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THE 

EXISTENTIALIST 
REVOLT 



The 
Existentialist Revolt 

THE MAIN THEMES AND 
PHASES OF EXISTENTIALISM 

Kierkegaard Nietzsche Hddegger 
Jaspers Sartre Marcel 

KURT F. REINHARDT 



With an Appendix on 
Existentialist Psychotherapy 



FREDERICK UNGAR PUBLISHING CO. 

NEW YORK 



Copyright 1952, 1960 
by Kurt F. Reinhardt 



Printed in the United States of America 
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-8570 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 



ALMOST eight years have passed since the first edition of this book 
was published. In the meantime, the "existentialist revolt" seems to 
have lost some of its original ferment and fervor, and it has become 
somewhat easier to distinguish its enduring contributions to philo- 
sophic thought in general and the philosophic problems of the pres- 
ent age in particular from the transitory fanciful thinking exercises 
of existentialism's "lunatic fringe/ 1 With the more widespread ac- 
ceptance of the "philosophy of existence" as a serious philosophic 
movement has come increasing respectability, so that it is no longer 
necessary for such astute thinkers as Heidegger, Jaspers and Marcel 
to shy away from being classified as "existentialists": it is widely 
recognized today that they and their followers are not adepts of a 
faddist cult but representatives of a philosophy which is making a 
valiant endeavor to call man back to himself, so that on the Odyssey 
of his homeward journey he may eventually rediscover his "lost 
face" and reassume his personal responsibility in a mechanized 
world of "mass-communication" and "organization-men." 

The text of the original manuscript is being republished without 
major changes. Though a discussion of certain developments in 
French existential thinking especially in the work of Maurice 
Merleau-Ponty (Phenominologie de la perception; Humanism* et 
terreur) and Francis Jeanson (Le probltme moral et la pensee de 
Sartre] seems an alluring task, the author has refrained from in- 
cluding this school of thought in the present volume because this 
new type of "social philosophy" actually transcends the boundaries 
of the "existentialist revolt." The interested reader is referred to an 
article by Herbert Spiegelberg 1 that deals with this offshoot of 
Sartre's existentialism. 

1 Herbert Spiegelberg, French Existentialism: Its Social Philosophies (The Kenyon 
Review, vol. XVI, no. 3, Summer, 1954, Kenyon College), pp. 446-462. 



vi PREFACE 

The author has added a supplementary chapter that discusses some 
post-Freudian and post-Jungian developments in psychotherapy and 
psychoanalysis which clearly and strikingly show the great impact of 
phenomenology and existentialism upon contemporary psychology 
and psychiatry. The most convincing documentary evidence of this 
influence is presented in the two international symposia edited by 
Francis J. Braceland, M.D. (Director of the Institute of Living, 
Hartford, Conn.), and by Rollo May, Ph.D., and some of his asso- 
ciates, respectively. 2 

The bibliography has been supplemented by the addition of a 
fairly large number of significant publications of recent date. Among 
these, Walter Kaufmann's popular anthology of existentialism 3 is 
conspicuous for its failure to penetrate to the heart of existentialist 
thought (because of die author-editor's ironclad biases), while Wil- 
liam Barrett's "study in existential philosophy" 4 is distinguished by 
a remarkable faculty of empathy and a lucid interpretative analysis. 

The author owes a debt of gratitude to Mr. Frederick Ungar of 
the Frederick Ungar Publishing Company for his initiative and 
interest in sponsoring this edition. 

Kurt F. Reinhardt 
Stanford University, California 
January 10, 1960 



a Cf. Francis J. Braceland (Ed.), faith, Reason and Modern Psychiatry. Sources 
for a Synthesis (New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1955). Rollo May, Ernest 
Angel, Henri F. Ellenberger (Ed.), Existence. A New Dimension in Psychiatry and 
Psychology (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1958). 

3 Walter Knufmann (Ed.), Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (New York: 
Meridian Books, 1956). 

* William Barrett, Irrational Man. A Study in Existential Philosophy (New York: 
Doubleday Anchor, 1958). 



PREFACE 



THE writing of this book has been anything but an "academic" 
affair. The main themes of Existentialism have occupied the author 
for at least the past three decades. His first acquaintance with 
Kierkegaard dates back to the years of World War I. In the early 
postwar years he read and reviewed some of Theodor Haecker's 
German translations of the Danish thinker. From 1919 to 1922 Karl 
Jaspers at the University of Heidelberg, and Edmund Husserl and 
Martin Heidegger at the University of Freiburg were among his 
teachers in philosophy. Their personalities as much as their works 
have left an indelible impression on his mind. 

It was at about the same time that the author took the first timid 
steps in his approach to the thinking of Aristotle, St. Augustine, and 
St. Thomas Aquinas under the guidance of Joseph Geyser (who 
was a Thomist) and Martin Heidegger, who taught a "Philosophy 
of Existence" long before "existentialism" became a fad and a 
fashion. 

After many years of philosophic study and after having familiarized 
himself with the thought of such "existentialists" as Unamuno, Ortega 
y Gasset, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Gabriel Marcel, the 
writing of this book became in the end what Heidegger calls "a 
necessity of thought," that is, a matter of compelling personal urgency. 

It has long been the author's conviction (which he shares with 
many contemporary Thomists) that in their emphasis (and often 
overemphasis) on the concrete "historicity" of human existence and 
in their revolt against an abstract "essentialism" (or idealism), the 
modern "existentialists" may aid in the rediscovery of long-forgotten 
or neglected philosophic truths. It is by "testing all and retaining the 
best" that the philosophia pcrennis remains "cxistentially" alive in the 
timeless validity of its essential principles. 

The author thus hopes that he may have succeeded to some extent 
in placing the "existentialist revolt" in its proper temporal and histori- 



vu 



viii PREFACE 

cal perspective. He has attempted to interpret the challenge o "existen- 
tialism" in such a way that its significance for the human individual 
and his personal predicament in this age of crisis stands clearly and 

cogently revealed. 

* * * 

The author and the publisher gratefully acknowledge their indebt- 
edness for the generously granted permission to quote from the original 
works and translations which are cited throughout this book. If not 
otherwise indicated, the translations are those of the author. A debt 
of gratitude is also due to Dr. Mary Williams, of Stanford University, 
for her aid in the reading of the page proofs. 

KURT F. REINHARDT 
Stanford University, California 
December 28, 1951 



CONTENTS 

Introduction: The Crisis of Human Existence i 

1. The Problem of Human Existence 14 

2. "Either-Or": The Challenge of Kierkegaard 23 

3. Man-God or God-Man? The Case of Nietzsche 59 

4. The Call of Truth and Being: Husserl and Heidegger 121 

5. The Ape of Lucifer: Jean-Paul Sartre 156 

6. Shipwreck or Homecoming? The Existentialism of Karl Jaspers 177 

7. "From Refusal to Invocation": Gabriel Marcel 203 
Conclusion: The Thematic Structure of Existentialism 228 
Appendix: Existentialist Psychotherapy and the Synthesis of Existence 244 
Bibliography 268 
Index 277 



INTRODUCTION 



THE CRISIS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE 

"Homo abyssus est" (St. Augustine). 



No ONE, even if he should live in the most remote and least disturbed 
corner of the globe, can escape the disquieting effects of the revolu- 
tionary transformations which human civilization is now undergoing. 
The most astute leaders of the thinking in East and West are well 
aware that the "modern" crisis affects not only certain sectors or 
aspects of life and civilization but their totality and thus the total 
existence of man. 

In this "progressive" age it is both pitiful and tragic to see the 
ever increasing discrepancy between the plenitude of scientific 
knowledge and the helplessness with which governments, peoples, 
and individuals face the intellectual and moral problems of human 
life. It is this tragic plight of modern man that was summarily stated 
by General Douglas MacArthur in 1945, in the brief but memorable 
radio address he delivered after the fall of the Japanese Empire. "The 
problem," the General said, "is basically theological, because it involves 
a spiritual improvement of human character, an improvement which 
must synchronize with our advance in science, art, literature, and all 
our material and cultural development of the past two thousand 
years. It is of the spirit and of the spirit alone that the flesh can 
be healed." 

Speculative thinkers of such widely differing philosophical and 
religious outlook as Jacques Maritain and F. S. C. Northrop 1 share 
the conviction voiced by the man of action that the present age 
stands in need of a radical spiritual revolution and re-formation. They 
are equally perturbed by the undeniable fact that the most advanced 
scientific and technical civilization the world has ever known presents 
itself, to use Albert Schweitzer's words, as "a strange medley of 
civilization and barbarism." 

This precarious situation in which contemporary man and con* 

iQE. F. S. C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West (New York: Macmillan, 
1946), Chap. I. 



a THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

temporary civilization in general, but the Western world in particular, 
find themselves, suggests that all the manifold social and political 
upheavals in every part of the globe are merely the external mani- 
festations, the symptoms and outbursts of a creeping and prolonged 
spiritual and moral disease. Modern civilization, it seems, is gravely 
threatened because the perennial values of intellectual and moral 
verities have increasingly been divorced from the realities of matter 
and nature, so that material reality, deprived of the guidance of right 
reason and a rationally enlightened will, is being handed over to 
the blind forces of chance and the biological urges of the will to 
power. 

From the centuries of the Christian past the nineteenth century 
had inherited certain basic convictions as to the nature of man, the 
structure of state and society, the rights and obligations of man as an 
individual and social being, the destiny of man, and the meaning of 
human existence and human civilization. The questions which the 
men and women of these past centuries had asked concerning these 
matters had been answered for them by theology and philosophy, 
which had ranked as the two supreme sciences in the hierarchy of 
knowledge. But in the course of the nineteenth century and with 
the adoption of the "scientific method" by historians, jurists, sociolo- 
gists, and "humanists," the Western mind began to reject the guiding 
principles provided by these two disciplines, 'Truth" henceforth was 
to be found exclusively in and by those sciences which analyzed and 
described extended and measurable physical reality. Sense knowledge 
was termed the only valid kind of knowledge, while rational or 
intellectual knowledge was declared synonymous with meaningless 
abstractions and fictitious beliefs. Theology became another name for 
superstition, and philosophy abandoned its ambition to arrive at 
universally indubitable certitude concerning the nature and destiny 
of man and human civilization. Instead of continuing as a normative 
discipline, laying down rules of human thought and conduct, philoso- 
phy became either a mere adjunct of the natural sciences or a purely 
historically minded discipline, relishing the re-telling of the past 
exploits of the human mind. Positivism and neopositivism made phil- 
osophy the handmaid of natural science, while idealism relegated it 
to an abstract sphere of pure thought, apart from the universe of 
material realities. 

In either case philosophy ungrudgingly surrendered its supreme 
prerogative of dealing creatively with fundamental human problems. 



INTRODUCTION 3 

And thus that discipline which Plato had once described as human- 
ity's "best guardian/' because "it comes and takes its abode in man, 
and is the savior of his virtue throughout life," largely lost the 
understanding of its legitimate function. It subsequently had to 
abandon also its guiding role in the institutions of higher learning 
and was forced into an inferior position in the curriculum. And such 
a consequence was quite natural and unavoidable, simply because a 
philosophy which has lost the power of translating itself into signifi- 
cant forms of human existence has surrendered its birthright and 
lost its aboriginal "existential" significance. 



The crisis toward which the modern world was slowly but surely 
moving was early diagnosed as a disease of the human mind by 
some advanced thinkers who dared to take their stand against the 
"spirit of the age" and some of whom fell as victims in a valiant 
struggle against forces which were as powerfully alive within their 
own selves as* in their surrounding world. The German poet Goethe, 
usually given to optimism, grew doubtful and melancholy when he 
weighed the progressive trends of the early nineteenth century against 
the chances of human happiness. "Men," he wrote, "will become more 
shrewd and clever, but they will not be better or happier. I see a 
time approaching when God will no longer be pleased with man, 
when He will have to smash His creation to pieces in order to 
rejuvenate it." And Friedrich Nietzsche was to write half a century 
later: "Oh thou proud European of the nineteenth century, art 
thou not mad? Thy knowledge does not complete Nature, it only 
kills thine own nature. . . . Thou climbest toward heaven on the 
sunbeams of thy knowledge but also down toward chaos. Thy 
manner of going is fatal to thee; the ground slips from under thy 
feet into the dark unknown; thy life has no stay but spiders' webs 
torn assunder by every new stroke of thy knowledge." 2 

In the interval between these apprehensive warnings of Goethe and 
Nietzsche, the imposing system of G. F. Hegel's metaphysical idealism 
had risen as a final attempt to unify science, philosophy, and religion. 
But Hegel's own "dialectical method" was seized upon by the radical 
"Young Hegelians" in Germany and England to destroy their master's 

2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thoughts out of Season, II: The Use and Abuse of History 
(translated by A. Collins; Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis, 1910), p. 76 f. [In 
The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. by Dr. Oscar Levy, Vol. V.] 



4 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

idealistic premises. Taking their cue from Auguste Comte's positivism, 
they developed a dialectical "historic materialism" which saw in 
history no longer any issues involving problems of true and false, 
right and wrong, good and evil, but merely questions of fact and 
material force. Even while Hegel was still alive, the inductive method 
of the natural sciences began to replace the deductive reasoning of 
the Hegelian system. Comte's positivism became first a powerful 
rival of Hegelianism and then its triumphant conqueror. 

With a thoroughly Germanic consistency, German positivism 
developed Comte's positivistic premises to the extreme conclusions of 
an integral philosophy of materialism. In 1855, the German Darwinist 
Karl Vogt published his famous essay on Superstition and Science 
(Kohlerglaube und Wisscnschaft), a cynical and witty attempt to 
dispense with the problem of a human soul. Thought he described as 
a secretion of the brain, in the manner in which the digestive juices 
are secretions of the stomach, bile a secretion of the liver, and urine 
a secretion of the kidneys. 

The most crucial blow against Hegel, however, was struck not 
by the materialists but by a representative of the religious individualism 
of the Protestant-Christian tradition. The Danish religious philosopher 
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) regarded Hegel's philosophy on the 
one hand and the teachings of liberal Protestantism on the other as 
the two most dangerous anti-Christian forces in modern times. Against 
Hegel's pantheistic identification of God and world, divine mind and 
human mind, Kierkegaard insisted that the Creator and the creature, 
God and the world, supernature and nature were separated by an 
unbridgeable gulf. Against Hegel's secularization of Christian dogma 
he preached the absolute sovereignty of the Deity. And against 
Hegel's deification of the omnipotent State he proclaimed the "inward- 
ness" of the individual. But, following Martin Luther's lead, Kierke- 
gaard proposed to discard reason for the sake of "Faith." He thus 
unwittingly contributed his own weighty share to the self-destruction 
of philosophy in the nineteenth century. 

Nevertheless, Kierkegaard diagnosed the spiritual and moral sick- 
ness of the modern age more profoundly and accurately perhaps 
than any other modern author, with the possible exception of 
Friedrich Nietzsche. Again and again he inveighed against the half- 
hcartedness and the intellectual and moral slovenliness of those of 
his contemporaries who lacked the courage and consistency to face 
the far-reaching consequences of their philosophical and religious 



INTRODUCTION 5 

opinions. He regretfully stated that with the aid of Hegelian philosophy 
and liberal Protestant theology, it had become an easy and comfortable 
thing to call oneself a Christian and actually be a pagan. And he 
drew a sharp dividing line between "Christianity" and "Christendom," 
asserting that whereas the former was and remained a resplendent 
reality, the latter was in danger of becoming but an "optical illusion." 
With his demand of an all-decisive "choice," an unconditional "either- 
or w he furnished the weapons with which Henrik Ibsen fought in his 
philosophico-religious dramas Brand and Peer Gynt against the half- 
heartedness and irresponsibility of liberal politicos and social phrase- 
mongers. In the symbolic characters of these two plays Ibsen presented 
his own version of the demand "All or Nothing." 

"I want honesty," Kierkegaard wrote in a political pamphlet, shortly 
before his death. "If that is what this race and generation wants, if it 
will uprightly, honestly, frankly, openly, directly rebel against Chris- 
tianity and say to God, 'We can but we will not subject ourselves 
to this authority* but remember that it must be done uprightly, 
honestly, frankly, directly well then, strange as it may seem, I am 
for it; for honesty is what I want. . . . But an honest rebellion against 
Christianity can only be made when one honestly admits what Chris- 
tianity is and how one is related to it." 3 It is understandable that the 
Danish liberal left-wing writer and famous literary critic Georg 
Brandes ventured the opinion that Kierkegaard had led the intellec- 
tual life of Denmark to a juncture at which there remained as the 
only alternative "a leap either into the black abyss of Catholicism, 
or over to the point where freedom beckons." 

It is his rejection of compromise, his call for an intellectual honesty 
that emanates from the deepest roots of human existence, which 
constitutes one of the reasons for Kierkegaard's hold on many 
prominent thinkers of the present day. In the "existentialisms" of 
Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre, Marcel, etc., no less than in the "dialectical" 
or "crisis" theology of Karl Earth and his associates, Kierkegaard's 
thought lives on as a challenge to the twentieth century. "There must 
be another Reformation," the Danish thinker wrote in one of the 
eighteen thousand pages of his Journals, "and this time it will be a 
horrible reformation. Compared with it that of Luther will appear 
as a mere jest. Its battle cry will clamor for the remnants of Faith 
on earth. And we shall witness millions becoming apostates: truly a 

s Cf. Walter Lowric, Kierkegaard (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 574. 



6 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

fearful reformation. We shall recognize that Christianity is practically 
nonexistent, and it will be a horrible sight to behold this generation, 
pampered and lulled to sleep by a childishly deformed Christianity 
to see this generation wounded once again by the thought of what 
it means to become a Christian, to be a Christian." 



About a generation after Kierkegaard had thus predicted a mam- 
moth apostasy and a second reformation, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844- 
1900) lamented "the unspeakable impoverishment and exhaustion of 
human existence." In the first part of his Thoughts out of Season 
(Unzeitgemdsse Betrachtungen, 1873) he wrote: "We are living in 
an atomic age, an atomistic chaos. Today everything is determined 
by the coarsest and most evil forces, by the egotism of an acquisitive 
society and by military potentates. ... A revolution is unavoidable, 
and it will be an atomistic revolution." And the preface of The Will 
to Power (Der Wille zur Machf) contains the following prophetic 
message: "My work will pass a summary judgment on this century, 
on the entire modern age, on the kind of civilization which we have 
attained. . . . What I am going to narrate is the history of the next 
two centuries. I shall describe what will of necessity come about: 
the advent of Nihilism. Our entire European civilization has long 
been moving with a tortuous tension, a tension growing from decade 
to decade, toward the final catastrophe/' 

Nietzsche was perhaps the first among European thinkers of great 
format to realize to the fullest extent the dangers inherent in a 
scientism that had thrown off the guardianship and guidance of 
human wisdom. In the preface to the second edition of The Birth of 
Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (Die Geburt der Tragddie aus dem 
Geiste der Musi\, 1886), he wrote: "What I got hold of at that time 
was something terrible and dangerous, a problem with horns, not 
necessarily a bull, but certainly a new problem: the problem of science 
itself, science comprehended for the first time as something problem- 
atical and highly questionable." Though never a systematic philoso- 
pher himself, Nietzsche first discerned the essential difference between 
science and philosophy and categorically emphasized the basic distinc- 
tion between the scientific and philosophic aims and methods. 

In Nietzsche's sensitive mind and passionate heart all the intellec- 
tual vibrations, radiations, and dissonances of the modern age are 
reflected as in a focus. His lonely fight against the tremendous odds 



INTRODUCTION 7 

of an "atomized" society and a disintegrating civilization, his ever 
growing isolation, and his final descent into the listless night of 
insanity make him both a witness and a victim of the modern crisis, 
the crisis of human existence. 'Philosophy was for him "love of wis- 
dom" in the strictly Socratic sense, and the philosopher, if he was 
deserving of his tide, was the friend and lover of wisdom. Possessed of 
the distinctive philosophic character marks of integrity (Rgdlich\eit) 9 
serenity (Heifer fat), and steadfast consistency (Bestdndigl(eit), the 
philosopher was first of all called to realize in his own life the virtues 
of a philosophic existence, and then to shape human conduct in the 
image and likeness of the true philosopher, whose supreme task was 
the consummation of a reintegration of thought, life, and civilization. 
This is why he calls the philosopher: "the physician of culture." 

Nietzsche was not only convinced that Western humanistic culture 
had utterly failed to live up to its original promises but also (owing 
to the slanted view of Christianity which he had rather uncritically 
accepted from Luther and Schopenhauer) that the originally Christian 
impulses of Humanism fully shared in this failure and were ultimately 
responsible for it. To escape, however, the snares of skepticism, 
cynicism, and nihilism, he called upon Western man to let the dead 
bury their dead and look toward a future in which the youth of the 
world would wrest new values from the vital forces of the earth, 
values which were once more to determine "the measure, currency, 
and weight of all things." 

The final phase of Nietzsche's battle with the "spirit of the age" 
and with the menacing forces of darkness in his own mind was 
marked by his despairing outcry for a synthesis of "Dionysos and 
Christ," the personification of the splendor of this life and die glory 
of the life beyond, and the profoundest longing of his complex soul 
was perhaps revealed in his call for "a Caesar with the soul of Christ." 

Nietzsche's message to the modern age, like that of Kierkegaard, 
was above all a great challenge: his deification of telluric forces and 
his simultaneous merciless dissection of the actually existing civiliza- 
tion signalized the crossroads to which modern mankind had advanced. 
The alternative was either an unequivocal new paganism or a whole- 
hearted, integral Christian Humanism. 



Again, a generation later, Nietzsche's attempt to diagnose the 
modern crisis and "to narrate the history of the next two centuries" 



8 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

was repeated by Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) in the two volumes 
of The End of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 1917, 
1922). The crisis of Western man and Western civilization, born of 
a growing lack of confidence in long established spiritual values and 
moral standards, was recognized by both Nietzsche and Spengler as 
involving the totality of human existence and its cultural milieu: the 
state, society, economics, education, art, literature, philosophy, and 
religion. But whereas for Nietzsche's basic cultural optimism the mind 
of Western man was still capable of advancing to new shores by 
means of the vitalization of its unused recuperative resources, by 
means of a "transvaluation of all values." for Spengler's biologically 
determined cultural pessimism the modern crisis was caused by the 
biological exhaustion of the organism of Western culture and there- 
fore indicative not of a transition but of the impending finale. To 
both thinkers, however, it appeared as the tragedy of human existence 
in its most critical stage that the modern scientific age, which had 
promised progress, peace, security, and liberation from all illusions and 
superstitions, was producing on all sides a growing existential inse- 
curity, accompanied and aggravated by multiplying revolutionary 
upheavals. 

The merit of Spengler's diagnosis of the crisis of human existence 
and of the crisis of the age lies, notwithstanding his counsels of 
despair, in his grim and cruel analysis of the "spirit of the age" and 
in the unrelenting consistency with which he proceeded from certain 
widely endorsed premises to seemingly inescapable conclusions. That 
this abysmal pessimism itself was one of the symptoms of the crisis 
is evidenced by the fact that Spengler remained completely unaware 
of the major flaws of his own materialistic and naturalistic metaphysics. 
There is no doubt that if his premises of an all-inclusive materialism 
and naturalism were correct, the conclusions presented in The End 
of the West are logically conclusive and thus equally correct. If the 
distinguishing mark of man is indeed "his hand" rather than his 
head, then such a being might actually achieve its greatest triumphs 
in the creation of "millions and billions of horsepower." But if man's 
distinguishing marks are his intellect and free will, then the entire 
picture changes, and the essentially different premises call for essen- 
tially different conclusions and solutions, [if in fact the crisis of 
human existence issues from the confused mind, the sick heart, and 
the perverted will of modern Western man, then he and his civiliza- 
tion are not irretrievably doomed or lost, because then even at this 



INTRODUCTION 9 

critical juncture human nature will be able to rouse itself and to rise 
again, to challenge the "spirit of the age" and to recover the whole- 
ness and balance of a truly human life and civilization.] 

But it seems that to achieve this ascent modern mankind stands in 
need of the challenge of such intransigent prophets as Kierkegaard, 
Nietzsche, Spengler, or some of the contemporary "existentialist" 
thinkers men who are highly sensitive to the prevalent dispropor- 
tion between thought and action, theory and practice, between truths 
intellectually known and truths actually lived. Their negations no 
less than their affirmations contain a stern summons to face anew 
the narrowness of a path marked by the dramatic possibilities of 
existence, by the unquestionable realities of "choice," of good and 
evil, of sin, death, and judgment. 

Whereas a century ago the large majority of Western men were 
still either convinced Christians or convinced rationalists, the present 
generation is in the gravest peril of losing both the "tragic optimism 
of Christianity" (Emmanuel Mounier) and the cheerful self-assurance 
of rationalism. Intimidated by the unexpected sight of the opened 
abyss of human existence, man finds himself lost in a world which 
dangerously closes in upon him from all sides, and he laments the 
seeming absurdity of his situation. Everything is "de trap" (Sartre), 
gratuitous, superfluous. In a world without God, man may succumb 
to the temptation of Nietzsche; he may feel tempted to become a god 
himself or a superman, but the inevitable failure of such an attempt 
results in "la nauste" (Sartre), ill existential disgust and the horrifying 
experience of complete vacuity. Thus human existence in a meaning- 
less world becomes for the French writer Albert Camus the absurdity 
of all absurdities. The existential "anguish" of Kierkegaard is trans- 
formed into the vague fear complexes of a nihilistic forlornness, and 
nihilism produces as its sociological counterpart the sadistic passion 
of terror and destruction. The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset 
compares contemporary man with a traveler in a motorcar the mechan- 
ism of which is a complete mystery to him. Man without God 
resembles the traveler without an experienced chauffeur: the car 
races at full speed, but the traveler has lost control. The world 
moves at full speed toward events over which man is no longer master. 

The general course of the transformations that were taking place 
in the West on the stages of the passage from antiquity to modern 
times was very ingeniously described by Oswald Spengler. Europe 
had experienced the early phases of its life in the sheltering embrace 



ro THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

of a closed cosmos and a universal Church. The cultural and artistic 
creations of ancient Greece and imperial Rome had reflected the 
static character of a spatially and temporally limited and self-contained 
world view. Christianity introduced the dimension of spiritual infinity 
into this finite universe: it placed history under the dual aspect of 
eternity and time. The temporal phase of history begins with the 
divine "Fiat!", with an act of creation ex nihilo; and then the irre- 
versible time current of history moves toward a preordained end, in 
which time and eternity will again converge. But within the temporal 
span between the beginning and the end the statically closed cosmos 
remained intact. 

With the waning of the Middle Ages a new cosmic consciousness 
begins to take hold of man: Galilei hurls the globe into infinite space, 
and the ancient and mediaeval arithmetic and geometric concepts are 
superseded by the functional dynamism of the infinitesimal calculus 
and of analytical geometry. The static economics of agrarian feudalism 
and the corporative economic ethics of the mediaeval guilds give way 
to the fluid open markets of competitive capitalistic enterprise* The 
homophony of mediaeval plain chant develops into the richer textures 
of polyphony and into the intricate mathematical and geometrical 
musical designs of fugal counterpoint. Balance, harmony, symmetry, 
and spatial limitation disappear in the flan vital of the dramatically 
antithetic and tragically restless Baroque and finally in the whirlpools of 
the existential disorientation of the nineteenth century. Human destiny 
can no longer be read in the symbolism of art and nature and in an 
objective reality open to reason and faith, but appears now enveloped 
in impenetrable and incalculable mystery^ without a known beginning 
or a decipherable qnd. Human existence reaches backward to an 
indefinite past and forward to an indefinite future but in either 
direction toward a time series which no longer carries any recognizable 
existential meaning. 

In individual and social life, in politics and economics, in national 
and international affairs, contemporary man is confronted with a 
complexity of facts and events which defies even the best-intcntioned 
efforts of governments and administrators. Although people talk as 
usual, gather in assemblies, conventions, and committees as usual, they 
are cynically or despairingly aware of their powerlessness over those 
events which tomorrow, without any known rhyme or reason, may 
make havoc of their plans and designs. Thrown back on their 
precarious momentary situation, men grow skeptical of the tremendous 



INTRODUCTION 11 

intellectual and material powers which have accumulated in their 
minds and hands. But even if everything over which they had proudly 
claimed mastery seems to be slipping away, there still remains the 
narrow circumference of their actual individual existence with its 
inevitable challenges and choices. And so they become "existentialists." 

At this very moment something unforeseen happens: a new power, 
more awesome than any of which man had held possession in the 
past, is handed over to him, the power, namely, to put an end to all 
human and natural power, the power to annihilate the very planet 
which he inhabits, to annihilate the past, present, and future of the 
human race as such. Thus the power released by the splitting of the 
atom has made the solitary existentialist "choice" a universally human 
problem and concern. The question is no longer whether I, individu- 
ally, prefer snuffing out my private personal life to the more arduous 
task of living it on a high and rational plane, but the question is 
whether mankind as such prefers the easier way of collective self- 
destruction to the heroic moral effort required for self-preservation 
and self-realization. 

Thus science has pressed anew into human hands the two-edged 
sword of freedom. A second time man has eagerly seized the fruit of 
the tree of knowledge, and again, and in the most ominous way, the 
promise of the Serpent has been fulfilled: he has become "like unto 
God, knowing good and evil." The freedom of "choice" has reappeared 
in the fearful armor of atomic power: armed for the attainment of 
good, and armed for the perpetration of evil. 

Emmanuel Mounier 4 . distinguishes between two types of nihilism, 
one of which is creative and "preliminary," while the other is destruc- 
tive and final. Creative nihilism points to the dark abyss of nothing- 
ness in order to warn and to rescue; it calls "nothingness" by name 
in order to reveal and save the splendor of "being" which lies buried 
in its hidden depths. This is the nihilism of Nietzsche and of Heidegger. 
Destructive nihilism, on the other hand, grows out of a frustrated 
desire to be creative in the attainment of knowledge or in the domi- 
nation of life and nature. It resembles the primitive reaction of the 
child taking vengeance on the object or subject which refuses to be 
subservient to his wishes or whims. The destructive nihilist is possessed 
by a horrible intoxication, a raving despair which drives him to the 
demolition of his home, his work, and his self. 

4 C. Emmanuel Mounicr, Gedanken fur cine apdydyptischc Zeit, "Lancelot/' I, 
8 (Koblenz, 1947), p. 22. Originally published in Esprit, January, 1947. 



12 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

When Nietzsche wrote in 1873, "The great springtide of barbarism 
is at our door,'* he thought primarily of the approaching Russian 
flood, but he was also acutely aware of the barbarism in the hearts of 
his contemporaries in the Western world, hearts which had been 
emptied of the strong and noble sentiments of a heroic past. He 
thought of the barbarism in human minds which had lost their 
sense of direction and orientation, and of the barbarism in human 
works and deeds which had become the stillborn children of intellec- 
tual and moral chaos. He thought above all of those whom Kierke- 
gaard had identified with the featureless human herd, the anonymous 
"public," and whom Mounier calls followers of the colorless "cvery- 
man's party," the party of indiflferentism, the party of those without 
faith, will, or aspiration. "I have as little desire," writes Mounier, "to 
deny as to admit that we have entered into those convulsive spasms 
which according to the Scriptures are to precede the end of our time. 
But I know that, even if this were the case, we should still be in 
duty bound to explore our disorder and to attempt for the sake of 
the honor of man as did our ancestors of the year 1000 to build 
a realm of granite, a realm which, depending on our beliefs, will 
either defy or anticipate eternity. . . . 'Peace to men of gbod will' 
may be read in reverse: 'War to men of ill will!'" 5 This generation 
as perhaps none other before has learned to know the meaning of 
peace and of war. The choice is ours. 



Human existence achieves its self-realization from day to day in 
works and accomplishments which have their measure and their justi- 
fication in the mandate of God. By losing himself and finding himself 
in his daily tasks, the tasks of the farmer, the laborer, or the artist, 
man attains to the mastery of the world. There exists no contrast and 
much less a contradiction between homo jaber and homo sapiens 
(man, the maker, and man, the thinker). The greatest minds of 
mankind were perfect artisans, perfect laborers, and their labor was 
consecrated for all time by the God-Man, who was a carpenter. It 
does not matter whether the fruits of their labor are visible or invisi- 
ble: if their labor is inspired and guided by love, their works are 
perfect: their humanity is informed and transfigured by Christianity. 
In this way and in this way only human existence opens out toward 



INTRODUCTION 13 

and takes into itself the totality of that creation which owes its 
generation to the Divine Word. For "in him all created things took 
their being, heavenly and earthly, visible and invisible . . . , and in 
him all subsist." 6 

6 Col. 1:16, 17. 



CHAPTER ONE 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN EXISTENCE 



HUMAN existence has always been a problem for man, the rational 
animal, who, in virtue of his faculty of rational reflection, could not 
help looking searchingly and critically at his own life and at life 
in general, and comparing his own mode of being with that of other 
creatures. Existentialism in its modern and particularly its contempo- 
rary form concentrates this critical reflection on the individual human 
self. It confronts this individual human existence with those collective 
claims and forces which threaten to submerge or pulverize indi- 
viduality and personality in abstract, ideal essences or in such pseudo- 
absolutes as "the nation," "the fatherland," "the race," "the interna- 
tional proletariat." In view of this danger, man passionately reasserts 
himself as an in-dividuum, as an indivisible unity or substance, 
conscious of the fact that no valid substitution can ever be made 
for a human personality. Existentialism has risen in modern Europe 
because the steadily increasing pressures of collectivism and abstract 
idealism have forced the individual to a resolute and radical self- 
affirmation. 

The rise of existentialism is thus one of the symptoms of a spe- 
cifically European crisis, although in its broader ramifications it is 
indicative of the modern crisis of human existence as such. History 
offers ample evidence that, as long as human life and culture arc 
healthy and normally integrated, the individual and universal elements 
balance each other. In times of severe stress and strain, however, when 
the foundations of human life and of the established system of values 
have been shaken, when man experiences more acutely the insecurity 
of life, one or the other of these elements tends to assert itself dispro- 
portionately and often pathologically. 

In existentialism, then, the weight or burden of life lies heavily on 
the individual and on the contingent and finite aspects of his "being- 
in-the-world" (Heidegger). But once contingency and finiteness 
become the exclusive frame of reference in human existence, man's 

14 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN EXISTENCE 15 

interest and preoccupation center in increasing measure in his own 
individual predicaments and uncertainties. In such a self-centered 
state of mind he is prone to become oblivious to the social com- 
ponents and needs of human nature and, burrowing deeply in 
the mysterious grounds of his own self, he starts on a dangerous 
journey of subterranean adventures. A certain kind of existentialism 
has without doubt succumbed to this kind of narcissic self-centrism, 
while another kind, taking cognizance of the noncontingent, spiritual 
component of human nature, has arrived at various possibilities of 
"transcendence." It is thus, roughly speaking, a different anthropology 
that accounts for the metaphysical and ontological differences 
between theistic existentialism (Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Marcel), on the 
one hand, and the nontheistic or atheistic forms of existentialism 
(Heidegger, Sartre), on the other. In its ambivalence existentialism 
mirrors the ambivalence and instability of human nature and both 
the positive and negative possibilities implicit in man's position in the 
universe. Beyond this, existentialism offers documentary proof of the 
desperate seriousness with which some of the best minds of the 
present age have been wresding with both the problem of man and 
the problem of philosophy. 

The major theme of existentialism is, as the term indicates, exist- 
ence, this term being understood in the meaning conveyed by the 
German word "Existenz," as an efcstasis, an e^-sistence, a "standing 
out" from the mere biological vitality by which all subhuman forms 
of existence are characterized and circumscribed. Martin Heidegger 
has this etymological root-meaning of "existence" in mind when he 
distinguishes between three different modes in which existents are 
or have their being: (i) things are "given" or exist as objects of 
human knowledge; (2) things are "given" or exist as tools or means 
of human activity (a hammer, for example, is "given" in this way: 
it derives its meaning, its signification, from the practical use which 
man makes of it); (3) the existent called "man" stands out from 
all other modes of existence in that man is not simply and statically 
like minerals, plants, and animals, or like inanimate tools, but has 
constantly and dynamically to affirm and actualize his existence in 
self-knowledge and self-realization. Man is thus a being suspended 
between nothingness and the plenitude of being. Man is "homo viator" 
(Gabriel Marcel), never at the goal, but always on the way: he may, 
to use Goethe's words, "become what he is," or he may fall away from 
his authentic self. 



i6 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

The term "existence" was first understood and used in this sense by 
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Kierkegaard in particular, by the pro- 
found analysis of "existence" and existential thinking (in his Con- 
cluding Unscientific Postscript, 1846), has fathered existentialism in 
contemporary theology and philosophy. The "crisis theology" or 
"dialectical theology" of Karl Earth, Emit Brunner, and Reinhold 
Niebuhr is no less indebted to the Danish thinker than the existential 
philosophy of Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre, and Marcel. But while 
"dialectical theology" is concerned primarily with the precarious 
existential situation of the individual Christian facing the "Eternal 
Word" of Christian revelation, Kierkegaard's main concern is the 
possibility of man's self-realization: to what extent, he asks, can man 
realize himself and save himself by withdrawing from the irresponsi- 
bility, superficiality, and forgetfulness of everyday life? Existence, 
then, is for Kierkegaard the attainment of self-possession in the 
spiritually directed and determined life of the individual. And "exis- 
tential thinking" is the vital thought-process by which the concrete 
human individual appropriates that Truth which for the armchair 
philosopher and the systematizer remains an abstract proposition, 
compelling no existential assent. 

The heavy emphasis which Kierkegaard placed on the personal 
appropriation of the contents of knowledge and truth could have 
acted as a wholesome corrective of the excesses of Hegelian idealism, 
which had been both the cause and the object of the existentialist 
attack on abstract speculation. But in this same emphasis there loomed 
the danger of subjectivism and irrationalism if the existential thinker 
in his concentration on the personal attitude of the knower were to 
lose sight of the objects of knowledge. Kierkegaard and several 
existential philosophers with him and after him did not always 
escape this danger. By demanding of the philosopher the highest 
degree of "subjectivity" in the passionate appropriation and vitalization 
of truth, and by denouncing "objectivity" as irresponsibility and 
indifferentism, he opened the door to an anti-intellectual voluntarism. 

Existentialism in all its forms is keenly aware of an clement of 
insecurity that attaches to all purely philosophical knowledge. This 
awareness is the strength of existential thinking, but it may become 
its weakness if the subject's share in the establishment of philosophic 
certitude is exaggerated. Philosophic knowledge is never as complete 
and final as an article of theological faith or a mathematical equation. 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN EXISTENCE 17 

Far from being allowed to rest securely on its past and present 
accomplishments, philosophy is thrown back again and again to its 
original queries, to the initial stages of its struggle for certitude. 

Time and again philosophers have tried to emulate theology and 
science, in attempts to eliminate this element of insecurity and insta- 
bility. The representatives of the philosophia perennis went farthest 
in laying a solid groundwork for rational certitude, but in the end 
they too had to resign themselves to the fact that their discipline lacked 
complete self-sufficiency and remained ultimately ancilla theologiae. 
Descartes, Spinoza, and, to some extent, Kant tried to impart to 
philosophy the impregnability of mathematics, while modern and 
contemporary positivists and neopositivists (logical empiricists, seman- 
ticists) have aimed at establishing philosophy as a branch of the 
experimental sciences, and the German idealists proposed to get rid 
of the troublesome concrete subject by immersing it in a "general 
consciousness" (Kant) or in an absolute, universal ego (Fichte, Hegel). 
But the concrete human being eventually rebelled against all these 
attempts to dispose of his dynamic subjectivity. Existential philosophy 
poses anew the problem of individuality and personality and the 
part the philosopher plays in the establishment of philosophic certi- 
tude. Existentialism calls attention to the fact that philosophy is a 
truly human discipline precisely because it always includes venture 
and risk and reflects in both its sublimity and frailty the ambivalence 
of human existence. 

Existentialism insists that no valid philosophic question can be 
asked and answered unless both question and answer take into 
account the concrete existence of the questioner. The query concerning 
the questioner is the central query of every existential philosophy. 
That being, called "man," who asks philosophical questions, wants 
first of all to know what he is and where he stands. And why is he 
so anxiously and vitally concerned with his own existence? Simply 
because by his very nature he is a questioning being, a philosophical 
creature. The irrational animal, on the other hand, i$ essentially 
unphilosophical: it does not question the meaning of its existence, 
nor the meaning of its surrounding world. It merely accepts both 
and uses them to the best of its ability. But man is that peculiar 
kind of being which perpetually questions and wonders and doubts. 
Man is thus, existentialism tells us, at the core of every philosophical 



i8 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

quest. With him philosophy begins, and with him it ends. He may 
cling to it as to a guide, and then it may lead him to the depths 
of his own self. Or it may beckon to him as a lure to intellectual 
adventure, and then he may eventually lose his self and be led to 
existential disintegration. For Plato and Thomas Aquinas philosophy 
acted as a guide to wisdom and virtue; for Nietzsche and Sartre it 
was to become a lure into adventure and into the abyss of self- 
destruction. But there may be greatness even in philosophic negation 
and existential despair if, as in Nietzsche's case, this attitude is 
inspired by a passionate sincerity, supported by a willingness to bear 
all the consequences, and hallowed by self-immolation. In other 
words, an attitude of existential despair may still be called philo- 
sophical as long as this despair does not consume the thinker's 
philo-sophia, his "love of wisdom" or his "wisdom of love," as long 
as he remains attuned to the mysterious heartbeat of Reality. The 
uncritical dogmatism of the armchair thinker, and the smug and 
irreverent skepticism of the nihilist are, on the other hand, equally 
sterile and unphilosophical. 

Peter Wust 1 compares man's genuine philosophic awakening to a 
"mct&noia," a real conversio that marks a radical change of mind and 
lends a new vision of self and of life. The egotistic and merely 
utilitarian point of view gives way to a larger and broader perspective 
in which reality appears in its objective and enduring aspects. Thus 
man's philosophic awakening is an advance from knowledge to wis- 
dom, a wisdom which penetrates to the metaphysical grounds of 
sensed phenomena and farther beyond to that timeless or eternal 
Reason or Truth in which all existents are rooted and in which all 
share. The philosopher's query thus aims at the ultimate meaning of 
all beings, including his own self. Though his quest may overshoot 
the capacity of his reason, his thirst for truth is as imperative as his 
bodily appetite for food and drink. The striving for total truth and 
total goodness manifests, according to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, 
the universal human desire for happiness, the happiness of self- 
realization and perfection. This philosophic striving or rational appe- 
tite, impelled by the light of reason, gropes for light and shrinks from 
darkness, and it cannot be at rest until it has illumined that massive 

1 Cf. Peter Wust, Der Mensch uitd die Philosophic (Munster, 1946), passim. 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN EXISTENCE 19 

darkness which veils and shrouds Reality. The human heart is described 
by St. Augustine as a restless heart, constantly beset by the weight of 
truth, a truth incarnate in the eternal Source of all Truth and Light 
and Love. 

Because philosophy becomes lightless and listless when it disregards 
this restlessly striving and loving human heart, the existential philoso- 
pher finds in Descartes's "cogito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am) 
or "sum res cogitans" (I am a thinking substance) a very inexhaustive 
description of the human self. The "I am,'* he argues, is much more 
than the "I think"; the human self is much more than "res cogi- 
tans" and the Cartesian formula is therefore inconclusive unless the 
ego understands himself in Kierkegaard's sense, as a subject discovering 
in introspection his existential and essential relationship to an Absolute 
Subject and, by virtue of this discovery, becomes actually what he is 
potentially: a human being. 

This opposition to Cartesian rationalism and idealism explains the 
predilection shown by some existential thinkers for the pre-Socratic 
philosophers of ancient Greece, and especially for Heraclitus (c. 500 
B.C.). While Kierkegaard praises Socrates as a philosopher whose 
existence fully and adequately expressed the Socratic ideas of truth 
and goodness, others (Nietzsche, Heidegger) find fault with the 
Greek philosopher's rationalism and give preference to those thinkers 
who preceded him and in whom they claim to find a more complete 
understanding of man and the world. The results of the most recent 
research 2 seem to confirm this claim. 

The major question in the speculation of Heraclitus concerns the 
self-analysis, the self-understanding of the human being, that is, the 
basic problem of every anthropology. Unlike Descartes and his 
successors, but very much like St. Augustine and the leading school- 
men of the Middle Ages, the Greek philosopher was interested in 
the totality of man and of realitv, not primarily in human conscious- 
ness and human knowledge. Heraclitus describes the soul of the 
philosopher as being related to "the eternally living fire,** a relationship 
which enables him to recognize within his own self the reflection of 
divine wisdom. These anthropological views arc grounded in cosmolo- 
gy and theology. "For Heraclitus," writes Werner Jaeger, "the human 

2 Of. Werner Jaq?er, Patdeia \i The Ideals of Greet Culture (New York: Oxford 
University Press t 1947); and Ludwijr Binswanjjer, Attsgewtihlte VartrSge und Artf- 
sStxe (Bern: A. Francke, 194?). PP 



2p THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

heart is the passionately feeling and active center in which all the 
forces of the cosmos meet and fuse.*' Human existence, to gain a 
real possession of itself, must gather itself from distraction, and such 
self-collection cannot pass by the world but must proceed in the world 
and through the world. 

The common characteristic of all men, according to Heraclitus, is 
the possibility of phronesis, that is, reflection or introspection. Man 
enters into die state of phroncsis when he collects himself in the 
tranquil contemplation of truth as it speaks to him in the voice of 
nature and in the voice of his own deep and enduring selfhood. 
But while this kind of existence is potentially open to all, it is 
actually sought and chosen by but a few. The multitude remains 
immersed in the distractions of life. These few are the aristoi, the 
best, while the many are termed the hoi folloi (Kierkegaard's "feature- 
less crowd," Jaspers' "masses," Heidegger's "das Man"). The crowd 
does not understand, learn, know, or remember anything, but it 
believes it knows everything. As a crowd and in the crowd human 
beings become forgetful of what it means to listen and to speak. 
They become like the deaf, of whom it is said that "though present, 
they are absent." 8 Eyes and ears are poor witnesses in men who 
have the souls of barbarians. But the most reprehensible feature of 
their way of life is what Heraclitus calls hybris, that is, their pre- 
sumptuous pride. Although they behave like children or irrational 
animals, they are really inferior to the animal which moves with 
instinctive certainty within its natural orbit, whereas a human existence 
is bound to transcend its natural orbit positively or negatively: choos- 
ing, forming, creating, or failing to choose, to form, and to create. 
For whatever man is or becomes depends on what he chooses to 
make, or fails to make, of his natural vitality. Karl Jaspers merely 
elaborates this Heraclitean thesis when he points out that the man 
who chooses to descend to the level of the brute becomes not an 
animal but less than an animal, "an existence shaken by despair, 
lacking that power and certainty which the animal possesses." How- 
ever, the animal-like gregarious man, the man who has disappeared 
in the crowd, resembles the brute in that he, too, accepts life without 
questioning, without authentic choices, without actual command 
over his destiny.* 

8 Cl Hermann Dicls, Fragments der Varso&atifar, Vol. i, 1922. Cf. Kathleen Free- 
man's translation (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1948). 
*lbid., fragment iz. 



THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN EXISTENCE 21 

The many resemblances which the Heraditean concept of man and 
his "being-in-the-world" bears to the existentialist point of view are 
obvious. There is lacking, however, in the Heraditean anthropology 
the "metaphysical category" of Kierkegaard's "individual," who 
desists (i.e., "stands out") against the universal claims and demands 
of the polls (the state, the world, civilization). For Heraclitus, no 
less than for Hegel, the individual is ultimately absorbed by the 
political and social universal. 

Phronesis, or the introspective listening to the truth of being in 
nature and in the self, is in the opinion of Heraclitus the way to 
gain knowledge of that cosmic norm which he calls Logos. "All 
human laws arc nurtured by the one divine law, for this divine law 
commands whatever it wills, and prevails above all else." 5 Knowledge 
of the cosmic norm (the Logos) teaches men that all cosmic events 
express in their dialectical movement the eternally changing nature 
of the aboriginal cosmic "fire." However, the main accent of the 
Heraditean metaphysics lies not, as has often been asserted, on the 
panta ret, that is, the eternal flux of all things. For in all this flux 
the Greek thinker seeks that eternal harmony which underlies all 
change. 6 Although the world often looks "like a disorderly heap of 
rubbish," 7 this foreground appearance merdy veils the hidden har- 
mony of being, and true phronesis would be impossible if there were 
not recognizable in all becoming a normative measure, proportion, 
order, or law. But phronesis is not only intellectual insight into the na- 
ture of the Logos: it also partakes, as does the Logos itself, of the "cos- 
mic fire," so that a material and moral parallelism exists between the 
soul and the world; between microcosm and macrocosm. "The regu- 
larity of cosmic phenomena guarantees the ethico-juridical nature of all 
becoming." 8 This unified and transparent view of the cosmos, as 
both Heidegger and Binswanger have observed, allows as yet of no 
distinction between separate philosophic and scientific disciplines, 
such as metaphysics, ethics, logic, psychology, biology, and physics. It 
is strictly monistic, and the cosmic unity and harmony is maintained 
in the dialectic of opposites. The Sophon (divine reason) itself, to 
which reference is made in fragment 108 of Fragmente der Vorsolyrati- 
\er f is evidently no transcendent principle but immanent in the cosmic 
dialectic. This cosmic movement oscillates between two poles: it 

s lbid. t fragment 1x4. *lbid., fragment 51. "* Ibid., fragment 124. 

8 Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, The WiU to Power (H, 3.); and Diels, op. cit. 
(fragment 94). 



22 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

swings back and forth between the human phroncsis and the Sophon, 
but it is impossible to say at which pole the movement begins, for 
"in the cosmic circumference the beginning and the end coincide." 9 
The divine principle is impersonal: it entertains no plans or designs, 
either regarding man or regarding the world. In die anthropology 
of Heraclitus, as in the existential "humanism" of Jean-Paul Sartre, 
man finds himself sufficiently rewarded for his relentless striving by 
the possibility of freely "making himself." 



The discussion of some of the basic concepts in the thinking of 
Heraclitus seems to warrant the conclusion that existentialism is a 
new name applied to a philosophic attitude or method that is not only 
very old but actually timeless in its significance. The existential 
philosopher, whether ancient or modern, proclaims and teaches a truth 
which is all too often lost sight of: that it is the end of philosophy to 
furnish a way of life rather than to present an abstract doctrine, and 
that the genuine philosopher touches for the authenticity of his 
thinking with his existence rather than with his "system." In a 
lecture delivered at the University of Louvain, Gabriel Marcel told 
his audience that "not a day passes without someone (generally a 
woman of culture, but perhaps a janitor or a streetcar conductor) 
asking me what existentialism is. No one will be surprised that I 
evade the question. I reply that it is too difficult or too long to 
explain. All one can do is try to elucidate the key-notion of it, not 
to formulate a definition." This keynote is stressed by Martin Heidegger 
when he writes: "We are used to looking for philosophic thought in 
the form of the extraordinary, which is only accessible to the in- 
itiated. We conceive of thought in the way of scientific knowledge 
and its research projects. ... It is time to rid ourselves of an overesti- 
mation of philosophy which demands of it the impossible. What we 
need in the present plight of the world is less 'philosophy' and more 
care in thinking; less 'literature* and a greater care in the cultivation 
of language and letters." Thought is only "a preliminary tool." 10 It 
is a tool, however, which, when properly used, will aid man in his 
self-realization and thus in the fulfillment of his human destiny. 

9 Dicls, op. cit., fragment 103. 

10 Martin Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrhcit (Bern: A. Francke, 1947); 
cf. the appended Brief iiber den Humtmismus, addressed to Jean Beaufret in 
Paris, p. 109. 



CHAPTER TWO 



"EITHER OR": THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 



THE biographical data of Soren Kierkegaard's life (1813-1855) and 
the autobiographical confessions of his Journals are of more than 
ordinary significance for an understanding of his thought, because 
they demonstrate to what extent the Danish author realized in the 
successive stages of his personal existence his demand for an "exis- 
tential" philosophy. He praised Socrates so highly because it seemed 
to him that the Greek archenemy of the Sophists had perfected 
philosophy by placing the chief emphasis on the philosophic existence 
as such, that is, on a thorough self-knowledge and self-realization of 
the philosopher. Only when the philosopher, he argued, has attained 
this kind of self-knowledge and self-realization, only when he has 
become existentially rather than professionally a philosopher, a friend 
and lover of wisdom only then will he be in a position to aid 
others in achieving the same end. He wanted, in short, to teach his 
contemporaries what it means "to think existentially," that is, to 
vouch for one's thought with one's personal life. And this kind of 
instruction called for the use of the "Socratic method." 

The Socratic method consists, according to Kierkegaard, in leading 
the reader to a point where he finds out for himself what the author 
has been trying to convey to him, without the need of "direct 
communication." To accomplish this, Kierkegaard needed a number 
of sharply profiled individual characters whose thoughts and actions 
he could experimentally develop to their extreme possibilities. This 
is the explanation of the use of the many pseudonyms in Kierkegaard's 
works. "With my left hand," he says, "I gave to die world 'Either/Or' 
(i.e., pseudonymous "indirect communication"), and with my right 
hand 'Two Edifying Discourses' " (i.e., "direct communication" over 
the signature of his own name). 

In the last analysis, to be a philosopher means for Kierkegaard to 
understand oneself as a creature of God. To be, generally speaking, 

23 



24 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

means "to be created," but to be a human being means to be created 
with the special capacity for the understanding of Truth, that is, to 
be created as a rational and spiritual nature. From a self-knowledge of 
his true nature Kierkegaard wants to lead man to an understanding of 
Christianity, that is, to the consciousness of both the meaning and 
the implications of a spiritual and everlasting existence. From this 
consciousness derives man's ethical task, his moral imperative. And 
he hailed Socrates as "the discoverer of Truth understood as the 
transformation of the individual in the depth of his self." 

It was Kierkegaard's conviction that in every generation there arc 
two or three individuals who are marked out as a sacrificial offering 
to the rest of humankind: "In my melancholy love of my fellow-men 
I pondered how I might help them, how I might console them and, 
above all, how I might clarify their thinking in specie Christianity. 
The thought goes far back in my memory that in every generation 
there are two or three who are being sacrificed for the others, who 
are made use of, so that their horrible suffering may benefit the 
others. This is the way I understood myself: I understood that I 
was singled out in this manner." 1 

Gradually but inevitably Kierkegaard centered his existence in the 
alternative indicated by die tide of his first great book: Either /Or 
(1843). Either wholehearted obedience to God's law or open rebellion 
against it; either for or against Christ, for or against Truth; either 
hot or cold, but never lukewarm or halfhearted! 

Kierkegaard's father was of Judand peasant stock. Born in dire 
poverty, the elder Kierkegaard had by hard work and thrift managed 
to establish himself as a successful and prosperous merchant in Copen- 
hagen, the capital of Denmark. A stern and God-fearing man, he 
ruled over his family with severe patriarchal authority, rearing his 
children in strict obedience to Lutheran orthodoxy. But once, in his 
childhood days, when he had been herding the flocks on the heaths 
of Judand, he had, in hunger and despair, rebelled against his sordid 
lot: he had cursed God, and he was unable to forget the enormity 
of this offense even when he had reached the age of eighty-two. In 
1786, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard had sold his hosier's business 
and had begun to devote himself to the study of theology under the 
guidance of Bishop Mynster, who at that time was the most brilliant 
and the most cultured among the Lutheran theologians of Denmark 

1 Sorcn Kierkegaard, Samlcde Vaerker, XHI, p. 605. 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 25 

and who later on became the Primate of the Danish-Lutheran State 
Church. 

Young Soren soon began to rebel against what he termed his 
"insane upbringing," and for a time religion itself became "a scandal'* 
to him. Nevertheless, his love and reverence for his father remained 
undiminished and, in spite of most serious doctrinal disagreements, 
extended even to the person of Bishop Mynster, to whom he habitually 
refers as "my father's priest." It was this reverence for his father and 
"his father's priest" that made him withhold his violent attack on the 
Danish State Church until Mynster's death. 

Outwardly Soren's childhood was happy, but inwardly he was, even 
as a child, burdened with an inherited melancholy, a fact which in 
retrospect he registers in his Journals. "I was already an old man 
when I was born," he writes, "but ... it was granted to me to hide 
my melancholy under an apparent cheerfulness and joie de vivrc? 
He describes himself as "delicate, slender, and weak, deprived of 
almost every condition for holding my own with other boys," but 
"one thing I had: an eminently shrewd wit, given me presumably in 
order that I might not be defenceless." 2 Another autobiographical 
note adds the characteristic remark, "I constantly prayed to God that 
He would give me zeal and patience for the work He Himself would 
point out to me. ... So I became an author." 8 

In 1831 Soren entered the University of Copenhagen and, in con- 
formity with his father's wishes, he chose the faculty of theology, 
but devoted a considerable amount of his time to historical, literary, 
and philosophic studies. At least some of the ten years he spent as a 
student at the university were years of dissipation and bohemian 
libertinage. He contracted heavy debts, was frequently drunk, and 
the Journals contain some references to contemplated suicide. He speaks 
of this period of his life as his "lowest fall"; it was followed by his 
"repentance," his "conversion," and by the decisive event of his 
father's death. 

To draw again on Kierkegaard's own accounts, he begaa his 
career as "a drawing-room hero," who soon became well known for 
the "dandyism" of his intellectual and moral bearing. He was excep- 
tionally fond of the theater and loved especially the operas of Mozart. 
His sparkling wit and biting irony were equally prone to charm and 
offend. Hans Christian Andersen, whose claim that great genius needs 

2 Walter Lowric, Kierkegaard (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 46 f. 
*lbid. t p. 50. 



26 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

favorable circumstances for its development had been challenged by 
Soren ("a genius is like a thunderstorm coming up against the wind"), 
took his revenge by caricaturing the challenger in The Galoshes of 
Fortune as the conceited parrot with its harsh voice, its sharp beak, 
and its delight in flattery. 

During his student years the aesthetic component in Soren's per- 
sonality and work became quite dominant, and his artistic and poetic 
talents sought and found an outlet in his Journals as well as in his 
early published works. Intellectually and morally he was seriously 
unbalanced and headed toward a major crisis. It was at this time 
that he formulated the question which was to become a kind of 
nucleus for his "existential" thinking: "What is Truth but to live 
for an idea?" If he was to go on living, he must needs find a truth 
which was truth "for him": "Every human action must be preceded 
by knowledge," he wrote; "it is a question of understanding what I 
am destined for; of finding out what God wants me to do; it is a 
question of discovering a truth which is truth for me, of finding 
the idea for which I am willing to live and to die." He needed 
something "related to the deepest root of my existence, something by 
which I am rooted in the divine, even if the entire world should fall 
to pieces." 

The day came when Soren learned of his father's guilt, and by a 
combination of circumstances he was led to believe that this guilt 
weighed on his entire family. Everything that had previously looked 
like divine blessings his father's great age and material prosperity, 
his own exceptional gifts appeared suddenly as a divine curse. It 
was this "great earthquake" that helped the young writer to gain a 
new understanding of the events of his past life. "I was tossed about 
in life," he wrote, "sorely tempted by much. . . , also unfortunately 
drawn into errors, and, alas! also into the path of perdition. So in 
my twenty-fifth year I was for myself an enigmatic, complicated, 
extraordinary possibility. . . . But I understood one thing, that my life 
should be most properly employed in doing penance. . . . Then my 
father died." 4 

Shortly before his death Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard had paid 
his son's debts and provided for an allowance which should enable 
Soren to live and work independently. Yet notwithstanding the fact 
that at the time of his father's death young Kierkegaard found himself 
in the possession of a sizable fortune, his capital dwindled rapidly and 

+ lbid., p. 115. 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 27 

in the year of his own death had reached the vanishing point. Al- 
though Soren enjoyed living in comparative luxury, the main bene- 
ficiaries were the poor. When he died, there was hardly enough 
money on hand to pay the expenses of the funeral. 

A few weeks after having received the degree of master of arts 
from the university, Soren became engaged to Regina Olsen. "I owe 
everything that I am to the wisdom of an old man and to the 
simplicity of a young girl," Kierkegaard wrote in his Journals. The 
old man was his father, the young girl Regina Olsen. Looking back 
upon the decisive phases of his life, they appeared to Soren as so 
many attempts to escape his true and ultimate destiny: the absolute 
and unconditional devotion to a strictly religious vocation. The 
escape into an aesthetic fool's paradise of poetic imaginings had led 
him "unto the path of perdition." The second attempted escape, 
through marriage, turned out to be, humanly speaking, an even 
more tragic failure. He had hardly become engaged when he began 
to realize that there were "further orders," and he felt himself in 
duty bound to break his engagement and to forsake, again humanly 
speaking, the greatest love and happiness of his life. These deeper 
reasons and motivations, however, were not immediately evident to 
him. What became clear to him almost immediately, and eventually 
beyond the shadow of a doubt, was the moral impossibility of bur- 
dening the girl he loved with his profound melancholy and with 
the real and imagined sins of his youth. 

"The whole of existence frightens me," Kierkegaard wrote in a 
Journal entry of May 12, 1839, "from the tiniest fly to the mystery of 
the Incarnation. Existence is inexplicable to me in its totality, and 
the most inexplicable thing of all is my own existence. . . . My suffering 
is great, boundless. No one knows it but God in heaven, and He 
does not want to have mercy on me. Young man, you who stand 
at the beginning of life's road: if you have gone astray, return; turn 
back to God, and under His guidance you will be ... strengthened 
for manly deeds. Then you shall never learn what he has to suffer 
who, after having gambled away the courage of his youth in rebellion 
against God, now starts upon his retreat, exhausted and powerless, 
passing through destroyed lands and devastated provinces, surrounded 
on all sides by the horrors of destruction, by burned cities and the 
smoking ruins of disappointed hopes." 

At the time of the engagement Regina was eighteen, Soren twenty- 
seven, but he felt that he "was an eternity too old for her." When he 



28 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

returned the ring to Regina, he sent along with it a letter in which 
he begged her to forget him: "Forget above all him who is writing 
this. Forgive a man who, no matter whatever else he is able to do, 
is unable to make a girl happy." And in Guilty Not Guilty, a sec- 
tion of Stages on Life's Road, he describes in some detail what fol- 
lowed: "What happened? Dear Lord, she came to my room while I 
was out. Upon my return, I find a note written with the passion 
of despair: she cannot live without me, it will be her death if I 
leave her; she implores me for God's sake and for my own salvation, 
in the name of every memory which binds me, by that Sacred Name 
which I only rarely pronounce (because my doubts have prevented 
me from appropriating it for me, although precisely for this reason 
my veneration for this Name is greater than for anything else)." This 
"Sacred Name" was the name of Christ. "In the name of Jesus 
Christ and for the sake of your father's memory," Regina had made 
her appeal. Thus, Soren felt, she had raised the entire question to a 
higher plane: now he felt bound unless he could persuade Regina to 
take herself the decisive step. And in order to bring this about he 
worked out a plan whose execution caused him more suffering than 
anything else he had hitherto experienced. He took it upon himself to 
pose publicly as a model of treachery and depravity, as a degenerate 
libertine, in order to convince Regina that he was thoroughly unworthy 
of her love and devotion. 

Regina was the youngest daughter of State Councillor Olsen of the 
Ministry of Finance. Kierkegaard's actions caused a tremendous scandal 
in the Danish capital, but while everyone else took appearances at 
their face value and condemned the young man as a profligate, 
Regina understood and forgave. She may not have grasped entirely 
the complexity of Sorcn's motivations, but she firmly believed in his 
moral integrity, and she respected his singular devotion to what he 
regarded as his religious vocation. Things did not work out therefore 
exactly as Soren had planned. After two years had passed, Regina 
married Fritz Scklcgel, who in 1855, the year of Kierkegaard's death, 
was appointed governor of the Danish West Indies. When Soren 
received the news, he, who at first had tried every possible means to 
bring about this solution, felt shaken and crushed. Regina found 
happiness in her married life. She died in 1904. 

It was at about the time of his engagement that Christianity ap- 
peared to Kierkegaard in a new light, in all its majestic greatness and 
commanding force. He asked himself many times whether he was 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 29 

justified in imposing upon Regina's innocent youth the harsh demand 
of an unconditional "cither /or" It was the same problem that Henrik 
Ibsen was to pose, later on, in the tragic conflict within the soul of 
pastor Brand. But Kierkegaard, unlike Brand, chose renunciation and 
thus steered dear of Brand's tragic guilt. 

To Christianity, as Kierkegaard began to understand, the demand 
"either I or*' applied absolutely: it must be absolutely true or absolutely 
false. But he also understood that, because Christianity is such a 
"radical cure," man is naturally inclined "to postpone it as long as 
possible." As far as Kierkegaard himself was concerned, to the end 
of his days he never thought or spoke of himself as "a Christian," 
but always and emphatically of the unfulfilled task of "becoming a 
Christian," that is, a follower of Christ, At the time of his engagement 
he had come to a parting of the ways where he felt it was a question 
of "either choosing this world on a scare that would be dreadful, or 
the cloister. ... I understood how impossible it was for me to be 
religious up to a certain point." 

"Oh blissful time," Kierkegaard wrote in recollection of these years, 
"oh sweet disquietude, oh happy sight, when I embellished my hidden 
existence with the enchantment of love. ... My sin has never been 
that I did not love her. ... My sin was that I did not have real faith, 
faith to believe that with God all things are possible. . . . And it was 
his eyes' delight and his heart's desire. And he stretched out his hand 
for it and grasped it, but he could not retain it; it was proffered to 
him, but he could not possess it alas, and it was his eyes' delight 
and his heart's desire. And his soul was near despair; but he pre- 
ferred the greater pain of losing it and relinquishing it, to the lesser 
pain of possessing it wrongfully." 5 

Immediately after the breaking of his engagement Kierkegaard 
left for Berlin. Six months later he was back in Copenhagen, and 
for the next four and a half years he worked unceasingly, "almost 
without a day's break." The Journals faithfully -reflect his state of 
mind: "My mind expands and presumably is killing my body. . . . 
During the past months I have been pumping up a veritable shower- 
bath; now I have pulled the cord, and the ideas stream down upon me 
healthy, happy, plump, merry, blessed children, easily brought to 
birth, and yet all of them bearing the birthmark of my personality." 6 

A few months after the pseudonymous appearance of Either/Or 

*lbid., p. 226 . *lbid. t p. 254. 



30 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

(1843), Kierkegaard published under his own name the first two of 
his Edifying Discourses. In the same year appeared Fear and Trem- 
bling and The Concept of Dread, both again making use of pseudo- 
nyms, that is, of "indirect communication." His purpose in writing 
these works was to demonstrate the insufficiency of both aestheticism 
and moralism as philosophies of life. Both, he was now convinced, 
were unable to penetrate to the highest sphere, that of religious 
existence. The Edifying Discourses were addressed to the only desira- 
ble reader, "my reader, the individual" 

As far as the different characters used dialectically in Kierkegaard's 
pseudonymous works are concerned, they all represent integral (yet 
contradictory) elements of the personality of the author. A good 
example are the five persons attending the banquet described in In 
Vino Veritas (Stages on Life's Road, I) : Kierkegaard was as bitter 
and coolly rational as Constantine Constantius, as pensively melan- 
cholic as The Young Man, as lyrico-dialectically reflective as Johannes 
de Silentio, as ironic as Victor Eremita, and as cynical as The Seducer. 
By being presented simultaneously these widely divergent charac- 
ters balance each other off. The author is hiding behind all of them: 
they are he, and yet not he, because none of them is wholly Soren 
Kierkegaard. 

Fear and Trembling begins with a paraphrase of the Old Testament 
narrative of Abraham's journey to the mountain of Morija, where he 
is to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham is hailed as "the father of faith," who 
believes "in virtue of the absurd." He is thus for Kierkegaard a symbol 
of both the "Knight of Faith" and the "Knight of Infinite Resignation," 
the man who undergoes the terrifying adventure of the mystical 
"dark night," "hoping against hope" (St. Paul's contra spem in spe). 

The year 1846 was marked by another important change in Kierke- 
gaard's thinking. He was giving serious thought to the possibility 
of relinquishing his career as a writer and of having himself ordained 
as a Lutheran minister in the State Church. What finally prevented 
his going through with this plan was, aside from his "thorn in the 
flesh" his almost morbid consciousness of personal guilt his grow- 
ing doubts as to the authenticity of modern "Christendom" and the 
"Established Church." 

While 1847 was for Kierkegaard a year of silence, the period from 
1848 to 1851 witnessed another literary "evacuation," with works of a 
strongly religious flavor following each other in rapid succession. He 
now definitely turned from "indirect" to "direct" communication. 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 31 

There were few publications after 1851, but a considerable number 
of works were published posthumously. 

Using the Socratic method of "midwifery," Kierkegaard's mature 
religious works aim at teaching human beings "to take notice" of the 
prime factors of human existence, namely, the reality of God and 
of their own immortal souls. To this end the Danish author uses all 
his brilliant literary gifts: wit, irony, a riotous poetic imagination, 
the "tactic of surprise," the "skill of wounding from behind." In 
leitmotif fashion these works repeat the identical theme: that it is 
easy enough to t(now what Christianity is but that it is extremely 
difficult to be a Christian, a follower of Christ, and that the difficulty 
increases rather than decreases with the individual's acquisition of 
education and culture. 

In his theological convictions Kierkegaard was and remained 
emphatic in his denial that merit can attach to human works in the 
sight of God, but he was equally outspoken in his rejection of 
Luther's assertion that man is justified and saved "sola fide'' that is, 
by a faith that bears no fruit in works of love. He likewise rejected 
the doctrine of absolute predestination as incompatible with human 
freedom. And he kept insisting that the love of God and one's neigh- 
bor must prove its authenticity "existentially," that is, in "living" 
Christianity. 

A concise summary of Kierkegaard's religious and theological signi- 
ficance is found in Theodor Haecker's short treatise on the Danish 
writer. He points out that it was Kierkegaard's historical mission "to 
defend the supernatural against the natural, the transcendence of God 
against the immanence of the rational philosophers, the personal God 
against pantheism; to urge the absolute uniqueness of the God-Man, 
the reality of sin and salvation, and the love of God as against the 
impurity and sentimentality of the 'beautiful soul' of Rousseau." 7 

Perhaps the most controversial point in Kierkegaard's theology is 
his concept of "existential faith." Regis Jolivet, the French Thomist, 
says of it that it "rests upon a great truth, corrupted by a grave 
error." Since faith is a divine gift, Kierkegaard is right when he 
emphatically insists that it can only be received but not acquired, 
regardless of any amount of scientific, philosophic, or theological 
effort. And as the object of supernatural faith is absolutely beyond 

7 Theodor Haecker, SSren Kierkegaard (translated by Alexander Dru; New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1937)* p. 58. 



32 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

the capacity of human reason, it may properly be called a "paradox" 
("a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks"). 
This is especially true of Christ, the God-made-man. As a believing 
Christian, therefore, Kierkegaard had to protest against Hegelian 
rationalism which had proclaimed the primacy of reason over faith. 
Kierkegaard's fundamental error, on the other hand, consists, accord- 
ing to Jolivet, in his identifying the following two procedures: "the 
rational demonstration of the truth of something which transcends 
reason, and the rational demonstration of the reasons for belief in 
something which transcends reason." Kierkegaard's confusion, says 
Jolivet, "is well revealed in the texts where he objects to every attempt 
to 'prove Christianity* and unremittingly condemns apologetics." But 
"apologetics does not assume the senseless task of proving mysteries: 
it applies itself solely to assembling and establishing the proofs of 
credibility.*' The motives of credibility "do not produce faith, but 
they influence the soul and justify it in admitting the gift of faith." 8 
Kierkegaard is wrong then when he asserts that one must believe 
without reason and even against reason and that therefore faith is a 
blind "leap into the absurd." 

Kierkegaard's The Point of View, published in 1848, is one of the 
great autobiographical documents of Christian literature. His outlook 
seems to have decisively changed once more. He feels "incredibly older 
and yet eternally young." Silently, he says, he has surrendered every- 
thing to God. With divine help, he knows, he will at last become 
himself; with the help of Christ he will at last triumph over his 
melancholy. "The thorn in the flesh" has been removed at last. The 
burden of his own and his father's guilt has been lifted. 

The most stirring event of this final period of Kierkegaard's life 
was the echo caused by his violent attack on the liberal theology 
of the Danish-Lutheran State Church. With Bishop Mynster's death 
in 1854 the time to speak had come, and Kierkegaard turned from 
his "religion of hidden inwardness" to an unequivocal profession of 
his creed. In the "pure inwardness" taught by Martin Luther he 
saw now the greatest threat to Christianity because it prevented 
religion from manifesting itself in "works." "Christendom," he had 
written in The Sickness unto Death (1848), "is so far from being what 
it calls itself that the life of most men ... is far too spiridess to be 

8 Regis Jolivet, Introduction to Kierkegaard (translated by W. R Barber; London: 
Frederick Muller, 1950), p. 55 . 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 33 

called sinful in the Christian sense." 9 Scornfully he now looked upon 
his own aesthetic and poetic endeavors: "A poet! Now, of all times, 
one poet more . . . ; now, when what is needed is ... martyrs by the 
thousands." 10 Christianity, he claims, was abolished in "Christendom" 
by leniency, "but for us there is only one salvation Christianity. And 
for Christianity there is only one salvation severity." 11 

In Kierkegaard's own estimate The Sickness unto Death the 
sickness of despair, healed by faith was his greatest religious work. 
It culminates in the demand that the disciple of today must become 
"contemporary with Christ." Never, the author contends, was a 
severely disciplined spiritual life more necessary than in the modern 
age, because the task of "reintroducing Christianity into Christendom" 
is a much more difficult one than that of introducing it into paganism. 
It is more difficult because it requires first of all that the "illusion" 
be overcome that all who live in "Christendom" are Christians, that 
Christianity is still a vital force in "Christian" nations and in a 
"Christian" civilization. 

In 1854, the year preceding Kierkegaard's death, the people of 
Denmark were deeply stirred by a series of nine pamphlets which 
appeared at monthly intervals; they were entitled The Instant and 
were published over the signature of their famous fellow countryman. 
Kierkegaard had been provoked to give vent to his pent up resentment 
by the funeral oration which Professor Hans Larsen Martensen, a 
pupil of the German philosopher Hegel and a liberal Lutheran 
theologian of the Danish State Church, had delivered on the occasion 
of Bishop Mynster's death. What in particular aroused Kierkegaard's 
wrath was the fact that Martensen had called Mynster "a link in the 
sacred chain of witnesses to Apostolic Truth." Without questioning the 
great erudition and the intellectual acumen of either Martensen or 
Mynster, the Danish thinker saw in them two typical representatives 
of the prevalent type of nominal Christianity. They represented that 
"mediocrity of Christendom" which enjoyed such a high reputation 
"particularly in Protestantism, particular^ in Denmark." From the 
time that Luther had abolished good works in favor of "faith alone," 
Kierkegaard argued, Christianity had been progressively emptied of 
its meaning by the gradual removal of all its difficulties. The abolition 
of the confessional, the suppression of the monasteries and religious 
orders, the despisal of evangelical poverty and asceticism, and, above 



Lowrie, op. /., p. 414 * 10 JW, p. 417- u ##> P- 43i 



34 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

all, the growing conformancc of "Christendom" to the worldliness of 
the modern environment, were all stages on the same disastrous road 
to total secularism. 

It had long been Kierkegaard's secret hope that Bishop Mynster 
before his death might make the admission that the kind of Christianity 
which he had been preaching was seriously defective, lacking in con- 
sistency and earnestness. His disappointment was therefore supreme 
when, after the democratic revolution of 1848, Mynster had enlisted 
the support of the liberal daily press, the same press of which 
Kierkegaard had written that it ought to bear on a big signboard 
the inscription: "Here people are demoralized in the shortest possible 
time, in the highest possible degree, and at the lowest possible price." 
Kierkegaard had an almost boundless contempt for the servility, the 
venality, and the lack of principles which he had encountered among 
journalists and, it seemed to him, the worst offenders were the 
spokesmen of the liberal press. "Although I believe," he wrote in his 
Journals, in an entry of the year 1851, ". . . that we shall rise with a 
transfigured body, I will ask God to let me retain even on my trans- 
figured body a little scar as a reminder that I was killed by journalists." 
What he particularly revolted against was the power wielded by 
journalists to the end of inducing millions of human beings to think 
identically en masse. This seemed to him a grievous insult to the 
eternal dignity of individual man, created in the image of God. 

"Bishop Mynster," Kierkegaard wrote, "has a dual aspect. He 
possesses a religious inwardness, and from this he draws his incom- 
parable sermons. . . . But then he has another aspect and, alas, 
the week, as is well known, has seven days. . . . And in the remaining 
six days worldly shrewdness is his element." "Now he is dead," reads 
a Journal entry of March i, 1854, "dead without that admission. . . . 
Now all he has left behind is the fact that he has preached Christianity 
fast into an illusion. . . . What I have to do now, I do with sorrow; 
yet it must be done, about that I am perfectly dear; I can find no 
peace until it is done." 12 

In the last period of his life Kierkegaard expressed himself rather 
definitely on his concept of the Christian Church. Opposing any 
democratic-constitutional or presbyterial authority, he sees the Church 
resting exclusively on divine authorization, and the authority of its 
ministry derives from apostolic succession and ordination. A priest 

12 /&</., p. aipf. 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 35 

is essentially what he is through ordination, we read in the Con- 
cluding Unscientific Postscript; ordination constitutes a character in- 
delebilis. But wherefrom, he asks, derives the authority of the 1000 
parsons of Denmark? Simply from the fact that they have behind 
them the police force. And because the pastors of the State Church 
are employees of the secular state, Kierkegaard denies them the right 
to administer the sacraments. Because they are "actors," he adds, it 
might even be questioned whether they should be buried in con- 
secrated ground! 

The case of Christianity versus "Christendom" had already been 
stated without any equivocation in the stirring essay entitled The 
Present Age (1846). "Christianity," Kierkegaard had written there, 

"without the following of Christ is merely mythology, poesy The 

enlightened nineteenth century treats Christianity as a myth, but it 
lacks the courage to give it up." 18 

On October 2, 1855, Kierkegaard suffered a stroke on his way home 
from the bank, from which he had drawn the pitiful amount that 
remained of his fortune. Partly paralyzed and in great pain, he was 
taken to Frederick's Hospital He knew that death was near, but he 
refused to receive the viaticum from the hands of "an employee of 
the State." He died on November n. 

According to Kierkegaard's own judgment, it was his providential 
mission to act as a "corrective," to be "that little pinch of spice, that 
little touch of red" that was used by the divine housekeeper and artist 
to impart a particular taste and hue to the rest: "A little pinch of 
spice! That is to say: Here a man must be sacrificed. . . ." His work 
had begun with Either /Or, and it ended "at the foot of the altar 
where the author, very conscious of his own imperfection and guilt, 
in no sense describing himself as a witness to the truth but only as a 
particular kind of poet and thinker who, 'without authority,' has 
nothing new to bring, and only 'desires to have read through once 
again in a more heartfelt way the original document of individual 
and human existence, the old, the known, as it was handed down 
by the fathers."'" 

Three years before his death Kierkegaard had confided to his 
Journals that he had found the solution of the riddle of his existence 
in Divine Love. "Love," writes Theodor Haecker, "led Kierkegaard 

is Ibid., p. 539* 

i* Cf. Preface to Discourses at Communion Service on Friday (1851); and the epilogue 
to Concluding Unscientific Postscript, in Haecker, op. cit., p. 51. 



36 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

to profounder, more valuable and more lasting knowledge than faith, 
which he understood so wrongly and one-sidedly." 15 The Journals 
sound the same dominant chord: "The birds on the branches, the 
lilies in the field, the deer in the forest, the fishes in the sea, coundess 
hosts of happy men exultantly proclaim: God is Love. But under- 
neath all these sopranos, supporting them as it were, as the bass 
part does, is audible the DC projundis which issues from the sacrificed 
one: God is Love." 16 

"Historically speaking," Kierkegaard writes, referring to his own 
impending death, "he died of a deadly disease but, poetically speaking, 
he died of his longing for Eternity, so that henceforth he might do 
nothing else but thank God unceasingly." 

Kierkegaard's message to the present age is eloquently summarized 
by Johannes Kohlenberg: "What is at stake is the choice between the 
individual and the collective, between the human person and the 
crowd, between freedom and slavery, between Christ and Antichrist. 
Either: the life of the individual person, a microcosm as the image 
of God, capable of free, responsible action, and therefore ... a life of 
toil and much suffering and many dangers; or: the life of an im- 
personal, unfree member of a collective, without the possibility of 
independent knowledge and responsible action, a life in the service of 
unknown forces , and as compensation for the loss of freedom at 
best a false, illusory dream of material welfare in an earthly paradise 
which can never become a reality." 17 



Kierkegaard's battle cry, "either or," signalized his valiant fight 
on two major fronts: on the one hand, he fought against the liberalist 
secularization of the Danish Lutheran State Church and, on the 
other, against Hegel's pantheistic idealism with its incumbent dis- 
solution of Christian dogma. The fight against the State Church, 
however, eventually became part of the more crucial problem which 
confronted him in the almost undisputed reign of Hegelianism in 
theology and philosophy. What was at stake was Christianity and 
Christian revelation as such, in view of Hegel's ultimate denunciation 
of Christian theology. Driven on by historical circumstances and en- 

"Haccker, op. cit., p. 51. 
"Walter Lowrie, op. at., p, 588. 

17 Johannes Kohlenberg, Soren Kierkegaard (translated by Maria Bachmann-Isler; 
Basel: Benno Schwabe & Co., 1949), p. 417. 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 37 

vironmental influences, Kierkegaard advanced and defended his own 
and Luther's fideism against Hegel's gnosticism. His fear of Hegel's 
extreme rationalism made him recede farther and farther from a 
rationally grounded theology, until at last he arrived at the position of 
an integral supranaturalism, approaching and following Luther in his 
contempt of reason and his denunciation of philosophy. 

This was of course not the first time in the history of Christianity 
that such antithetical positions as those held by Kierkegaard and 
Hegel had followed and challenged each other. In Christian antiquity, 
for example, the School of Antioch (John Chrysostom, Theodoret) had 
opposed its theological positivism (fideism) to the allegorical and 
gnostic rationalism of the School of Alexandria (Clement, Origen). In 
the Middle Ages many antidialectical theologians took their stand 
against that dialectical movement which culminated in Abelard's 
rationalism. Similarly, but more radically, Luther turned against 
Aristotle and the scholastics as Kierkegaard turned against Hegel and 
Schleiermacher. In Thomistic scholasticism, on the other hand, the 
organic relationship between faith and reason, theology and philosophy, 
supernature and nature is duly recognized and firmly established, and 
both the transcendence of faith and the relative autonomy of reason 
are safeguarded. Thomism, then, strikes a middle path between the 
extremes of an integral supranaturalism (fideism) and an integral 
rationalism (gnosticism). 

Both of these extreme positions are strangely enough rooted in an 
almost identical concept of the Deity: they both entertain the idea 
of a God who creates the world, only to leave it to its own evolution 
and proliferation: "creavit et abiit" As against this "deistic" concept of 
the Deity the patristic and scholastic theologians and philosophers 
insisted that God not only creates but also sustains His creation, and 
that without this sustenance the orphaned universe would immediately 
sink back into nothingness. 

Though representing the exact antithesis of Hegel's theological 
position, Kierkegaard was in his own spiritual development at least 
negatively determined by Hegel's dialectical philosophy. As Hegel 
finally arrived at a complete identification of God and world, Kierke- 
gaard posited the complete and irreconcilable "otherness" of the abso- 
lute divine Mind as against all contingent created being, including 
the created human mind. He thus saw no analogy, but only an abysmal 
difference between infinite and finite being, between the necessary and 
the contingent, between the Creator and His creation. 



38 THE EXISTOSTTIALIST REVOLT 

Hegel, starting out as a theologian, had in the end denounced all 
theology. Step by step he had transformed Christian dogmatics into 
a gnostic theory of knowledge: Redemption was interpreted as the 
redeeming force of love; the Holy Trinity became "the dialectic of 
the Absolute Mind"; the God-Man was transformed into a man who 
had experienced his identity with the Absolute; and the Holy Spirit 
appeared as the communal spirit of social life. Was Kierkegaard's view 
then unduly gloomy when he saw in Hegel the most ingenious and 
therefore the most dangerous modern enemy of Christianity? 

Kierkegaard himself, on the other hand, had started out as a 
speculative writer and ended as a theologian who denounced philosophy. 
He became "a Protestant monk," a lonely Christian who deeply, in 
fear and trembling, experienced the agony of Christ on Mount Calvary, 
almost forgetting its sequel, the gladness of Easter. He took a forceful 
stand against Hegel's fatalistic theory of the predetermined evolution 
of the world spirit. Far from conceiving of Christianity as one phase 
among others in an 4 evolutionary cosmic process, the Christian dis- 
pensation was for him a unique occurrence of absolute and incom- 
parable value and validity. For him, therefore, the individual's concern 
was with faith and salvation rather than with the "objcctivations of 
the World Spirit." 

There is ample justification for accepting as essentially correct 
Kierkegaard's contention that Hegel's goal, as revealed in the con- 
cluding paragraphs of his Philosophy of History, was the seculariza- 
tion of religion and the divinization of nature and worldly prudence. 
God must become man, so that the philosopher may become God, or, 
to use Hegel's own phraseology, a representation of objective truth, 
of absolute being, of self-conscious Idea; so that in the end all oppo- 
sites may be identified and neutralized: God, World, and Man are 
One Idea. 

Against the backdrop of the Kierkegaard-Hegel antithesis, the 
present condition of Christianity in the world stands out more clearly. 
The contemporary philosopher who chooses his stand on the side of 
atheism and paganism is no longer apologetic about it and therefore 
perhaps more sincere than Hegel. Kierkegaard had tried desperately 
to resolve the thought extension, spirit nature, soul body dual- 
isms and antinomies which Descartes had bequeathed from one genera- 
tion of philosophers to the next. But, because the Danish thinker 
had no access to the scholastic doctrine of the "analogy of being," 
the antinomies remained, and the self-destruction of philosophy went 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 39 

on apace. In such a situation the Christian philosopher has all the 
more reason to equal and surpass his atheistic opponent in unequivocal 
and uncompromising determination. A clarification of the issues at 
stake can only aid in making both controversy and conversation more 
fruitful. Nothing is more inducive to generating mutual respect than 
an increasing emphasis upon the sincerity and integrity o religious 
and philosophical convictions. And Kierkegaard may well be regarded 
as the prototype of such an attitude, grounded in the wholeness of 
human existence, and thus as the "father" of modern "existentialism." 
It was his historically and circumstantially conditioned fate to be 
a Christian thinker who felt it his duty to call in question the very 
concept of a Christian philosophy. It was his merit to have emphasized 
anew the distinction between the infinite and the finite, and to have 
defended this basic distinction against any philosophy of immanence 
and identity. But an aspect of tragedy and frustration was introduced 
into Kierkegaard's life and work by his inability to recognize that 
both finite and infinite being partake of the common term of Being. 
Thus he failed to see what St. Augustine described as "tanta similitude, 
tanta dissimilitude" His integral supranaturalism thwarted his com- 
prehension of the fullness of life, reality, and human nature: it cut 
short his vision of a world redeemed and transfigured by Divine 
Love Incarnate. 

What is the meaning of "existential truth" in Kierkegaard's life 
and work? It is a translation of the abstract into the concrete, an 
ethical and religious appropriation of the ideal, an active practice and 
realization rather than any doctrinal knowledge; a "how" rather than 
a "what." It is the actual living of all that one believes, teaches, and 
preaches. Theodor Haecker calls the separation of the intellect from 
all the other human faculties in man a special characteristic of Euro- 
pean philosophy. "European philosophy," he says, "proceeds from the 
world through the person, who is but an empty relative point, back 
to the world; it goes from objects, things, sensations . . . , passing 
as quickly as possible over the subject, the self, the individual, back 
to objects, things, and sensations. . . . Kierkegaard does not follow 
this age-old development, because he aims at something higher. He 
wishes to reverse the order for both philosophy and thought. He 
wishes to go from the person by way of the things to the person, 
and not from the things by way of the person to things." 18 

"Haecker, of. of., p. 25 f. 



40 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

Kierkegaard's writings, hedged in by the dialectics of "double 
reflection" and pseudonymous mystification, and yet having their 
center of gravity in existential introspection, present formidable obsta- 
cles to objective analysis and interpretation. "If one were to attempt 
a presentation of Kierkegaard's thoughts," writes Haecker, "he would 
find himself compelled to repeat step by step and sentence by sentence 
the original writings. One would, in other words, find himself com- 
pelled to refer the reader to the works themselves and to tell him: 
now go ahead and read!" 19 

While the exposition of the ideas of an author who dreads all 
objectivity with a genuine horror vacui is thus by no means an easy 
task, it is nevertheless possible to trace the many radiations of Kierke- 
gaard's existential thinking to a focus in which they fuse. This focal 
convergence and concentration is found in the Concluding Unscien- 
tific Postscript, a work which was published in 1846 and which repre- 
sents the promised sequel to Philosophic Fragments, published two 
years earlier. The Postscript outweighs the earlier work both in 
volume and pivotal significance. It marks the transition from "indi- 
rect" to "direct" communication (an acknowledgment of Kierkegaard's 
authorship of the works previously published under pseudonyms, and 
an explanation of his reasons for the use of the pseudonyms is 
appended), and it poses in concreto the problem to which all the earlier 
works had been leading up, the problem of "becoming a Christian." 
The use of the term "unscientific" in the title is explained by an entry 
in the Journals (1846), in which Kierkegaard expresses his apprehen- 
sions as to the encroachments of natural science on the human studies, 
in particular on philosophy and religion. "In the end," the note reads, 
"all corruption will come about as a consequence of the natural 
sciences. . . . The scientific method becomes especially dangerous and 
pernicious when it encroaches upon the realm of the spirit. Let 
science deal with plants and animals and stars; but to deal in that 
way with the human spirit is blasphemy." 20 

The Postscript bears the subtitle, An Existential Contribution by 
Johannes Climacus. This pseudonym had originally been chosen by 
Kierkegaard in 1842, in connection with the composition of a polemic 
fragment against Cartesian rationalism. It was used again in the 

19 Theodor Haecker, Der Bucfal Kier&gaards (Zurich: Thomas Verlag, 1947), p. 8, 
20 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (translated by David F. Swcnson, 

introduction and notes by Walter Lowrie; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944), 

p. XV. 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 41 

Philosophic Fragments, and a third time in the Postscript. At the 
time of the publication of the latter two works it had become clear 
to Kierkegaard that the true enemy of existential thinking was Hegel, 
not Descartes. 

From the outset and to the very end of the book, Johannes Climacus 
asserts emphatically that he is not a Christian, but a poor, lonely, 
existing individual who is passionately and infinitely interested in 
what it means to become a Christian, to be a Christian. Johannes 
Climacus had made the "leap" from the aesthetical to the ethical, 
but the more decisive leap from the ethical to the religious still lay 
ahead. In two later works (The Sickness unto Death, 1849; and Train- 
ing in Christianity, 1850), Kierkegaard introduces an "Anti-Climacus," 
whose existence represents that final leap and who proclaims himself 
a Christian in the highest degree, a tide never claimed by Kierkegaard 
himself. 

In a precious passage the Postscript relates how Johannes Climacus 
became an existential thinker and an author. One Sunday afternoon, 
while he was sitting as usual at the caf in the Frederiksborg Garden 
("that wonderful garden where the King dwelt with his Queen") 
and smoking a cigar, it occurred to him that he had been a student 
for ten years and had not yet launched himself on any career, while 
many of his acquaintances had achieved prominence in the realm of 
thought or in practical life. They knew well how to become benefac- 
tors of mankind by making life easier by means of railways, omni- 
buses, and steamboats, or by telegraphy. Others benefited the age by 
facilitating public enlightenment by means of textbooks, compendia, 
and digests, and still others ("the true benefactors of the age") made 
both thinking and living ever so much easier by neutralizing all 
difficulties in the comfortable abstractions of Hegelian thought, in 
the "unity of opposites" of the Hegelian "System." What was there 
left to do for poor Johannes Climacus, who, though possessed of a keen 
wit, a sense of irony and humor, was only an idle dreamer? Mean- 
while the cigar had burned down, and while he reflectingly lit another, 
Johannes was struck by the idea that everything had grown so easy 
that it had become intolerable, and that perhaps someone was needed 
to make things hard and complicated again. And so, "out of love of 
mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing situation . . . , I 
came to regard it as my task to create difficulties everywhere." 

Hegel had carried farthest the rationalistic attempt to understand 
man, the world, and God by way of a logico-dialectical mediation of 



42 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

contingency and necessity, finiteness and infinitude, matter and mind. 
He had described human personality and its faculties as a passing, 
historically conditioned and limited phase in the dialectic evolution 
of the World Spirit or Universal Reason. In this view the contents of 
human consciousness could be made intelligible only by first relating 
them to the totality of human personality, then relating this individual 
totality to the totality of the human species, and finally relating the 
human species to the Universal Idea or Reason which contained in 
itself the sum total of all things. 

It is against this Hegelian submersion of the individual in the 
universal and his consequent virtual annihilation that Kierkegaard 
protests. He refuses to let the individual self be reduced to "a para- 
graph in a system." Both "the professor" who espouses such a 
system and the age which is willing to accept and acclaim it have 
forgotten what it means to exist. The authentically existing individual 
will always be infinitely interested in himself and in the realization of 
his destiny. That infinite interest Kierkegaard calls the passion of 
human freedom. This passion forces upon the individual a decisive 
choice, but a choice which always involves the incertitude of a ris^. 

Only the infinite can be desired and chosen with an infinite passion. 
And as the finite existence of the individual is constantly confronted 
with the infinite, his decision is a decision for or against the infinite, 
an absolute "either-or," all or nothing; it is a choice which makes 
or unmakes the individual, a choice in which he cither truly "becomes 
what he is*' or utterly fails to realize his authentic existence. Therefore, 
Kierkegaard concludes, truth is "subjectivity," that is, the highest 
degree of personal self-realization. 

Subjectivity could, on the other hand, never become conscious of 
itself and of the decisive choice imposed upon it, if it were not 
confronted with an infinite "object," an Absolute Being. "The existence 
of a Christian," Kierkegaard wrote in his Journals in 1854, "is his 
contact with Being." The Christian, in other words, finds himself 
face to face with God at every moment, but in thus finding himself 
in his finiteness confronted with the infinite God and the infinite 
Good, he recognizes himself as a sinner. To exist, therefore, means 
for a Christian to be a sinner. But to exist as a sinner in the sight 
of God is not only the mark of human misery but simultaneously the 
mark of human grandeur: existence in the Christian sense is at once 
sinfulness and bliss, the annihilation of the individual before God 
and his rebirth in God, a rebirth which comes about in the supreme 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 43 

venture of a faith which passionately embraces the paradox of the 
eternal in the temporal, the divine that has entered into history, the 
Word that has become flesh. It is this faith which is "a scandal to 
the Jews and folly to the Gentiles." 

Johannes Climacus, in the Postscript, is not directly concerned with 
the objective problem of the truth of Christianity; he rather proposes 
to deal with the subjective problem of the individual's relationship 
to Christianity. He asks, "How may I, Johannes Climacus, participate 
in the happiness promised by Christianity?" The first book of the 
treatise nevertheless deals with the possibilities of an objective approach, 
but it does so derisively and ironically, with scathing contempt, and 
with much special pleading for "subjectivity." In Hegel, the author 
asserts, the passionate question of existential truth does not even arise, 
since Hegelian philosophy has tricked individuals into becoming 
"objective." In making everything relative to the dialectic of the world- 
process Hegel has introduced into modern philosophy the sophistry 
of Protagoras and has thus 'made philosophy totally indifferent to 
the eternal happiness of the individual. 

The second book, treating in a preliminary form of "the relation 
of the subject to the truth of Christianity" and "the problem of 
becoming a Christian," begins with an expression of gratitude to Gott- 
hold Ephraim Lessing, the famous German critic and playwright 
of the eighteenth century. In Lessing's cautious rationalism and biblical 
criticism, Johannes Climacus believes he finds support for his own 
refusal to base the truth of Christianity on the approximative methods 
of history and philosophy. He surmises in Lessing the same existential 
concern with the Deity that stirs his own passionate seE And it 
seems to him that to the question which had been asked in the 
Philosophic Fragments, "Is it possible to base an eternal happiness on 
historical knowledge?" Lessing would have replied in the negative 
as emphatically as he. 

In an essay entitled Ubcr den Bcweis des Gcistes und der Krajt (On 
the Demonstration of Spirit and Power), Lessing does not deny that 
the scriptural accounts of miracles and prophecies are as reliable as 
any other historical testimony, but he asks: "Why, seeing that these 
accounts are only reliable in this sense, is it proposed to make a use 
of them that demands an infinitely greater reliability?" Both Johannes 
Climacus and Lessing are thus opposed to admitting the possibility 
of a direct transition from the reliability of an historical account to 
an eternal decision or choice. But both (and Kierkegaard with them) 



44 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

are unaware of the fact that historical reliability rests qualitatively 
on the authority of "the witness" and that in the case of the scriptural 
accounts the authority of the witnesses constitutes a motive of credi- 
bility. For both Johannes Climacus and Lessing, on the other hand, 
any transition from the historically contingent to the eternally necessary 
involves a "leap": "This requires 'a leap,'" says Lessing in his last 
reported conversation with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, "a leap which 
I can hardly afford to make with my old legs and my heavy head." 

Is Lessing speaking seriously or with his tongue in his cheek? 
Johannes Climacus is not too sure, but at any rate he wishes to 
believe that for Lessing, too, "all Christianity has its roots in the 
paradox, whether one accepts it as a believer, or whether one rejects it 
precisely because it is paradoxical." 

A confirmation of his own thesis that the existing individual is 
constantly in process of becoming, that this process makes all earthly 
life insecure, and that this existential insecurity in turn finds its 
expression in the individual's infinite striving for Truth, is found by 
Johannes Climacus in Lessing's well-known saying: "If God held 
enclosed in His right hand all truth, and in His left hand the 
single, ever watchful striving for truth (though with the implication 
that I am forever bound to err), and if He were to ask me to choose, 
I should humbly seize upon His left hand and say to Him: Give, 
Father! Pure Truth is for Thee alone!" 21 Human existence, born 
of the infinite and the finite, the eternal and the temporal, is 
then this constant and infinite striving, and it is only the systema- 
tizing philosopher who forgets that he himself is such a striving and 

21 G. E. Lessing, Wer\e (Leipzig: Goschen, 1864), vol. II, p. 319. Though Lessing 
declares in this frequently quoted statement of the year 1778 that he would make his 
hypothetical choice "humbly," his words betray a kind of "humble" presumptuousness 
which foreshadows the hybns of Goethe's Faust and Nietzsche's ftbermcnsch. For it is 
nothing but a romantically disguised presumptuousness when a higher value is attributed 
to an endless human striving ("forever bound to err") than to the possession of the 
noblest and highest Good. Johannes Climacus (and Kierkegaard) evidently read into 
Lessing's words a meaning that expresses their own restless striving for infinite Truth, 
a striving which rather fits the experience of St Augustine, the God-seeker, than Lessing, 
the "Faustian" advocate of eternal becoming, who rejects the objective claim and 
testimony of revealed Truth. What Kierkegaard wanted to stress with his reference to 
Lessing was the dynamic transforming power of Christian Truth, a power which allows 
of no complacency and satiety on the part of the individual. But, upon closer analysis, 
Kierkegaard would certainly have been unwilling to pay the terrific and entirely unwar- 
ranted price stipulated by Lessing: to be "bound to err in perpetuity." The Danish 
thinker was acutely aware that the refusal to accept the Truth spelled the disintegration 
of the human spirit 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 45 

insecure human being, and that his purported explanation of life 
omits both the existential and essential factors. 

The unique historical fact which for Johannes Climacus is not only 
approximately but infinitely and absolutely certain is the fact of his 
own existence. This existence includes both positive and negative 
elements, simply because it is a synthesis of the finite and the infinite, 
the eternal and the temporal. And it is precisely the perpetual presence 
of the negative, the contingent, the finite that opens the individual's 
eyes to the reality of the positive, the necessary, the infinite. Thus, while 
the existing subject is essentially eternal, qua existing he is temporal. 
Qua existing, his positive security is shaken, not only by the nega- 
tions implicit in his temporality and historicity, but by the reality of 
death, which may terminate this individual earthly existence at any 
moment. 

The preliminary inquiry into the subjective problem of how the 
individual can share in the eternal happiness promised by Chris- 
tianity leads Johannes Climacus to the conclusion that (i) a logical 
system is possible; (2) an existential system is impossible. Reality is a 
"system" for God, but it cannot be or become a system for an 
existing human individual, because a system is something final, whereas 
an existing individual is a constant striving for finality and as such 
always in via or unfinished. The only truly systematic thinker 
therefore is God, who in His eternity is absolutely and forever 
complete and who also includes in Himself the fullness of existence. 
To an existing human individual, on the other hand, there applies 
an unconditional "either-or": he can either try to forget that he is an 
existing individual; and thereby he becomes a ridiculous figure, because 
existence continually holds him in its grip, whether he remembers 
this or chooses to forget it. Or he can concentrate his total energy 
on the fact that he is an existing individual; and thereby he realizes 
his authentic existence. In the "system" of the speculative philosopher 
(Hegel) subject and object, thought and being are identified, whereas 
in individual existence they are separated. The "philosophy of identity'* 
thus revokes and abolishes individual existence in a pantheistic unity 
of opposites. And while the speculative philosopher, by identifying 
himself with Humanity at large, works Tinder the illusion that he 
has made himself into something infinitely great, he has actually 
ceased to be anything at all. 

Part Two of the Postscript adds further qualifications to the concept 
of "subjectivity." How does individual existence relate itself to the 



46 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

sphere of moral action? Johannes Climacus anticipates Nietzsche's 
critique of "historicism" when he asserts that an overdose of historical 
interest paralyzes the individual's spontaneity and renders him unfit 
for the exercise of his freedom. The great ethical personality, in 
devoting all his efforts to the task of self-realization, will in all 
probability also produce the greatest effects in the external world. 
But such a person remains from first to last conscious that, as these 
external results are not in his power, his primary concern must be 
with his own moral existence. A reformer may entice an entire 
generation with the zeal of his teaching, but he will nevertheless 
confound the meaning of existence unless his own life be an adequate 
expression of his doctrine. 

Johannes Climacus compares moral freedom with Aladdin's miracu- 
lous lamp: when the lamp is rubbed, some spirit appears, but the 
Divine Spirit appears only when the lamp is rubbed in the right way, 
that is, with the highest ethical passion. In the fable of Aladdin the 
spirit of the lamp is the servant of the owner of the lamp, but 
whoever rubs the lamp of freedom with the highest ethical resolve 
becomes himself the servant of the appearing Divine Spirit, the 
Spirit of the Lord. An individual, bent on "doing good to others, 
even to the extent of improving the whole human race," may perhaps 
have the power to make the Spirit appear, but "I think the Spirit 
would then gather itself together in wrath and say to this individual: 
'Stupid man! Do I not exist, I who am omnipotent? . . . Presump- 
tuous man! . . . Do you possess anything of your own, whereof you 
might give to me? Or is it not a fact that even when you do your 
utmost you merely give back to me my own, and that sometimes 
you do it in a paltry enough fashion?'" 22 The real task and the 
great venture of the individual is to dare renounce everything so as 
to become as nothing before God, that is, to become that particular 
existing individual, of whom God requires everything. Then and 
this is the reward "God can in eternity not get rid of you." Then 
only will the individual have gained his true significance as a human 
being, a significance in comparison with which every other signifi- 
cance becomes illusory. 

It is the simplest things in life, Johannes Climacus holds with 
Socrates, that are the most difficult to understand, and more difficult 
for the learned and cultured than for the unlettered. Why should 

22 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 124. 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 47 

any man take pride in his complex scientific knowledge and pursuits 
as long as he has not learned to understand the simplest? There is, 
for example, the problem of death, the problem of what it means 
to die. People know of course of death in a general and abstract 
way. They know that all men are mortal, and they may even have 
heard of the syllogism which infers from this general knowledge 
that Socrates, being a man, is mortal also. They know that there are 
several ways in which one may commit suicide; that one man dies in 
bed and another on the field of battle; that the hero usually dies in 
the last act of a tragedy, and that the dead are eulogized in funeral 
orations and remembered in the prayers of the living. But does this 
knowledge actually convey to them an jmderstanding of the meaning 
of death? All my knowledge of "universal history" will likewise 
contribute very little to such an understanding. And yet my own 
death, which may occur some years hence or at any moment, is 
something which concerns me very directly and intimately. It is with 
me and remains with me as an existential insecurity that imparts a 
peculiar flavor to everything I am and everything I do or fail to do. 
It is an impossibility for an individual to gain an understanding of 
his own self unless this understanding includes the prospect of his 
own death. He has to ask himself whether the nonbeing of death 
invades his being as it invades and destroys the being of a dog, or 
whether his own death rather signalizes a victory of being over 
nonbeing. The answer any answer to this question will have a 
decisive transforming effect on his entire life. 

Reflection on such questions concerning the simple and massive 
realities of life may teach a man what it means to think "existentially." 
He may learn that this kind of thinking is very different from die 
kind engaged in by the speculative philosopher who, seated at his 
desk, writes about what he has neither done nor ever intends to do. 
In existential thinking man's very soul is on trial, and his God- 
relationship is put to the test: If, for example, one who lives in 
Christendom goes to the house of God, the house of the true God, 
with the conceptually correct knowledge of God in his mind, and 
his entire being is not seized and permeated by this knowledge, he 
cannot be said to have true devotion. If, on the other hand, a man 
who, having been reared in an idolatrous society, and never having 
had an opportunity to form a correct concept of the true God, prays 
to the image of his idol with the infinite passion of his being: he, 
as much as lies in him and according to the lights given him, prays 



48 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

to the true God, although externally he worships an idol. In this way 
"subjectivity" may become a more truthful expression and acknowledg- 
ment of the truth than a detached nonexistential "objectivity." 

Once upon a time, Johannes Climacus reflects, it was a very difficult 
thing to become a Christian, but nowadays it has become even more 
difficult because of the fact that in modern Christendom it is taken 
for granted that everyone is eo if so a Christian. It has remained for 
the modern age and its speculative thinkers to say the most offensive, 
revolting, and stupid thing about Christianity: that it is true to a 
certain degree! Such a statement is worse than blasphemy: let a man 
be scandalized (as the Jews and Greeks were scandalized); let him 
despair of his ever becoming a Christian; let him shed his blood in 
persecuting Christianity; in his hatred there is passion, and there 
may also be a realization of the great force that Christianity is. But 
if he says: Christianity is true to a certain degree, he is not only 
wicked, but plainly stupid. "Whoever is neither hot nor cold is 
merely nauseating. . . . Had not Pilate asked 'objectively' what truth 
is, he would never have condemned Christ to be crucified. Had he 
asked subjectively, the passion of his inwardness, paying heed to 
what in the decision facing him he had in truth to do, would have 
saved him from doing wrong." 23 The persecutor may defend himself 
by saying: Yes, I have tried my best to exterminate Christianity; it 
had set my soul on fire, and I had perceived its hateful tremendous 
power. And the apostate may say: Yes, I was aware that if I gave 
Christianity my little finger it would take the whole of me, and I 
was unable and unwilling to surrender on such terms. But different 
from these is "the professor" who has explained Christianity and has 
come to the conclusion that it is true to a certain degree. "Which of 
these," asks Johannes Climacus, "must be regarded as in the most 
terrible position?" What makes a man a man is his God-relationship. 
Outside this relationship he may imitate in a puppet-like fashion 
human motions and emotions, but at the end of his earthly journey 
it would have to be said that the one essentially human thing had 
escaped him: he had taken no notice of God. "Idolatry is indeed a 
sorry substitute for God, but that God should be entirely omitted 
is still worse." 

"Becoming objective" in the Hegelian sense means to sit down and 
contemplate in a nobly detached manner Christ's crucifixion, an event 

28 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript t p. 206. 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 49 

"which when it happened did not permit even the temple to remain 
objective, for its veil was rent in twain, nor the dead, for they rose 
from their graves; that is to say, what suffices to make even the 
lifeless and the dead subjective, that is now studied objectively by 
objective gentlemen." 24 This latter statement is found in an appendix 
to chapter two of the second part of the Postscript, in which Johannes 
Climacus offers his comments on two of Kierkegaard's earlier pseu- 
donymous works (Either/Or, a Fragment of Life by Victor Eremita, 
1843; and Stages on Life's Road, edited by Hilarius Bookbinder, 1845). 
The "stages," as described in the later of the two works, are the 
aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. While aesthetic existence is said 
to be essentially sensuous enjoyment ("the path of perdition"), and 
ethical existence is essentially struggle and victory, religious existence 
is essentially suffering. In regard to this triple division Johannes Clima- 
cus now states that the three stages are intimately related to one 
another and that in their cumulative sequence they lead up to an 
unconditional "either-or." The characters who represent the three 
stages are all "consistent to the point of despair." But in the sphere 
of abstract thought there is no room for any such existential consist- 
ency, and Hegel is quite right when he abolishes the principle of 
contradiction in his system of purely abstract essences. He is wrong, 
however, when he extends this annulment to the categories of exist- 
ence, because by so doing he annuls existence itself. 

Could it be, asks Johannes Climacus, that the appearance and increas- 
ing popularity of these abstract thinkers has some deeper significance? 
"An epidemic of cholera is usually signalized by the appearance of a 
certain kind of fly. . . ; may it not be that the appearance of these 
fabulous pure thinkers is a sign that some misfortune threatens 
humanity, as for instance the loss of the ethical and the religious?" 25 

Chapter three of part two of the Postscript continues the examina- 
tion of the existential thinker's relation to reality and proceeds to a 
critical analysis of the Cartesian cogito, ergo sum. The real subject, 
Johannes Climacus argues, is not the cognitive subject, and it is 
therefore impossible for an abstract thinker to prove his existence as a 
human being by the fact that he thinks. "How silly," objects the 
existential philosopher, "there is no question here of your self or 
of my self, but solely of a pure ego," an ego which has no real but 
only a conceptual existence, so that the supposed syllogism becomes 



bid., p. 248. 25 /&W., p. 37*. 



50 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

nothing but a tautology: I think (abstractly), therefore I am thinking. 
Abstract speculation in the Cartesian and Hegelian manner has 
led to an unspeakable impoverishment of life. People smile at the 
practices of mediaeval monasticism, but no monk in his cell and no 
hermit in the desert ever lived so unreal a life as is common in the 
modern day and age. For while the monk and the hermit abstracted 
or withdrew from the world, it never occurred to them to abstract 
or withdraw from their own selves. Human existence, while partaking 
of the Universal Idea, is not itself an Idea or a purely ideal existence. 
Abstract thought is thought without a thinker. Concrete thought is 
thought which is related to an existing thinker. 

To be sure, existential thinking is not yet moral action, but it is 
pregnant with the possibility of moral action. It makes sense to 
speak of virtue in thought and sin in thought, because the external 
act is related to an internal moral decision. The good deed I intend 
to do is certainly not identical with the good deed I have done, but 
neither is the external act always a valid criterion of the moral 
disposition of the agent, "for the human being who does not own a 
penny can be as charitable as one who gives away a kingdom." The 
moral accent of an action therefore lies rather with the internal decision 
than with the external execution. But "the professor" takes a different 
view of the nature of these things: "For six thousand years human 
beings have loved and poets have sung the praises of love, so that 
now in the nineteenth century we ought to know surely what love 
is; our task is to assign to love, and especially to marriage, its proper 
place in 'the System' for the professor gets himself married in 
distraction of mind." 26 

What then is the supreme ethical task of the individual? No more 
and no less than to become "an entire man." And "if ever so many 
blind and mediocre and cowardly individuals renounce their own 
selves in order to become something en masse . . . , Ethics does not 
bargain with them." 27 

Abstract philosophic idealism is a fashionable game that can be 
easily and comfortably played in the professorial chair and in the 
lecture hall, but not nearly so easily in real life, because reality and 
existence posit formidable obstacles. Philosophic idealism expresses on 
the highest level the peculiar depravity of the modern age: its "disso- 
lute pantheistic contempt for the individual man." And why this 

*/., p. 308. MM*., p. 309. 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 51 

general flight from individuality? Because for an age that lacks reli- 
gious and moral enthusiasm individual existence becomes a matter of 
despair; because in an age that has forsaken God and has therefore 
been forsaken by God, individual existence becomes the prey of fear, 
and individuals henceforth dare to live only en masse, clustering 
together in the vain hope that collectively they may again amount to 
something. While modern statesmen and politicians are apprehensive 
of an imminent breakdown of governmental institutions, the threat 
of a general spiritual bankruptcy is far more serious; for ideas have 
been emasculated and words have lost their meaning, so that contro- 
versies and disputes have become as sterile and ridiculous as common 
resolutions and mutual agreements. 

Chapter four, finally, turns from Ethics to Religion and treats in 
particular of the problem of how to become a Christian. Once more 
the theme of the Hegelian "mediation" of opposites is resumed: medi- 
ation, Johannes Climacus states, is "a rebellion of the relative ends 
against the majesty of the absolute, an attempt to bring the absolute 
down to the level of everything else, an attack upon the dignity of 
human life, seeking to make man a mere servant of relative ends." 28 
The absolute "telos" of man is forgotten, and whenever this happens, 
men, in a kind of mad frenzy, attach themselves with an absolute 
and idolatrous devotion to relative ends. For it is nothing but madness 
when a being whose nature is consecrated to the eternal clings with 
all the strength of his enthusiasm and passion to the precarious and 
transitory, to that which is nothing aside from that fleeting moment 
in which it is possessed, "a moment in time filled with emptiness." 

The teacher and preacher of religion must forcefully call attention 
to this case of mistaken identity, to this confusion of means and ends, 
to this reversal of man's existential relationship to the absolute and 
the relative. The religious discourse must point out that it is not 
man's task to begin with the individual in order to arrive at the 
human race, but that both the beginning and the end lie with the 
individual. 

Occasional Sunday glimpses into eternity are of no avail for the 
remaining six days of the week, for it is on the weekdays, in daily 
life and work, and in the living room, that the decisive Christian 
battles must be fought. The absolute demand, the absolute standard 
must be introduced into the life of every day and every hour and, 

w/foW., P . 375. 



52 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

though not specifically mentioned, it must always be present. Only if 
this is done can the conception of God or the conception of a promised 
eternal happiness transform the entire existence of the individual in 
relation to this idea. If man in his human frailty thus holds fast to 
the absolute concept of God at every moment of his life, God will 
console him in his suffering. And this will be his only consolation, 
as he can derive no comfort whatsoever from knowing what the crowd 
knows, from the knowledge of men "who have a shopkeeper's notion 
of what it means to be a man, and a facile gossipy notion at seventeenth 
hand of what it means to exist before God." 

Has then a man who thus exists before God an eternal certainty? 
Yes, says Johannes Climacus, he has the eternal certainty that "what- 
ever pleases God prospers in the hands of a devout man." But what is 
it that pleases God? "Is it this or that, is it this occupation that he 
ought to choose, this girl he ought to marry, this piece of work he 
ought to begin? Perhaps, and perhaps not." And precisely because 
he cannot be too sure in these matters the religious man should not 
be unduly concerned about these external things, but rather seek those 
things which always and indubitably please God: peace of mind and 
his soul's salvation. 

The last chapter of the Postscript presents a "conclusion." Johannes 
Climacus recapitulates by repeating that his work has tried to point 
out the difficulties involved in becoming a Christian. But he adds that 
it has not been his intention "to make it difficult for laymen to 
become Christians. First of all, everybody can become a Christian; 
and, in the second place, it is assumed that everyone who says he is a 
Christian, and has done the highest things, is actually a Christian 
and has done the highest things. . . . Woe unto him who would be a 
judge of hearts." 29 The problem of the difficulties involved in becom- 
ing a Christian was raised for a different reason: it was raised 
because of the suspicion aroused by the ambition of an entire genera- 
tion to go farther than Christianity would have them go, to aspire to 
the "objectivity" of speculative philosophy as the highest thing. But 
in the Christian order of things such a "forward" ambition is in 
reality a going backward. The claimed "objectivity" of "the System" 
expresses in reality merely disrespect, irreverence, and indifference. 
Christ loved the young man who could not make up his mind to 
give all his possessions to the poor and follow Him. This young 

29 Ibid., p. 520. 



THE, CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 53 

man showed respect and reverence for that which he could not 
bring himself to accept. "Better, then, frank sincerity than 
lukewarmness." 

Johannes Climacus is satisfied he has demonstrated that in the 
modern age it is not easier to become a Christian than it was in 
the beginning, that, on the contrary, it has become more difficult and 
will become more difficult from year to year, especially for the learned 
and cultured. For "the predominance of intellect in the man of 
culture and the trend towards the objective will in his case constantly 
cause resistance against becoming a Christian, and this resistance is 
the sin of the intellect: lukewarmness." 30 

A summary statement of the existential position and message of 
Johannes Climacus is contained in the final paragraphs of the Post- 
script, in which the author addresses the reader: "My dear readerl 
If I have to say it myself, I am anything but a devilish good fellow 
at philosophy, one who is called to direct it into new paths. I am a 
poor, individual, existing man, with sound natural capacities, not 
without a certain dialectical dexterity, nor entirely destitute of educa- 
tion. But I have been tried in life's casibus and cheerfully appeal to 
my sufferings, not in an apostolic sense as a tide of honor, for they 
have only too often been self-deserved punishments, but yet I appeal 
to them as my teachers. ... I remain what I myself concede is 
infinitely little. . . ." But "I am prepared for being an apprentice, a 
learner, which in itself is no small task. I do not give myself out to 
be more than this: fit to be able to begin in a higher sense to learn. 
If only among us there were to be found teachers! . . . The teacher 
of whom I speak ... is the teacher of the ambiguous art of thinking 
about existence and existing. . . . And I cannot suppose that such a 
teacher could believe he had nothing else to do but what a mediocre 
teacher of religion in the public schools does: set a paragraph for 
me to learn every day and recite it the next day by rote. ... In our 
time, when one says 'I know all,' he is believed; but he who says, 
There is much I do not know,' is suspected of a propensity for 
lying. . . . Ah, those ungodly and mendacious men who say, 'There 
is much that I do not know* they get their just deserts in this best 
of worlds. . . ." 81 

Here the existential confession of Johannes Climacus ends, but for 
Kierkegaard himself the problem raised by his dtcr ego called for a 

**lbid., p. 536. 81 Ibid., pp. 548-550. 



54 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

more definite and unambiguous conclusion. In his life and in his last 
works he demonstrated that he was that teacher for whom Johannes 
Climacus looked in vain: the teacher who lived his doctrine, who 
"ventured far out," from the ethical to the religious; who found in 
divine Love the true identity of subjectivity and objectivity and in the 
divine "I Am Who Am" die ens realissimum for all existence. But 
before he could discover that ultimate Reality, Kierkegaard had to 
experience in full measure the depth of the abyss that separates subject 
and object, thinking and being. Before he could envisage the individ- 
ual's relation to the infinite he had to experience human existence in its 
aspects of finiteness and temporality. Human individuality appeared 
to him as implying both sinfulness and freedom, and while human 
existence is isolated by individuation and wounded by sin, it is, by 
virtue of its freedom, capable of opening itself to the life-giving action 
of the Infinite Spirit, of making the consciousness of sin the first 
decisive step toward redemption. It is thus the consciousness of sin 
that opens the way toward authentic existence and that distinguishes 
the religious stage from the aesthetic and ethical stages of human life. 

"Authentic" human existence is, however, never a real unity or 
synthesis but rather a togetherness of opposites, a paradoxical and 
ambiguous junction of contrasting elements whose vital tension finds 
its expression in existential anguish (Danish, angesf). This anguish 
or anxiety, which is distinguished from fear by the indefiniteness of its 
object, is intimately linked with the finiteness and temporality of 
human existence and results from the fact that man is, as it were, 
suspended at the danger point between Being and nothingness. Existen- 
tial anguish is thus generated by the mysterious contact of the 
temporal and the eternal, the finite and the infinite, the human 
individual and God. 

The religious function which Kierkegaard attributes to existential 
anguish is most conspicuous in his concept of faith. For him as for 
Martin Luther faith, as has been pointed out, requires a "leap," a 
plunge into the paradox, a "fighting certitude," a certitude of the 
uncertain. Kierkegaard thus carries his abhorrence of "mediation" 
even into the very center of his theology, notwithstanding the fact 
that his own religious experience could not help but acknowledge 
the divine mediatorship in the person of Christ. 

Kierkegaard's three "stages on life's road" culminate and find their 
existential fulfillment in the transcendent reality of the supernatural. 
Farthest removed from the religious existence is the aesthetic mode 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 55 

of life. In the Diary of the Seducer (Either/Or I) and in In Vino 
Veritas (Stages I) Kierkegaard discusses the existential relationship 
between the aesthetic and the ethical stage, while the interrelation 
between the ethical and religious stage is the major theme of Fear and 
Trembling and Guilty Not Guilty (Stages HI). The Diary of the 
Seducer is akin in spirit to the German romanticist Friedrich Schlegel's 
novel Lucinde, and Plato's Symposium provides the pattern for In 
Vino Veritas. 

Johannes the Seducer shares with Julius, the hero of Schlegel's 
novel, the conviction that any "conventional" tie, such as engagement 
or marriage, is incompatible with "love." Johannes thus exemplifies 
the aesthetic stage of existence, its outward appearance of gaiety and 
its inward emptiness and despair. It is characterized by a perpetual 
seeking for moments filled with sensual enjoyment, moments which 
mutually cancel themselves out, so that the seeking and striving never 
end in fulfillment. The type of this kind of life is the Don Juan of 
Mozart's opera: he possesses "the passion of the infinite," but with 
him this passion attaches itself to the evil infinity of lustful moments 
which, as soon as they are attained, become shallow and empty and 
dissolve into nothingness. Don Juan's world is a world of appearance 
rather than of reality; it is the world of the constant betrayal, a 
world of nihilistic passion. In it no "existential choice" is possible. 

Judge William, the ethicist, the main character in Part Two of 
Either/Or, enumerates five modes of aesthetic existence, differing 
according to the ascending scale of sophistication. These five modes 
are represented by the five guests attending the banquet of In Vino 
Veritas. Each of these evades reality and authentic existence by a pas- 
sionate devotion to relative and transitory values, such as health, beauty, 
riches, honor, talent, and sensual pleasure. But inwardly every aesthetic 
mode of life is abysmal despair because finite man, without the vista 
of the eternal and the infinite, finds himself eventually face to face 
with nothingness. 

Existential despair expresses the reductio ad absurdum of the aesthet- 
ic mode of life. But this "sickness unto death" may bear within itself 
its own cure. The shipwreck of the aesthetic life may mean the emer- 
gence and growth of the ethical life. The ethical is present, according 
to Kierkegaard, whenever an "authentic choice" becomes possible. 
And thus, if man chooses despair, he chooses himself in his eternal 
validity. The man who turns away from the glamour and lure of the 
external world toward the inwardness of his own self, gains with 



56 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

this decision his ethical existence. He learns to know himself and to 
form himself. The paradigm of this type of existence is Socrates. 

The ethical stage is discussed at length in Part Two of Either /Or, in 
Several Observations about Marriage (Stages II), and in the Post- 
serif t. Judge William calls the ethical "the universal and as such 
divine." The ethical life has continuity; its amplitude encompasses 
hope and recollection, future and past, whereas the aesthetic life is 
torn to shreds in its attachment to the fleeting moment. Only the 
ethical life can also enduringly save and preserve aesthetic beauty. 
And only the ethical life, by virtue of its universality, can bind the 
individual to the rational and social order of things and thereby 
awaken in him the consciousness of his calling as a human being. 
"The great thing," says Judge William, "is not to be this or that, but 
to be oneself, and this is something which every man can if he wills." 
In choosing himself, man also ethically acknowledges an absolute 
distinction between good and evil, a distinction which Hegel, in his 
"metaphysical attempt to assassinate all ethics," had tried to "mediate." 

But even the ethical structure of human existence is still seriously 
incomplete; although the ethical individual reaches out toward the 
universal, he is bound to remain within the confines of human 
immanence unless, by probing even deeper into the hidden layers of 
his selfhood, he discover in his sinfulness and his faith the bridges 
leading to divine transcendence: "An ethics which disregards sin is a 
perfectly idle science; but if it affirms sin, it is eo if so well beyond 
itself." 

The authentic individual is not only responsible to himself and his 
fellow men; he is, above all, responsible to God. The ethical mode of 
life is transformed into the religious mode of life when, with a contrite 
heart, man chooses himself as guilty and hopes for divine forgive- 
ness: "There is an 'either/or' which makes a man greater than the 
angels." 

The pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling is Johannes de 
Silentio, and the principal character of the work is Abraham, the 
"Knight of Faith." The major theme is the clash between the ethical 
and the religious "stage." In obedience to God, in fear and trembling, 
in the detachment of infinite resignation the Jewish Patriarch sur- 
renders his son to God, only to receive him back by virtue of the 
magnitude of his faith; for with God all things are possible. Thus 
the religious mode of life suspends or absorbs the ethical. By the 
"leap of faith" the homo religiosus imparts to the finiteness and tern- 



THE CHALLENGE OF KIERKEGAARD 57 

porality of his existence an infinite and eternal significance. Every 
aspect of his life is henceforth determined and permeated by his 
God-relationship. 

In the concluding pages of the Postscript Kierkegaard designates 
the ethical stage as "religion A" and the religious stage as "religion 
B" When man stands in the self-annihilation of sinfulness before 
God, he is in the state of "religion A." In his finiteness he has 
entered into the crisis of existential despair, the "sickness unto death." 
But this spiritual sickness, unlike any physical deadly disease, does 
not have to terminate in death. It is a sickness which can be healed 
by "existential faith." "The despair," says Kierkegaard, "consists in 
that despairingly man wants to be himself; that the despair cannot 
get rid of the self." And when despair turns into its opposite, namely, 
faith, man gains his authentic selfhood in virtue of the Eternal and 
Infinite. He "leaps" into a nothingness in which the abyss of sin 
becomes the abyss of faith: "As long as you despair, you sink; as 
soon as you believe, you arc carried by the power of God. . . . The 
weaker a man is, the stronger is God in him, and the stronger a 
man is, the weaker is God in him." In faith man has crossed the 
threshold that marks the entrance to "religion B." He has risked 
everything, surrendered everything, but he receives back infinitely 
more than he has been able to give: his union and communion with 
God's Love. He has gained "authentic existence." 



Kierkegaard had started out with the contention that the deadly 
disease of the modern age was the divorce of thought and life. He 
had complained that philosophy had become highly abstract, lifeless, 
and artificial, and that life had been emptied of real content to such 
a degree that human beings no longer knew what it means "to exist." 
As for Christianity, it had become "a diluted, enervated sentimentality 
and a refined epicureanism." In relation to their imposing "systems" 
the philosophers were living "in a little shack nearby: They do not 
live in their magnificent edifices. Spiritually speaking, however, a man's 
thought must be the building in which he lives." 

Existential thinking calls for the unity of thought and life. And 
the eternal pattern of this unity Kierkegaard sees in Christ. He there- 
fore fervently pleads for the "following of Christ": "Thou, the holy 
pattern of the human race and of each individual, hast left a footprint 



58 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

so that, saved by Thy atonement, man might at any moment be 
willing to strive to follow Thee." Christianity is thus for Kierkegaard 
essentially communication of existence. It can only be taught "existen- 
tially," that is, by a teacher whose life has been informed and trans- 
formed by Christ. 



CHAPTER THREE 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 
THE CASE OF NIETZSCHE 

i 

THE tragedy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is partly revealed in 
a brief passage from a letter he wrote to his sister Elisabeth in the 
year 1886: "A man of spiritual depth needs friends, unless he still 
has God as a friend. But I have neither God nor friends." The 
weaknesses and fallacies of Nietzsche's thinking are rather obvious 
and have frequently been commented upon, while its strength escapes 
a superficial glance at his life and works and becomes visible only 
with a more penetrating insight into his complex personality. Never 
afraid of facing the ultimate consequences of his own ideas, even to 
the point of self-destruction, Nietzsche carried his relentless search 
for the plenitude of human existence beyond the shallow and frag- 
mentary views of positivism and naturalism, notwithstanding the 
fact that these philosophic creeds often refer to Nietzsche's doctrines 
to support their own claims. But, as in the case of many an outstand- 
ing thinker, historical justice demands that one distinguish between 
those who profess to speak in Nietzsche's name, and the actual impli- 
cations of Nietzsche's thinking and teaching. 

Nietzsche had in fact very little in common with those among his 
self-styled disciples who in his name have tried to blacken and debase 
the image of man, with those who indulge in the glorification of the 
blind forces of instinct and in the calumniation of the spirit. There 
is no doubt that the motivating force in all of Nietzsche's negations 
was his passionate will for affirmation. It was his burning desire to 
remake human existence in its entirety that urged him on to tear 
down the actual structure of human society in order to build a better 
one on a truer foundation. His attacks on the hollowness and shallow- 
ness of nineteenth-century bourgeois morality were to clear the way 
for a new existential moral philosophy. Without deviation he main- 
tained his conviction that philosophy is something more real and 

59 



60 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

substantial than a harmless intellectual parlor game or a sophistic 
juggling of words and concepts, and he regarded as worthless any 
philosophic position that was not vouched for by the philosopher 
himself, even at the risk of his entire personal existence. 

While Nietzsche intended a break with the past and its standards 
of value, his will to the future still throve on the spiritual and moral 
substance of the western tradition. His entire work is saturated with 
the greatness of the European past, and even his most violent con- 
demnations vibrate with his secret admiration for the objects of his 
wrath. "How much has already been accomplished," says Zarathustra, 
"how rich is this earth in ... good and perfect things, things well 
made and deeds well done!" 

Aware of the crisis of Western civilization, and himself unafraid 
of the dangerous abyss which he had opened up with his thinking, 
Nietzsche plunged into that very abyss and demonstrated to his age 
with his own tragic fate the inescapable alternatives which lay before 
modern man. An existential thinker in the manner of Kierkegaard, 
Nietzsche valued more highly the "how" than the "what": more 
highly the subjectivity of the thinker than the objectivity of the 
"system," more highly the growth of human personality than the con- 
ceptual integrity of abstract thought. In Nietzsche's view, it is the 
test of every genuine philosophy "that it be capable of forming a 
human being." 

Nietzsche no more than Kierkegaard could accept J. J. Rousseau's 
theory of the natural goodness of man, the view that "all is good in 
nature" (tout bien dans la nature). Looking at man's historical reality, 
they both found something fundamentally wrong with human nature. 
"Man is something which must be overcome," says Nietzsche's Zara- 
thustra. But while Kierkegaard, the Christian, called for a restoration 
of the religious integrity of human existence, Nietzsche, the neopagan, 
demanded that man be de-Christianized, because he thought that it 
was Christianity which had brought about the corruption of human 
existence. In the advent of European 'Nihilism Nietzsche sees a major 
symptom of the progressive disintegration of the Christian type of 
man. The impact of Nihilism, he contends, has created a unique his- 
torical situation, making it possible to prepare the way for the "higher 
man" or the "Super-Man" of the future. But the emergence of this 
"new man" he expects not from supernature, but from nature; more 
precisely, from man's preying instincts and urges and thus ultimately 



MANM30D OR GOD-MAN? 61 

from the "Will to Power." This Will to Power manifests itself in two 
phases or stages: in the first it appears as Nihilism, while in the 
second it is "sublimated" into the will to create the "higher man." 

The common element in the anthropological views of Nietzsche 
and Kierkegaard is their conviction that modern philosophy has shown 
itself unable to resolve the problems of human existence. The "systems" 
of pure thought, such as Hegel's dialectic idealism, do not correspond 
to reality and therefore cannot express reality. The two thinkers are 
thus in search of a philosophy which will affect and transform human 
existence decisively. Although they almost totally disagree in their 
ideas as to what constitutes authentic human existence, they are both 
existential thinkers in the sense that their thinking aims at arousing 
and creatively forming the human self. Both stand in uncompromising 
opposition to their age, and it is this opposition which animates and 
invigorates their philosophy. 

While Kierkegaard mercilessly dissects and unmasks a "Christen- 
dom" that has become a mere external fa$ade, a mere tradition or a 
mere habit, without vital actualization in the human individual, 
Nietzsche proclaims the definitive failure of Christianity on the 
historical proving and testing ground of European life and civilization. 
Both find the "paradox" of human existence in the mysterious union 
of the temporal and eternal, of nature and spirit, of the subhuman 
and the suprahuman, but whereas Kierkegaard calls upon the power 
of the Absolute Divine Spirit to raise man into his suprahuman dimen- 
sion, Nietzsche calls upon the forces of the earth and of a purely 
this-worldly nature to restore wholeness and haleness to human exist- 
ence. Thus Nietzsche's "new man" is the divine beast of prey, "the 
blond beast" whose untamed power and beauty he sees enhanced by 
the admixture of spirit. For Nietzsche the "Absolute Spirit" is identi- 
cal with Hegel's Wcltgeist, and like Kierkegaard he turns against 
this supreme abstraction of the Hegelian dialectic. He never relin- 
quishes his intense interest in the life of the spirit and its evolution 
in history and civilization, but for him this evolution must proceed 
in the movement of life rather than in a sphere of abstract ideas; it 
must have its place in existence rather than in a realm of conceptualized 
essences. 

Nietzsche's archenemy is the theorist whose thinking remains un- 
related to his existence and thus becomes in the end hostile and 
harmful to life. The prototype of such a theorist is for him as for 
Kierkegaard the philosopher Hegel who in his metaphysics of abstract 



62 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

idealism established what Karl Lowith calls "an ambiguous unity of 
theology and philosophy, of religion and atheism, of Christianity and 
paganism." It seems to Nietzsche that Hegel thereby merely "pro- 
crastinated the advent of honest atheism." In Nietzsche this "honest 
atheism" becomes fully articulate. His "Zarathustra" voices both the 
praise and lament of the human soul that has abandoned God and 
has been abandoned by God. Zarathustra's songs are the lyrics of 
rebellious man who has taken it upon himself to evade the reality of 
God and who suffers ultimate shipwreck in the attempt to put the 
Man-God in the place of the God-Man. But, Nietzsche asks himself 
when he nears the end of his tragic odyssey, has his attack really 
harmed the cause of God and Christianity? His answer is in the 
negative: "For thus it has always been and thus it will always be: one 
cannot aid a cause more effectively than by persecuting it, by hunting 
it with all hounds. . . . This I have done." 

II 

Friedrich Nietzsche was born at Rocken, a small village in the 
Prussian province of Saxony, as the descendant of two families whose 
heads had been Lutheran pastors for many generations. His sister 
Elisabeth, two years younger than Friedrich, became the philosopher's 
close companion, later on (during the final years of his insanity) his 
guardian, and his first (though not overly reliable) biographer. The 
father died of a brain hemorrhage when Friedrich was five years old, 
and the family moved to the city of Naumburg shortly afterward. 

Friedrich grew up in the belief that, like his father and his male 
ancestors, he was destined for a life of intimacy with God as a 
Lutheran pastor. At the age of ten he entered the Gymnasium (hu- 
manistic secondary school) at Naumburg, and his mother was soon 
told that her son's superior intelligence made it advisable to send him 
to an institution of higher scholastic standing. Thus, at the age of 
fourteen, he was placed in the renowned Furstenschule (princely 
school) of Pforta, a boarding school located near Naumburg which, 
in pre-Reformation days, had been a Cistercian monastery (Monas- 
terium sanctac Mariac de Porta, 1132-1543). Schulpforta had preserved 
some of its ancient monastic austerity, combined with a spirit of 
humanism, strict moralism, and Prussian discipline. 

During the years at Schulpforta, Nietzsche prepared himself con- 
scientiously for the pastorate. His program of study included classical 
languages and natural, technical, and military sciences. "And, above 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 63 

all," he writes in his notebook, "religion, the foundation of all human 
knowledge. Great is the domain of knowledge, everlasting the search 
for truth." At the age of seventeen, meditating on the relationship of 
knowledge to life, he quotes Byron's verses, 

Sorrow is knowledge: They who know the most 
Most mourn the deepest over the fatal truth, 
The tree of knowledge is not that of life. 

And though Nietzsche accumulates a surprising amount of knowl- 
edge, his mind remains restless and dissatisfied. Is there perhaps, he 
asks himself, a tcrtium quid, a higher synthesis beyond knowledge and 
faith? And he believes he has found that tcrtium quid, an escape 
and a refuge, in the realm of art and especially in music. He tells his 
horrified mother of his plan to devote himself to a musical career. 
But her violent protestations finally make him relinquish this idea. 

The very thought, however, of choosing music in place of theology 
resulted from a gradually developing religious crisis which was never 
to be resolved as long as Nietzsche retained his sanity, and which 
even extended into the darkness of his mental night. The fact that he 
felt his religious faith slipping away filled him with growing appre- 
hension, because he dimly realized the dangers that were lying 
ahead. "Ah, it is easy to destroy," he writes, "but to rebuild, to recon- 
struct, that is another matter!" 

Nietzsche was still a student at Schulpforta when, with the advent 
of the summer heat, he experienced for the first time those violent 
headaches and visual disturbances which henceforth were to recur 
with increasing frequency and which periodically incapacitated him 
for his work as a writer and teacher. Meanwhile, the thought of his 
professional future continued to perplex and worry him. "It is a 
question," he wrote, "of finding that precise field in which I may 
hope to give my all." 

At about the time Nietzsche departed from Schulpforta he wrote 
in the solitude of his study some verses which he addressed "To the 
Unknown God" and which gave striking expression to the questions 
which he pondered in his doubting and searching mind: 

Once more, before I part from here 

And turn my glance toward the future, 

I raise my hands in solitude 

To Thee, to whom I flee, 

To whom, in the depth of my heart, 

I have solemnly dedicated altars. . . . 



64 THE EXISTENTIAUST REVOLT 

I am His, even though to this hour 
I have remained in the impious crowd. 
I am His and I feel the snares 
Which drag me down, fighting, 
And, whithersoever I flee, 
Force me into His service. . . . 

I wish to know Thee, God unknown, 
Thou, who seizest my innermost soul, 
Thou, who roarest through my life like a storm. . . . 

And a second poem of the same period reveals a similar mood: 

Unspeakably terrible Thou art! 

Thou, huntsman behind the clouds! . . . 

Thou God unknown! . , . 

Speak, at last! 

What dost Thou ask of me, Thou thief of the great highways ? . . . 

Thou wantest me all of me? 

In mid-October, 1862, Nietzsche entered the University of Bonn on 
the Rhine. Out of filial respect for the wishes of his mother he 
matriculated in the faculty of theology, but he devoted considerably 
more time to the study of classical philology, which was taught at 
Bonn by two of its then most brilliant representatives, Otto Jahn and 
F. W. Ritschl. The latter, to whom Fricdrich occasionally refers as 
"Papa Ritschl," became his first guide and adviser. 

A sizable number of Nietzsche's fellow students pursued philosophic 
studies. Some were enthused with the idealism of Fichte, Schelling, 
and Hegel, while others were more interested in the materialism of 
Vogt, Buchner, and Fcuerbach. 1 But neither of these fashionable 
trends could hold Nietzsche's interest. Many of the younger genera- 
tion, following the lead of Auguste Comte and Feuerbach, believed 
they had discovered a substitute for Christianity in these thinkers' 
man-centered "humanism" and humanitarianism. Nietzsche would 
have none of that. For him "the happiness of the greatest number" 
and a minimum of suffering were not worthy goals of youthful aspira- 
tion. In a conversation with his friend Paul Deussen, who was a 
disciple of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche took exception to the theological 
"liberalism" advocated by David Fricdrich Strauss in his Life of Jesus 
(1836) : "The question is an important one; if you give up Jesus, you 
must also give up God." 

Nietzsche seemed to be willing to accept his own advice with all 

1 Cf. the author's Germany: 2000 'Years (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 
1950), pp. 500-507 and p. 594 f. 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 65 

its tragic implications. Evidence of his turning away from the religious 
beliefs of his family is contained in an essay written in 1862, two years 
before he left Schulpforta, and entitled Fate and History. Here he 
questions for the first time the traditional contents of Christian doc- 
trine. Recalling the domestic influences in his religious upbringing, 
he violently turns against them. 

"I departed from Bonn like a fugitive," Nietzsche wrote to his 
sister. He came to look upon this first year of his academic studies 
as the emptiest period of his life. After a brief stay in Berlin he followed 
Ritschl to the University of Leipzig, where the latter had accepted a 
chair in classical philology. Quite by accident he became acquainted 
with Arthur Schopenhauer's masterpiece, The World as Will and 
Idea, and from its perusal his life and thought received a new in- 
spiration and direction. Even in Schopenhauer's negation of life and 
"the will to live" Nietzsche felt the dynamic force of life, a vitality 
which corresponded to his own thirst for life. He there and then 
adopted Schopenhauer as his teacher and spiritual "father." 

What Nietzsche really sought and found in Schopenhauer's writings 
was not so much a rigorous philosophic and logical argumentation as 
inspiration and edification. Moreover, he thought he had discovered in 
Schopenhauer's doctrine a possibility of salvation without the necessity 
of a savior. In the Christian dispensation man cannot save himself. He 
is saved by divine grace through the mediatorship of Christ. Accord- 
ing to Schopenhauer, on the other hand, man can save himself by his 
own unaided effort. By virtue of his own inner worth he can raise 
himself above the nullity and absurdity of existence. By the exercise 
of his own intellectual, moral, and aesthetic powers he can attain 
to truth, goodness, and beauty. These were intoxicating ideas for 
Nietzsche, the young scholar, who had become conscious of a strong 
driving force within his own self and who proudly felt that he could 
dispense with any divine aid. You are strong and noble in your 
aspirations, he told himself. The time is out of joint, but you may 
be able to set it and yourself right if only you remain true to the 
call of your innermost being. "What led me to Schopenhauer, was 
his atheism," he confessed. Christianity, he felt, "was lying on its 
death-bed." It had been transformed into a gentle moralism: "What 
remains is not 'God, Freedom, and Immortality,' but benevolence, a 
feeling of decency, and the belief that throughout the universe, too, 
benevolence and feelings of decency will become prevalent. We are 
witnessing the euthanasia of Christianity." 



66 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

The same dynamic force which had fascinated him in Schopenhauer 
attracted Nietzsche to Bismarck, the Prussian Junker: "Unchained 
power, without moral restraint. How happy they are, how strong they 
are, these pure wills which are untroubled by the spirit!" And he 
was more than anxious to contribute his share to Bismarck's edifice 
of a new Prussia and a united Germany. Despite his deficient eye-sight 
he enlisted in an artillery unit of the Prussian army and relished the 
ascetic discipline of Prussian militarism. In the military service he 
found "an antidote to that paralyzing skepticism the effects of which 
we have only too deeply experienced." 

This enthusiasm was, however, of short duration. Nietzsche soon 
bemoans the fact that an artillery soldier with literary tastes and in- 
terests is a very unfortunate creature. An injury incurred in a fall 
from his horse put an early end to his military exploits. In a letter 
to Ritschl he deplores the frailty of human beings "which is never 
as obvious as at the moment one gets a glimpse of a fragment of 
one's skeleton." After his recovery Nietzsche resumed his studies at 
the University of Leipzig. 

The same spirit of action which Nietzsche admired in Bismarck 
he found, coupled with a strong aesthetic component, in Richard 
Wagner. He had heard of Wagner's stormy life as a composer, poet, 
publicist, and revolutionary, and he had read some of his works 
and listened to some of his music. At Leipzig, in 1868, he was per- 
sonally introduced to the maestro. Their common high esteem of 
Schopenhauer became the starting point of their friendship. 

Before the year was ended Ritschl one day surprised his pupil 
with the question, "Would you be interested in a professorship at 
the University of Basel?" Nietzsche had just completed his twenty- 
fourth year and had not yet obtained his doctoral degree. After some 
hesitation he accepted the offer. In view of his brilliant record the 
University of Leipzig conferred upon him the degree of doctor of 
philosophy without the usual examination. 

Not far from Basel (in Switzerland), at Tribschen near Lucerne, 
lived Richard Wagner in his sumptuous "Villa." The main reason 
for Wagner's retirement to the idyllic solitude at Lake Lucerne was 
the scandal that had been caused by his liaison with Cosima, the 
daughter of Franz Liszt and the Countess d'Agoult, the wife of the 
famous pianist and conductor Hans von Billow. Wagner and Cosima 
were married in 1870, after several children had been born out of 
wedlock. 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 67 

For some years Tribschen became the center of Nietzsche's life. 
To his friend Erwin Rohde, the classical philologist, who had invited 
him to join him on a sojourn in Rome, the young Wagner enthusiast 
replied, "I too have my Italy; its name is Tribschen. . . . Believe me: 
Schopenhauer and Goethe, Pindar and Aeschylus are still alive." But 
back in Basel, separated from Wagner, he was immediately seized 
by a feeling of loneliness and by that gnawing anguish and spiritual 
unrest which were to haunt him for the rest of his life. 

The gathering political clouds that heralded the approaching Franco- 
Prussian War (1870-1871) filled Nietzsche with dire apprehensions. 
His admiration for Bismarck turned out to be short-lived, after all. 
"There must not be war," he wrote shortly before the outbreak of 
hostilities, "the Prussian State would become too powerful." He was 
fearful of the threatening hegemony of Berlin, that detested metropolis, 
that "citadel of bureaucrats and bankers, journalists and Jews." 

When Nietzsche had accepted the professorship at Basel, he had 
been required to renounce his German citizenship. But when he read 
of the heavy losses incurred by the German armies in their first 
victorious battles, he solicited and obtained from the Swiss authorities 
the permission to join the German ambulance corps. And in the 
ambulance service he visited the battlefields in France, displaying 
great courage and a singular devotion in aiding and comforting the 
wounded and the dying. His only regret was to be barred from active 
military service. "All my military passions are aroused, and I cannot 
satisfy them: the Swiss neutrality ties my hands," he jotted down in 
his notebook while the battle of Sedan was raging. 

With the hospital train of the sick and wounded Nietzsche returned 
to Karlsruhe, the capital of Baden, himself a victim of dysentery and 
diphtheria. He eventually found refuge and shelter in the home of his 
mother and sister at Naumburg. The experiences of the war had made 
a proud German out of the "loyal Swiss." War, it seemed to him, 
exerts an ennobling influence on human beings. It makes them aspire 
to an ideal order of duty and responsibility. The Romanic nations of 
Europe, he argues, have been enfeebled by their utilitarianism. To 
Germany, the land of poets and soldiers, he assigns the task of as- 
suming that leadership which the "decadent" nations have lost by 
default. 

But even while Nietzsche thus indulged in wishful patriotic fancies, 
he was not blind to the fragility of his idol. Much that he observed 
in the new Germany was "human and all-too-human." He soon grew 



68 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

suspicious of the "patriotic delirium," of the brazen display of national 
boasting and pride, and he inveighed against the crude and stupid 
bureaucracy which he saw at the helm in his native Prussia. "Con- 
fidentially speaking," he wrote to his friend Gersdorff, "I am of the 
opinion that this modern Prussia constitutes a powerful and dangerous 
threat to human culture." 

In February, 1871, Nietzsche's strength suddenly gave way: he was 
plagued by neuralgia, the usual visual disturbances, persistent vomiting, 
and sporadic attacks of jaundice. Upon his urgent appeal Elisabeth 
arrived from Naumburg. Together they journeyed to Lugano in the 
Swiss Ticino. In the mail coach in which they crossed the St. Gotthard 
Pass, Nietzsche made the chance acquaintance of Mazzini, the cham- 
pion of Italian liberalism and of a united Italy, who quoted to him 
some lines of Goethe which remained strongly engraved in his mind: 
"We must wean ourselves away from all half-heartedness, to live 
resolutely in wholeness, fulness, and beauty." 

Nietzsche recovered rapidly at Lugano and spent two happy 
months in the Italian part of Switzerland. Spring came, the war was 
over, and in April the young classical scholar returned to Basel to 
continue his research on the tragedies of the ancient Greeks, in which 
he believed he recognized the prototypes of the Wagnerian music- 
drama. 

Nietzsche held the chair of classical philology at the University of 
Basel from 1869 to 1879. * n ^79 as ^ as keen P " 1 ^ out > &s academic 
work was interrupted by his participation in the Franco-Prussian 
War, and later on, especially in 1875, he had to take leaves on account 
of his poor health, until he was finally forced to resign from his 
position for the same reason. 

Toward the end of 1870 Wagner had begun pondering the plan 
of a novel theater or Festspielhaus at Bayreuth in Bavaria. When these 
ideas were taking concrete shape, the composer had to leave Tribschen 
for Bayreuth. When Nietzsche arrived at Tribschen in April, 1872, 
Wagner was already on the move. The "idyl of Tribschen" was ended. 

ra 

The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1871), Nietzsche's 
first major work, grew out of some preliminary sketches on Greek 
philosophy and civilization. It was in the first place an attempt to 
trace the development of Greek tragedy from the ritualistic choral 
dances of the Dionysos cult to its classical height in Aeschylus and 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 69 

Sophocles and, further on, to its decline in Euripides, and to demon- 
strate that in Greek tragedy two different and even antagonistic con- 
cepts of life and art fused. Beyond this immediate purpose the book 
presented a new interpretation and evaluation of Greek antiquity. 
Third, it was an attack on the "Socratic spirit" in its ancient and 
modern manifestations and contained a highly original exposition of 
the "Dionysian" philosophy of life. Last but not least, it was a 
propagandistic manifesto in favor of Wagner, whom it pictured as the 
savior and renovator of modern civilization. 

Nietzsche's presentation dealt not primarily with the historical 
aspects of the evolution of Greek tragedy. He adopted from Schopen- 
hauer the distinction between the plastic arts (architecture, sculpture, 
painting) and music, and he derived from these two types of art two 
fundamentally different vital human experiences and attitudes, which 
he designated as "Apollonian" and "Dionysian." These resemble each 
other in only one point: they both lift man above the level and the 
concerns of everyday life. The plastic arts, according to Nietzsche, owe 
their existence to human imagination. They correspond to the "Apol- 
lonian" experience, in which man seeks an escape from the harshness 
of reality in a realm of beautiful forms. The objects of reality are 
changeable and transitory, but the Apollonian artist transforms and 
transfigures these objects by liberating them from their limitations 
and their contingency, thus raising them above the flux of time into 
a realm of lasting validity. The Dionysian artist, on the other hand, 
is possessed of an intoxicating enthusiasm which in its turn defies 
and transcends the finiteness and narrowness of external reality. He 
loses his own individuality and becomes one with all mankind and 
with the vital forces of the universe. "Dionysian art" is not subject to 
the principles of beauty and therefore not concerned with the creation 
of pleasing and agreeable forms. It is an art which in its violent 
expressiveness manifests both human pain and irresistible passion. 

It was Nietzsche's conviction that these two basic human experiences 
were reflected and embodied in early Greek culture and that they 
finally blended in the art form of Greek tragedy, in which the Diony- 
sian ccstasis appears solidified and sublimated in Apollonian form. 

Nietzsche accordingly finds the origin of Greek tragedy in the 
Dionysian chorus. The ecstatic choral dance gave birth to die tragic 
"mythos? and the tragic mythos in turn assumed on the stage the 
form of a tragic play. But while the speakers or actors expressed them- 
selves in Apollonian language, there remained beneath the smooth 



70 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

surface of the spoken dialogue the dark and irrational sentiments 
expressed by the chorus, the irrationality of Dionysian intoxication. 
At the very moment, however, when Greek tragedy and Greek 
civilization had achieved their towering height, the spirit of Greek 
"rationalism'* emerged, a spirit of skeptical doubt which no longer 
understood the Dionysian experience, which no longer had any organ 
for the mysterious and tragic horrors of human existence. Incapable 
of recognizing any truth behind and beyond soberly observed facts, this 
new rationalism and skepticism destroyed both Greek mythology and 
Greek tragedy. The "moralism" of Socrates and the "rationalism" of 
Euripides were incapable of that enthusiasm and that sympathy which 
more sensitive Greek minds had experienced in viewing the unde- 
served and unjust suffering and death of the tragic hero. 

Modern opera, like ancient Greek tragedy, was born, according to 
Nietzsche, out of a Dionysian experience of life. The modern listener 
completely misunderstands the nature of operatic music when he 
demands that its artistic form be clearly intelligible and that the 
music be subordinated to the text. The exact reverse was true in early 
Greek tragedy: music was the dominant, vital element, and the words 
and action served only as media to convey the musical mood. 

But the most dangerous embodiments of the destructive "Socratic 
spirit'* Nietzsche finds in pure rational knowledge and pure empirical 
science. Schopenhauer, says Nietzsche, had already pointed out the 
limitations of both rational and scientific knowledge and had shown 
that neither can lead to the comprehension of the ultimate ground of 
Reality. As soon as the conviction of these limitations of knowledge will 
have become more general, a new evaluation of life will ensue: life 
will then be viewed and understood artistically. The tragic mythos 
will be revived, and out of the spint of music a new form of tragedy 
will be born. Liberated from rationalistic and scientific complacency, 
culture will perhaps once more reach true greatness and reveal new 
insights into the mysteries of Reality. 

The basic premise of Nietzsche's argument was his thesis of the 
prevalence of pain, suffering, and evil in human life, a thesis which 
both Schopenhauer and Martin Luther had taught him. Luther 
in particular had asserted that human nature was hopelessly per- 
verted and corrupted by the consequences o original sin. But while 
Nietzsche no longer accepted the Lutheran view on original sin, he 
still retained the conviction of the actual depraved condition of human 
nature. Familiar through personal experience with the pain and 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 71 

suffering of a "fallen" state of existence, his philosophy set out to 
answer the ancient outcry of man for redemption and salvation. 

The Christian answer to the human call for redemption was no 
longer acceptable to Nietzsche. The answer of Schopenhauer, on 
the other hand, he still accepted, though with qualifications. Accord- 
ing to Schopenhauer, the purpose of tragedy was "the presentation 
of the horrible aspects of life. ... It presents on the stage the nameless 
pain and grief of mankind, the triumph of iniquity, the mocking 
dominion of chance, and the irretrievable fall of the just and the 
innocent. And in this lies a significant hint as to the actual condition 
of the world and of existence. Tragedy reveals the inner conflict of 
the will with itself, a conflict which here, on the highest level of its 
objectivation, manifests itself in the most frightful way." 2 Tragedy 
depicts, as it were, the sadness and meaninglessness of human exist- 
ence, and in his own destruction the hero overcomes the "will to live" 
and reaches that timeless Reality which lies outside and beyond life's 
contingencies. Some tragedies, Schopenhauer admits, do not go that 
far. The hero sometimes refuses to be intimidated: he clings to the 
"will to live" and dies without remorse. It is only in the greatest 
tragedies that the hero attains to a complete detachment from the 
"will to live." Tragedy thus represents for Schopenhauer the sublime 
possibility of art to illustrate the absurdity of existence. If man has not 
attained as yet to that knowledge by his personal suffering, he will 
attain to it by his compassion with the suffering tragic hero. 

But Schopenhauer's way of "self-redemption" by an escape from the 
"will to live" no longer held much attraction for Nietzsche. He re- 
sented in particular the idea of complete detachment, of ascetic re- 
nunciation and resignation. The Greeks, he argued, were in an extra- 
ordinary way capable of suffering, but as soon as they found themselves 
face to face with the extreme cruelty of life they were in danger "of 
submitting to a yearning for a sort of Buddhistic negation of the 
will. They were saved, however, from this danger by art: through 
the medium of their art they made life triumph over death." 

Finally, Nietzsche offered a radically new interpretation of Schopen- 
hauer's concept of the "Thing-in-itself ." For Schopenhauer the Thing- 
in-itself is in a permanent state of quiescence, unmoved by desire 
and untouched by the tempests of existence. Nietzsche, on the other 
hand, placed the root of life's unrest and suffering in the Thing-in- 

2 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Witt and Idea, I, 51. 



72 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

itself. For Schopenhauer suffering attached only to the world of 
phenomena, and man could escape suffering by turning either to the 
world of Ideas or to the realm of the Thing-in-itself, by cither seeking 
a temporary refuge in the contemplation of art and beauty or a per- 
manent release from the "will to live" in the eternal silence and 
tranquillity of "Nirvana." For Nietzsche it is the Thing-in-itself that 
suffers from an intolerable "tension," and this tension can only be 
resolved and overcome in the world of phenomena, in a restless creative 
activity which transforms itself into ecstatic rapture. In "Dionysian 
rapture" man becomes one with ultimate Reality: "For short moments 
we actually arc ourselves that aboriginal Being and share in its bound- 
less desire and lust of life." Dionysos is thus the creative spirit of the 
world, the artist-god, and human beings, like the rest of creation, are 
only the pictures or images he paints, appearances he calls into exist- 
ence to destroy them again at will. But this process of perpetual 
creation and destruction is also the perpetual healing process of the 
festering wounds in the innermost recesses of existence. The world 
and human life have their sanction and justification not in any moral 
norms, but in Dionysos, who creates and destroys for his own 
pleasure and enjoyment. The world and human existence are justified 
no more and no less than the playing of a child. To such a play the 
criteria of "good" and "evil" do not apply. 

Dionysos became thus for Nietzsche a substitute for the discarded 
God of his childhood, and art had to fill the vacated place of a lost 
paradise of heavenly bliss. The Birth of Tragedy presented a philosophy 
of life that was inspired and transfigured by that ancient artist-god of 
Thracian-Phrygian origin in whose cult the powerless and lonely 
individual might experience the raptures of the "Will to Power." 

The Birth of Tragedy was received enthusiastically by Nietzsche's 
friends, especially by Wagner. But the author waited anxiously for 
the reaction of his fellow philologists. It finally came in the form 
of a polemic pamphlet, written by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Mocllen- 
dorff, a young scholar who, like Nietzsche, was an alumnus of Schul- 
pforta and who was destined to become one of the most prominent 
classical philologists of Europe. He answered Nietzsche's challenging 
book with an indignant protest. "Here," Wilamowitz wrote, "I find 
the negation of the long tradition of western knowledge and science. 
Here the truths of philosophy and religion are wiped out, so that a 
wishy-washy pessimism could in self-created solitude exhibit its bitter- 
sweet face. . . . And all this in order to make us kneel in the dust before 



MANX3OD OR GOD-MAN? 73 

the idol of Richard Wagner." Nietzsche, the author of the pamphlet 
asserted, had shown himself unfamiliar with the work of some of 
the greatest classical philologists; he had shown no regard for historical 
facts: "What nest of nonsense is your book, Herr Nietzsche! ... Do you 
realize how you have disgraced Schulpforta, your intellectual mother? 
. . . Let him step down from his academic chair; let him gather at 
his knees tigers and panthers, but not the younger generation of 
German philologists!" 8 

Nietzsche showed himself unwilling to accept the criticism of 
Wilamowitz at its face value and immediately imputed personal 
motives to the author. But the majority of classical philologists sided 
with Wilamowitz, and the controversy destroyed Nietzsche's reputation 
as a philologist once and for all. 

In the winter semester of 1869-1870, and again in the summer of 
1872, Nietzsche had lectured on the Pre-Socratic philosophers. In pre- 
paring these lectures for publication he wrote two prefaces in which 
he expressed the conviction that "in every philosophic system, no 
matter how false and transitory it may be, there is always something 
imperishable: it is part of the unique personality of the philosopher." 
It is from this personalistic (or "existential") point of view, he 
explained, that the history of Greek philosophy ought to be written. 
In this manner he had himself studied the works of the early Greek 
philosophers. 

Nietzsche claimed that the study of Heraclitus had confirmed him 
in his view that war was the father of all things; that change, tension, 
and strife reveal the secret of Reality. Heraclitus saw in Fire the 
original substance of the world (cf. p. i$.) 9 the permanent reality 
which underlies all the changes of visible existence, the One which is 
the substrate of all multiplicity, the Being which underlies all be- 
coming. This aboriginal Fire, which Heraclitus calls the divine Princi- 
ple, is dynamic, not static: it moves in opposite directions, and in its 
dynamic movement it creates those tensions and conflicts which find 
their visible expression in the phenomena of change and evolution. 
As Nietzsche sees and interprets this Heraclitean idea, it means "a 
becoming and passing away, a building and tearing down, without 
any moral responsibility, in eternal innocence. ... As the child and 
the artist play, so plays the eternally living Fire; it innocently builds 
and destroys." 

8 Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Mocllcndorff, Zutynjtsphilosophie, pp. 23 and 32. 



74 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

Parmenides of Elea, in diametrical opposition to Hcraclitus, had 
described Reality as a huge, homogeneous, immutable sphere; as pure 
being, from which all becoming is excluded. By degrading and belying 
the data of sense perception, argued Nietzsche, Parmenides had de- 
stroyed the integrity of the intellect itself and encouraged the falla- 
cious dualism of spirit and matter, mind and body: a radical division 
which, especially through Plato's fault, became "the curse of philosophy. 
Truth from then on was supposed to reside only in the most colorless 
and abstract generalities. . . . And by the side of such a lifeless truth 
was seated the philosopher, himself bloodless like an abstraction and 
enveloped in the webs of empty formulas." 

On the whole it may be said that though there is much profound 
insight in Nietzsche's interpretation of Greek thought and life, it 
represents above all a projection of the needs and wants of his own 
discordant mind into the objects of his research. 

IV 

Toward the end of the year 1872 the problems of his own age and 
in particular the problem of contemporary culture began to weigh 
more and more heavily on Nietzsche's thinking. He saw a Europe 
drunk with its plenitude of material goods; he saw a Germany de- 
lirious with her recent total victory over France. But underneath this 
glittering surface he believed he could discern the symptoms of 
an approaching new barbarism. And he felt that it had become 
necessary to restore to this modern age a sense of culture, of virtue, 
and of passion. What higher mission and vocation could there be for 
a genuine philosopher? He felt the call to become for his age, as it 
were, an anti-Socratic Socrates. 

Suffering from severe headaches as well as from eye and stomach 
trouble, Nietzsche found writing more and more difficult, but his mind 
worked feverishly, and his notes accumulated. In a short dramatic 
fragment, entitled Oedipus, he faces life as Oedipus faced the Sphinx. 
"My heart cannot believe that love is dead," Oedipus-Nietzsche ex- 
claims; "it is incapable of sustaining the horror of this most solitary 
of solitudes." 

At Easter, 1873, Nietzsche took a two weeks' vacation and departed 
for Bayreuth. There he learned that things were going badly for 
Richard Wagner. Lack of funds threatened to force the suspension of 
the construction of the Festspiclhaus. Nietzsche finally decided to aid 
Wagner's cause with the publication of a pamphlet. 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 75 

A few weeks before his visit to Bayreuth, Cosima had called 
Nietzsche's attention to a new book by the liberal Protestant theologian 
David Friedrich Strauss, entitled The Old and the New Faith. Wagner 
himself had referred to it and condemned it as a symbol of the evil 
times. Strauss seemed to be just the kind of adversary Nietzsche 
desired. He was a popular writer who enjoyed a high reputation among 
the members of the German bourgeoisie. In his youth he had written a 
Life of Jesus (1836), in which he had tried to prove that the Gospels 
were nothing but a chance accumulation of contradictory and ques- 
tionable data. That book had established Strauss's fame, and he had 
soon assumed pontifical airs. The new book, written at the age of 
sixty-four, was a further exposition of his liberal-rationalistic creed. 

In The Old and the New Faith Strauss asked four questions: (i) 
Are we still Christians? He answered with an unequivocal "No." 
(2) Do we still have a religion? This question was answered in the 
affirmative. (3) How do we understand and interpret the world? 
The answer was given on the basis of Strauss's shallow optimism and 
was couched in the terms of the scientific theories of the age. (4) 
How can we restore "order" to our lives? The answer was that of a 
respectable, moderately conservative and patriotic bourgeois philos- 
opher, who had lost faith in the traditional moral and spiritual values 
of the Western world, but who hesitated to renounce them in toto 
and therefore merely diluted and rationalized them. 

Nietzsche saw in Strauss the prototype of a "bourgeois philistine." 
In former times, he stated, the philistine was at best tolerated, but in 
the nineteenth century he has at last come into his own. His triumph 
has gone to his head: he has become a fanatic, the founder of a "new 
religion," and Strauss is the prophet of this new religion of Philistinism. 

Nietzsche's pamphlet appeared in 1873 under the tide Thoughts out 
of Season. Strauss died a few months after its publication, and 
Nietzsche was disconsolate because he remained convinced that his 
essay was the major contributing cause of Strauss's death. 

The anti-Strauss and pro-Wagner essay began with an attack on 
the culture of the "new Germany," a prelude to the personal attack 
on Strauss, who appeared to Nietzsche as the typical representative of 
this new type of Rultur." On the basis of his own Dionysian, anti- 
rational, and antimoralistic philosophy, Nietzsche indicted Strauss's 
complacently optimistic belief in progress and generally condemned the 
moralistic and rationalistic tendencies of modern European 
"humanism." 



76 THE EXISTENTIAUST REVOLT 

Referring specifically to Germany's recent victory over France, 
Nietzsche asserted that a great victory is always a great danger, be- 
cause human nature is so constituted that it finds it harder to retain 
its integrity in triumph than in defeat. He claimed that the illusory 
belief in the superiority of German Kultur threatened to convert the 
German victory into a total defeat; it threatened to extirpate the 
"German mind" for the greater glory of the "German Empire." 

The book of Strauss, Nietzsche contends, is the confession of a 
cynical philistine, and "to the philistine, even a Straussian metaphysics 
is preferable to that of Christianity." He calls the Straussian "pocket- 
oracle" a combination "of impudence and weakness, of daring words 
and cowardly concessions," and its great success seems to him sympto- 
matic of the general decline of scholarship. The "scientific man" with 
his frantic haste and his total disregard for the ultimate problems of 
human existence (the questions, "Wherefore?", "Whither?", and 
"Whence?") appears to him as a strange and monstrous paradox. Our 
scholars, he asserts, have become totally forgetful "of the most vital 
question of all the 'Wherefore* of their own work . . . and their 
painful ecstasies." And the essay concludes with the accusation that 
the German "culture-philistine" has altogether lost the healthy and 
manly instinct for what is real and what is right. "And yet," Nietzsche 
exclaims pathetically, "what can one lonely individual do against a 
whole world, even supposing his voice were heard everywhere?" 

Nietzsche's work on a continuation of his Thoughts out of Season 
was interrupted by a call of distress from Bayreuth. Things were mov- 
ing toward a crisis there, and Wagner thought that only an appeal 
to the German public could avert the complete failure of the Bay- 
reuth enterprise. He wanted Nietzsche to draft such an appeal, and 
the philosopher accepted the assignment. At the end of October, 1873, 
he read his Appeal to the Germans to the assembled chairmen of the 
German Wagner Vereine. But Nietzsche's listeners considered his 
language too undiplomatic and provocative. Some called his draft a 
"monkish sermon." The author thereupon withdrew his text and 
abandoned the idea. 

The second part of Thoughts out of Season, entitled On the Useful- 
ness and Harmfulness of History in Relation to Life, was published 
in February, 1874. Nietzsche's main thesis stated that an excess of 
historical knowledge endangers and maims the spontaneity of life, 
He distinguishes three types of historiography or historical method: the 
monumental, the antiquarian, and the critical. Each of these can serve 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 77 

life or stifle life; each of them can be useful or harmful. Monumental 
historiography is interested primarily in the great men of the past, 
those heroic characters who are as beacon lights to future generations. 
By presenting exemplars of courage and valor it stimulates human 
hope and aspiration. Antiquarian historiography satisfies the needs 
of people of a conservative and reverent nature. It comforts and 
enriches human beings, enlarges their horizons, filling the void of 
the present with the opulence of the past. In understanding the history 
of their native lands, cities, and towns they learn to understand their 
own selves. They identify themselves with the spirit of the houses, the 
families, the manners and customs of their ancestors. In their lives 
they find inspiration and meaning for their own. 

In meditating thus on the past Nietzsche may have thought of the 
traditional family life and the devout Christian spirit of his own 
Saxon forebears. Though he had left the land and abandoned the 
faith of his fathers, he still felt the ancient ties. He knew only too 
well that what real substance there was in his own life had its well- 
springs in that venerable past. But he was equally sure that for him 
there was no possibility of turning back: he had to go forward. And 
thus he envisaged a third kind of historical understanding which was 
to justify this refusal to turn back: a critical historiography, of which 
he hoped that it would liberate him from those revered and dreaded 
bonds of the past. 

Antiquarian historiography, Nietzsche felt, might easily degenerate, 
once the springs of piety and reverence were dried up. The learned 
habit might then turn the scholar into a "mad collector," who knows 
of no higher ambition than the scraping together of the fragments of 
the past. And thus the critical approach to history might become 
mandatory: the sifting and evaluating judgment of the past. But who 
is to sit in judgment and pronounce sentence? No other than Life 
itself, Nietzsche answers his own question, "that dark, driving force 
that insatiably desires only itself' and whose judgment is always 
unmerciful and unjust. 

But the critical method, too, is beset with specific dangers of its 
own, for the knowledge of the extent to which we ourselves are 
heirs of the past, of its glories as well as of its errors, perversions, and 
crimes, may have a paralyzing effect on our own vital efforts. This 
danger, Nietzsche argues, can only be avoided by those who succeed 
in liberating themselves from the constraints of the past by developing, 
as it were, a strong, self-reliant "second nature." . 



7 8 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

No matter, concludes Nietzsche, to which of the three methods of 
historiography we give preference, one thing is certain: We cannot do 
without historical knowledge, even though it harms us at times and 
may threaten to destroy our intellectual substance and moral spontane- 
ity. But this need of historical knowledge should not make us blind 
to the dangers inherent in an oversaturation with history. And, it 
seems to Nietzsche, modern scholarship and research has largely suc- 
cumbed to these very dangers: "Modern man carries within himself 
an enormous heap of indigestible rocks of knowledge which occasion- 
ally rattle in his body. . . . And the rattle reveals the most striking 
characteristic of modern man, the presence of something inside to 
which nothing external corresponds; and vice versa." Knowledge, in 
short, has lost its power of transforming and elevating human lives, 
and real culture has been replaced by some vague knowledge about 
culture: "We moderns have nothing of our own. We are only note- 
worthy for filling ourselves with foreign customs, arts, philosophies, 
religions, and sciences; we are wandering encyclopedias." 

A purely encyclopedic knowledge of historical and scientific facts 
represents, according to Nietzsche, a mortal threat to the integrity of 
human existence and human culture because it leads to an attitude 
of irony and cynicism in regard to everything that has a claim to 
greatness and nobility. To counteract this tendency, he demands that 
historical knowledge be subordinated to life and that the individual 
be taught to live "unhistorically." Only in this way, he believes, can 
the modern scholar again learn to distinguish between essential and 
nonessential truths; only thus will he cease to be "a cold demon of 
knowledge" and acquire again a strong sense of justice and a vital 
desire for truth. Historical "objectivity," Nietzsche claims, is often 
merely a disguise for that cold detachment which remains supinely 
indifferent to all values. Genuine historical knowledge requires 
nobility of character and a profound understanding of the ultimate 
problems of human existence: "Only he who is building the future 
has a right to judge the past. And a hundred such men educated 
against the fashions of today would suffice to give an eternal quietus 
to all the noisy sham education of this age." As man is creative only 
in love, in an unconditional faith in what is perfect and what is 
right, everything which falls short of such a love and such a faith 
"cuts at the very root of man's strength: he must wither away," 

There is good reason for the modern boasting about the triumphs 
of science, says Nietzsche. But would a life ruled by science be of 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 79 

much value? And can the "scientific" study of history be conducive 
to "historical culture?" It rather seems that the "scientific" approach 
merely makes the student lose every feeling of admiration and won- 
derment. Since he has learned that things were different in every age, 
he grows skeptical regarding all ideas and all moral values, and he 
pays less and less heed to the status and stature of his own self. He 
is filled to the brim with historical and scientific "facts": "You need 
only shake him, and wisdom will rattle down into your lap; but the 
wisdom is rotten, and every apple has its worm." And thus "solid 
mediocrity becomes more and more mediocre; science becomes more 
and more 'useful.' . . . True enough, the progress of science has 
been amazingly rapid during the past few decades; but look at the 
savants, those exhausted hens. They are anything but 'harmonious' 
natures: they merely cackle more than ever before, because they lay 
eggs oftener. The eggs, however, are getting smaller and smaller, 
although their books get bigger and bigger." 

The modern "historical man," says Nietzsche, is a strange phenome- 
non: he has renounced all power in heaven and on earth merely to 
become an idolatrous worshiper of power as such. Thus he is pre- 
pared to kneel in the dust before the "power of history" and nod 
"yes" in the end, like a Chinese doll, to the power of government, 
of public opinion, or of a mere numerical majority. It is only the 
"virtuous man" who even in this modern age will rise against "the 
blind force of facts, against the tyranny of the actual. ... He always 
swims against the waves of history, whether it be by fighting his 
passions (the nearest brute facts of his existence) or by pledging 
himself to honesty amidst the glittering nets spun round him by 
falsehood." 4 

And who is the real power behind the throne of all "historical 
power," asks Nietzsche? It is "the prince of this world," the great 
master of "success" and "progress." The modern world has become 
very skillful in giving new names to things, and it has even tried to 
baptize the devil. Is this not truly an hour of great danger? "O you 
proud European," Nietzsche exclaims, "are you not mad? Your 
knowledge does not complete nature: it only kills your own nature. 
... On the sunbeams of your knowledge you climb toward heaven 
but also down toward chaos. . . . The ground slips under your feet 

* Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History, translated by Adrian Collins (New York: 
The Little Library of liberal Arts, No. u, i949)> P- 6x- 



8o THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

into incertitude; your life has no longer any stay but spiders' webs 
which every new stroke of your knowledge tears asunder/' 

In his conclusion Nietzsche frankly admits that his own treatise 
exhibits and illustrates the maladies of the modern age and of modern 
man. It is the work of a "weak personality"; it is immature and 
full of critical exaggerations; it wavers between irony and cynicism, 
between pride and skepticism. And it can hardly be otherwise, he 
contends, since a young modern scholar is to a large extent the 
product of the kind of education he has received. The goal of 
modern education is, however, no longer the liberally educated man, 
but the "scientific man," who takes his stand apart from life. The 
young scholar thus develops into a precocious and sophisticated 
"babbler on Church, State, and Art; the sensorium that receives a 
thousand impressions; the insatiable belly that yet knows not what 
real hunger and thirst is. An education with such an aim and such 
a result is against nature." It is thus no wonder, according to Nie- 
tzsche, that modern man "crumbles and falls asunder," that "his whole 
being is divided," and that he is "sown with abstract concepts as 
with dragon's teeth." He has become a lifeless and yet uncannily 
agile manufacturing plant of concepts, a "thinking substance" who 
may justly apply to himself the Cartesian Cogito, ergo sum but who 
has long forgotten what it means to say, Vivo, ergo cogito: I live, I am 
therefore I think. 

The antidote against the "historicist" disease is for Nietzsche the 
"unhistorical" and "suprahistorical" attitude. He calls Art and Reli- 
gion "suprahistorical powers" because they turn the eye away from 
the process of becoming and impart to existence the character of the 
permanent and the eternal. Science, on the other hand, must of neces- 
sity feel antagonism to art and religion because the "scientific" attitude 
sees everywhere only the historically actual and nowhere the everlasting 
permanence of Being. 

Nietzsche's essay ends on a hopeful note. He sees in the youth of 
Europe the vanguard of a happier and sounder humanity of the 
future. Though the younger generation may be raw and intemperate, 
it calls its own a brave, unreflecting honesty and the consolation of a 
great hope. True, these young people "will be more ignorant than 
the 'educated' men of the present age: for they will have unlearned 
much . . . ; but at the end of the cure they will be human beings 
again." 

To reach this goal, modern youth must follow the exhortation of 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 81 

the Delphian oracle, "Know thyself!** This hard saying demands that 
each individual "organize the chaos within himself and that he rally 
all the honesty, sturdiness, and truthfulness of his character to 
rebel against secondhand thinking, secondhand learning, secondhand 
action." For "everything that makes for greater truthfulness is a step 
toward true culture, even if such truthfulness may harm the fashion- 
able educational ideals of the day, even if it may lead to the over- 
throw of an entire system of merely decorative culture." 

In spring and summer, 1874, Nietzsche wrote the third part of 
Thoughts out of Season, in which he tried to sketch the strong 
and integrated personality that would be capable of pointing the 
way to a new integrated Kultur. This essay bears the tide, Schopen- 
hauer as an Educator. 

Observing realistically that most human beings never become 
actually what they are potentially, Nietzsche propounds a dynamic 
ethics of self-realization. Man, if he wants to escape mass-stupor and 
become a personal self, must follow the call of his conscience which 
constantly exhorts him, "Be yourself! You are not actually all that 
which you do, think, and desire." 

In the process of self-realization the human person may succeed 
in closing that gap which separates his presently given nature from 
his "true nature." Most men, Nietzsche avers, are loath to heed this 
call of conscience, either because they are afraid of being themselves 
or because they arc too lazy to rouse themselves from their comfortable 
everyday routines. And their inertia is fostered and fathered by the 
State and by Society which are both inimical to human selfhood and 
which lure man into a listless conformism. "True existence," there- 
fore, means emancipation from such collective beguilements and 
pressures. 

One sure way for man to discover his "true self is, according to 
Nietzsche, to fashion his existence in conformity with those exemplars 
of the species whom he has lovingly and discriminatingly singled 
out as his "educators." In the context of the essay this means for 
Nietzsche to mold himself in the image of the best features he has 
been able to discern in the personality and work of Arthur Schopen- 
hauer. And in trying to do this he is convinced that he follows 
the precise directives which he had himself outlined in the second 
part of Thoughts out of Season, especially in the discussion of the 
benefits deriving from both the "monumental" and "critical" types 
of historiography. 



82 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

Schopenhauer thus becomes for Nietzsche a symbol of the "existen- 
tial" educational significance of the great historic personality whose 
exalted function it is to be culturally creative by "promoting . . . 
the generation of the philosopher, the artist, and the saint, and in 
this way working at the perfection of nature." By becoming culturally 
creative, Nietzsche implies, the great personality not only works at 
the perfection of nature but also (as a teacher and educator) aids 
his fellow men in perfecting themselves. "The men with whom we 
live," he writes, "resemble a field of ruins . . . , and everything 
shouts at us: come, help, perfect . . . , for we yearn with infinite 
longing to become whole." 

But it may be asked: how does Nietzsche justify his contention 
that the philosopher, the artist, and the saint are the supreme speci- 
mens of man's "true nature" or of his natural perfection? As Walter 
A. Kaufmann points out, Nietzsche "accepted Darwin's doctrine 
concerning the lack of any cardinal distinction between man and 
animals as incontrovertible empirical fact," but he "tried to counter 
this 'deadly* gospel with the new, Nietzschean, assertion that man 
can rise above the beasts. . . . There are certain pursuits which are 
super-animalic, and the man who engages in them is a truly human 
being and has a unique worth. The artist, saint, and philosopher are 
representatives of true humanity and culture." 5 

In a recent Nietzsche biography, Schopenhauer, the hero of Nie- 
tzche's essay, is described as "a half-wild, feline creature . . . , at first 
thin, starved, and neglected, with no settled home; then, as he 
grew stronger, vociferous, inharmonious, and combative on the roof- 
tops, and finally a sour old tom-cat, settling warily into a selfishly 
guarded comfort." 6 Yet, in Nietzsche's opinion, Schopenhauer "was 
great through and through, and in every respect." He mentions in 
particular three qualities which he believed he had discovered in the 
great pessimist and which for him became henceforth the distinctive 
marks of any authentic philosopher: Rcdlich\cit (intellectual integ- 
rity), Hctoerfai* (serenity), and 'Bcstandig\eit (steadfast consistency). 



Even before he had completed the essay on Schopenhauer, Nie- 

8 Walter A. Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton: 
Princeton University Press, X95<>)> P I 49 

H. A. Reybura, H. E. Hinderks, J. G. Taylor, Nietzsche. The Story of a Human 
Philosopher (London: Macmillan, 1948), p. 205 . 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 83 

tzsche's views had begun to change. This change was at first slow, 
but later on more radical, leading in the end not only to a break 
with his own Dionysian philosophy of life, but to a growing estrange- 
ment with most of his friends, especially with Wagner. His new 
outlook eventually uprooted his professional career and deprived him 
of his metaphysical anchorage, so that he became a restless wanderer 
without a definite goal and burdened with sickness and suffering. 

In his search for stability Nietzsche had found a temporary support 
in the music of Richard Wagner. And yet, his love for Wagner was 
from the outset a kind of love-hatred, a love which was soon poisoned 
by disappointment and doubt and which in the end turned into open 
hostility. The more Wagner, in his struggle for recognition, displayed 
the marks of the clever propagandist, the more he appeared to Nie- 
tzsche as a mere showman and actor. As early as 1873 he characterized 
Wagner's art in his notes as "a monstrous effort for self-affirmation and 
self-control in an antiartistic age. But the antidote it offers is merely 
another poison.*' 

In March, 1875, Wagner's ill fortunes took a sudden turn for the 
better: King Louis II of Bavaria intervened in his behalf and saved 
the Bayreuth venture by a gift of one million marks. Nietzsche did 
not see Wagner again until July, 1876, when he attended the festivities 
at Bayreuth. In the meantime he had written an essay entitled 
Wagner in Bayreuth, which was still meant as a defense and eulogy 
of Wagnerian art. Section IV portrays Wagner as a great personality, 
destined to restore the unity and integrity of human existence. Section 
VII represents an attempt to determine Nietzsche's personal relation- 
ship to the great composer, and after having spoken at length of the 
magical force of attraction that issues from Wagner's personality, 
the author abruptly comments in Section VIII on the fact that Plato 
had banished the dramatic artist from his ideal State. But, he adds, 
one would have to be a Plato to dare expel such a swindler from 
the national community. The very fact that contemporary society still 
needs Wagner is an indication that it is not in a healthy state of 
mind. There will perhaps arise a society of the future in which 
artists of the Wagnerian type will have become superfluous. 

Nietzsche evidently believed that he himself had progressed beyond 
Wagner, that he had the call to point the way to a world of the 
future that would be more natural and more honest than the one in 
which he lived. To the question as to what Wagner can possibly 
mean to those who really understand him, he answers that he can 



84 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

be at best an interpreter of an idealized past but not a prophet of 
the future. 

After a week's stay at Bayreuth a new spell of sickness caused 
Nietzsche to depart for a near-by mountain retreat, but he returned 
on the eve of the first performance of the Ring of the Nibelungs and 
stayed through the entire period of the Wagner festival. The French 
religious philosopher Edouard Schure, one of the thousands present 
at this epoch-making international musical event, recorded the impres- 
sion he received of Nietzsche in a remarkably penetrating description: 
"Conversing with Nietzsche," he relates, "I was struck by the superior- 
ity of his mind and the strangeness of his physiognomy. A large 
forehead, short hair, projecting Slavic cheek-bones. His big, drooping 
moustache, his sturdy profile, would have given him the appearance 
of a cavalry officer if it had not been for a certain mixture of timidity 
and haughtiness in his bearing. The melodious voice and his slow 
speech revealed an artistic temper; his pensive and meditative expres- 
sion betrayed the thinker. But nothing could be more deceptive than 
the outward calm of his features. The fixed stare of his eye spoke 
of the painful labor of his thought. It was at once the eye of a 
fanatic, a keen observer, and a visionary. During the performance 
of the tetralogy he seemed sad and depressed." 

In October Nietzsche accepted an invitation from Malwida von 
Meysenbug, his motherly friend and the author of the then widely 
read Memoirs of an Idealist. Malwida had rented a villa at Sorrento 
near Naples. The second houseguest was Paul R&, a German Jewish 
thinker, whom Nietzsche had first met at Basel and whose mind 
had been formed by such French and British philosophers as La Roche- 
foucauld, Chamfort, and John Stuart Mill. Malwida's house overlooked 
the Mediterranean and was surrounded by olive and lemon orchards, 
cypress groves, and vineyards. "Of what kindness and benevolence," 
she wrote in her Memoirs, "was Nietzsche animated at that time. His 
amiable and good nature counterbalanced his destructive intellect." 

In the beginning Nietzsche felt very much at home and at ease 
at Sorrento. "I do not have sufficient strength for the North," he 
wrote in November, 1876; "up there life is dominated by clumsy and 
artificial souls; among them I have spent my entire youth. ... I 
shudder and I pity myself when I become aware that I began my 
life as an old man; and I shed tears of gratitude that I was saved 
at the last moment. I am spirited enough for the South." But the 
early Italian summer caused a recurrence of his ailments, and in 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 85 

May he returned to Switzerland. Dreading, however, the approach- 
ing winter semester in Basel, he pondered the idea of resigning from 
his position at the university but was finally persuaded by his sister 
to continue in his academic office. 

Among Nietzsche's new friends was, aside from Paul R&, the 
young musician Hcinrich Kosclitz, better known by his .adopted 
name, Peter Cast. He had come to Basel to make Nietzsche's acquaint- 
ance and was so deeply impressed that he decided to stay. He 
remained Nietzsche's most understanding and faithful friend to the 
end. He was exceptionally talented as a musician and composer and 
made himself indispensable as a kind of secretary who could take 
dictation and copy the manuscripts before they were sent to the printer. 

In 1876, on account of his poor health, Nietzsche had been granted 
a year's leave of absence with full pay. He resumed his academic 
work in fall, 1877, but suffered a serious relapse early in 1878. In 
spring, 1879, he broke down completely. All the ailments from which 
he had been suffering for the past four years seemed to have been 
only the preliminary symptoms of that total disease which now 
invaded his body and his mind. He felt certain that the end was 
near. His sister was summoned, and upon her arrival she found 
Friedrich in the most pitiful condition. There was little hope that 
he would ever be able to resume his academic duties. He gave up 
his position, and the university and city of Basel granted him an 
annual pension of 4,000 Swiss Francs. 

Elisabeth suggested a change of climate and environment, and a 
trip to St. Moritz in the beautiful lake country of the mountainous 
Swiss Engadine brought relief and respite. But even there Nietzsche 
suffered from depressive moods. Shortly before his departure from 
the Engadine in September he wrote a letter to Peter Cast which was 
filled with brooding reflections and several allusions to religious prob- 
lems to Dante, the mediaeval church, Martin Luther, the Psalms, and 
to Christ: "I have reached the end of my thirty-fifth year. ... So 
now I stand in 'the middle of life,' but surrounded by death, which 
may seize me at any moment. . . . Renunciation of everything: a 
small room with a bed, the food of an ascetic. . . . Renunciation up 
to one point: I have clung to my thought what else could I have 
done! But this precisely is for my mind the most pernicious thing 
of all." 

In this mental state of painful resignation Nietzsche's memories of 
his early youth and of his parental home forcefully reasserted them- 



86 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

selves, and he yearned for the peace and security of those years. On 
September 20, 1879, he departed for Naumburg, the town where his 
mother lived and where he had spent his happy childhood days. He 
wanted to return to the simple things of life, to forget for a while 
the many problems which tortured his mind. He took a lease on a 
piece of land near the mediaeval city wall and intended to plant fruit 
trees and raise vegetables and flowers. But soon his interest in garden- 
ing faded, and he found himself again alone with his unsolved 
problems. 

In a letter to his sister, Nietzsche calls this year the most horrible 
of his life and he bemoans his return to "the gloomy North." But 
he is willing to accept his suffering like a supreme test, like a spiritual 
exercise. A letter of January 14, 1880, addressed to Malwida, speaks of 
"the terrible and almost incessant martyrdom" of his life and of his 
"thirst for death." "I have suffered so much," he writes, "I have 
renounced so many things that there is no religious ascetic with whose 
life my own could not justly be compared. . . . But I also know 
that many have been guided by me to a more elevated, a more serene 
existence. . . . We both, you and I, are brave, and neither distress 
nor contempt can turn us from the path which we have once recog- 
nized as good and right. . . . We still have hopes for the human 
race and, without much noise, we offer ourselves as a sacrifice. . . . 
Receive, dear friend, who are as a sister to me, the greetings of a 
young old man to whom life after all has not been too cruel, 
although it has nurtured in him the desire for death." 

In February, 1880, Nietzsche left Naumburg for Venice. Despite all 
handicaps he had been writing almost without interruption, from the 
time of his visit at Bayreuth, in 1876, to his arrival at Naumburg, in 
1879. The bulk of his notes he gathered into a single volume which, 
after it had been carefully rewritten by Peter Cast, was handed to 
the publisher and came off the press under the title, Human, All-too- 
Human. A Eoo\ for Free Spirits (1878, 1879). The kok was dedi- 
cated to Voltaire. A second volume was added to the third edition 
of 1886. 

Nietzsche was by nature inclined toward optimism. Even at the 
time he was most strongly influenced by Schopenhauer, he had always 
found refuge in a self-created inner world which to some extent 
restored meaning to that external world in which he had lost confi- 
dence. But his optimism grew out of a profound experience of the 
tragic aspects of human existence. With the ebbing of his youthful 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 87 

energy the Dionysian intoxication subsided, and he longed for peace, 
harmony, and simple human happiness. This change is, as always, 
reflected in his works. "I have," he said, "composed all my writings 
with my whole body and soul. I do not know of any purely intel- 
lectual problems." 

Human, Att-too-Human was written for those "free spirits" who 
agreed with Nietzsche that there existed no supernatural or supra- 
sensible world, no reality behind the surface phenomena of experience, 
no eternal lawgiver, and no life beyond. The world simply is, but it 
has no meaning. It is the human being who creates all values, and 
he is not responsible to anyone but himself for his choice of the values 
of his own making. 

Nietzsche wrote his book in a pointed, glittering, and sophisticated 
style, following the model of those French "moralists" and skeptics 
who had inspired his writing, such as Montaigne, Voltaire, Chamfort, 
and Stendhal. Much of it is autobiographical, and a significant theme 
is the nostalgia for the great thoughts and accomplishments of the 
past. "The best things in us," he writes, "are perhaps the heritage of 
the experiences of earlier times to which we have no longer direct 
access; the sun has already set, but the horizon of our lives still gleams 
and glows in its light, although we have long lost sight of it." 

The final section of Part Two of the work bears the title, Man 
done with Himself. It contains a profound self-analysis of great beauty 
and force. The motif of "the Wanderer" reappears. He who has 
attained to freedom of thought, Nietzsche muses, is as a forlorn 
wanderer on this earth. He looks at the world with open eyes but 
must take care never to attach his heart too strongly to the things 
of this world. "To be sure, such a man will have his bad nights 
when he comes home tired and finds the city-gate locked, the gate 
of the city in which he had hoped to find rest. . . . Then the terrible 
night descends upon him like a desert in a desert, and his heart feels 
tired of wandering. And when at last the morning sun rises, glowing 
like a god of wrath, and when the city-gate is opened, then he may 
discover in the faces of the city-dwellers an even greater desert, more 
filth, fraud, and insecurity than outside the gate and the day will 
perhaps be worse than the night. . . . But then there are compen- 
sations: there are the blessed mornings . . . when in the dawn of day 
the dancing muses swarm about him in the mountain haze; and, 
later on, when he walks silently among the trees in the harmonies 
of the awakening day, and from the tree tops and the foliage all 



88 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

those good and bright things are showered upon him, the gifts of 
all those free spirits who are at home in mountain, forest, and solitude 
and who, like himself, are in their gay and thoughtful ways sages, 

wanderers, and philosophers They are in search of the philosophy 

of the early day" 

The sentiments expressed in this passage are indicative of the inner 
conflicts and contradictions that run through the entire work. Nie- 
tzsche preaches a gospel for "free spirits," but almost in the same 
breath he denies that there is any real freedom. He demands liberation 
from all illusions and superstitions, but at the same time he insists that 
life cannot be lived without illusions. He says a melancholy farewell 
to art but concludes with a hymnic praise of beauty. The work thus 
gives voice to the conflict between Nietzsche's passionate desire for 
absolute freedom and his religious need for dependence on some 
unconditional absolute. 

A second major theme is the conflict with Wagner. The publica- 
tion of Nietzsche's book coincided with the appearance of Wagner's 
Parsifal. As a Christian music drama of redemption it aroused Nie- 
tzsche's violent antagonism. But although he called its psychology fan- 
tastic he admired the dramatic dynamism of the opera and praised its 
great poetic beauty. 

Nietzsche had destroyed the simple faith of his early youth. With 
the aid of philosophic reasoning he had endeavored to create a syn- 
thesis of Dionysian rapture and an artistic transfiguration of life. But 
this wished-for synthesis, too, crumbled under the impact of his 
corrosive intellect. His skepticism forged weapons against both his 
Dionysian faith and his artistic vision, weapons which eventually 
struck at the roots of his own existence. What remained in the end 
was his passionate desire for freedom, the hope that he might succeed 
in transfiguring all existence by means of beauty, and, above all, the 
longing for the divinization of all life, including his own self. 

VI 

After the break with Wagner, Nietzsche for a while deprived 
himself of all music. But "to live without music, what absurdity," he 
wrote in inner revolt. This self-imposed abstention from music ended 
with his arrival in Venice, in the spring of 1880. Peter Cast helped 
him to find a composer to his liking. It was Chopin, whom the friend 
interpreted for Nietzsche on the piano. 

With the advent of the humid summer heat Nietzsche fled from 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 89 

Venice, first to Marienbad in Bohemia and then to Genoa, where he 
spent the winter of 1880-1881 in the small attic room of a house 
located on top of a hill overlooking the bay, living "simply, exacting 
toward myself, but tolerant with others. A light sleep, a brisk, quiet 
walk, no princes nor other celebrities, no women, no newspapers, no 
honors. . . ." 

In 1880 Nietzsche became acquainted with a recently published book 
by Hermann Oldenberg, dealing with Buddhism and the life of the 
Buddha. He was deeply impressed with the similarity he believed 
he discovered between Buddha and himself. Buddha too had devoted 
his life to the search for truth and, like Nietzsche, he had been 
called an atheist and a nihilist. But actually, Nietzsche concluded, 
Buddha was a God-seeker, and the Buddhistic Nirvana was not "the 
nought"; it was pure, unfettered, ecstatic Being. At Genoa, in his 
simple lodgings, in his ascetic living habits, the ideal of the Buddha 
shone all the more brightly. The simple people of the neighborhood 
referred to Nietzsche as their piccolo santo (little saint). The things 
nearest and dearest to him were the people, the sea, and the sky, 
and in their proximity he acquired a new taste of that Reality the 
loss of which had been his great misfortune. 

While Nietzsche was thus enjoying another respite, he was working 
on a new book to which he gave the title, Aurora or the Dawn of 
Day (1881). He had hardly finished this work when his health again 
broke down. He fled to the Engadine and discovered to his delight 
the small village of Sils-Maria, where from then on he spent his 
summers. In the winter he would return to Genoa or its vicinity. 
The scenery of Sils-Maria admirably suited the mood of the ailing 
thinker. Located at a lake of the same name, the village is surrounded 
on one side by an austere chain of rugged mountains capped with 
eternal snow, while on the other side spreads the glistening white 
beauty of the Fex-Glacier. In summer the landscape is a symphony 
of color: the vast meadows are covered with a carpet of the red, blue, 
and yellow of the alpine flora, extending far up into the mountain 
slopes; a panorama of mountains, hills, forest, and water. 

Nietzsche rented an inexpensive room in one of the small shingle- 
roofed farmhouses, a room protected from the brightness of the sun. 
There he lived in complete solitude, elated over the freedom he had 
at last won, and filled with nostalgia for the personal and spiritual 
ties he had lost. "Sometimes, my friend," he wrote to Peter Gast in 
August, 1881, "I have a distinct feeling that I really live a very 



90 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

dangerous kind of life, for I am one of those machines that burst 
easily! The intensity of my emotions makes me shudder and laugh. 
A few times I felt unable to leave my room for the ridiculous reason 
that my eyes were inflamed. And why? I had wept too much on 
my wanderings the day before; not sentimental tears, but tears of 
jubilation, tears mingled with song and nonsensical chatter; my soul 
was filled with a new vision." 

The new vision which so exulted and transported Nietzsche's entire 
being was the idea of Eternal Recurrence. Only a short time ago, he 
had written, "Doubt devours me. I have killed the Law, and now it 
haunts me as a cadaver haunts a living person. If I am not more 
than the Law, then I am among the damned souls the most damned." 
From this haunting experience the idea of Eternal Recurrence seemed 
to offer an escape. Nietzsche believed he had found this doctrine antici- 
pated not only in the speculation of modern positivists, such as Spencer 
and Vogt, but in the thought of Heraclitus and Buddha. The idea that 
everything that is happening now must have happened innumerable 
times before and will happen innumerable times in the future, had 
become a metaphysical and moral necessity for Nietzsche. 

At noontime, near Sils-Maria, on the road to neighboring Silvaplana, 
Nietzsche experienced the Eternal Recurrence in an ecstatic vision: 
he saw the cosmos animated by an endless cyclical movement, com- 
posed of a finite number of eternally recurring elements. "That every- 
thing returns eternally, this is the closest possible rapprochement of 
the world of becoming and the world of being," he wrote. The 
ancients, who had been unfamiliar with the idea of eternity, had 
merely asserted that everything returns. For Nietzsche, on the other 
hand, the meaning of being and existence lay in the newly gained 
assurance that everything returns eternally. When he was a child he 
had known eternity by faith. When he was a young man and a 
disciple of Schopenhauer and Wagner, he had tried to satisfy his 
thirst for eternity in aesthetic contemplation and in Dionysian rapture. 
In the vision of Sils-Maria he experienced eternity not as residing in 
an intangible beyond, but in every fulfilled instant of existence, so 
that even the harshest and most cruel aspects of reality appeared 
exalted and transfigured by the sheen of eternity. Therefore, no 
matter how hard and burdensome life be, it calls for total affirmation 
on the part of man. "Lux, mea crux; crux, mea luxl" (Light, thou 
art my cross; Cross, thou art my light), Nietzsche jotted down in 
his notebook. 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 91 

With the idea of Eternal Recurrence Nietzsche gained access to a 
new concept of immortality. He found in it a substitute for his lost 
Christian faith. It thus represents the fulfillment of his this-worldly 
optimism. Above all, it served to express some basic "existential" 
needs of Nietzsche: the eternal recurrence of all things seemed to 
place the highest stress and strain on personal existence and personal 
action, for every action of the individual must now make manifest 
the eternal quality of his existence. Eternal recurrence, furthermore, 
means that all things are co-present in the idea of Being: as there is 
nowhere a beginning and nowhere an end, the world is always whole 
and perfect. Eternity, which is present in each fulfilled moment, 
clothes every such moment with perfection and thus redeems all 
things. 

Faith in Eternal Recurrence means, according to Nietzsche, "that 
you love life in the very form in which it has confronted you and 
has made you what you are and that you crave eternity for just 
this kind of life. . . . Let us then impress upon our lives the 
image of Eternity." This faith then becomes for Nietzsche a moral 
imperative which demands that man live in such a way that he 
must desire to live again and again. 

Still entranced with his "vision," Nietzsche began work on two 
other books, one of which was to be a continuation of Aurora, while 
the second was to be a song of praise and triumph. The first, entitled 
The Joyful Wisdom (la gay a scienza), was written at Genoa during 
the winter months of 1881-1882; the second, entitled Thus Spatp 
Zarathustra, followed in 1883. Zarathustra, the founder of the ancient 
Persian religion (eighth century, B.C.), the prophet and mysta- 
gogue, was to occupy the center of the latter work. 

Nietzsche was placing himself more and more in radical opposition 
to the spirit of his age, and he began to fed more and more isolated. 
Aurora was ignored by the critics and received with great coolness 
even by the author's few remaining friends. Materialism in nineteenth- 
century philosophy seemed to have run its course, and the younger 
generation of thinkers, following the lead of Henri Bergson, was 
groping for a new spiritual anchorage. What Nietzsche had to offer 
was a kind of cryptomaterialism. Politically and socially, Europe was 
moving toward democracy, dreaming of universal peace and security. 
The future which Nietzsche envisaged looked somewhat different. 
"We may," he wrote, "expect some centuries of war and revolution 
the like of which the world has never seen before. . . . We are 



92 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

entering upon the classical age of war, the age of scientific and 
universal warfare on the largest scale. . . . The twentieth century 
will fight for the domination of the globe." In his own age and 
environment Nietzsche discerned the signs of a decisive historical 
change: the end of one historical sequence and the beginning of 
another. And as the most conspicuous features of this radical break 
he cites the "leveling process" and the rapid growth of the "spirit 
of the herd." The revolt of the slaves, he avers, began as a reaction 
against the power politics of the ancient Roman Empire; it continued 
during the centuries of the Christian era, and it has reached its 
culminating point in the age of "democratic socialism." Both bourgeois 
and socialists have divorced themselves from religion, and it is for 
this reason that they both lead a phantomlike existence. 

Democratic socialism disregards the actual inequalities among men; 
it makes the average and the mediocrity the standard of measurement 
and thus leads to the tyranny of morons and to the sham morality of 
the herd. The result will be "a flock without a shepherd, a flock in 
which all the sheep are equal. . . . The democratic-socialist ideal is 
nothing but a stupid misunderstanding of the Christian idea of moral- 
ity." Nietzsche then contrasts the featureless "masses" with "the people" 
and asks "to create a people again out of the masses." A people 
(Volty is for him something noble, while the masses are "the sand" 
of humanity: "all alike, all very puny, very round, very sociable, and 
very boring." Where die masses prevail, the individuals no longer 
dare to assert themselves. The masses think only of prosperity, comfort, 
the gratification of sensual desires, and as a consequence "this social- 
democratic world is headed for a type of intellectual and moral 
slavery unsurpassed in all history." 

The growing domination of nature by modern science, which 
Nietzsche foresees for the twentieth century, fills him with grave 
apprehensions. He does not rule out the possibility that modern 
civilization may perish by its own technical devices. The religious 
forces, though greatly enfeebled, "might still be strong enough to 
produce a religion of atheism." 

The much-vaunted "democratization of Europe" means for Nie- 
tzsche "an involuntary arrangement for the breeding of tyrants." And 
the steady grojvth of general insecurity and uncertainty will cause 
men "to kiss the dust before any will power that commands." The 
"Lords of the World" will then serve as substitutes for God. Does 
the remedy for the ills of the modern age then perhaps lie in the 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 93 

establishment of a constitutional world government? If mankind 
does not want to destroy itself by world government, it must, in 
Nietzsche's opinion, first of all acquire a thorough knowledge of those 
conditions which make true civilization possible: "In the discovery 
of the standards and criteria for world government consists the monu- 
mental task of the great minds of the twentieth century." 

vn 

In November, 1881, at the time he was working on the manuscript 
of The Joyful Wisdom, Nietzsche wrote to his sister from Genoa: 
"As I did in the Engadine, I wander over the mountains with jubilant 
gladness and with a vision of the future as no one before me has 
ever dared. . . . Perhaps a time will come when the eagles will 
timidly look up to me, as they do on that picture of St. John the 
Evangelist of which we were so fond when we were children.*' 
In January, 1882, he completed the fourth book of The Joyful Wisdom. 
It began with words of calm confidence: "I shall try more and 
more to see the beauty of things in the fact that they are necessary. . . . 
Amor fati: that shall be my love from now on. ... In a word, I want 
to be nothing but a great Yea-Sayer [Ja-sager]." 

During the same winter at Genoa Nietzsche had discovered in 
Bizet's opera Carmen a type of music that fully compensated him 
for the loss of Wagner. In Bizet's passionate Mediterranean melodious- 
ness Nietzsche experienced a liberation from the seductive charms 
of northern romanticism. Nevertheless, it remained his avowed ambi- 
tion to perpetuate and surpass what was best in the work of Wagner. 
The new hero who is to triumph over the somber clouds of the 
"Twilight of the Gods" is not Parsifal, the errant knight, poor in 
spirit, but Zarathustra, mighty in mind and heart. 

The last paragraph (342) of The Joyful Wisdom bears the signifi- 
cant tide, Incifit tragoedia." It introduces Zarathustra who, when he 
was thirty years of age, went forth into the mountains to live in soli- 
tude for a period of ten years. But at last he became "weary of his wis- 
dom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey." Like the liberated 
slave in Plato's famous parable of the Cave, Zarathustra feels the urge 
to descend again to the valleys of men "to bestow and distribute," so 
that "the wise may once more become joyous in their folly, and the 
poor happy in their riches. . . . Thus began Zarathustra's down-going." 

At the end of the winter of 1881-1882 Nietzsche followed one of his 
sudden impulses and went to Messina in Sicily. He felt so happy 



94 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

there that he decided to stay for the writing of his Zarathustra. But 
early in April the hot sirocco wind drove him away from this newly 
found haven. Letters from Malwida and Paul Ree urged him to join 
them in Rome on his way north. Malwida was anxious to have him 
meet Lou-Salome, a young girl of great charm and an avid reader of 
Nietzsche's books. He accepted the invitation and, shortly after his 
arrival in Rome, Lou was introduced to him on the occasion of a 
visit to St. Peter's Basilica. She was the daughter of a Russian 
general and at that time in her early twenties. 

Lou-Salome's book, entitled Friedrich Nietzsche in his Wor\s, 
contains a vivid description of the philosopher. "Loneliness," she 
writes, "that was the first strong impression which Nietzsche's appear- 
ance conveyed. . . . This man of medium height . . . had nothing 
spectacular about him. . . . The fine and very expressive lines of his 
lips were almost completely concealed by a large, drooping moustache. 
He had a soft laugh, a way of talking almost inaudibly, and a cautious, 
pensive gait. . . . His hands were nobly shaped and incomparably 
beautiful. . . . Truly revealing were his eyes. Half blinded, they 
nevertheless had nothing of the spying, blinking, involuntarily obtrus- 
ive expression of many near-sighted people; they rather looked like 
the guardians of hidden treasures, of mute secrets that must not be 
disturbed by intruders. . . . He showed great politeness and an 
almost womanly tenderness, a steady, benevolent equanimity." In 
his distinguished formality "there was also the enjoyment of wearing 
a mask, a mask that covered his never revealed inner life." 

Nietzsche and Paul Re accompanied Lou and her mother to 
Lucerne in Switzerland, where Nietzsche showed her Wagner's former 
residence at Tribschen and talked to her of his relationship to the 
composer. He told her of his childhood, his early doubts, and of the 
new inspiration he had received from Schopenhauer and Wagner. 
But Schopenhauer, he confided, was too much steeped in negation, 
and Wagner's world was built on illusions. "Yes," he concluded this 
confession, "thus the cycle began, and it goes on, but where will it 
end? After having run the full course, whither are we to turn? . . . 
Perhaps we will have to make a new start with faith? Perhaps a 
Catholic faith?" 

Nietzsche believed, or at least tried to make himself believe, that 
he had found in Lou a worthy partner for his life. He loved this 
young girl who had shown so much sympathy and understanding, 
but he lacked the courage to speak for himself. So he asked Paul R& 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 95 

to speak in his behalf, while he himself fled to Basel. There he 
finally got Lou's answer: she gently but firmly rejected the idea of 
marriage. All she could promise Nietzsche was the enduring friend- 
ship of a faithful disciple. 

The first performance of Wagner's Parsifal was scheduled for July 
27, and Nietzsche could not resist the temptation to be at least in 
the vicinity of Bayreuth, especially as he knew that Lou had planned 
to be there. So he journeyed to Tautenburg in the Thuringian Forest, 
located a short distance only from Bayreuth. 

Parsifal, enthusiastically received by the international audience, 
became Wagner's greatest triumph. "The old sorcerer has scored a 
tremendous success," Nietzsche wrote to Peter Cast. After the end 
of the Wagner Festival Lou-Salom4 accompanied by Elisabeth, visited 
Nietzsche at Tautenburg. "The hours," wrote Lou of this meeting, 
"in which he revealed to me his thoughts are unforgettable. . . . He 
spoke with a low voice and with all the appearances of the deepest 
horror* And indeed, life was for him such a profound suffering that 
the certitude of an Eternal Recurrence must of necessity have struck 
him as a frightful idea." 

"Lou Salom was never sincere," Elisabeth commented on these 
days of Tautenburg; "she was eager and curious to listen, con- 
tented with being idolized, but her passion and enthusiasm were 
feigned." As a matter of fact, Elisabeth had grown more and more 
jealous of the young Russian girl. She regarded her brother as a 
kind of precious and exclusive possession of hers, and she felt that 
he was slipping away from her tutelage. Brother and sister exchanged 
harsh words and, filled with deep resentment, Friedrich departed for 
Leipzig. 

But Nietzsche's relationship with Lou also deteriorated. Evidently 
the young girl was unwilling and unable to give that total and uncon- 
ditional assent to Nietzsche's ideas which he demanded. She left 
Tautenburg in accordance with her previous plans and, although Nie- 
tzsche continued writing and confiding to her his ideas and projects, his 
faith in the possibility of this idyl was shattered. He fled to Basel, 
and from there to Genoa and Rapallo, where he spent a solitary 
winter, plagued by insomnia and depressed by melancholy. 

By the middle of January, 1883, ^ e philosopher had sufficiently 
subdued his somber mood to begin the writing of the first part of 
Thus SpaJ(e ZaratAustra. Yet it was but a flicker of light: ten days 
later darkness descended again. During a severe attack of influenza 



96 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

he wrote in reply to a letter he had received from Elisabeth, "I am 
glad to learn that you no longer intend to wage war against your 
brother. . . . This has been my hardest and most miserable winter, 
aside from ten days which, however, have made it possible for me 
to create something that makes my entire painful and troublesome 
existence seem worthwhile." 

Early in May Nietzsche joined Elisabeth in Rome and stayed with 
her to the middle of June. During this time she partially regained 
her domineering influence over him. From Rome Friedrich went 
to the solitude of Sils-Maria to work on the second part of Zarathustra. 
But the quarrels with and about Lou followed him to his alpine 
retreat. Elisabeth made matters worse and precipitated a complete and 
definitive break by writing an offensive letter to her young Russian 
rival. When Lou complained to Nietzsche about this provocation, he 
stood up for his sister and in his farewell letter gave Lou a severe 
and genuinely Nietzschean scolding. Lou Salom later on became 
the wife of Professor Andreas, a famous Iranist of the University of 
Gottingen, and the friend of several prominent personalities in the 
realm of arts and letters, among them the German poet Rainer Maria 
Rilke. 

It was in the midst of this emotional turbulence that the first two 
parts of Zarathustra were written. The third part was composed at 
Nice, in February, 1883, and the fourth (and last) part in Zurich, 
Mentone, and Nice, in the autumn and winter of 1884-1885. 

VIII 

The first part of Thus Spafo Zarathustra contains no arguments 
and attempts no demonstration. It is simply the outpouring of a 
soul's inner experiences. "All that I have thought, suffered, and hoped 
is in it, and in such a way that my entire life appears now somehow 
vindicated," Nietzsche wrote- from Rome, in May, 1883. And to 
Gersdorff, in June: "Behind all these simple and strange words stands 
my deadly seriousness and my entire philosophy. It is a beginning 
of my self-revelation -no more.** Later on, in Ecce Homo (1888), 
Nietzsche analyzes the ecstatic experience which inspired his writing: 
"Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century," he asks, "an idea 
of what the poets of manly ages called inspiration? ... If there were 
even a minimum of superstition left in us, we should hardly be able 
to deny that in such moments we are nothing but the incarnation, 
the mouthpiece, the medium of supernatural powers. What actually 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 97 

happens in such a state is best described by the term 'revelation,' in 
the sense that suddenly, with ineffable certainty and subtlety, some- 
thing becomes visible and audible, something that shakes and over- 
whelms us in our innermost depths. One hears one does not seek; 
one receives without asking who is the giver; an idea blazes like a 
flash of lightning, with a necessity that allows no hesitation I have 
never had a choice. There is a rapture whose tremendous tension is 
sometimes released by a stream of tears ... a complete ccstasis ... a 
profound bliss in which even the most somber experiences appear not 
as a contrast, but as a complement, as a necessary nuance of a super- 
abundance of light. . . . Everything happens in the highest degree 
involuntarily, but in a storm of freedom, of power, of God-likeness." 

Part One of Zarathustra comprises twenty-three songs of hymnic 
prose. The two ideas which had been predominant in Nietzsche's 
mind when he first broached the subject in 1881 were the idea of 
Eternal Recurrence and the idea of the Super-Man, but in the com- 
pleted manuscript the Eternal Recurrence was hardly mentioned. 
Zarathustra's message expresses Nietzsche's desire to wrest from 
actual life a lasting meaning and value, whereas the idea of Eternal 
Recurrence was to give voice to the longing for a greater and higher 
reality above and beyond actual existence. 

It is the mission of the Super-Man to overcome the philosophy of 
pessimism. "Man is something that must be overcome"; that is, only 
a new, a higher and better creature can impart once again meaning 
to this earthly human existence. And so Zarathustra leaves his moun- 
tains and begins his descent to the big city. He meets the crowds 
and prepares those individuals who are willing to listen for the 
acceptance of his doctrine. He warns them to beware of those who 
wish to entice them by promising them the bliss of another world, 
and he tells them that man's salvation is in his own hands. 

Zarathustra wants to arouse the people from their complacency and 
self-satisfaction, so that they may learn again to know themselves 
and to appreciate the breadth and depth of human nature: "Man is 
a rope stretched between the animal and the Super-Man a rope 
over an abyss." Man is not an end in himself, but a bridge to an 
end higher than himself. But, alas, Zarathustra laments, the time of 
the most despicable man is close at hand the man who can no 
longer despise himself. When this time arrives, there will be only a 
huge herd without a shepherd: all will be equal, all will have the 
same desires, and "he who feels differently will go voluntarily to 



98 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

the madhouse." But Zarathustra's message falls on deaf ears. "They 
understand me not," he says to his heart, "I am not the mouth for 
these ears." 

From an attack on those philosophers who demand that man adjust 
himself to the actual situations and conditions of life, Zarathustra 
proceeds to a castigation of the modern concepts of State and Society. 
He calls the State "the new idol, the coldest of all cold monsters." 
This modern State "is false through and through." It claims for itself 
absolute power: "And this lie also creepeth from its mouth: 'I, the 
State, am the people! . . . There is nothing on earth greater than I; 
it is I who am the regulating finger of God' thus roareth this 
monster." And all the people fall on their knees to worship this new 
idol. They lose their own selves and become mere cogs in the 
gigantic mechanism of a collective pseudo-absolute: "Just look at all 
these superfluous ones! . . . They vomit their bile, and call it a 
newspaper. . . . They acquire wealth, and they become poorer thereby. 
They seek power and, above all, much money, the lever of power. . . . 
Badly smelleth their idol to me ... badly they all smell to me, 
these idolaters. My brethren, will ye suffocate in the fumes of their 
mouths and their lusts? . . . Flee from the steam of these human 
sacrifices! Open still remaineth the earth for great souls. . . . Verily, 
he who possesses little is so much less possessed: blessed be poverty!" 7 

But if the State is a false god and if all supernatural concepts are 
illusory, where is man to find that "absolute" that will rescue him 
from absurdity and that will redirect his existence? "Dead are all 
the gods," Zarathustra proclaims; "now do we desire the Super-Man 
to live." Thus the divinized heroic man, the Man-God, is to take the 
place of God; and the future domain of the Super-Man is to supersede 
the Kingdom of God. 

Most of Part Two of the work was written at Sils-Maria, in the 
midsummer of 1883, ^th tte exception of the Night-Song, which had 
been composed in Rome during the spring of the preceding year. This 
particular chapter (31) gave vent to a mood of deep melancholy. 
From the loggia of his boardinghouse on the Piazza Barberini, Nie- 
tzsche could overlook the Eternal City as the twilight of the evening 
descended upon it and as from down below sounded the soft murmur 
of the fountains. In the dark night Zarathustra's soul joins in the 

7 Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (translated by Thomas Common; New York: 
The Modern library, reprinted by arrangement with Macmillan), p. 64 . 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 99 

awakening songs of all the loving ones. There is within him some- 
thing unappeased and unappeasable that clamors for expression: it 
is a craving for love. In the dark night he alone is Light, and it is 
his utter lonesomeness that condemns him to live in his own light: 
"I drink into myself the flames that break forth from me. . . . Ah, 
there is ice around me. . . . Ah, there is thirst within me. . . . Thus 
sang Zarathustra." And while Nietzsche listened to the murmuring 
of the fountains, he vaguely realized that his melancholy and his 
lonesomeness had their ultimate cause in his own stubborn and self- 
centered will. While his soul was full to overflowing, emptiness was 
spreading, fastening its deadening grip on his mind. 

Zarathustra sings his Dance-Song to a group of girls, who are 
dancing on a meadow. It, too, ends on a note of sadness and doubt. 
He asks himself whether it is not folly to go on living, since there 
seems to be no answer to the questions "Why?" "Wherefore?" 
"Whither?" "How?" In the Grave-Song the sage mourns his lost 
past, the death of all the visions and consolations of his youth. If he 
still clings to that past it is because from there emanates a sheen of 
love, a love which died too soon but for which the heart of "the lone 
seafarer" feels an unspeakable longing. 

In some of the concluding chapters of Part Two Zarathustra takes 
issue with the founders and servants of religion and with the dis- 
pensers of knowledge and science- prisoners all, tied down by false 
values. His soul, he confesses, sat hungry at their tables. These 
"scholars" like nothing better than to "sit cool in the cool shade; they 
want in everything to be mere spectators, and they carefully avoid 
sitting in the burning sun." 8 They fill themselves with the thoughts 
which others have thought, and if one lays hands on them they give 
forth a dust like flour sacks. "But who would ever guess that their 
dust came from corn and from the yellow delight of the summer 
fields? ... In their wisdom there is often an odor as if it came from 
the swamp." But "they are good clockworks; only be careful to wind 
them up properly! Then they will indicate the hour without mistake, 
and make a modest noise thereby." 9 

Gradually the reader is initiated into the secret of the Eternal 
Recurrence: life, as it is actually lived, is miserable, fragmentary, im- 
perfect. How can it be perfected? How can it be redeemed? Above all, 
how can the past be redeemed, and how can man's dissipated existence 

f., p. 136. 



ioo THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

be made whole again? Zarathustra hints at the answer, but he is 
not prepared as yet to reveal it fully. The will can accept the past and, 
in affirming itself, affirm also the past; then the past will return 
and become present and future. Thus the will can break the yoke 
of time. But, evidently, Zarathustra-Nietzsche is appalled by the 
thought that in this case all the horrors of the past will also have to 
be lived through again and again. 

In Part Three Nietzsche's visionary power reaches its greatest height. 
Zarathustra's message is centered in the idea of the Eternal Recurrence. 
He preaches the new religion of atheism, and he implements this 
new gospel with Nietzsche's own early religious experiences, with 
his reminiscences of Christianity, and with elements of the ecstatic 
cult of Dionysos. The chapter entided The Vision and the Enigma 
elucidates the main idea. An obnoxious dwarf, the personification of 
the spirit of gravity and inertia, has cast a gloom on Zarathustra's soul 
and has paralyzed his action. But his courage overcomes his dejec- 
tion, "for courage is the best slayer. ... It slayeth also dizziness at 
abysses: and where doth man not stand at abysses! . . . Courage 
slayeth even death itself; for it saith: 'Was that life? Well then! 
Once more!"' 10 

The dwarfs previous remark, "Time is a circle," had indicated 
that the Eternal Recurrence was not entirely unfamiliar to him. Now 
they have both stopped in front of a gateway at which two roads meet: 
one running backward and the other forward, but both continuing 
into eternity. The gateway itself is named "This Moment." Behind 
man and ahead of man stretches an eternity, so that all things "must 
already have happened, run their course and gone by." And what 
about the gateway, "This Moment"? What about you and me? "Must 
not we also have already existed? And must we not return and run 
on in that other road out there ahead of us ... must we not eternally 
return?" 

The idea of Eternal Recurrence is an intoxicating and a nauseating 
thought. How can the eternal repetition of the sufferings and terrors 
of existence be made tolerable? By freely accepting life in its totality, 
with all its joyful and frightful implications, answers Zarathustra- 
Nietzsche, and by learning simultaneously that the present human 
race represents a transitional phase in the flux of evolution, that it 
must give way to a superior race of the future, a higher kind of 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 101 

existence, in which all human aspirations to love, beauty, and truth 
will be fulfilled. Only in the vision of such a divinized future exist- 
ence, present-day man in his pettiness and seeming futility is also 
justified as a steppingstone on the' road to the Super-Man. Thus the 
idea of Eternal Recurrence and the idea of the Super-Man fuse. 

The religious overtones in these philosophic-poetic dreams of Zara- 
thustra are unmistakable. They are inspired by the dominant theme 
of all religion, the yearning for redemption from human finiteness and 
insufficiency, the desire for a wholeness and security which are to be 
found in a Reality that is both timeless and infinite. 

In Part Two Zarathustra had made the astounding statement, 'If 
there were gods, how could I bear it not to be a god? Therefore, there 
are no gods/' In Part Three he goes one step farther: Dionysos and 
all the other gods of the past are dead. Their thrones are vacant, and 
Zarathustra finds himself alone beneath the starry sky, the abandoned 
abode of the defunct gods. After having groped so long in the dark, 
on errant ways and rocky paths, he now feels himself worthy of par- 
taking of the glowing splendor of the highest heavens. He has risen 
above fear and guilt, above law and duty, and he looks down upon 
human life and blesses it: "A blesser have I become and a Yea-Saycr. 
And therefore strove I so long and was a wrestler that one day I 

might get my hands free for blessing And blessed is he who thus 

blesseth. For all things are baptized at the font of Eternity, and 
beyond good and evil. . . " u In the rapture of self-deification Zara- 
thustra experiences life as a divine bliss, in the fruition of which the 
Eternal Recurrence becomes the source of redemption and of lasting 
happiness. 

But for Nietzsche himself the experience of Zarathustra provided 
no guarantee for this kind of happiness. He knew in his innermost 
heart that for mortal man the greatest height always harbors the 
possibility of the deepest fall. And even Zarathustra, in the hour of 
his greatest triumph, experiences the inevitability of suffering: the 
enraptured Dionysian god seems to assume the agonized features of 
the suffering God-Man of the Gospels, who died on the cross, so 
that man might live and live more abundantly. 

As Christ suffered death because of the new gospel he preached, 
so also Zarathustra's downfall begins with the revelation of his great 
secret: "I have spoken my word, I am broken by my word: so willeth 

11 Ibid., p. 174. 



102 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

it my eternal fate as a prophet do I perish!" Zarathustra's knowledge 
of the smallness of man makes him shudder at the thought of Eternal 
Recurrence: "Alas, man returned! eternally! The small man returneth 
eternally. Naked had I once seen them both, the greatest man and 
the smallest man! All too like one another all too human, even the 
greatest manl All too small, even the greatest man! That was my 
disgust at man! And the eternal return also of the smallest man 
that was my disgust at all existence!" 12 

The concluding chapter of Part Three bears the title The Seven Seals 
and the subtitle The Yea and Amen Song. It reaffirms the doctrine of 
Eternal Recurrence and proclaims its wholehearted acceptance. Each 
paragraph ends with the refrain, "Oh, how could I not lust for 
Eternity and for the bridal ring of rings the ring of the Return? 
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should want to have 
children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, 
O Eternity!" 18 

Contrary to his original intention, Nietzsche soon began to think 
of a continuation of Zarathustra a fourth part which was to be 
more systematic than the preceding ones. He even contemplated 
writing a fifth and sixth part: Zarathustra was to leave his mountain 
cave to wander again to the big city. There he was to preach to his 
disciples, prior to his final departure. Nietzsche had evidently planned 
to paraphrase the Gospel narrative of Christ's entrance into Jerusalem. 
But only Part Four, comprising twenty chapters, was actually 
completed. 

For many years the prophet has been living in the solitude of his 
mountains. He has grown old and white haired. He knows, however, 
that some day he will become the founder of a great realm that is 
to last for a thousand years. But the time is not yet. Man must come 
and seek him, and patiently he waits for this sign and signal. 

One day a visitor arrives, "the soothsayer," who tells Zarathustra 
of the sad state of the world. The hermit's heart momentarily wells 
up with pity, but he overcomes this "weakness" and refuses his help. 
The present human race, he knows, is beyond redemption. 

The first visitor is soon followed by a group of several men, among 
them two kings. They all represent the "higher" type of human 
existence. From them Zarathustra learns anew of the human outcry 
for help. He finally yields to persuasion, and together they start out 

*., p. 22 5 f. 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 103 

on a search for further exemplars of the "higher man." On their way 
they meet an anonymous retired old pope who has gone forth in 
search of "the last pious man, a saint and a hermit who, alone in his 
forest, had not yet heard . . . that the old God no longer liveth." The 
old pope had loyally served that old God "until his last hour." Thus 
the last remaining Christian meets Zarathustra, the atheist. "Is it not 
thy very piety," the pope finally asks Zarathustra, "which no longer 
letteth thee believe in God? . . .. Nigh unto thee, though thou pro- 
fessest to be the most god-less of all, I sense the fragrance of long 
benedictions." And the forlorn wanderer is shown the way to the 
shelter of Zarathustra's cave. 

Next Zarathustra meets "the ugliest man," the man who "has 
murdered God." How can this horrible deed be justified? "He had 
to die" the ugliest man tells Zarathustra, "he looked with eyes that 
saw everything he saw man's depths and abysses, all his concealed 
shame and ugliness. ... He always looked at me. . . . Man cannot 
endure it that such a witness should live." Thereupon Zarathustra "got 
up and prepared to go on: for he felt frozen to his very bowels." He 
pursues his way more thoughtfully and slowly than before, "for he 
asked himself many things and knew no easy answer." In this striking 
scene Nietzsche, the God-killer, meets Nietzsche, the God-seeker. 

Meanwhile in Zarathustra's cave are gathered together those nine 
men who represent the highest types of the presently existing human 
race. They are "the last remnants of God among men: that is to 
say, the men of great longing, of great disgust, of great satiety all 
those who do not want to live unless they learn again to hope." But 
when Zarathustra returns to his cave in the late afternoon, he sternly 
tells his guests that, though they be "higher men," they are not high 
and strong enough. They are not the stuff out of which the Super- 
Man can be formed. They are not the disciples for whom he has 
been waiting in his mountains: "Nay! Three times Nay! For others 
do I wait. . . . Such as are squarely built in body and soul: laughing 
lions must come!" 

The final two chapters of Part Four bear the tides The Drunken 
Song and The Sign. Mood and language are serious and somber. Late 
in the evening Zarathustra and his guests leave the cave and con- 
template the moonlit landscape. From the distant valley is heard the 
tolling of a bell announcing the approaching midnight. Then follows 
the second Night-Song, a hymnic and almost humble praise of life. 
Once more the theme is the Eternal Recurrence: Zarathustra has 



104 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

finally come to realize that he is no god, after all, but only a 
sensitive soul, condemned to suffering. But he also knows that there 
are ineffable joys and raptures above and beyond the agonies of 
temporal existence. The sheen of Eternity illumines beauty and ugli- 
ness, good and evil. "For, although woe be deep, joy is deeper still 
than grief can ever be. ... Joy wanteth itself: it wanteth Eternity, it 
wanteth Recurrence, it wanteth everything eternaUy-like-unto-itself ." 

In the brief concluding chapter of the entire work, Zarathustra is 
shown in exultant expectation of the "great noontide." He finds him- 
self surrounded by a swarm of doves as by "a cloud of love," and at 
his feet rests a mighty yellow lion signs and symbols of the dis- 
ciples, who cannot be far away. "The lion hath come," he exclaims, 
"my children are nigh. ... My hour hath come . . . arise now, arise, 
thou great noontide!" With these words Zarathustra leaves his cave, 
"glowing and strong, like a morning sun coming out of gloomy 
mountains." 

IX 

Thus Spafe Zarathustra bore the subtitle, "A Book for All and 
None." For the time being and for some time to come it remained 
a book for "none": Nietzsche's literary masterpiece and personal con- 
fession aroused no one's interest. Very few read it; no one was either 
provoked or enthused by it. For Part Four the author could not even 
find a publisher, so that Nietzsche finally decided to have forty copies 
printed at his own expense. But the number forty exceeded the de- 
mand: Nietzsche had not that many friends and readers. Thus the 
hoped-for disciples had failed to arrive. Looking out from his lofty 
mountain retreat for kindred minds and hearts, what was Zarathustra- 
Nietzsche to do if no one was willing to listen? The author did not 
know the answer. 

The enthusiasm which had inspired the writing of Zarathustra 
gave way to a mood of melancholy depression after the completion 
of the work in February, 1885. One of the external reasons for Nie- 
tzsche's dejection was the marriage of his sister to Dr. Bernhard Forster, 
a teacher in one of the secondary schools of Berlin, who had been 
forced to resign because of his rabid anti-Semitism and who was 
planning the establishment of a "racially pure" German settlement in 
Paraguay. But though both her mother and her brother were strongly 
opposed to her association with Forster Nietzsche had nothing but 
loathing for the anti-Semitic movement and its representatives 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 105 

Elisabeth had proved stubborn and had gone ahead with her marriage 
plans. Friedrich's opposition gradually weakened, but he refused to 
be present at the wedding ceremony. Early in 1886 the German colon- 
ists departed for Paraguay. "I have now lived for forty-three years," 
Nietzsche wrote to Erwin Rohde at this time, "and I am still just as 
lonely as I was in the years of my childhood." 

After the completion of Part Three of Zarathustra, Nietzsche had 
written to Peter Gast, "The next six years will be devoted to the 
elaboration of ... 'my philosophy'!" Ajid as these years passed, the 
notes and aphorisms accumulated, but the promised systematic outline 
was never written. In 1885, Nietzsche made another start, but he 
found himself unable to concentrate his mind on the task. He 
thereupon decided to publish a kind of prelude to the great under- 
taking, to which he gave the title Beyond Good and Evil. In 1888, 
he began to revise his earlier writings and to provide them with 
new prefaces, in which he traced his intellectual development and 
evaluated the relative merits of these earlier publications. Two years 
before, he had written to his sister, "In the course of the next four 
years a major work in four volumes may be expected. Its very tide 
is frightening: The Witt to Power. An Attempt at the Transvaluation 
of all Values." In the spring and summer of 1887 he again interrupted 
the work on his major project to compose another preliminary study, 
entitled The Genealogy of Morals. Then, in the spring of 1888, there 
followed in rapid succession two more small works, The Case of 
Wagner and The Twilight of the Idols. Finally, likewise in 1888, he 
added another fragment containing his most bitter attack on Christian- 
ity, which bore the tide The Anti-Christ. 

These successive publications used up a substantial part of Nie- 
tzsche's collected notes, so that there was really not sufficient material 
left for the execution of the original monumental plan of The Will 
to Power. Nevertheless, the main theme emerges clearly enough: 
Nietzsche recognized that modern Europe was in the midst of a 
"moral crisis," and it seemed to him that this crisis had its roots in 
the hitherto accepted system of values. He saw the minds of his 
contemporaries in turmoil, uprooted and shaken by forces and ex- 
periences unknown to previous generations. The question was whether 
by a "transvaluation" of the established values the substance of the 
European tradition could be regenerated and saved. "The inhabitants 
of hell are more consistent than you," Nietzsche had told his con- 
temporaries through the mouth of Zarathustra. "You are the living 



io6 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

refutation of faith itself. . . . But he who has the call for creation is 
the possessor of dreams and of stars and he has faith in faith!" 

In 1885 Nietzsche had underlined in his own copy of Pascal's 
works the words, "Without the Christian faith . . . you will be to 
yourself a monster and a chaos." Nietzsche's intellectual development 
had by no means extinguished his profound religious needs and in- 
stincts. But, since the Christian God was "dead" and Dionysos, too, 
had disappeared, Nietzsche now became submissive to a new deity 
which he called "chance." He was hoping against hope that "chance" 
might be powerful enough to raise his individuality to the heights of 
infinite power and glory. Nietzsche's final self-apotheosis is his final 
and desperate attempt to break out of the vicious circle of his endless 
search for a new "god," a god whom he needed and desired, but 
whom he had to destroy again and again in his thirst for limitless 
power. 

During the last meeting with his sister before her departure for 
Paraguay, Nietzsche had talked to her about the difficult problems 
which occupied his mind: "All alone with myself," he had said, "I 
am ... in danger of losing myself in a forest. ... I need help. I need 
disciples; I also need a teacher, a master. I should find it sweet to 
obey. ... If only I could find someone capable of clarifying for me 
the value of our moral ideas. . . . But I find no one; no disciples, to 
say nothing of teachers." 

Nietzsche had experienced the impact of his ideas on his own ego, 
and at times he felt concern for equally sensitive minds and souls who 
might be exposed to the destructive force of his thinking. One Sunday 
at Nice a young girl of the neighborhood asked him whether he 
had been to church. "Today," he replied, "I was unable to go." And 
to a friend who had witnessed the scene he explained afterward, "Not 
every truth is for everyone; if I had troubled the heart of this young 
girl, I should have felt disconsolate." In the observatory of Arcestri, 
on the heights of San Miniato al Monte near Florence, the philosopher 
made the acquaintance of a distinguished astronomer. "I wish," he 
observed to his companion on this visit, "this man had not read my 
books. He is too good. My influence on him could be very disastrous." 

"Every profound spirit needs a mask," Nietzsche wrote in Beyond 
Good and Evil. Wearing a mask became a necessity for Nietzsche, and 
this theme recurs again and again in his later works. What the 
thinker was hiding behind his several masks was his heart-rending 
knowledge of the agony of Western civilization. Most of his con- 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 107 

temporaries seemed to be entirely unaware of the approaching crisis. 
Nietzsche alone was clairvoyant enough to realize that Europe was 
menaced by disruptive forces which worked as yet underground, but 
which might erupt at any moment, especially since the guiding and 
binding power of God was no longer alive in human hearts and 
minds. In Nietzsche's opinion, Christianity was ultimately to blame 
for the emergence of European "nihilism" because, he charged, it had 
transposed the highest values of mankind from this world to a world 
beyond. The "death of God" consequently deprived human existence 
and the generally accepted human values of their meaning and 
foundation. Everything remained suspended in the void of nothing- 
ness. Laboring vainly in this void, Nietzsche observed a multitude of 
hands, engaged in the manufacture of tools and of arms, a greedy 
acquisitiveness, a perpetual motion without an ultimate aim and 
end: "Strong passions whirling around objects which are of no value. 
Even the greatest energy no longer knows why it is active. All the 
means are still there, but no ends." These then were the dark fore- 
bodings that burned and consumed Nietzsche's soul. 

Before returning from Venice to the Engadine, Nietzsche paid a 
visit to his mother. When he mentioned the fate of his books, she 
told him that she detested them and that they deserved being dis- 
regarded and forgotten. From Naumburg the philosopher traveled on 
to the Engadine, but instead of the hoped-for sunshine he found 
those winterly mists which always deeply depressed him. "Horrible," 
he wrote in his notebook, "is this being alone with the judge and 
avenger of one's own law. Thus a star is flung into empty space and 
into the icy breath of solitude." 



Nietzsche's philosophy represents the most extreme and perhaps 
also the most consistent form of that branch of Western thought which 
is usually referred to as idealism. It began with Descartes and pro- 
ceeded through several stages in the speculation of Spinoza, Male- 
branche, and Leibniz, to achieve its most systematic formulation in 
the works of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. In nineteenth-century German 
idealism man is conceived as the epistemological center of the world 
which as such is regarded as a mere product or artifact of the innate 
faculties of the human mind. This kind of idealism imprisons man 
in the fortress of his own thought, and man in turn imposes the 



io8 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

structure of his mind on whatever there is admitted as extramental 
reality. Man is no longer confidingly opened toward Being and 
Reality, but he is filled with distrust and doubt as to anything which 
is not in the mind, of the mind, or the mind itself. It is this "prison 
of the mind" that later on became the object of the attacks launched 
by "realists," "phenomenologists," and "existentialists," from Kierke- 
gaard, Feuerbach, and Marx to Bergson and Husserl, and from Husserl 
to Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre, and Marcel. 

Nietzsche, in following the premises of German idealism to their 
extreme conclusions, strips extramental reality of the last vestiges of 
independence and truth. Man, he argues, does not discover laws and 
values: he creates all values and then projects them into a chaotic 
conglomerate of phenomena. The supposed object of knowledge is for 
Nietzsche nothing but an artifact arbitrarily created by the human 
mind and will. Ideas are nothing but arbitrarily chosen signs and 
symbols without any objective validity. And it is this extreme epistemo- 
logical subjectivism that leads Nietzsche to the denial of any objective 
laws of nature and in nature. The human mind constructs its own 
world by transforming, uniting, ordering, and simplifying a meaning- 
less mass of phenomena. Both the world of sense experience and the 
supposed ontological or metaphysical realm behind sense experience 
are equally unreal. There is no "real" world at all. There is only a 
multitude of subjective, private worlds which Nietzsche calls "human 
perspectives." And thus, having started out from an idealistic and 
subjcctivistic premise, Nietzsche proceeds to the complete annihilation 
of objective reality. 

But the history of philosophy (Berkeley Hume Watson 
Dewey Carnap) shows that with the dissolution of the objective 
world and of objective truth the individual subject too is threatened 
with annihilation. Nietzsche was not unaware of this fact. "There is 
neither 'mind,' nor reason, nor thought, nor consciousness, nor soul, nor 
will, nor truth," he wrote in The Will to Power. "All these arc 
fictions and quite useless." Beyond the illusory "perspectives" of the 
animal species called "man," there is nothing. 

"Nihilism," Nietzsche wrote early in 1888, "is an attitude of strong 
minds and wills. Negation in both thought and action is part of their 
nature." But what happens when this philosophy of "nihilism" meets 
with the idea of "Eternal Recurrence"? "Let us consider this thought 
in its most frightful form: existence, such as it is, without any meaning 
and goal, but inevitably recurring, inevitably moving in nothingness. 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 109 

. . . That is the extreme form of nihilism: nothingness, meaninglessness 
eternalized!" 

It is hardly surprising that Nietzsche found it impossible to maintain 
or endorse this kind of nihilism for any length of time. He soon 
came to see "Nihilism" and "decadence" as parallel phenomena. Modern 
Europe, he thought, was decadent and, aside from brief interludes, such 
as the Renaissance and the era of the Napoleonic Empire, it had been 
decadent since the fall of ancient Rome. Like Edward Gibbon, Nie- 
tzsche blamed Christianity (which he regarded as a late and hybrid 
form of Judaism) for having destroyed the strong and healthy pagan- 
ism of the Roman Empire. Once the masses had triumphed in the 
French Revolution of 1789, they began to tyrannize the great individ- 
uals and, depriving them of their self-respect, drove them into nihilistic 
despair. Nihilism was thus seen as a consequence of individual and 
social decadence. But while the masses were sinking deeper and deeper 
into the void, the exceptional few might still succeed in saving them- 
selves from the nihilistic snare. 

Salvation from nihilism, Nietzsche tries to persuade himself, lies 
in the Will to Power. While all ideas, including the idea of the Will 
to Power, are fictions, some fictions may at times prove very useful. 
In fact, argues Nietzsche, we accept ideas not because they are true, 
but because they are useful. He thus pragmatically identifies "truth" 
with anything that strengthens and perpetuates Life. In other words, 
man's ideas are true to the extent that they beget practical results or 
serve to increase human power. The Will to Power is then con- 
ceived by Nietzsche as both the source and the criterion of all values, 
of all value judgments, and of human existence as such. All goals, 
purposes, ideals, and ends are expressions, derivations, instruments, or 
at best sublimations of the Will to Power. 

All values fall a prey to Nihilism, all except the value judgment 
itself. Thus the only certainty which remains is the certitude of the 
judgment that every so-called value is false and fictitious. The weak 
ones, Nietzsche claims, are crushed by this "truth"; the stronger ones 
aid in the destruction of everything that has not already been 
broken; the strongest ones alone are able to overcome Nihilism and 
to survive the annihilation of all established "values." But to do that 
they must first have learned to stand alone and forsaken in a meaning- 
less world. Aware of the fact that the so-called objective world harbors 
no genuine values, they will then feel free to engage creatively in 
value projects of their own making, and in this way they will 



no THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

eventually learn how to dominate the world: the world will serve 
them as an instrumental means for their own personal aggrandize- 
ment. Thus the breeding of great, heroic individuals, that is, of genuine 
representatives of the Will to Power, becomes for Nietzsche at this 
stage both the raison d'etre and the most important goal of human 
society. Being sovereign masters of their free choice, this higher breed 
of men will be their own lawgivers. They will be "beyond good and 
evil/' but the consciousness of their responsibility for their choices 
will raise them far above the brutes. 

But these future "Lords of the World" must also be capable of en- 
during the greatest pain and suffering. "To such men," Nietzsche 
writes in The Will to Power, "I wish suffering, abandonment, sickness, 
maltreatment, humiliation; I wish that they may not be spared deep 
self-contempt, the torture of distrusting themselves, the misery of 
defeat: I have no pity on them because I wish for them the only 
thing which today can demonstrate a man's value or disvalue 
perseverance? The brutal conqueror, the "tropical beast of prey," turns 
in the end away from all external triumphs, to the conquest of his 
own self. It hardly need be pointed out that Nietzsche's concept of 
the highest type of human existence comprises some contradictory 
elements. 

Europe, says Nietzsche, has been infected with the leveling spirit 
of mediocrity a spirit which, according to his way of thinking, was 
fostered by Christianity. The "spirit of the herd" has invaded science 
and manifests itself in varying degrees in democracy, socialism, and 
anarchism. The "higher men" must fight against all these tendencies 
and movements: they "must declare war on the masses." And hand 
in hand with the checking of the influence of "the herd" must go 
the breeding of a new aristocracy. The philosopher, the educator of 
the future, is to become the companion, guide, and counselor of the 
new rulers. 

There is only one thing which holds the modern world back from 
undertaking its remaining task, the breeding of the "Lords of the 
Earth": those inherited values and valuations which all derive ulti- 
mately from one source Christianity! For this reason Christianity 
now becomes for Nietzsche the mortal enemy; that Christianity which 
in its Lutheran version he knew from his parental home and whose 
heavy residue he still felt as a cumbersome burden on his soul. 
This enemy must be destroyed! 

In September, 1888, Nietzsche began writing The Anti-Christ. The 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? in 

only new dement in this "manifesto" is the intensity of passionate 
hatred. It is interesting, however, that Nietzsche exempts Christ from 
his general attack on everything Christian. Jesus, according to Nie- 
tzsche, taught "a new way of life" that was to bring peace and har- 
mony to the human soul, so that the pacified soul might then effect 
the total transfiguration of all things. Such a unity and harmony of 
soul, though contrary to Nietzsche's own teaching, was by no means 
foreign to his innermost longing. And while his doctrine forced him 
to reject such a concept of life and of the world, he rejects it hesitatingly, 
gently, and almost reverently. 

Christ died on the cross, says Nietzsche, and with Him died the 
essence of Christianity; for Christ was and has remained "the only 
Christian." His glad tidings was followed by "the worst tidings: 
the tidings of Pad . . . that genius of hate." Most of Nietzsche's 
accusations against Christianity have a feverish and hysterical ring: 
"I call Christianity the One great Curse, the one great inward cor- 
ruption . . . the one immortal mark of shame of the human race." 
And yet, only a short time prior to this emotional outburst he had 
written to Peter Cast, "I hope I shall never show myself ungrateful to 
Christianity, for I owe to it the best experiences of my childhood." 

In 1887 Nietzsche had written to Peter Cast from Sils-Maria: "I 
live . . . constandy in the vicinity of danger without an answer 
to the question, 'Whither?'" For the past ten years he had tried des- 
perately to meet this question with his answer of the Eternal Recur- 
rence. But in Part One of The Genealogy of Morals another answer 
seemed to have suggested itself: "Can anyone," Nietzsche had asked 
there, "imagine anything that equals in miraculously enchanting force 
the symbol of the 'Holy Cross'? Nothing equals in impressive strength 
that paradox of a 'Crucified God* ... of a God crucifying Himself 
for the salvation of men. In this sign and symbol at least Israel 
triumphs eternally over any other ideal." 

In the autumn of 1888 Nietzsche told his sister in a letter from 
Italy that he was writing a review of his life. The reference is to Ecce 
Homo, perhaps the strangest autobiography and the most glowing 
self-apotheosis ever written. The tide relates to a passage in the Gospel 
of St. John (19:4-6) : "And now Pilate went out again, and said to 
them: See, I am bringing him out to you, to show that I cannot find 
any fault in him. Then, as Jesus came out, still wearing the crown of 
thorns and the scarlet cloak, Pilate said to them: Ecce Homo (see, 
here is the Man)' 3 It seems clear that Nietzsche wanted to have these 



ii2 THE E5QSTENTIALIST REVOLT 

words applied to himself, who was also wearing "a crown of thorns." 
Eccc Homo consists of four parts, the tides of which are self-ex- 
planatory: (i) "Why I am so wise"; (2) "Why I am so prudent"; (3) 
"Why I am writing such excellent books"; (4) "Why I am a Fate." 
On the whole this work is less bitter and polemic than The Anti-Christ. 
Nietzsche seems so certain of his victory that he can afford to forgive 
his enemies. But he remembers with pride that he has always been 
a warrior, and he enumerates the principles of his "war strategy": to 
attack only matters that are victorious; to attack only where he 
stands alone, without any allies; never to attack persons, but to use 
persons only "as a kind of huge magnifying glass" in order to make 
visible some creeping but as yet intangible crisis. In the final section 
of the book Nietzsche sees himself as the man of destiny who, though 
he has contradicted "as no one has ever dared to contradict," is 
nevertheless "the opposite of a spirit of negation." On the contrary, 
he is "the bearer of glad tidings," a Yea-Sayer with whom "the hope 
of the human race has been restored: Ecrasez I'infame! Have I 
made myself dear? Dionysos against the Crucified. . . ." With these 
words this bizarre autobiography ends. 

XI 

On November 13, 1888, Nietzsche wrote to Peter Cast from Turin, 
begging his friend to come and see him. This appeal was repeated 
more urgently in a second letter, written five days later. Comparatively 
little is known as to what happened during Nietzsche's last days at 
Turin, between Christmas, 1888, and early January, 1889. We have, 
however, his own testimony for the fact that he was beginning to 
have hallucinations of the dual presence of Christ and Dionysos. He 
was writing many letters during these days which reveal, among 
other things, that he was gradually losing the consciousness of his 
identity. Each of them was carefully inscribed on costly paper, and 
each bore a different signature. Thus he wrote, for example, to the 
Swedish playwright August Strindberg (signed: Nietzsche Caesar), to 
the Pope and the Papal Secretary of State, and to the King of Italy 
(signed: The Crucified). Other letters bore the signature "Dionysos." 
Nietzsche, in the progressive delusion of his mind, began to identify 
himself with the suffering god in the two forms in which the Deity 
had haunted his life and his thought. But he also identified himself 
with two criminals whose crimes had been publicized in the Paris 
press; or with Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal, 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 113 

On January 9, Jacob Burckhardt, the famous historian and author 
of The Culture of the Renaissance in Italy one of Nietzsche's oldest 
friends and a former colleague went to see Franz Overbeck, the 
liberal Protestant theologian of the University of Basel. The two men 
were only casually acquainted, and Overbeck sensed immediately that 
Burckhardt had come to discuss the fate of Nietzsche, their common 
friend. After a consultation with Professor Wille, the director of the 
psychiatric clinic, Overbeck immediately departed for Turin. He found 
Nietzsche in a most pitiful condition. From the landlord he learned 
about the most recent events: on January 3, on leaving his living 
quarters, Nietzsche had witnessed a cab driver brutally mistreating 
his horse. With tears and sobs he had thrown his arms about the 
animal's neck and had threatened anyone who tried to come near 
him. Then he had collapsed in the street. After he had been carried 
to his room and had regained consciousness, he believed himself 
transformed into the dual deity of Christ and Dionysos. A physician 
was called in, and the police and the German consul were notified. 

Overbeck was enthusiastically welcomed by Nietzsche, who soon 
began to improvise on the piano and to sing "sublime, wonderfully 
visionary and unspeakably horrible things about himself as the suc- 
cessor of the defunct God." Overbeck then enlisted the aid of a 
German dentist to transport Nietzsche to Professor Wille's clinic in 
Basel. His mother arrived on January 13, and she accompanied her 
son from Basel to an asylum in the German city of Jena. There, under 
the care of Dr. Binswanger, Nietzsche grew gradually calmer, al- 
though the mental derangement (usually diagnosed as progressive 
paralysis) advanced steadily. 

Early in 1890 Nietzsche's mother moved from Naumburg to Jena. 
And when her son, at the end of March, was permitted to leave the 
asylum, she took him into her home. After her death, in 1897, Elisabeth, 
whose husband had died and who had thereupon returned from Para- 
guay, cared for her brother during the last years of his life. 

Nietzsche became famous almost overnight, and the royalties on 
his works began to be pouring in. Elisabeth bought an estate at Weimar, 
not far from the Goethe house, and there she assembled all of her 
brother's books, manuscripts, and notes. And here Nietzsche, the 
author of The Will to Power, resided, entirely passive and absolutely 
powerless, unaware of his growing fame. He died on August 25, 1900, 
and was buried in the little churchyard at Rocken, next to his 
father's resting place. 



n 4 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 



XII 

The modern philosophy of existence wants to call man back to 
himself. Jos6 Ortega y Gasset expresses a conviction common to all 
the thinkers of this school when he asserts that modern man, afraid 
of the lonesomeness of his existence, has been trying to steal himself 
into the anonymity of the social collective. Miguel de Unamuno saw 
in modern man a sort of Don Quixote engaged in a restless search 
of his own substance and to t^at end embarking on the adventures of 
an incalculable existence. "Man," he said, "must be thrown into the 
ocean, deprived of every anchorage, so that he may learn again what 
it means to live as a human being." 

While the ancient Greek thinkers were primarily concerned with 
the problem of the intellectual penetration of the "cosmos," the 
Fathers of the Church and the mediaeval schoolmen discerned in this 
cosmos a divinely created order of Being, an order in which and 
through which man was to find his way to God, the supreme Being 
(Ipsum esse subsistens) and the Author of the entire order of beings 
or existents. The way of Christian ethics was described by St. Thomas 
Aquinas as "the movement of the rational creature toward God" 
(tnotus rationalis creaturae in Deum). And, as the action of every 
creature flows from its "being" (operari sequitur esse) 9 the action of 
man, the rational creature, must correspond to his rational nature which 
as such has the capacity of knowing the hierarchical order of Being. 
In trying to conform his existence to his essence (or nature), man may 
expect to realize the meaning of his life in the created universe: in 
obedient reverence for the order of Being, for his own self, and for God, 
the Creator of all essences and existences, in whose Being essence and 
existence are self-identical or one. 

The cosmo-centered view of pagan antiquity and the God-centered 
view of Christianity gave way in the secularized modern world to 
a man-centered view of reality. In Hegel's metaphysics all beings 
are still situated "in God," but only as dialectically determined en- 
tities, as "phases" of the historical movement of the self-realization 
of the absolute "World Spirit." God Himself is drawn into the evolu- 
tionary process and is ultimately identified with this process. When 
this Hegelian metaphysics is radically dissolved in the thinking of 
Feuerbach, Marx, Stirner, and Nietzsche (the "Young Hegelians"), 
man finds himself without God, confronted with the Promethean task 
of becoming the sole "creator" of all truth and of all values. From then 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 115 

on human existence begins to sway back and forth between the desire 
for self-deification and the experience of failure and shipwreck. And in 
this hour of "crisis," man, who by his very nature is both a questioning 
and a questionable, problematic being, begins in anguish to probe 
into the meaning of his self, of the world, and of his "being-in-the- 
world." 

Both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are opposed to the bourgeois 
complacency of Hegel's synthetic "system" of philosophic idealism; 
both are opposed to the dissolution of the individual in the historico- 
logical processes of thought as well as to any and all forms of State- 
idolatry. On the other hand, both experience profoundly the growing 
homelessness of the individual in the "objective" and collective modern 
world. This forlornness begets existential despair, but despair may 
beget salvation if, face to face with "nothingness," the individual can 
be reawakened to an "authentic" existence* Both Kierkegaard and 
Nietzsche confront man with the nightmare of an "unauthentic" 
existence in a meaningless world and, by doing so, they mean to 
warn him of that abyss and to call him back to his true self. But 
while Kierkegaard, the Christian, knows that man's true selfhood is 
grounded in God, that man is "nothing" without God Nietzsche, 
the apostate, solemnly proclaims the "death of God" and thereby 
destroys not only man's individual self but simultaneously all the 
selves or "thous" in the communal order with whom the individual 
shares his human essence or nature. 

Nietzsche's saying, "God is dead," appears for the first time in 
Book Three of The Joyful Wisdom, but already in The Birth of 
Tragedy, his first major work, he had written, "I believe in the ancient 
Germanic saying: all the gods must die." Section 125 of The Joyful 
Wisdom contains the following passage: "Have you not heard as yet 
of that mad-man who on one bright forenoon lit a lantern, ran out 
into the market-place and cried out again and again, *I seek God! I 
seek Godl' Because there were standing about just at that time 
many who did not believe in God, the mad-man was the occasion of 
great merriment. Has God been lost?, said one of them. Has He lost 
His way like a child?, asked another. Or is He hiding Himself? Is 
He afraid of us? Has He boarded a ship? Has He emigrated? Thus 
they cried and laughed. But the mad-man pierced them with his 
glance: 'Whither has God gone?,' he cried; 'I am going to tell you. 
We have filled Him you and I! We all are His murderers. But 
how have we accomplished this? How have we been able to empty 



ii6 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

the sea? Who gave us the sponge with which to wipe oft the entire 
horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from 
its sun? Whither does the earth now move? Whither do we ourselves 
move? Away from every sun? Are we not constantly falling? . . . 
Are we not groping our way in an infinite nothingness? Do we not 
feel the breath of the empty spaces? Has it not become colder? Is 
there not night and ever more night? . . . How do we manage to 
console ourselves, we master-assassins? The most holy and the most 
mighty being that the world possessed it has bled to death under 
our knives. Who is going to wipe this blood off our hands? Where 
is the water with which to purify ourselves? What feasts of atonement, 
what sacred rites shall we have to invent? . . . Must not we ourselves 
become gods to make ourselves worthy of such a deed?'" 

The saying, "God is dead," means that nothingness is spreading. 
Nihilism, "the uncanniest of all guests," stands at the door. AJX 
ultimate goal is lacking, and there is no longer an answer to the 
question, "Why?" "Never again will you be able to pray, to adore, 
to rest in an infinite trust . . . there is no longer any reason in what- 
ever happens and no love in whatever will happen to you no longer 
any resting place for your heart. , . . Man of the great renunciation, 
all this you are willing to renounce? Who will give you the power 
to do this? No one has yet had such power!" 

The new valueless world and existence demand the creation of 
new values or, in Nietzsche's words, a "transvaluation of all values." 
An incomplete or halfhearted Nihilism merely attempts to fill the 
vacuum created by "the death of God" with such paltry substitutes 
as humanitarianism, utilitarianism, or socialism, while a complete or 
total Nihilism courageously proceeds to the "transvaluation" of all 
traditional values. In this way it may yet generate a "superabundance 
of Life." Thus Nietzsche, who in the frailty of his physical con- 
stitution felt himself cruelly cheated by nature, believed he had dis- 
covered a means of self-exaltation in the divinization of Nature and 
Life. He knew perfectly well that man cannot live a meaningless 
life and that therefore any absolute Nihilism remains an impossibility. , 

In this as in other respects Nietzsche's position became in the end 
self-contradictory. To make possible the proposed "transvaluation of 
all values," Nietzsche had to proclaim a strict relativism of all values. 
The Super-Man, who is "beyond good and evil," becomes the 
sovereign and arbitrary "creator" of the new values of his choice. But 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 117 

does he not thereby become himself the absolute norm and measure 
and the archenemy of relativism? 

Nietzsche, furthermore, advocates the moral self-determination of 
man: he demands that man should live in such a way that he can 
and must desire the "Eternal Recurrence," that is, the eternal repeti- 
tion of the cycle of his earthly existence. And yet, under the influence 
of Darwinism, Nietzsche preaches an amor job, that is, a rigid deter- 
ministic fatalism. 

Again, Nietzsche mournfully announces "the death of God," but 
he gives the lie to his avowed atheism by his never ending seeking 
and longing for "the unknown God," by his thirst for the eternal 
and the divine: "All the streams of my tears flow toward thce! And 
the flame of my heart burns for thce! Oh, come back to me, my 
unknown God! My sorrow and my ultimate happiness!" 

Nietzsche's final self-deification bears witness to the truth of Martin 
Luther's saying that "man worships either God or an idol." In other 
words, Nietzsche cannot evade the fact that man is essentially a 
"worshiping being" (ens adorans) and as such always pays homage to 
some "highest good" (summum bonum), either to God, the true 
"absolute," or to some pseudo-absolute, such as money, fame, power, 
"the race," "the state," "the nation," "society." In the case of Nietzsche 
his own ego usurps in the end the vacated throne of God. 

As Johannes B. Lotz points out, the objects of Nietzsche's attack 
are in the main three: Christianity, God, and Spirit (or Intellect). 14 "At 
the age of twelve," Nietzsche writes in retrospect, "I saw God in His 
splendor." The German critic suggests that this terse sentence perhaps 
refers to the one unique hour in which Nietzsche answered God's 
demand for a total self-surrender with a rebellious "non scrviam," so 
that henceforth the lonely thinker was destined to circle round the 
living flame of Divine Love like one of the fallen angels. 

Contrary to historical truth Nietzfeche began to see Christianity 
in the discoloration of Schopenhauer's pessimism. It was presented 
to him as a religion that demanded hatred and contempt of life, and 
thus he came to oppose to it his own eulogy of earthly existence. The 
spirit of the age and the conventionalized "bourgeois" religion of many 
of Nietzsche's contemporaries seemed to demonstrate furthermore 
that Go d had lost His power over men's minds and hearts. God was 

14 Cf. Johannes B. Lotz, S.J., Das ckristliche Ucnschepbild im Ringen der Zeit 
(Heidelberg, 1947), passim. 



n8 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

"dead," and man had to rebuild his existence without God and against 
God. Following Ludwig Feuerbach's line of reasoning, Nietzsche be- 
gan to regard God as an illusory phantom into which man had pro- 
jected his fears and hopes. Once the illusory nature of this god 
was recognized, man remained as the sole creator, and he had to 
safeguard his creative freedom from any future "divine" infringements. 

The consequences of the loss of God which Nietzsche experienced 
so strongly and disastrously in his own existence, he visualized in 
magnified proportions in the large context of contemporary Western 
civilization: "The greatest of recent events," he wrote in The Joyful 
Wisdom, "that 'God is dead' begins to cast its shadows over Europe. 
. . . We may expect a long sequence of breakdowns, destructions, rev- 
olutions ... an eclipse the like of which this earth has perhaps 
never seen before." 

Nietzsche's anti-intellectudism, finally, wants to confine human 
existence to man's bodily and earthly life. Man's salvation must come 
from "below," from the telluric forces of instincts and urges. Nie- 
tzsche's "new man" must reclaim these forces from an illusory 
"beyond" and must then utilize them for the construction of his this- 
worldly realm. The Man-God or Super-Man is an Ersatz-Gott func- 
tioning as the primary cause of a "new world" which in the eternal 
recurrence of its constitutive elements will manifest the superabund- 
ance of "Life." This is the new form of "eternity" that is born 
simultaneously with the new "Lord of the World." 

Nietzsche's concepts of Christianity, God, and Intellect represent 
merely the final phase of a historical evolution which took its start 
from the declaration of absolute human autonomy in the age of the 
Renaissance, an evolution which is carried to its logical conclusion in 
the self-deification of the Super-Man, the Man-God, who in his 
attempt to dethrone God strikes at the roots of his own self. 

When Nietzsche designates Christianity as the greatest antihuman 
force in the history of mankind, his distorted view evidently derives 
not only from Schopenhauer's atheism but also from his early indoc- 
trination with Martin Luther's doctrine of nature and grace. Orthodox 
Lutheranism had so radically divorced nature from supernature that 
everything natural, temporal, and human had been emptied of any 
eternal and metaphysical meaning. Man had been judged incapable of 
co-operating with divine grace and consequently incapable of "good 
works." But in the Gospels, Christ actually refers to Himself as "the 
Life" (John 14:6), stating that He has come "that they may have 



MAN-GOD OR GOD-MAN? 119 

Life, and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). Reborn in Christ, 
the God-Man, man is said to have become "a partaker of the divine 
nature" (2 Pet. 1:4) and a "son of God" (i John 3:1). This means 
that the life of grace does not destroy or mutilate human life and 
human nature but, on the contrary, saves them and preserves them. 
The Christian cross is thus, as Johannes Lotz points out, not the 
negation of lije, but the negation of death: it signifies the restoration 
of life in its integrity and plenitude. 

The "God" whose "death" Nietzsche announces bears no resemblance 
to the God of the Judaic-Christian tradition. This "God" is the same 
scurrilous specter that is satirized by Kierkegaard and Ibsen, that 
"good old uncle," the "God" of a complacent bourgeois society, who 
has been divested of all power and majesty: the guarantor of the 
safety and satiety of man's "everydayness," the conniving helper of 
man in the attainment of his selfish desires. Nietzsche's love of great- 
ness and heroism rose in revolt against such a "God." 

The Christian God is neither man's "chum" nor is He (as in the 
theology of Luther and Calvin) a total stranger to all human affairs 
and concerns. He is Personal Life in the highest degree and in 
infinite plenitude; a superabundant Life whose sheen is reflected in 
different shades of brightness in the being of all creatures. Because 
He is man's origin, ground, and end, He is also the guarantor of 
man's ultimate perfection and happiness. He is man's highest good and 
end so exclusively that no earthly, temporal, finite good is ever 
capable of fully satisfying the human heart which, in the words of 
St. Augustine, is restless until it finds rest in Him. Without God, 
therefore, human existence shrinks and withers away in meaning- 
lessncss and absurdity. Man's self-surrender to God, which for Nie- 
tzsche signifies abject self-enslavement, is fgr a Christian the highest 
form of self-affirmation and self-realization. In God he truly finds 
himself and acquires his authentic freedom, strength, and greatness. 

The Intellect, finally, is not, as Nietzsche contends, inimical to life 
but, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, "the highest degree of life" 
(supremus gradus vitae). It opens up for man the totally new 
perspectives of the infinite, the eternal, and the divine. And it is in 
virtue of his intellect that man may be said to be "capax Dei 9 , 9 that is, 
capable of embracing God by sharing in some measure in the Light of 
the Divine Intellect* 

But if Christianity values the human intellect so highly, does it 
do so perhaps at the expense and to the detriment of the human 



120 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

physis, man's bodily, "fleshly" existence? St. Augustine, in turning 
against the gloomy view which the Manichaean sect (and, later on, 
the "Reformers" and the "Puritans") took of human nature and the 
life of the body, emphasizes again and again that all natural and physi- 
cal life is metaphysically good because it is a creation of the "good 
God," whose goodness and glory it reflects. Catholic theology and 
philosophy insist in opposition to Lutheranism and Calvinism that 
even original sin could not completely corrupt human nature, a 
nature which has forever been redeemed, healed, and consecrated 
by the God-Man, who in His Incarnation assumed the physical nature 
of man. Thus in the integrally Christian view even the final and 
eternal status of man is not that of a pure spirit, but that of human 
nature in its totality: the renewed substantial union of soul and body. 
The fully or authentically human existence is therefore, as Kierke- 
gaard's insight had unwaveringly proclaimed, the totally Christian 
existence. 



CHAPTER FOUR 



THE CALL OF TRUTH AND BEING: 
HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 



THE contemporary Philosophy of Existence in all its branches is 
inspired by the thinking of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. As has been 
shown in some of the preceding chapters, this does not mean that 
the problem of existence was not faced and subjected to philosophic 
analysis long before the advent of the nineteenth century. Heraclitus, 
Socrates, St. Augustine, and Pascal as well as many of the great 
Christian mystics were undoubtedly genuine existential thinkers. What 
is new in contemporary existentialism is the visualization of human 
existence within the general frame and the specific conditions of the 
present age. 

In an almost completely secularized and disenchanted world the 
ancient questions concerning the nature of man and the meaning of 
life arc being asked with a new urgency. The loss of God in the 
widely disseminated philosophies of atheism, materialism, and natural- 
istic "humanism" has thrust modern man into a situation of spiritual 
abandonment and homelessness in which everything, including his 
own existence, has become questionable. Thus the problem of "to 
be or not to be" is once more forced upon him as an alternative 
involving self-preservation or self-annihilation. 

While the contemporary Philosophy of Existence presents in most 
of its discussions modern variations of the major themes of the 
existential thinking of the past, the orchestration of these themes 
as well as the technical nomenclature used in their elaboration stems 
to a large extent from the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. 
This in spite of the fact that Heidegger himself has repeatedly 
disavowed his association with "existentialism," insisting that his phil- 
osophy is primarily concerned with "being'* rather than with 
"existence." 

The existentialist themes, discussed by various authors in the 



122 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

terminology coined by Heidegger, include, among others: the con- 
tingency, insecurity, self-estrangement, and dereliction of human 
existence (Dasein); its ultimate meaning; its "temporality," "histor- 
icity," and "authenticity"; its "care," its "dread," and its encounter 
with the abyss of "nothingness"; its "being-toward-death" (Sein zum 
Tode) and "freedom-to ward-death"; the interrelation of "being" and 
"existence," "being" and "truth," "being" and "nothing:," "being" and 
"transcendence." The connotations implied in these philosophical and 
anthropological concepts and the conclusions educed from them vary 
according to the theological and metaphysical convictions of indi- 
vidual authors, but the questions and problems to which they refer 
are essentially the same. 

The method which is adopted by most of the contemporary existen- 
tialist thinkers for the analysis and elucidation of these basic problems 
is similarly uniform: it is the "phenomenological method" which 
was first developed by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), the founder of 
the school of Phenomenology. A native of the Bohemian province 
of Moravia, Husserl began his academic career as a mathematician. 
Having turned to philosophy under the influence of the German 
philosopher Friedrich Paulsen, it became the great ambition of 
HusserPs life and work to transform philosophy into an exact and 
absolutely trustworthy science. 1 From 1916 until 1929 he held the 
chair of philosophy at the University of Freiburg in Baden. He died 
in exile in Paris, and his last work, the Meditations Carttsicnnes, was 
written and published in the French language. In 1929, Martin 
Heidegger, HusserPs most promising and prominent pupil, became 
his successor in the University of Freiburg. 

Husserl acknowledged his indebtedness to the Wisscnschaftslchre of 
Bernhard Bolzano (1781-1848), and to the neo-Aristotelian "descrip- 
tive psychology" of Franz Brentano (1838-1917). Bolzano was a native 
of Bohemia and achieved international fame not only as a Catholic 
theologian but as an astute philosopher and mathematician. Brentano 
was a Catholic priest and at one time a distinguished member of the 
theological faculty in the University of Wurzburg in Lower Franconia. 
He came, however, into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities and 
was suspended from his priestly office and relieved of his academic 
duties. From 1874 to 1895 he was a lecturer at the University of 

1 Cf. especially Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (London; Allen 
and Unwin, 1931). 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 123 

Vienna, and the final years of his life were spent in retirement in 
Italy and Switzerland. 

With his distinguished teachers Husserl shared the conviction that 
in the present age more than ever philosophy must be able to present 
a doctrine and a truth of universal validity. What kind of truth is it, 
he asked, which can claim to provide an unshakable foundation for 
a universal science? It must be a truth, he answered his own question, 
that is absolutely univocal and immutable in its universality. Husserl 
thus showed himself strictly opposed to any kind of relativism. There 
must be, he argued, an essence of truth as there is an essence of every 
other idea, and this essence is reflected in all particular truths. Without 
this essential principle of truth the existence of the world would be 
impossible. Though truth in its essence transcends every contingent 
existent, it is the "intentional object'* of every true judgment of the 
human mind. This essence of truth, Husserl asserted, is revealed in 
a mental act of "intuition'* (Wesensschau). His philosophic position 
thus entails a realism of essences, that is, a form of epistemological 
realism as extreme and radical as that of Plato and Descartes. 

What is meant by HusserFs "intuition of essences'* may be illustrated 
by referring to the artistic or poetic experience as distinguished from 
scientific knowledge. In the natural sciences an object is understood 
and explained in terms of its visible and tangible elements, qualities, 
and functions. An aesthetic apperception of the object, on the other 
hand, is, according to the testimony of both creative artists and 
aesthetic theorists, of a more immediate and, at the same time, a more 
fundamental and comprehensive nature. The French novelist Flau- 
bert, for example, speaks in one of his letters of his "entering into the 
particular thing*' be it rock, plant, animal, or human being that 
he depicts in his writings. An artist who is interested in the essential 
nature of the world of objects a painter with the penetrating vision 
of a Michelangelo, a Greco, a Van Gogh starts, to be sure, from 
sense perception, but he goes far beyond it in rendering the essences 
of things and beings. There are then, it would seem, aspects of 
reality which are hidden from sense perception and inaccessible to it, 
but open to a different kind of mental or intellectual apperception. 
This is obviously what both Plato and Husserl have in mind when 
they speak of the knowledge of "Ideas" or "Essences,** respectively. 

In both kinds of perception sense knowledge and "eidetic" knowl- 
edge (or "ideation") something "real** is directly given and per- 
ceived. Husserl therefore repeatedly emphasizes that there is nothing 



124 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

"mystical" in such an "intuition of essences," even if the objects thus 
perceived are above and beyond sense perception. All "ideation," he 
insists, is rooted in sense objects and sense perceptions and can never 
dispense with them. The philosopher has to rely as much on the 
perceptive faculties of his senses as the painter has to rely on his 
optical vision, the composer on his sense of hearing, and the poet on 
both his eyes and his ears. What makes the artist is, however, not his 
faculties of visual, auditory, and tactual perception, but precisely his 
capacity to erect on the foundation of his sensory perceptions a new 
world and reality of higher validity and truth. And the reality and 
truth with which the philosopher is concerned are of a similar nature. 
Philosophy, according to Husserl, is thus not so much a science of 
facts as a science of essences (Wesenswi$senschaft)> and philosophic 
knowledge is not a knowledge of. facts but a knowledge of essences. 

Husserl calls the world of philosophic truths a world of ideal 
phenomena. They have, he says, no "real" existence in the sense in 
which existence is attributed to a rock or a tree or a dog, but neither 
do they have a purely "ideal" existence in the manner of Plato's 
"Ideas" or Kant's "things-in-themselves" (noumena). The Kantian 
Ding an sich remains unknowable: the human mind knows only its 
phenomenal manifestations as they "appear" in human consciousness. 
Husserl professes no interest in this central problem of the Kantian 
theory of knowledge. His own interest is centered in the elaboration 
of a science of the "pure phenomena" or "pure essences" of conscious- 
ness. Such "eidetic sciences" are, for example, pure geometry or pure 
arithmetic: they are sciences in which concepts are formed, judgments 
passed, and conclusions arrived at, independent of sense experience 
(a priori). Such purely mathematical concepts as number, triangle, 
and circle, Husserl calls pure essences, and he claims that such pure 
essences can also be encountered in a purified intellectual and philo- 
sophic intuition. He therefore proposes to analyze and describe such 
intellectual experiences in analogy with the mathematician's analysis 
and description of the objects and contents of physics. He thus 
develops his "phenomenological method" as an instrument to be used 
in the radical analysis of "pure consciousness." 

The phenomenological method in its application to the analysis of 
the contents of human consciousness demands the simple and unprej- 
udiced observation and description of those phenomena which are 
actually encountered either in sense perception or in "eidetic" percep- 
tion. As his starting point Husserl chooses the point of view of every- 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 125 

day life with its experience of a surrounding external world. In this 
familiar environment I perceive certain real and definite objects. But 
I may decide to shift my attention from such directly observed objects 
this desk, this inkstand, this bookshelf to any number of things 
which I know to be there, even if I do not observe them visually at 
the moment: the pictures on the wall behind my back, the lecture 
rooms and students in the building in which my office is located, 
the neighboring buildings, the gardens and playgrounds, and so on. 
All these things I know to be integral parts of my surrounding world, 
and the shifting of my attention to diem makes them the more or 
less clearly co-perceived contents of my consciousness. 

Into this natural experience of my everyday surroundings Husserl 
now proposes to introduce a radically different point of view. What 
would happen, he asks in effect, if I were to apply to these everyday 
experiences the principle of the Cartesian doubt? I might tell myself: 
it is possible that I am being deceived. I have the illusion that there 
is a desk with its utensils in front of me, and I merely imagine the 
existence of all those other things which, on the basis of previous 
observations, I had taken for granted. What, then, will remain if I 
call in question the existence of these supposedly "real" implements 
of my surrounding world? Nothing will remain but the experienced 
contents of my consciousness; for, no matter whether the objects of 
my experience are real or imagined, there can be no doubt that they 
are genuine experiences as contents of my consciousness. 

And what has happened to the "real" world in the process of 
HusscrPs "phenomenological reduction"? The external world of 
natural and normal everyday experience has simply been "discon- 
nected," "bracketed," "put out of play," together with all my precon- 
ceived beliefs, opinions, prejudices, and convictions in regard to existing 
objects. There remains nothing but the sphere of "pure conscious- 
ness" with its indubitable contents. If rigorously applied, Husserl 
claims, this "phenomenological method" will ultimately answer the 
epistemological question, "How is it possible to gain access to trans- 
cendent reality?" 

In all the transformations which a thing may undergo, there persists, 
according to Husserl, an identity and unity of certain essential features 
which remain unchanged. And phenomenological description is the 
description of these essential features. There are several degrees of 
evidence, and the final goal of phenomenological description is the 
attainment of an adequate evidence of the transcendent reality of 



126 . THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

the phenomenon. As a "science of essences" phenomenology thus aims 
at the recognition of the essential predicables that belong to individual 
objects. 

Attention has been called to the fact that Husserl acknowledged 
his indebtedness to the teachings of both Bolzano and Brentano. The 
question therefore suggests itself to what extent his Phenomenology 
shares in the philosophic heritage of the philosophic* perennis, that is, 
that broad and vital stream of philosophic thought which reached its 
crest in the synthetic digest of Greek and Christian speculation 
embodied in the works of the leading mediaeval scholastics, especially 
those of the Thomistic school. 2 

Both Husserl and St. Thomas Aquinas teach that truth exists objec- 
tively, independent of the seeker and knower. They disagree, how- 
ever, in their interpretation of the nature of Truth as such. For St. 
Thomas the object of the "first philosophy" (prima philosophia, i.e., 
metaphysics) is God. After having discussed the idea of God and 
the modes of His being and knowledge, he proceeds to a definition 
and description of the relationship which exists between the essence, 
existence, and knowledge of created beings and the essence, existence, 
and knowledge of God. In this connection St. Thomas also inquires 
into the capacity of human beings for knowing God, knowing them- 
selves, and knowing other created beings. Each being, he asserts, has 
received the mode and essence of its existence from God and, corre- 
spondingly, also its specific measure and manner of striving, feeling, 
and knowing, its specific grade and type of truth and perfection. 

As against this God-centered view of the world and of every created 
being in it, Husserl's Phenomenology presents a radical shift of accent 
and viewpoint. Taking its start from the human subject and his 
consciousness, Phenomenology remains ego-centered throughout; at 
no point does it achieve a genuine transcendence of the sphere of 
immanence. St. Thomas, on the other hand, knows of an order of 
intelligibility which not only transcends every created being but is 
prior to it, an order of which every created being partakes analog- 
ically. Intellectual knowledge, according to St. Thomas, is only possible 
in proportion to the range of intelligibility that is comprised in the 
object of knowledge. And while things and beings are thus known 
to some extent in their relation to the transcendent universal order 

2 Of. the author's A Realistic Philosophy (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 
I944> PP- 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 127 

of intelligibility, the range and mode of such knowledge is strictly 
proportionate to the capacity of the human intellect. 

"The human soul knows all things in the light of their eternal 
reasons,*' says St. Thomas. 3 He agrees with Husserl that the perceived 
objects or phenomena are the material cause of human knowledge, 
but he denies that they are its ultimate term. In St. Thomas' view 
this ultimate term and object of human knowledge is God and the 
Divine Intellect. The human intellect is described by him as "capax 
Dei" that is, as capable of being assimilated to some extent to the 
Divine Intellect in intellectual knowledge. 

The potentialities of the human intellect with regard to the pleni- 
tude of the intelligible order may, however, never be fully realized 
in statu viae (Le., in this earthly life), and for this reason every 
philosophy will ultimately remain fragmentary. St. Thomas points 
out that even material objects arc kxxown by man only imperfecdy 
and not with the richness and fullness of perfecdy comprehensive 
knowledge. And this more or less perfect knowledge comes to the 
human mind directly through created things but indirectly through 
the Divine Intellect, the infinite and eternal source, cause, and measure 
of all truth and all being. In the words of St. Augustine, "If we 
both recognize that truth is contained in what you say and in what 
I say: whence then comes our knowledge or vision of it? Neither 
do I see it in you, nor do you see it in me, but we both see it in 
that immutable Truth which is superior to our minds."* In short, the 
fhilosophia perennis holds that truth cannot be properly defined with- 
out referring it to God and the Divine Intellect. For if there were 
no absolute norm of things, prior to them and prior to finite minds, 
then every judgment regarding things would remain arbitrary, and 
any objectively certain articulation and. evaluation of both essences 
and existences would become impossible. 

Husserl, then, deviates from some of the basic tenets of the philo- 
sophia perennis when he assumes that the capacities of the human 
mind and the reaches of human knowledge are well-nigh unlimited. 
The fullness of truth exists, says St. Thomas with Husserl, but, he 
adds, only Divine knowledge and the Divine Mind can ever compre- 
hend and comprise it in its plenitude. HusserPs ideal goal, in other 
words, is realized only in Divine knowledge where being and knowing 
are one, whereas for the finite mind they are distinct and apart. 

3 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Tkeologica, la, qu. 84, a. 5. 
* St. Augustine, Confessions, XII, 25. 



128 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

Again, for St. Thomas all human knowledge is gained by way 
of the rational analytic and synthetic treatment of the data furnished 
by sense perception. Husserl, on the other hand, insists that philo- 
sophic evidence results from an "intuition of essences." The implied 
meaning seems to be, however, that the philosopher need not compare 
a number of objects before he proceeds to abstract from them their 
essential qualities, but that a single "intuitive" illumination reveals 
the essence in the individual object. Phenomenological "reduction" or 
abstraction means "looking away" ("bracketing") from all accidental 
qualities in order to concentrate on the essence of the object. St. 
Thomas, who assigns to the intellect the function of "intus-legcrc? 
that is, of reading and disclosing the essential natures ("rationes") of 
things, would in all probability have no quarrel with such an "intui- 
tion of essences." HusserFs conviction that this kind of "intuition" 
penetrates deeper into the world of existence than the traditional 
logical syllogism is shared by some leading Thomists. 

Husserl and St. Thomas, furthermore, seem united in their oppo- 
sition to any integral idealism and rationalism that regards the objects 
of knowledge as constructs or creations of the human mind and its 
innate categories. But whereas St. Thomas conceives of the analytical 
activity of reason as both active and passive, devoting considerable 
effort to the elucidation of the abstractive function of the "active 
intellect" (intellectus agens), Husserl asserts the primarily passive 
nature of rational intuitions. 

Husserl claims for his "intuition of essences" the same kind and 
degree of "immediacy" or self-evident truth that St. Thomas restricts 
to "first principles." 5 Phenomenological intuitions, in other words, are 
regarded by Husserl as a priori truths and thus beyond the jurisdiction 
of experience. Only in two other instances (aside from "first princi- 
ples") did St. Thomas admit such an immediate and a priori certitude 
of knowledge: one is the general knowledge of "the Good" (as 
distinguished from what is good in this or that particular instance 
or situation), which he describes as an a priori of practical reason; 
the other is the immediate experience and evidence which man has 
of his own existence. This latter is an a priori knowledge in the 
sense that it does not depend on any kind of demonstration. 

It had been HusserPs original endeavor to break down Kant's 
dogma of the rational inaccessibility of "things-in-themselves." His 

5 Cf. the author's A Realistic Philosophy, p. 33 ff. 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 129 

own realm of intuitively known essences was to replace Kant's Ding 
an sick. HusserPs philosophic interest, in other words, turned from 
the subject to that object which for Kant had remained an "ignotum 
X." In this original effort Husserl did, however, not persist: he never 
succeeded in actually reaching the sphere of transsubjective reality. 
St. Thomas succeeded where Husserl failed because he included in his 
approach to reality not only sense experience and intellectual experience 
but, in addition, the contents of revealed truth. While the focus of 
HusserPs Phenomenology is a purified transcendental consciousness, 
the focus of Thomistic philosophy is the creative and uncreated Being 
of God and His relationship to the various gradations of created being. 

n 

It had been HusserPs original intention to turn from the subjectivism 
of Kantianism to the objects themselves and to free the realm of 
essences from its lifeless rigidity in order to reveal its interrelation 
with concrete historical existences. This objective, which Husserl 
himself later on relinquished in favor of a Cartesian immanence of 
consciousness, reappears in the speculation of Martin Heidegger. For 
him as for Husserl, philosophy is primarily a reading of phenomena, 
but beyond that it is for Heidegger "a universal ontology, starting out 
from a hermeneutics (i.e., an ontological analysis and interpretation) 
of man." 6 On the basis of sense experience and side by side with it, 
HusserPs philosophy aspired to a supra-empirical "intuition of essences" 
(WesensscAau). Heidegger applies Phenomenology and its methodo- 
logical devices to a Philosophy of Existence which he wants to anchor, 
however, in a new "fundamental ontology." The central question, 
therefore, of Heidegger's philosophy concerns not "existence" but 
"Being." It reads: "What is Being and why is it?" or, in the phrasing 
which Leibniz had given to the same question, "Why is there some- 
thing rather than nothing?" 7 

Martin Heidegger was born in 1889 in the litde town of Messkirch 
in the German province of Baden, and he lives at present in seclu- 
sion at Todtnauberg in the Black Forest. "There on top of a moun- 
tain," writes Stefan Schimanski, "with the valley deep down below, 
with nothing but space and wilderness all around, in that small 
skiing hut, I spoke to the philosopher. . . . His living conditions 
were primitive; his books were few, and his only relationship to 

9 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (1927); 6th edition (Tubingen: Neomarius Verlag, I949) 

p. 37 . 
7 Cf. Leibniz, Principes de la nature et dcla grdce fondles en rdson. 



130 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

the world was a stack of writing paper. . . . The atmosphere of 
silence all around provided a faithful setting for Heidegger's philoso- 
phy. . . . The external world faithfully reflected the world of the 
mind . . . , the spirit of overwhelming solitude." 8 

Born and raised as a Roman Catholic, Heidegger shows himself 
well acquainted with the scholastic tradition in its Thomistic and 
Scotistic branches. His academic training proceeded at first under the 
influence of the Neo-Kantian school of Wilhelm Windelband and 
Heinrich Rickert and then brought him into contact with Husserl 
and his Phenomenology. He taught at the University of Marburg and, 
in 1929, succeeded Husserl at the University of Freiburg. In 1933, as 
rector of the latter institution, he delivered an address in which he 
expressed qualified approval of the National Socialist revolution. In 
1935, he declined Adolf Hidcr's invitation to accept the rectorate of 
the University of Berlin. After the defeat of Germany and the occu- 
pation of southern Baden by the French, Heidegger, for political 
reasons, was not permitted to resume his teaching. 9 

Heidegger's first published work was his inaugural dissertation 
(for the university lectureship), dealing with Duns Scotus' doctrine 
of Categories. 10 Part One of his masterpiece, Sein und Zeit (Being and 
Time), representing two of the originally planned six sections of the 
work, appeared in 1927. Part Two is still unpublished. The essays 
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, On the Essence of Cause (or 
"Ground"), and What is Metaphysics?, were published in 1929. The 
first was a reinterpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the 
second (dedicated to Husserl on the occasion of his seventieth birth- 
day) a discussion of the problem of "transcendence," and the third 
a new and critical approach to the problem of metaphysics. 11 Three 

8 Cf. Existence and Being, with an introduction by Werner Brock (Chicago: Henry 
Regnery Company, 1949)9 P- io This work represents the first English paraphrase, 
translation, and interpretation of some of Heidegger's major writings. Compiled by 
the co-operative effort of Werner Brock, Stefan Schimanski, Douglas Scott, R. F. C. 
Hull, and Alan Crick (all of England), it contains a summary account of Sein und 
Zeit and both outlines and translations of the essays HolderUns Gedicht: Andenfan 
(*943)> Holdcrlin und das Wesen der Dichtung (1936), Dber das Wesen der Wahrheit 
(1943), and Was ist Metaphysitf Mb einem Nachwort (1929, 1943). 

9 Officially Professor Emeritus, he has, in the meantime, been given a Lehrauftrag, 
Le., he is conducting seminars and offering a few specified lecture courses. 

10 & Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus (1916). 

und das Problem der lAetaphystkj tiber das Wesen des Grundes; Was ist 
(1929); the latter was republished with a Postscript (1943). 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 131 

studies dealing with the German poet Friedrich Holderlin were pub- 
lished in 1936, 1941, and 1942." Two additional works appeared in 
the postwar period: an analysis of Plato's Doctrine of Truth, with an 
appended Letter on Humanism, addressed to M. Jean Beaufret of 
Paris, and a volume entitled Holzwcge, containing essays on Anaxi- 
mander, Hegel, Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilkc, and on several other 
subjects related to philosophy, art, and literature. 18 

Heidegger is "a peasant by birth and tradition," says Schimanski, 
and this is precisely the way the author of this book remembers his 
onetime teacher: stocky, sturdy, and stubborn, rooted in the maternal 
earth of his homeland, wrapped up in his search for truth and scarcely 
interested in enticing others to follow him on his lonely path. That 
Heidegger has found many such followers nevertheless and that the 
influence of his thought extends today far beyond the boundaries of 
Germany is not at all attributable to his own efforts; he has, on the 
contrary, done everything possible to render difficult the access to 
his philosophy. First of all, he has created a philosophic language 
and terminology all his own, frequently either reverting to the long- 
forgotten root meanings of words and concepts, or coining new ones 
to satisfy his groping quest for an adequate verbal expression of his 
ideas. He has, "furthermore, abandoned time-honored ways of thinking 
to an extent that makes it almost impossible to fit his philosophic 
concepts into any established categories. It is thus hardly surprising, 
and at least pardy his own fault, that he has been so often misun- 
derstood and misinterpreted, especially by non-German thinkers who 
must of necessity find his modes of thinking puzzling and discon- 
certing. The fact, finally, that Heidegger's terminology and principal 
concepts have experienced an almost complete perversion of their 
original meaning at the hands of Jean-Paul Sartre (cf. Chapter 
Seven) has added to the confusion and has multiplied the difficulties 
of interpretation. 

Heidegger's philosophy is usually associated with the contemporary 
movement of "existentialism," although the philosopher has himself 
repeatedly disavowed any such association. He has been accused of 
atheism, immoralism, antihumanism, and outright nihilism, notwith- 
standing the fact that Heidegger has at various times convincingly 

^Holderlin und das Wcsen der Dichtung; Holderlins Hymne: Wic wenn am 
Feiertag. . . ; Holderlins Gedicht: Andenfyen. 

18 Platens Lekre von der Wahrheit. Hit einem Brief ubcr den "Humanismus" (Bern: 
A. Franckc, 1947). Holzwcge (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostcrmann, 1950). 



i 3 o THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

the world was a stack of writing paper. . . . The atmosphere of 
silence all around provided a faithful setting for Heidegger's philoso- 
phy. . . . The external world faithfully reflected the world of the 
mind . . . , the spirit of overwhelming solitude." 8 

Born and raised as a Roman Catholic, Heidegger shows himself 
well acquainted with the scholastic tradition in its Thomistic and 
Scotistic branches. His academic training proceeded at first under the 
influence of the Neo-Kantian school of Wilhelm Windelband and 
Heinrich Rickert and then brought him into contact with Husserl 
and his Phenomenology. He taught at the University of Marburg and, 
in 1929, succeeded Husserl at the University of Freiburg. In 1933, as 
rector of the latter institution, he delivered an address in which he 
expressed qualified approval of the National Socialist revolution. In 
1935, he declined Adolf Hitler's invitation to accept the rectorate of 
the University of Berlin. After the defeat of Germany and the occu- 
pation of southern Baden by the French, Heidegger, for political 
reasons, was not permitted to resume his teaching. 9 

Heidegger's first published work was his inaugural dissertation 
(for the university lectureship), dealing with Duns Scotus' doctrine 
of Categories. 10 Part One of his masterpiece, Sein und Zeit (Being and 
Time), representing two of the originally planned six sections of the 
work, appeared in 1927. Pan Two is still unpublished. The essays 
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, On the Essence of Cause (or 
"Ground"), and What is Metaphysics?, were published in 1929. The 
first was a reinterpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the 
second (dedicated to Husserl on the occasion of his seventieth birth- 
day) a discussion of the problem of "transcendence," and the third 
a new and critical approach to the problem of metaphysics. 11 Three 

8 Cf. Existence and Being, with an introduction by Werner Brock (Chicago: Henry 
Regnery Company, 1949), p. zof. This work represents the first English paraphrase, 
translation, and interpretation of some of Heidegger's major writings. Compiled by 
the co-operative effort of Werner Brock, Stefan Schimanski, Douglas Scott, R. F. C. 
Hull, and Alan Crick (all of England), it contains a summary account of Sein und 
Zeit and both outlines and translations of the essays Holderlins Gedicht: Andenken 
(1943), Holderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung (1936), Ufa das Wesen der Wahrheit 
(1943), and Was ist Metaphysik? Mit einem Nachwort (1929, 1943). 

9 Officially Professor Emeritus, he has, in the meantime, been given a Lehraujtrag, 
i.e., he is conducting seminars and offering a few specified lecture courses. 

10 Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus (1916). 

XL Kant und das Problem der Metaphysics O&er das Wesen des Grundes; Was ist 
Metaphysitf (1929); the latter was ^published with a Postscript (1943). 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 131 

studies dealing with the German poet Friedrich Holdcrlin were pub- 
lished in 1936, 1941, and I942. 12 Two additional works appeared in 
the postwar period: an analysis of Plato's Doctrine of Truth, with an 
appended Letter on Humanism, addressed to M. Jean Beaufret of 
Paris, and a volume entided Holzwege, containing essays on Anaxi- 
mander, Hegel, Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, and on several other 
subjects related to philosophy, art, and literature. 18 

Heidegger is "a peasant by birth and tradition," says Schimanski, 
and this is precisely the way the author of this book remembers his 
onetime teacher: stocky, sturdy, and stubborn, rooted in the maternal 
earth of his homeland, wrapped up in his search for truth and scarcely 
interested in enticing others to follow him on his lonely path. That 
Heidegger has found many such followers nevertheless and that the 
influence of his thought extends today far beyond the boundaries of 
Germany is not at all attributable to his own efforts; he has, on the 
contrary, done everything possible to render difficult the access to 
his philosophy. First of all, he has created a philosophic language 
and terminology all his own, frequently either reverting to the long- 
forgotten root meanings of words and concepts, or coining new ones 
to satisfy his groping quest for an adequate verbal expression of his 
ideas. He has, furdiermore, abandoned time-honored ways of thinking 
to an extent that makes it almost impossible to fit his philosophic 
concepts into any established categories. It is thus hardly surprising, 
and at least pardy his own fault, that he has been so often misun- 
derstood and misinterpreted, especially by non-German thinkers who 
must of necessity find his modes of thinking puzzling and discon- 
certing. The fact, finally, that Heidegger's terminology and principal 
concepts have experienced an almost complete perversion of their 
original meaning at the hands of Jean-Paul Sartre (cf. Chapter 
Seven) has added to the confusion and has multiplied the difficulties 
of interpretation. 

Heidegger's philosophy is usually associated with the contemporary 
movement of "existentialism," although the philosopher has himself 
repeatedly disavowed any such association. He has been accused of 
atheism, immoralism, antihumanism, and outright nihilism, notwith- 
standing the fact that Heidegger has at various times convincingly 

^Holderlin und dot Wescn der Dichtung; HolderUns Hymns: Wie wenn am 
Feiertag. . . ; HolderUns Gedicht: Anden^en. 

13 Platans Lckre von dcr Wahrhcit. Mit einem Brief aber den "Humanismus" (Bern: 
A. Francke, 1947). Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1950). 



132 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

refuted all these charges, most recently in his revealing Letter on 
Humanism (cf. p. 144 ft). While the Belgian Thomist A. de Waehlens, 
in his comprehensive monograph, 14 concurs in the negative evaluation 
of Heidegger's philosophy, the Catholic philosopher Max Miiller, who 
at present occupies Heidegger's former chair in the University of 
Freiburg, as well as the German Jesuit, Johannes B. Lotz, who at 
one time was one of Heidegger's pupils, suggest a much more positive 
approach and arrive at the conclusion that Heidegger's thinking is 
informed by deeply Christian impulses. 15 Friend and foe, however, 
are in agreement as to the highly original and provocative nature of 
the German thinker's basic ideas. It is also interesting to recall that 
at the Philosophic Congress held at the University of Cuyo in the 
city of Mendoza in Argentina in 1949, a large number of the papers 
presented dealt with the major problems thrust into the limelight 
by Heidegger's speculation, and that among those who followed 
Miiller and Lotz in their constructive critical appraisal were several 
leading Spanish Thomists. 16 

"I am not primarily concerned with existence," Heidegger told 
Stefan Schimanski on the occasion of the latter's visit with the recluse 
of the Black Forest "My book bears the tide Being and Time, not 
'Existence and Time. 1 For me the haunting question is and has been, 
not man's existence, but 'being-in-totality' and 'being as such.'" In 
other words, Heidegger is primarily interested in ontology, not in 
anthropology. 

It is true nevertheless that the central concept in the published 
part of Being and Time is "existence," not "being," and it is this 
fact, among others, that has led to the adoption of the term "existen- 
tialism" to designate certain trends in contemporary philosophy that 
show the influence of Heidegger's major work. Why then Heidegger's 
protestation that he has no affiliation with "existentialism"? Because for 
him "existence" and "man in existence" or "existence in man" is merely 
a starting point and a means for the illumination of Being as such, 
that is, for the elaboration of a universal and fundamental ontology. 
Schimanski states quite correcdy that Heidegger's philosophy begins 
where that of Sartre ends. 

** QE. A. de Waehlens, La Philosophic de Martin Heidegger (Louvain, 1942). 

15 Cf. Max Miiller, Existenzphilosophie im geistigen Leben der Gegenwart (Heidel- 
berg: F. H. Kerle, 1949); and Johannes B. Lotz, S.J., Das chnsiliche Menschenbild im 
Kngen der Zeit (Heidelberg: F. H. Kerle, 1947). 

18 QE. Oswaldo Robles, En torno al primer Congreso Argentine de Fihtofia (Mexico: 
Abade, SHI, 4, 1949), p. 435 fL 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 133 

It is Heidegger's contention that the inquiry into the meaning of 
"Being" was the central problem of occidental philosophy, from the 
Pre-Socratics down to Hegel, but that after Hegel the problem fell 
almost completely into oblivion. "Being" was, as it were, henceforth 
taken for granted; it was treated as if it were something self-evident, 
and it is being made use of in an extremely vague manner in all human 
knowledge, in all statements and judgments, in all human behavior. 
Kierkegaard profoundly speculated on the problem of human existence, 
but owing to the fact that his own thinking was negatively determined 
by Hegel's essentialism, the problem of "Being" and the interpenetra- 
tion of existence and "Being" escaped him almost completely. He 
criticized Hegel for having omitted or suppressed the actual existence 
of the individual, and he offered his own "existentialism" as a means to 
aid himself and others in the practical ethical and religious conduct of 
life. True existential thinking, however, is, according to Heidegger, 
intimately related to both theoretical insight and practical conduct. 

In his attempt to inquire anew into the meaning of "Being," Heideg- 
ger's first objective is the ontological analysis of human existence. What 
does it mean when I say: "I am?" Is the meaning the same as when 
I say: "a stone is," "a tree is," "a dog is"? And if the meaning is not 
the same, what is the difference? In short, what is the meaning of 
"is" in each of these statements? Heidegger answers that, while 
stones, plants, and brutes certainly exist, they lack the means to 
illuminate the meaning of their existence. Human life, however, 
differs ontologically from the life of all other existents in that it 
alone is and must of necessity be concerned about its Being and its 
potentialities. And human life alone is capable of piercing the mystery 
of its own existence. It alone makes genuine choices and decisions. 
It may gain full possession of itself and thus exist authentically, or it 
may lose itself and disintegrate into an unauthentic form of existence. 

To carry on his ontological analysis Heidegger makes use of HusserPs 
"phenomenological method." To describe the way man exists, in 
contradistinction to other beings, he uses the term Dasein ("being- 
there"). Human Dasein "ex-sists" rather than "in-sists," that is, it does 
not "stand in itself' like things or plants or brutes, but it "stands 
out" comprehendingly into that boundless realm of "being" from 
which it receives its own meaning and which imparts to it the 
understanding of its own self as well as the understanding of the 
being of every other existent. In its "cxistentialistic" structure human 
Dasein thus differs ontologically from all other existents. While these 



i 3 4 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

latter arc either simply "vorhanden" (present, at hand) or "zuhanden" 
(at man's disposal, e.g., man-made tools, such as a saw or a hammer), 
man alone can learn to know by insight into his own existence the 
absolute ontological ground of everything that is and can thus prepare 
himself for the humble and obedient acceptance of the mandates of 
"Being." 

Human Dasein is, furthermore, "being-in-the-world," and in this 
respect too man's mode of being differs essentially from the ways in 
which other existents (trees, stars, animals) are in the world. Man, 
as existing, is actively related to the objects and beings which surround 
him, and without his active insertion into the world, knowledge would 
be impossible. If man tries to withdraw himself from the world in 
detached observation, he perceives only the external aspects of things 
but fails to penetrate into their essential meaning. To seize reality, man 
must live and act. The external world, in turn, has no complete 
existential autonomy: it is rather a constitutive element of human 
Dasein, the subject matter and term of human action, a potential 
means for the realization of human existence. The world is the "space" 
which in the sum total of its implements is related to man and the 
indispensable condition of his Dasein. 

In his ontological analysis of the structure of human Dascin, Heideg- 
ger distinguishes several modes or " existentidia!' The most important 
among these are "Befindlichfyit' (the way in which man is "placed" 
in life and in the world), "Verstehen" (the understanding of the 
dominant purpose or end. for the sake of which man exists, and the 
understanding of the potentialities of his being), and "Rede" (the 
faculty of speech, including listening and silence). 

In order to point out the difference between authentic and unauthen- 
tic existence, Heidegger proceeds from an analysis of the banality of 
everyday life ("AlltaglichfaiS') and refers to a potentiality of human 
Dasein which he terms "das Verfallen" (the "falling away," disinte- 
gration). Who is this, he asks, who in "everydayness" exists in the 
world and with others? It is not the individual, private ego, he 
answers, with its genuine intentions, endeavors, and possibilities, but 
an anonymous and featureless public ego ("das Man"), the "one- 
like-many," shirking personal responsibility and taking its cues from 
the conventions of those who live en masse. 

Das Man thinks, believes, speaks, behaves as "one does" and thus 
expresses the conformist leveling which characterizes the average 
human life. Das Man has fallen a prey to the things in the world 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 135 

and has become alienated from authentic human purposes and possi- 
bilities. It expresses itself and communicates with others not in 
genuine speech (Rede) but in conventional, superficial chatter (Gcrede). 
The atmosphere of publicity in which das Man moves begets either 
a satiety which rests on the pretense that everything is in the best 
of order and that the momentum of a stale inertia must under no 
circumstances be disturbed, or it generates a restless activity that leaps 
from distraction to distraction, in its craving for ever new surface 
impressions and sensations (Neugier), in its indifference to any 
essential insight and understanding. In either case the result is a 
"self-estrangement" (Selbstentfremdung) of human existence, leading 
eventually to the blotting out of its potentialities and to its disinte- 
gration in the irrelevancy of everyday life. 

To exist authentically docs not mean, however, that one has to 
disown or discard all the attitudes of everyday life. Such a demand 
would be impossible of fulfillment, since man exists and must continue 
to exist in die world and with others. Authentic existence is some- 
thing decisively different from everyday life nevertheless, because it 
makes man capable of seeing his everyday life in an entirely new 
perspective. Heidegger follows at this point a line of thought which 
seems to have been suggested by Kierkegaard's category of "repeti- 
tion": Kierkegaard's "knight of infinite resignation," having arrived at 
the highest religious level of existence, makes an act of absolute and 
unconditional renunciation, but he is rewarded in the end by receiving 
back in 1 a richer and fuller measure everything he has surrendered. 
This is true as much of Abraham, the "knight of faith," as of Job, 
the "knight of infinite resignation." Having surrendered all things to 
God, their total detachment actually restores all things to them: they 
now really possess them rather than being possessed by them. With 
Kierkegaard or with St. John of the Cross this perfect sacrificial 
offering carries, of course, a strictly religious significance, but the 
religious undertones are still audible in Heidegger's philosophic 
argument. 

Human Dasein, as has been stated, differs from other modes of 
existence in that it is always concerned about its Being and its 
possibilities. It is permeated and saturated by "care" (Sorge). As a 
preliminary for the analysis of "care" Heidegger first inquires into 
the ontological character of "dread" (Angst). And again Kierkegaard's 
"concept of dread" provides the psychological setting for Heidegger's 
ontological analysis. 



136 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

Both Kierkegaard and Heidegger distinguish between "dread" and 
"fear": while the object of fear is always something definite of which 
man is afraid, the object of dread is "that indefinite something which 
is nothing" (Le., no thing). What threatens is found nowhere in 
particular, and yet, it is everywhere. What is dreaded is the world 
as such and one's "being-in-the-world." The struggle with "dread" and 
its outcome ultimately determines whether man finds himself in the 
ground of "Being" or whether he is swallowed up and annihilated in 
"nothingness." 

Man discovers and discloses the world in which he exists by way 
of those objects among which he moves, about which he is concerned 
and cares, and to which he attends. And to illustrate the all-pervasive- 
ness of "care" in human Dascin, Heidegger alludes to an ancient 
Roman fable which also inspired some of the scenes in the second 
part of Goethe's Faust: "One day," the story reads, "when Care was 
crossing a river, she noticed some clay on the river bank. She took 
up a piece and began to fashion it. While she was still reflecting on 
what she had fashioned, Jupiter arrived on the scene. Care asked 
btn> to give this form of day a soul, which Jupiter promptly did. 
But then a dispute arose between Care and Jupiter: each wanted to 
give his own name to the new creature. And while they were still 
arguing, Earth came along and insisted that her name be given to 
the creature, since it was she who had provided it with a body. The 
three of them thereupon called in Saturn to judge their dispute. 
'Jupiter,' said Saturn, 'since you have given this thing a soul, you 
shall receive this creature after its death; you Earth, shall in the 
end receive its body; but since Care first shaped this creature, she 
shall possess it as long as it lives. And as for the quarrel over the 
creature's name let it be called man (homo), since it has been 
fashioned out of earth (humo)" Human Dascin, says Heidegger, 
is "thrown" into a world not of its own making, and it is left there in 
its "thrownness" (Geworfenheii) to "care," to engage itself and concern 
itself, using its own devices and acting under its own responsibility. 

in 

Section Two of Being and Time discusses the "temporality" (Zeit- 
lichJ(cit) and "historicity" (Geschichtlichfaif) of human Dascin. From 

17 Of. William Barrett, What is Existentialism? (New York: Partisan Review Scries, 
No. a, 1947), p. 32. 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 137 

its very beginning, Heidegger asserts, philosophic thought intimately 
linked the meaning of "Being" with the phenomenon of "Time." 
And the understanding of the "temporality" of Dasein, in its relations 
to the dimensions of past, present, and future, opens up the "horizon" 
for a new interpretation of "Being." 

Heidegger begins this second major part of his investigation with 
two fundamental questions: (i) in what way can Dasein be approached 
and analyzed as a "whole" (im Ganzen), in its totality? And (2) in 
what way can Dasein be established as "authentic"? The first question 
is answered by the statement that to envisage Dasein as a whole it is 
necessary to understand it as "being-toward-death" (Sein zum Tode). 
For death, being the "end" of Dasein, completes and integrates it. 
Death my own death, viewed as an ever present possibility is part 
of the Being of Dasein. As soon as Dasein exists, it is "thrown" into 
this possibility, and this "being thrown" reveals itself in "dread." 

According to an old proverb, "As soon as we are born, we are old 
enough to die." Death is thus an "end" of human Dasein in the sense 
that it may cut short my existence at any moment. In other words, 
my life is not a long, smooth, well-laid-out road, at the end of 
which the event of death occurs, but death permeates as it were my 
existence from the moment I am "thrown" into the world. 

Among Christian thinkers no one has perhaps more profoundly 
experienced and expressed the "bemg-toward-death" of human Dasein 
than St. Augustine. "From the first moment that we find ourselves in 
a mortal body," writes the Bishop of Hippo, "something happens 
within us which steadily leads us toward death. . . . Each one of us 
is nearer death a year hence than he was a year ago, nearer tomorrow 
than he was today, nearer today than yesterday, nearer in a little 
while than he is now, nearer now than a short while ago. Each span 
of life shortens the length of life, and that which remains of it 
becomes smaller and smaller with every passing day; and thus our 
entire lifetime is nothing but a racing toward death, in the course 
of which no one is permitted to stop for a little while or to slow 
down his walk: all are forced to keep in step, all are driven on to 
the same speed." 18 

Since death not only completes Dasein but also terminates it, I can 
never have an adequate experience or understanding of the actual 
transition from life to death. I may have a more or less detached 

18 St. Augustine, De ciritate Dei, XHI, 10. 



i 3 8 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

and somewhat abstract experience of the death of others, but such 
an experience no matter how much I may be stricken by the 
death of a beloved person is of no relevance for the understanding 
of my own death. I can only learn to understand that I have to die 
my own death and that no one can relieve me of this my personal 
and private destiny. Kierkegaard's reflections on death, especially those 
attributed to Johannes Climacus in the Unscientific Postscript (cf. p. 
47), have undoubtedly lent their persuasiveness to Heidegger's 
argument. 

To envisage death as a genuine potentiality of the Being of Dasein, 
it is necessary to consider the way death appears in die context of 
everyday existence. In the no man's land of the anonymous Man the 
stark reality of death is obscured or neutralized. One reads about 
deaths in the obituary columns of the daily newspapers, one attends 
public funerals, one observes certain rules and conventions laid down 
by das Man, and one tries at the same time every possible trick 
to reduce the actuality of one's own death to some such abstract and 
detached proposition as "all men are mortal." The result is the self- 
estrangement of Dasein from its genuine potentiality of Being. The 
authentic understanding of my own "being-toward-death," on the 
other hand, restores to me my true selfhood; it personalizes me, and 
it also imparts to me true insight into the Being of my fellowmen. In 
virtue of the "resoluteness" (Entschlossenheit} with which I face my 
own death I am freed from the bondage of those inconsequential 
concerns and activities which engulf the everyday existence of das 
Man. By overcoming in my "freedom-toward-death" the self-delusions 
of das Man, I can at last arrive at an understanding of my Dasein as a 
"whole." 

Heidegger's second question, referring to the problem of the "authen- 
ticity" of Dasein, calls for an ontological analysis of the three phenom- 
ena of "conscience," "guilt," and "resolve." The "call" of conscience 
appeals to the selfhood of man; it calls him back from the anonymity 
of das Man. This call itself issues from the innermost self of man 
and is generated by "care." "Conscience reveals itself as the call of 
Care," says Heidegger. "Guilt" points to an intrinsic and original 
deficiency or privation of Dasein. Only by entering into the prospect 
of guilt can man open himself to his authentic potentiality of existence. 
And he projects himself into this potentiality by his "resolve," thus 
imparting to his Dasein an authentic lucidity. "Resolve" makes possi- 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 139 

blc genuine "choice"; it begets action in concrete situations and the 
strength to master them. 

Resolute, authentic Dasein lives in the fulfilled moment and has 
become capable of relating itself to future, past, and present, the three 
dimensions of "temporality." They unveil temporality as a "being- 
outside-itself" (an ex-statifyn) and are therefore called by Heidegger 
the three "ex-stases." 

The authentic understanding of "Being" is grounded, according 
to Heidegger, in "historicity" and is transmitted in the history of 
civilization. "Historicity" designates the specific kind of motion or 
movement that occurs in human history, in contradistinction to any 
kind of physical and mechanical motion. History, the recorded annals 
of the "happenings" (das Geschehen) of human Dasein, places man 
within the monumental frame of the social and national community. 
The true historian is capable of disclosing the history of the past in 
its potentialities with such forcefulness that its implications for the 
present and the future become evident. He is, in the words of the 
German romanticist Friedrich Schlegel, "a retrospective prophet." In 
his discussion of these problems of historiography Heidegger specifically 
refers to Nietzsche's essay On the Use and Abuse of History (cf. p. 
76 ff ) and states that the authentic historian should be able to present 
a synthetic unity of "monumental," "antiquarian," and "critical" 
historiography. 

IV 

The analyses of Part One of Being and Time were to unfold "the 
transcendental horizon" of the problem of Being. Part Two was to 
present a critical inquiry into the central doctrines of Aristotle, Des- 
cartes, and Kant, and to point the way for contemporary philosophy 
to overcome the subjectivism of modern thinking. The several essays 
which Heidegger published since the appearance of the first part of 
his major work in 1927, are all organically related to these funda- 
mental themes of Being and Time. There is, however, an unmistak- 
able shift of emphasis from existence to "Being," and Heidegger, 
furthermore, shows increasing interest in the interrelation of philoso- 
phy and poetry. In the essay On the Essence of Truth he describes 
the philosopher as "a wanderer into the neighborhood of Being." 

The interrelation of philosophy and literature, Heidegger declares, 
was closest in ancient Greece, especially in the age of the Pre-Socratics. 



i 4 o THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

Man was then the "guardian" of Being and dwelled in its intimate 
proximity. And this closeness to "Being" is the distinguishing mark 
of the true philosopher and the true poet in every age. Their 
creative thinking has its source in the "ground of the Truth of 
Being." 

The problem of Truth as such, Heidegger states, is inseparably 
linked with the problem of Being. But the original meaning of Truth 
has become obscured in the course of the history of philosophy. The 
Greek term ^-A^cia describes truth as an "un-covering" or "un-veiling" 
(Entbergung) as opposed to the "concealment" (Verbergung) of 
untruth. Truth as such, according to Heidegger, is essentially one and 
indivisible. He subsequently criticizes and tries to refute as incomplete 
and inconclusive the scholastic saying, v eritas est adaequatio rei et 
intdlectus (truth expresses an adequate assimilation of the intellect 
and the thing), a criticism which seems to indicate that Heidegger 
misunderstands the implications of this time-honored definition. For, 
as Etienne Gilson points out, to understand this scholastic sentence 
correctly, it is necessary to call attention to the meaning it has "in 
the existential ontology of St. Thomas Aquinas. . . . The assimilation 
of the intellect to reality which defines truth, is legitimately affirmed 
in a doctrine in which the intellect, in the process of reflecting on 
itself, finds itself capable of becoming reality. . . ." 19 

When Heidegger speaks of the "overtness" (das Offene) in which 
the vast realm of beings is "opened up," he evidently (yet unwittingly) 
repeats in modern phraseology Aristotle's and St. Thomas's "anima 
est quodammodo omnict' (the human soul is in a way all things). 20 
The knowing intellect receives into itself the "form" of the thing 
known and in some way "becomes" that thing by a process resulting 
in a mysterious synthesis of the knower and the object known. All 
knowledge, in other words, leads to an expansion or enlargement of 
the being of the knowing subject. 

According to Thomistic doctrine, all things are knowable only, 
however, because they are ontological manifestations of the supreme 
knowledge of God: Scientia Dei est causa rerum (God's knowledge 
is the cause of all things). In short, without the Eternal Ideas of 

i*"L' adequation de I'inteUect tut reel, qui definit la veritt Saffirme Itgitimement 
dans une doctrine oh, rcfttchissant sur soi-meme, I'inteUect se dScouvre capable de 
devenxr la realitf: secundum hoc cognoscit tteritatem intellectus, quod supra se reflecti- 
sur" Etienne Gilson, Le Thomisme (Paris: Vrin, 1948), pp. 326 and 331. 

* St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa TAeohgica, la, qu. 14, a. x. 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 141 

the Divine Intellect there would not only be no knowable objects, 
but no objects at all. Both the knowing subject and the known object 
participate in the plenitude of the Divine Being. 21 And St. Thomas 
would certainly agree with Heidegger that only in this kind o "overt- 
ness" an adequation of a thing and an intellectual proposition has 
meaning and becomes possible. This "overtness" is the enduring and 
indispensable condition not only of all prepositional truth, but of all 
human civilization, all human knowledge, and all purposive action. 

The problem of Truth in all its magnitude was, according to 
Heidegger, faced for the first time when some of the early Greek 
thinkers in profound astonishment asked the question, "What is all 
that which is?" This question marked not only the beginning of 
the history of philosophy and metaphysics but also of history and 
civilization. To ask such a question the thinker had first to withdraw 
from the everyday view of things, in a way analogous to the with- 
drawal described by Plato in the famous parable of the "cave." 22 
Liberated from the fetters of das Man, the philosopher ascends into 
the light of the "sun" of Truth. When he finally descends again "into 
the cave," he is able to convey to his fellowmen the insight he has 
gained. 

Truth thus consists in the "uncovering," in the bringing back into 
"the open" that which is. Man, in the process of this "uncovering" 
of the being of things, enters into Dascin. The early Greek thinkers 
revealed for the first time what it means to be or to exist "in truth." 
And while this insight into the Truth of Being liberates man for 
authentic existence, the previous "concealment" of the Truth of 
Being had held man imprisoned in untruth and error. True philosophy, 
Heidegger concludes, is always obedient to ag.d a servant of "Being." 



Heidegger's Holderlin essays 28 are reflections and meditations on 
philosophy and poetry and their interrelation. Holderlin, who gave 

21 Cf. the authors A Realistic Philosophy, p. 93 f. 

22 C. Plato, Politeia (The Republic), VH, 5i4a, 2 to 5173, 7. 

23 Fricdrich Holderlin (1770*1843) was a German poet affiliated with both the 
classical and romantic periods of German letters. A native of the province of Swabia, 
he studied Protestant theology at the University of Tubingen and in his youth associated 
with Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel, although as a poet and thinker he stands all by 
himself. Like the hero of his novel Hyperion he lived as a "hermit" in the midst of 
a society which could offer no satisfactory answer to his longing for a unified 
Weltanschauung. In tragic isolation he sought in vain to bridge the chasm between 



142 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

such profound expression to his insight into the metaphysical nature 
of poetry, is for this reason for Heidegger "the poet of the poet." In 
Heidegger's view, Holderlin felt himself to be an intermediary be- 
tween "the gods" and the people, trying to communicate to men what 
he had learned of "the gods," and to "name the holy" The age in 
which Holderlin lived and wrote is, with only minor modifications, 
also the age and cultural environment of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and 
Heidegger: an age in which "the old gods" have sunk into oblivion 
and "the new God" has not yet appeared. God "withholds His 
presence," and "holy names are lacking." 

In the modern age "the God remains afar," no matter how hard 
man labors to fill the void by the invention of substitute "gods." In 
such an age the one necessary thing is, according to Heidegger, to 
persevere and to be ready for the time when the word that could 
reverently and convincingly "name" the High One will be granted 
again. The Holderlin essays, says Heidegger, "make no claim to be 
contributions to research in the history of literature and aesthetics. 
They arose from a necessity of thought." 

Poetry is for Heidegger what it was for Holderlin: not an embel- 
lishment of human existence and not a mere phenomenon of culture 
but rather the deepest "ground of human history," guiding and 
inspiring human beings by the verbal expression of its insights and 
visions. God is, whether man knows Him or not. What singles the 
poet out among mortals is the fact that he is "open" for the reality 
of the divine and, while singing its praises, rises into its closest 
proximity. The poet's joyfulness is born of his nearness to the holy, 
but the loneliness of his worship and his remoteness from his fellow 
men, whom he yet deeply loves, makes his poetry replete with over- 
tones of sorrow and sadness. 

VI 

The most important of Heidegger's essays, aside from the Letter 
on Humanism, is the lecture on the nature of Metaphysics (1929) 

subjective experience and objective reality; in vain he tried to find refuge and consolation 
in nature, in art, and in love, the three symbols and sublimations of his frustrated 
quest of the divine. In the idealized forms and figures of ancient Greece he visualized 
that serene harmony which was denied to him and his age. An unhappy love affair 
left his mind clouded with an incurable melancholy, and from a brief sojourn in 
France and Spain he returned as an aimless wanderer, spending the remaining thirty- 
seven years of his life in mental derangement. In the dynamically moving force of 
his Greek meters and free rhythms he resuscitated the religious individualism of Pindar's 
odes and anticipated the hymnic language of Friedrich Nietzsche. 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 143 

with its Postscript (1943). Here the philosopher analyzes the concept 
of "nothingness," viewed as a metaphysical category and in its relation 
to the problem of "Being." To pose the problem of "Being," Heidegger 
contends, one must first have faced the problem of "nothingness." The 
discussion of "nothingness" is thus intended as a preliminary step 
leading to the elucidation of metaphysics. 

The one specific mood in which "nothingness" is experienced is 
"dread." "What effect has nothing?" Kierkegaard had asked. "It 
evokes dread." For Heidegger "nothingness" is a strange and be- 
wildering metaphysical phenomenon. Though it cannot be actually 
apprehended, it is much more than a mere vague feeling or emotion. 
In this frightening experience all things seem to slide away from the 
grip of man: the "nothing" seems to annihilate them ("das Nichts nich- 
tet"). But this sinking away of things may and should be followed 
by a second and reverse movement: man's rediscovery of the true 
nature of things and his subsequent turning back to them with his 
newly gained love and understanding. Once he has been threatened 
and stirred to his depths by the engulfing terror of nothingness, he 
now is prepared for a new and radically different approach to reality. 
Things, after having been tested in the contrast to nothingness, are 
revealed in the total "otherness" of their true being. 

Metaphysics is defined by Heidegger as the "questioning beyond" 
the things that are, in order to regain them in their full reality 
and totality. The traditional technical term for such a "questioning 
beyond" is, of course, "transcendence." Without transcendence, that 
is, without the metaphysical inquiry, knowledge and learning become 
a mere statistic and positivistic accumulation and classification of data. 

Metaphysical inquiry, Heidegger says, began with the question, 
"What is the Being of all that is?" This query brought man into 
"the open": his horizon widened immeasurably, and both history and 
civilization received a solid foundation. And this momentous process 
has to be repeated by every genuine thinker in every historic epoch. 

In the Postscript to the lecture on metaphysics Heidegger dwells in 
particular on the distinction between science and philosophy, con- 
trasting scientific "calculation" (which he calls "the will to will" or 
"the will to power") and philosophico-metaphysical thought In meta- 
physical speculation the phenomena and problems which the philos- 
opher proposes to analyze and interpret can never be made "objects" 
in the sense in which one speaks of the objects of scientific research. 
The reason is that in the approach to metaphysical data the Being 



144 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

of the thinker is always involved and implied. He can neither step 
outside his own Being nor outside "Being" itself and thus achieve a 
scientific "objectivity." "All the historical and philosophical disciplines 
(Geisteswissenschajten)? writes Heidegger, "and even those which 
deal with organic life, must, in order to be strict, of necessity be 
inexact/' 24 

Heidegger concludes his inquiry into the nature of metaphysics 
by describing the true philosopher as the one who obediently and 
faithfully responds to the "call of Being," the one who dedicates his 
life to the maintenance of the Truth of Being. Only this attitude 
on the part of the philosopher can succeed in kindling an identical 
single-minded devotion in others. The true philosopher and the true 
poet strive to find the word which enunciates the Truth of Being. 
And "dread," opening up for man the abyss of "nothingness," may 
then cause him to listen to this Word in speechless silence. For 
"nothingness is the veil of Being." 

vn 

The Letter on Humanism was written by Heidegger in answer to 
certain pertinent questions which M. Jean Beaufret, of Paris, had 
asked in a communication of November 10, 1946. It clarifies some 
of the terms and concepts which Heidegger uses in his various 
writings and attempts to refute some of the objections and accusations 
of the philosopher's critics. 

At the outset Heidegger once more insists on the essential difference 
between the scientific and philosophical approach to reality. Modern 
philosophy, he argues, is haunted by the fear of losing its dignity and 
validity unless it can make itself into a "science." But such a trans- 
formation would entail the surrender of the very essence of thinking. 
Is it fair, Heidegger asks, to call "irrationalism" the endeavor to bring 
thought back into its own element? 

In reply to M. Beaufret's question, "How can we restore the true 
meaning of 'Humanism'?" Heidegger points out that true humanism 
(and he obviously regards his own philosophy as an endeavor aiming 
at the restoration of true humanism) is concerned with the essence 
or nature of man, so that the homo may again become humanus. 
Humanistic thinking should thus be engaged in the task of leading 

2 * Heidegger, Die Zeit des Weltbildcs. In Holztvege (Frankfurt am Main: V. 
Klostermann, 1950), p. 73. 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 145 

man back from the inhuman and antihuman to the human and there- 
with to the original sphere of his own being. 

The humanitas of man rests then on his very nature. But how is 
human nature properly defined? Karl Marx believed he had discovered 
human nature in the "social man." For him the totality of man's 
natural needs and wants (food, clothing, procreation, economic sub- 
sistence) is secured and safeguarded in and by Society. The Christian, 
on the other hand, defines man's humanitas by setting if off from 
Deltas (the Godhead). In the Christian economy of salvation man is 
"the child of God," listening to the call of the Father in the incarnate 
God-Man, and following this call. Man, in the Christian view, is "not 
of this world," inasmuch as "this world" is merely a transitory passage 
to the plenitude of supernatural life. 

If "humanism" is defined as the endeavor to enable man to recover 
in freedom his humanitas or his human dignity, then there are as 
many different kinds of "humanism" as there are different concepts of 
the "freedom" and the "nature" of man. Their common denominator 
is the conviction that the humanitas of the homo humanus is deter- 
mined by a definite interpretation of human nature, of history, of the 
world, of reality as a whole. Every such "humanism" is grounded in 
metaphysics, that is, it presupposes a knowledge of the most general 
nature or essence of man. But, Heidegger asserts, the question as to 
the Truth of Being and the question as to the way in which man is 
related to the Truth of Being are inaccessible to metaphysics. 

Perhaps even more important, however, is the question whether or 
not the nature of man is situated in the same dimension as the animal 
nature. In other words, does our questioning proceed in the right 
direction when it tries to understand and define human nature by 
referring it back to the nature of plants and animals, simply adding 
something specifically "human"? Is the definition of man as "rational 
animal" a really satisfactory and exhaustive description? To be sure, 
such a definition will always make it possible to arrive at correct 
predications concerning man, but it would seem that within such a 
frame of reference man remains cast in the molds of the natures of 
plants and brutes, notwithstanding the fact that he is said to be marked 
off from them by a specific difference. Heidegger is convinced that 
this traditional definition implies an underestimation of human nature. 
Traditional metaphysics, he claims, always thinks of man in terms of 
homo animdis rather than specifically in terms of man's humanitas. 

According to Heidegger, the aberrations of naturalism and biolog- 



: 4 6 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

ism are not overcome by merely grafting on the physical and physio- 
logical nature of man an immortal soul, and on the soul a spiritual, 
personal existence. The fact that physiology and chemistry can in- 
vestigate man scientifically as a natural organism docs not prove that 
human nature is constituted or even conditioned by this scientifically 
analyzed body. 

None of the "humanistic" definitions of man, Heidegger asserts, 
does justice to his true dignity. And he admits that to the extent that 
the analyses contained in Being and Time call attention to these short- 
comings of "humanism," the philosophic position advanced there may 
well be called "antihumanistic." This, however, does not mean that 
it is antihuman. On the contrary, Heidegger's position is antihumanistic 
precisely because "humanism" in the accepted usage of the term does 
not esteem highly enough the humanitas of man. 

As had been stated in Being and Time, man is "thrown" into the 
Truth of Being, so that in the ex-sistence of his Dasein he should be 
the guardian of Being and that in the Light of Being the things that 
are might appear in their true nature. Whether and how God, history, 
and nature enter into the Light of Being this matter is not for 
man to decide: he is simply called to be in all humility the "shepherd 
of Being." 

But what is "Being" (das Sein) ? It is neither God nor the ground 
or cause of the world (Weltgrund), Heidegger answers. It is vaster 
and broader than everything that is (das Seiende) 9 but it is nevertheless 
closer to man than any existent, be it rock, animal, a work of art, an 
angel, or even God Himself. "Being" is nearest to man, but this 
nearest has become his farthest because he has lost his relationship to 
Being in its plenitude and is clinging to things and beings rather 
than to "Being." And this loss of his relationship to Being in its 
plenitude is the real reason why modern man rootless and home- 
less moves in the void of nothingness. When man forgets Sie Truth 
of Being in the midst of the noisy crowd of existents, his Dasein 
disintegrates. 

Parmenides* ancient saying, mv yctp fcvat ("Being certainly is"), 
implies that existents never really and fully "are." Philosophy has 
never advanced beyond this insight, says Heidegger. The latest thinker 
who deeply experienced the homelessness of modern man his separa- 
tion from "Being" was Friedrich Nietzsche. But his way out of this 
modern dilemma was the abortive attempt to put metaphysics upside 
down. And yet, in the nearness of Being alone the question can and 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 147 

must be asked and decided whether night and darkness shall remain 
or whether the day of holiness will dawn again and the divine epiphany 
will once again become possible. "Or how shall modern man be able 
even to ask in earnest whether God is near or withholds Himself if 
he refuses to think in that dimension in which alone such a question 
can be asked? . . . This dimension, however, is the dimension of the 
holy. . . . Perhaps what makes this present age different from other 
epochs is the fact that the dimension of the holy is closed to it And 
perhaps this is the very thing which makes this age not only unholy, 
but un-whole and un-hale (hcillos)? 2 * 

It seems to Heidegger that any true "humanism" understands the 
humanitas of man from his nearness to Being, from his "ex-static" 
dwelling in the neighborhood of Being, and from his "care" for and 
about Being. The real meaning of "humanism" can thus only be 
restored by a redefinition of the term, and such a redefinition requires 
first of all a more genuine understanding of man's nature and Dasein. 
But then the question may be asked whether a humanism which sets 
itself up against all the historical forms of "humanism" can still legiti- 
mately be called by the same name? 

This question provides Heidegger with an opportunity to answer 
those critics who have accused him not only of teaching an antihu- 
manistic but an antihuman philosophy and who for good measure have 
added to their indictments the charges of irrationalism, atheism, and 
nihilism. 

"Because," says Heidegger, "we have spoken out against 'humanism,' 
they fear that we defend the in-human and glorify barbaric brutality. 
For what is more logical* than the assumption that for him who 
opposes 'humanism* there remains only the affirmation of inhumanity? 

"Because we have spoken out against 'logic,' they conclude that 
we demand that the rigor of thinking be abandoned and that in its 
place the irrational arbitrariness o blind urges and emotions be en- 
throned. For what is more 'logical* than to assume that he who speaks 
out against 'logic* defends the a-logical and anti-logical? 

"Because we have spoken out against 'values,* they profess their 
horror in view of a philosophy which presumably exposes to con- 
tempt the highest goods of humanity. For what is more 'logical* than 
to assume that a thinking which denies 'values* must of necessity 
proclaim the worthlessness of everything? 

* Heidegger, ibid., p. 103, 



i 4 8 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

"Because we have stated that the Being of man is a *being-in-the- 
world,' they believe they have discovered that we have degraded man 
to a mere this-worldly creature and have thereby plunged headlong 
into the philosophy of Positivism. For what is more 'logical* than to 
conclude that whoever asserts the 'worldliness* of man leaves room 
only for the 'this-worldly* and denies the 'other-worldly* and with it 
any kind of transcendence? 

"Because we have called attention to Nietzsche's saying that 'God 
is dead,' they declare that we teach atheism. For what is more 
'logical* than to assume that he who has experienced the 'death of 
God* (in the present age) is a thoroughly god-less individual? 

"Because in all these matters we have spoken out against that 
which mankind regards as sacrosanct, we are accused of teach- 
ing an irresponsible and destructive 'nihilism.' For what is more 
'logical* than to assume that he who denies the truth of existing things 
and beings, places himself on the side of non-being and preaches 
'nothingness* as the sole meaning of reality? 

"What is going on here? . . . With the aid of the much heralded 
logic and ratio they argue that what is not positive must of necessity 
be negative. . . . And they are so filled to the brim with 'logic* that 
everything that runs counter to the customary drowsiness of thinking 
must be branded as a damnable negation. . . . But does the 'contrct 
which is advanced against certain conventional opinions necessarily 
mean pure negation? ... 

"To advance arguments against traditional logic . . . simply means 
to pay attention to that 'Logos' which manifested itself early in the 
history of human thought. . . . What good are all the 'systems' of logic 
as long as they remain . . . neglectful of the task of inquiring into the 
nature of the 'Logos'? 

"Our argumentation against 'values' does not want to assert that 
all those things which are commonly designated as 'values,' such as 
culture, art, science, human dignity, the world, God, and so on, are 
worthless. It should rather be seen and understood at long last that 
we deprive things and beings of their dignity by designating them 
as 'values.' By estimating something as a 'value,' this valued thing or 
being is reduced to a mere object of human evaluation. That which 
amounts to something in its own Being is ... more than a mere 
'object of value* for a subject. Every valuation, whether positive or 
negative, is a subjectivation. . . . Calling God the 'supreme value* 
means to degrade the nature of God. Thinking of God in terms of 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 149 

'value* is the greatest blasphemy imaginable. ... To argue against 
'values' . . . means therefore to protest against subjectivism and to 
confront thought with the light of the Truth of Being 

"The statement: the essence of man rests on his 'being-in-the-world/ 
implies no decision as to whether man is a this-worldly or other- 
worldly being in any theologies-metaphysical sense. In this definition 
of the nature and condition of man nothing is said as yet concerning 
the existence or non-existence of God. . . . But with the clarification of 
the meaning of 'transcendence' 26 a sufficiently clear concept of Dasein 
is gained to make it possible to ask how human Dasein is ontologically 
related to the existence of God. . . ," 27 

To think the Truth of Being, Heidegger concludes his inquiry into 
the meaning of "humanism," is to think the humanitas of the homo 
humanus. If, however, man's humanitas is thus centrally located in 
philosophy, will it not become necessary to supplement the knowledge 
of Being (ontology) with general and specific directions for doing 
(ethics) ? There is no doubt that in this age of technology man, who 
has been handed over to the impersonal forces of the featureless col- 
lective, can be brought back to a personal steadiness of his badly 
shaken existence only by a moral ordering of his planning and doing. 

"Man, in so far as he is man, abides in the neighborhood of God" 
(^00* dv0pwir$> 8ai/w>v). Thus reads Heidegger's translation of an 
ancient saying of Hcraditus. And to give the meaning of these words 
added emphasis, he tells an anecdote related by Aristotle: "We are 
told of some words that Heraclitus is said to have spoken to a group 
of strangers who had come to see him. Drawing nearer, they observed 
Heraclitus as he was warming himself at a bakeoven. They stopped 
in surprise and, as he noticed their hesitation, he encouraged them to 
come in, saying: 'Here, too, the gods are present.' >>28 

The strange visitors, so Heidegger interprets this anecdote, are 
somewhac taken aback at the sight of the great thinker. They had 
expected to meet him in surroundings bearing the marks of the 
extraordinary. And their curiosity had hoped to make this meeting 
an occasion for some entertaining chatter. Perhaps they had expected 
to find the philosopher wrapped up in deep thought. And what do 
they find? A homely, commonplace locale; an oven in which bread 

26 C. Heidegger, Vom Wesen des Grundes, p. 28, n. i. 

27 Heidegger, fiber den "Humanismus? loc. cit. t pp. 95-101. 

28 CL Aristotle, De partibus awmaUum, A 5, 645, a 17. 



150 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

is being baked; and a plain, ordinary individual a philosopher who 
warms himself at the stove! As there is nothing sensational about the 
sight of a shivering thinker, the curious visitors lose all desire to step 
nearer. Do they have to pay a visit to a great philosopher to be 
treated to such an uncouth spectacle? Heraclitus, who reads the dis- 
appointment in their faces, tries to speak words of encouragement. He 
asks them to enter, and he adds, "Here, too, the gods are present." 

Not unlike those men who paid a visit to Heraclitus, Heidegger 
means to say, we are used to looking for philosophic thought in the 
form of the extraordinary, accessible only to the initiated. And we are 
used to measuring moral action by successful practical accomplishments. 
What is the real measure of thought? And to what law or norm does 
the action which it begets conform? 

Thinking itself is an action, replies Heidegger; an activity more 
potent and more pregnant with consequences than any kind of 
praxis. Thinking permeates all doing and making. Thinking aids "in 
the building of the House of Being," and the nature of Being will 
some day make it possible for us to meditate on the meaning of "house" 
and "abiding in the house." Only in so far as man has his abode in 
the Truth of Being can he receive directives from the heart of Being, 
directives which he may then accept as his law and rule and compared 
with which all other "laws" are merely poor artifacts. 

It is time, Heidegger states at the end of his "epistle" on humanism, 
that we cease demanding of philosophy the impossible: "Thought is 
on its descent into the poverty of its nature as a preliminary tool. It 
gathers language into the simplicity of speech. Speech is the tongue 
of Being, as the clouds are the clouds of the heavens. Thinking ex- 
pressed in speech leaves inconspicuous furrows in language. These 
furrows are even more inconspicuous than those which the tiller of the 
soil leaves on his slow progress through the fields*" 29 

vra 

Where, it must be asked if one is to interpret correctly Heidegger's 
contribution to philosophic thought does the German philosopher 
take his stand in the historical dialectic of essence versus existence? 
Heidegger himself emphasizes that what he means by "ex-sistence" 
differs from the traditional Aristotelian and Thomistic concept of 
existcntia (Lc., actuality) as distinguished from essentia (i.e., inner 

29 Heidegger, he. at., p. 1x9. 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 151 

potentiality). "The nature of Dasein lies in its ex-sistence." he states. 80 
As has been pointed out, ex-sistence means a "standing out" into the 
Truth of Being. The nature of man is neither determined by the 
csse essentiae nor by the esse existentiae, but by the "ex-stasis of 
Dasein." 

Existence, as the term is traditionally used, predicates that some- 
thing is. Essence (Wesen) predicates what something is: it refers to a 
thing or a being's nature or to the "internal possibility" (interna possi- 
bilitas) which makes it of necessity what it is. A philosophy whose 
basic concept is the essence of things and beings is an essentialist 
philosophy. And a philosophy which centers in the existence of things 
and beings is an existentialist philosophy. 

The exemplary prototype of all essentialist philosophies is the 
essentialism of Plato. In Platonism, that which is eternal and immu- 
table is not things and beings (ta onta)> but that by which things 
and beings are measured, that with which they are to be compared in 
order to determine whether or not they correspond to their particular 
essences. Thus there is, for example, an immutable essence of the 
State which provides the measure and standard for all actual states. 
There is an essence of Art which makes it possible to measure and 
judge all individual works of art And there is also an essence of 
nr^artj an essence which every human being carries within hims^f 
and which permits him to determine whether or not his existence 
corresponds to the essential human nature. It is man's task to realize 
this human essence, that is, to translate into existence his "internal 
possibility": to become existentially what he is essentially. 

Philosophy, by advancing from existence to essence, moves from the 
dimension of time to the dimension of eternity: at the moment it 
arrives at the world of eternal essences it has transcended the world 
of changeable and contingent things and beings* Thus, in Platonic 
essentialism, the reality of the essence precedes the borrowed and 
inferior reality of existence, since this latter is nothing but the im- 
perfect realization of the enduring, immutable essences. 

As Max Miiller points out, 81 in Plato's essentialism the relationship 
between eternity and time, essential and existential reality, constancy 
and change, remains unexplained. In Platonism, there are two distinct 



80 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 42. 

81 Cfc Max Miiller, Existenzphilosophic im geistigcn Leben dcr Gegcnwart (Heidel- 
berg: F. H. Kcrlc, 1949), passim. 



153 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

worlds: an ahistorical, eternal world of essences or "Ideas," and a less 
real, defective, and changeable world of existences. 

St. Thomas Aquinas calls essence that which determines the place 
which every existent occupies in the totality of Being. The position 
of everything in the whole of creation is thus preordained. And every 
human action receives its norm and direction from this universal and 
hierarchical order of Being. 32 The moral imperative of Thomistic 
ethics enjoins every human being to act in such a way that he safe- 
guard for every existent its essential place in the ordered universe 
and that he aid in restoring this universal order whenever and wherever 
it has been disturbed or perverted. Man is called upon to realize his 
own essence by his actions, so that he may conquer, occupy, and 
maintain his essential place in the created universe, a position which 
is preassigned to him both by his own essence or nature and by the 
essences of all other existing beings. There is, furthermore, in Thomis- 
tic philosophy a hierarchy or gradation of values, strictly correspond- 
ing to the hierarchy of Being: God ranks above man; man's spiritual 
nature above his material nature; man above brutes; the brutes above 
plants. Preordained also is the range of human freedom: man can 
decide freely for or against what is "right," that is, what is in accord- 
ance with the hierarchical, universal order of things. 

It is Heidegger's contention that in this grandiose Thomistic 
philosophy of order the central theme of all philosophy, namely, 
"Being," is not made the real object of the philosophic inquiry. 
"Being," he says in effect, is recognized in Thomism as the light 
that illumines with its sheen everything that is and thus makes 
philosophy and philosophic questioning possible, but "Being" itself 
is not subjected to a thoroughgoing philosophic analysis. The in- 
vestigation, he asserts, rather abruptly leaps from the discussion 
of the universal order in Being to the Creator of this order above 
Being. Does this not mean, however, to continue the thinking in 
the essentialist categories of Plato and Aristotle rather than to think 
in specifically Christian categories? Christianity, Heidegger argues 
with Pascal and Kierkegaard, does not demand that I give at all times 
preference to the higher value in the universal hierarchy of Being: 
it simply commands that I love my neighbor. And who is my 
neighbor? Can any universal order answer this question for me? My 
neighbor is the one who is nearest to me at this moment. He is the 

82 Cf. the author's A Realistic Philosophy, p. 27 . 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 153 

one whom no one helps if I do not help him. He is the one who needs 
me, no one and nothing else. 

In short, the Christian category of "the neighbor** is a historical 
category, whereas the schema of essential inner possibilities and of a 
hierarchy of order and of values is ahistorical. It merely enunciates 
what is to be done or left undone always or at any time. But the 
individual Christian may have to sacrifice all his "inner possibilities" 
for the sake of one specific historical and personal mandate which 
God imposes upon him in this particular historical situation, at this 
particular moment. Freedom in the highest sense is therefore the 
taking upon myself of a task which is uniquely and exclusively my 
own. This is what Heidegger means by an "existential decision*' or 
"choice"; this is for him the authentic mandate of an "existential 
ethics." And this is also why he designates "historicity" as the funda- 
mental category of existential thinking. Kant's "categorical imperative," 
which enjoins me to do what every other human being would do if 
he were placed in my position, is thus the exact opposite of the 
"existential imperative," which tells me to do what I alone and no 
one else can do. 

It is Heidegger's claim that the modern historical consciousness can 
no longer remain satisfied with the ahistorical propositions deriving 
from a static order of essences. He is convinced that the significance 
of historical change and becoming must find its expression in a new 
approach to ontology; that philosophy must acknowledge and incor- 
porate in its queries the profound changes that have occurred and 
are occurring in the essential meaning of religion, morals, politics, 
economics, art, literature, and in various other provinces of human 
thinking, doing, and making. By this Heidegger does not mean to 
suggest that the essences which underlie these phenomena of human 
history and civilization are without enduring reality but rather that 
their reality must be approached and interpreted in accordance with 
the changing historical functions which they fulfill in human life 
and civilization. The "Truth of Being" calls for different forms of 
realization and revelation, and such a task, according to Heidegger, 
can only be accomplished by a new "fundamental ontology." 

The German philosopher shows himself equally opposed to Positiv- 
ism and Idealism: Positivism, he contends, suffered shipwreck be- 
cause it concentrated its attention exclusively on the finiteness and 
contingency of matter. Idealism suffered shipwreck because it con- 
temptuously denied the finiteness and contingency of human Dasein 



154 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

and was bent on submerging the individual existence pantheistically 
in the absolute and infinite spirit. Heidegger's philosophy is laboring 
with the problem of giving verbal expression to a new experience of 
both the finite and the infinite. 

There is no doubt that Heidegger has a high esteem for Christian 
theology, although he insists that it refrain from engaging in purely 
philosophical and metaphysical argumentation. If he disavows a 
primary interest in the problem of the existence of God, he does 
so as a philosopher who is more concerned with "Being" than with 
"existence." In this disavowal he deviates of course from Thomism as 
well as from traditional Catholic doctrine. The alternative of theism 
or atheism, he states, does not face the philosopher in his inquiry into 
the nature of "Being." God, in other words, is not directly and immedi- 
ately encountered on the philosopher's way from existents to the 
ground of "Being." 

Again, it may be asked, what is "Being"? In Heidegger's terminology, 
it certainly does not signify the "pure act" (actus purus) which for 
Aristotle and St. Thomas describes the nature of the "Being" of God 
(the "Ipsum csse subsisted'). "Being" for Heidegger is that reality 
which is encountered in everything that is and which makes possible 
everything that is. "Being" is the historical evolution of this all- 
pervading reality toward its actual existence. If "Being" were identical 
with God, says Heidegger, then this Deity would be a "becoming" or 
"emerging" God, which is "nonsense " Therefore, "Being" is not to 
be identified with the Ipsum csse subsistens of Thomistic philosophy. 
Neither is it the ens commune (which is merely an ens rationis). In 
scholastic terminology, Heidegger's "Being" is the actuality of the 
essence (actus essentiae), from which the individual essences issue as 
modi of its contingency. Although the transcendent God is not en- 
countered in the realm of strict philosophy, "Being" is His image 
and similitude (imago et similitudo Dei). 

IX 

One question of great importance is in the end left at least partially 
unanswered by Heidegger: the question as to how "Being" is related 
to "nothingness." Which of the two is the ultimate "ground" of 
existents? It seems to be Heidegger's conviction that, since what at 
first appears as "nothingness" is ultimately revealed as "Being," all 
existents are ultimately grounded in that immense realm of "Being" 



HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER 155 

which reveals itself behind the veil of nothingness and which restores 
to man all things and beings, including his own authentic Dasein. 

"Without Being there can never be any existent/' says Heidegger. 
Being as such, however, is so far above and beyond all the things that 
are, that "it is without any existents" (es west ohnc das Seiende). Here, 
it would seem, the horizon opens toward the divine Being. 

"God creates everything out of nothing; and that which He wants 
to use He first reduces to nothing," wrote Kierkegaard in his Journals. 
For Christianity, too, nothingness is thus in a way "the veil of Being," 
that is, a transitory phase in the process of man's spiritual self-realiza- 
tion with the aid of divine grace. Thus understood, nothingness is 
not only the "veil" but, strictly speaking, the opposite pole of Being. 
Christianity teaches not only that everything that is was created out 
of nothing but also that everything would sink back into nothingness 
the moment God were to withdraw His all-sustaining creative power. 
This is why Nietzsche's or Sartre's "man without God" moves in a 
meaningless void which he vainly and desperately tries to populate 
with the stillborn creatures of his own whims and fancies. And 
since in Christianity, as in no other religion, man's existence is ab- 
solutely grounded in God, the atrophy of faith in God must of 
necessity lead to the most horrible experience of the abyss of annihila- 
tion and nothingness. But in this hour of total abandonment there 
rings out as it were a final appeal to man's freedom: he may definitively 
choose either the powers of this world, as a sordid substitute for the 
real ground of his being, or he may regain his selfhood by striking 
roots again in the Being of the Living God. 



CHAPTER FIVE 



THE APE OF LUCIFER: JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 



i 

THREE major intellectual forces are today struggling for the soul of 
France: Christianity, Marxism, and Atheistic Existentialism. The chief 
representative of the latter movement is Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 ), 
while the theistic-Christian branch of French existentialism has found 
its most convincing spokesman in Gabriel Marcel (cf. Chapter Seven). 

Sartre began his career as a free-lance writer and philosopher in 
1924; for a number of years he taught in the French secondary 
schools, was active in the French resistance movement of the Maquis 
during World War II, and achieved international renown after the 
publication of Uiture et le niant (Being and Nothingness), his major 
philosophic work, in I943- 1 In the several novels and stage plays 
which appeared before and after that date, Sartre exhibits his brilliant 
gifts as a writer and a master technician, his unfailing instinct for the 
requirements of the stage, a remarkable lucidity of artistic form and 
literary style, and a sure grip on the problems of both normal and 
abnormal human psychology. Sartre's philosophic writings reveal, on 
the one hand, his talent for rational analysis and logical precision, 
while, on the other, they often either offend or intrigue depending on 
the mentality and taste of the reader by a certain flippancy and frivol- 
ity which the author displays in the discussion of serious philosophic 
problems. 

L'ftre et le niant is a book of over seven hundred large and closely 
printed pages. After its publication, the philosophy of existentialism, 
which up to 1943 had been known and discussed only in the circles 
of the sophisticated French intelligentsia, became almost overnight a 
topic of daily conversation and disputation. Sartre and a group of 
disciples started the publication of Les Temps Modernes, a periodical 
which was to provide a platform for the expression of their philosophic 
and literary ideas. 

1 Cf. Jean-Paul Sartre, Uetre et le nant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943). 

156 



JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 157 

L'Are ct le ntant bears the subtide Essai d'ontologie phtnomSnolo- 
gique; it reveals as Sartre's goal a "phenomenological ontology'* cen- 
tered in human existence. Aside from Heidegger and Husserl, the 
philosopher names Hegel and Freud as his chief precursors. 

Several years before Sartre presented his "phenomenological ontol- 
ogy" he had made the phenomena of "being" and "existence" the 
subject matter of a novel entided La Naustc (Nausea, 1938). This 
work is no novel in the ordinary sense; it has the form of diary notes 
which are said to have been found among the literary remains of 
Antoine Roquentin. A sort of Socratic soliloquy, it aims at the step- 
by-step denouement of "existence." "Prior to these past few days," 
writes Antoine Roquentin, "I had really never felt what it means c to 
exist.' . . . Ordinarily, existence hides itself. It is here, round about 
us, within us: we are it, and we cannot speak two words without 
speaking of it, but in the end we never grasp it. ... Existence is not 
something which can be thought from a distance: it overwhelms 
you brusquely ... it weighs heavily on your heart like a fat, loathsome 
beast." 2 

Existence is for Sartre pure contingency: it means simply "to be 
there; existents appear, they are encountered, but they can never be 
infcrentially deduced. I believe there are people who have understood 
this, but they have been trying to overcome this contingency by invent- 
ing a Necessary Being who causes himself (a causa sui). No Necessary 
Being, however, can explain existence. . . . There is not the least 
reason for our 'being-there.' . . ." Every existent is "de trop": super- 
fluous, absurd. "And I, too, am 'dc trap.' And yet people are trying 
to hide themselves behind the idea of law and necessity. In vain: 
every existent is born without reason, prolongs its existence owing to 
the weakness of inertia, and dies fortuitously." 8 

The existence of Antoine Roquentin gravitates toward the CafS 
Mably with its glittering atmosphere of bohemian libertinage. In 
1945, in a conversation with the French philosopher Roger Troisfon- 
taines, Sartre frankly admitted that he was passing most of his days, 
"from morning till night," in the caji. Accused by Troisfontaines of 
mistaking the atmosphere of the cafi for that of normal human living, 
Sartre replied: "Your interpretation is all wrong; in the caf I am 
more absorbed (fngagf) than at home. In my room I fed the desire 
to stretch out on my bed. In the caj> I work. It is there that I have 

2 Sartre, La NausSe (Paris: Gallimard, 1938), p. 162 f. 
CL Sartre, ibid., pp. 163-170. 



158 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

composed all my books." Asked what in particular attracted him to 
the ca]&, the author added, "It is this atmosphere of indifference: the 
others are there without bothering about me, and I do not care about 
them. . . . The burden of a family would be intolerable for me." 
Sartre's universe, Troisfontaines concludes his comments on this 
conversation, "is a world seen from the point of view of the caf"* 

What is the philosophic meaning of Antoine Roquentin's encounter 
with the phenomena of "Being" and "existence"? Sartre and the hero 
of his novel are concerned with the things of everyday life because 
of their conviction that the meaning of "being" and its relationship 
to human existence can be discovered in them. In philosophic idealism 
human consciousness is the epistemological center of the world of 
being and of the being of the world. Everything that is, is nothing 
but an artifact of the human mind. Sartre, in La Nausfe, makes this 
formidable mental bastion of philosophic idealism the object of his 
attack. Like most modern existentialist thinkers he starts out from 
an anti-Cartesian position but, unlike the others, he relapses in his 
later works into the idealism of Descartes. 

In La Nausic the center of theworld is not man or human conscious- 
ness, but the massive extramental universe as it is symbolized in the 
seemingly most insignificant objects of everyday life. To ridicule 
philosophic idealism, Sartre introduces the figure of the "autodidact," 
the omnivorous reader, the peddler of dead ideas: "The reading matter 
of the 'autodidact' gets more and more on my nerves," writes Antoine 
Roquentin; '"suddenly I remember the names of the authors he has 
recently perused: Lambert, Langlois, Larbal&rier, Lastex, Lavergue. 
This is like an illumination. Now I understand his method: he is 
reading in the alphabetical order." 5 The encyclopedic brain of the 
"autodidact" is filled with shadows and spectres, not with realities, 
and the home and origin of these shadows is the void of nothingness 
or, what amounts to the same thing, the Platonic "realm of ideas." 

What strikes and overwhelms Antoine Roquentin is the brutal 
reality of existing things, in contrast to the phantomlike reality of 
ideas. The experience which makes him aware of the naked "being- 
there" of existents is la nausie, the "great disgust" (Nietzsche). And 
what makes this experience so terrifying is the fact that dead objects 
actually have the power of limiting die freedom of a human being to 

* Roger Troisfontaines, Le Choix de Jean-Paul Sartre (Paris: Aubier, 1945), p. 52 1 * 
6 Sartre, La NausJe, p. 48. 



JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 159 

deal with them at will. "The objects," remarks Antoine Roquentin, 
"should not concern us at all, for they are not alive. One makes use 
of them, one puts them back into their place, one lives among 
them . . . and yet, they affect me. This is intolerable. I am afraid 
of entering into a relationship with them, just as if they were animal 
organisms." 6 As this world of "dead" objects confronts man with 
silent and stubborn hostility, there arises in the human consciousness 
a horrible, oppressive fear of the obscene nakedness of the "being- 
there" of things. 

Antoine Roquentin has made the shocking discovery that all being 
spends and wastes itself on a prodigious scale, but that it docs so 
gratuitously, without any meaning or purpose. Man faces the fearful 
sight of this colossal, inert mass of being, and he simultaneously 
experiences himself as the only existent that is aware in his conscious- 
ness of the extent, the weight, and the ultimate meaninglessness of 
this gigantic realm of being. 

In a preliminary way La Nausfe introduces the main themes of 
U&re et le ntant? In his philosophic analysis of "existence" Sartre 
logically confines himself to a phenomenological investigation of the 
only empirically known being that can consciously experience what 
it means "to exist," namely, man. It is human consciousness which 
makes possible this experience. 

Sartre states with Brentano and Husscrl that consciousness always 
posits an object: it is of necessity consciousness of something; of 
something which is different from and beyond consciousness. This 
"transphenomenal being" Sartre calls the "in-itself" (I'en-soi), and 
he opposes to it the "for-itself ' (le four-sot) of human consciousness. 
Nothing can be said of the en-soi except that it is. Sartre's work is 
therefore not primarily concerned with this "being-in-itself ' but rather 
with the phenomenological analysis of the "structure, the projects, and 
the limitations of human consciousness. 



Ibid., p. 25. 

7 The reader may gather from the following brief analysis that Sartre is familiar 
with the principal teachings of Aristotelian and Thomistic thought and that he follows 
several of its premises and procedures up to a certain point. He then abruptly and 
arbitrarily plunges into unwarranted and illogical conclusions and develops what has 
been justly called an "upside-down metaphysics" and an "inverted theology." The 
thing which strikes the critical reader as peculiar is the nonchalance with which 
Sartre presents as dazzling discoveries of his own many ideas which are almost 
commonplace with both Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. He gives no credit whatever 
to that philosophic tradition which constitutes a substantial part of his own reasoning. 



160 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

One characteristic dement of human consciousness, according to 
Sartre, is negation, its capacity of saying "no." This possibility of 
negation enters into man's questioning of himself and of the world. 
The "nothingness" of negation, that is, the possibility of not-being, 
is lodged like a worm in the very core of being: "Nothingness haunts 
being." 8 

Human consciousness, says Sartre, is discordant, divided in itself. 
It knows of itself, but it does so in such a way that this knowledge 
and the knower are neither entirely different nor entirely identical. 
When, for example, I perceive a tree, I am conscious of the tree 
and, in addition, I am conscious of the fact that I perceive a tree. I 
and the tree are two different things. But my perception of the tree, 
and my being conscious of this perception are neither two entirely 
different things nor are they entirely identical. What then lies in 
between these two phenomena: my perception, and the consciousness 
of my perception? Nothing (rien), replies Sartre. And this "nothing" 
separates the two phenomena to such an extent that they can neither 
converge nor become entirely separate and independent. They are 
both linked and held apart by an "abyss of nothingness" which is 
unbridgeable. Owing to this split in his consciousness, man, Sartre 
concludes, is divided in himself, never fully himself. The "en-sot" that 
is, the objective world of things, on the other hand, is undivided, 
impregnable, massive, unshakable. In the en-soi the fullness and 
security of being manifests itself. 

Confronted with the massivity and ontological integrity of the 
en-soi, man experiences himself not only as discordant and frag- 
mentary but also as free. Freedom, in Sartre's view, thus results from 
the fact that man is not self-sufficient, not fully real and therefore 
actually inferior to the fullness of being of the en-soi. Man's freedom, 
in other words, is a consequence of his ontological inferiority, of a 
diminution of his being (une decompression d'itre). But, understand- 
ing himself as thus divided and incomplete, man strives to fill this 
lacuna in his being: he aspires to the plenitude of the en-soi, but in 
doing so he wants to retain the consciousness of his own self, his 
prerogative as a "pour-soi." For what good would it do him to attain 
to the fullness of being without being conscious of it and thus without 
being able to enjoy it? 
The goal of all human striving is thus an ideal "self," combining the 

8 Cf. Sartre, L'&tre et It ntant, p. 40 & 



JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 161 

fullness of being with the fullness of consciousness. Man, says Sartre, 
is nothing but this striving to become "I'en-soi-pour-soi" or, in other 
words, the striving to overcome the debility of his being by divinizing 
himself. But such a goal is impossible of attainment: the "en-soi-pour- 
soi" is by definition a self-contradictory concept: it attempts to unite 
two types of being which by their very nature exclude each other. Man 
is therefore, Sartre concludes, "a futile passion" (une passion inutile)? 

Man, in his futile pursuit of his flighty and fugitive self, "is not 
what he is, and he is what he is not,'* Sartre asserts with paradoxical 
pungency. "We are existcnts who can never catch up with them- 
selves." 10 No matter how passionately man forges ahead in this 
endless chase, the fullness of being forever escapes him. But if he 
knows that this is so, why does he continue such a hopeless race? 
Because, answers Sartre, man cannot do otherwise: "to exist" means 
for man to realize himself in action, to storm ahead toward an impossi- 
ble goal. Although he knows that all his projects are destined to suffer 
shipwreck, although he knows that he spends himself in vain, he is 
condemned to continue in activities which constantly annihilate his 
past, his present, and the projects of his anticipated future. Man, in 
short, is "condemned" to a freedom which weighs upon him like an 
inescapable fate. 11 

Man is his freedom, says Sartre, and therefore this freedom is 
absolute. It extends to anything and everything; it leaves no room 
for any kind of determinism. No one can relieve me of this burden: 
neither I myself, who am this freedom, nor any of my fcllowmen, nor 
a god, because there is no God. All the modes of my being equally 
make manifest my freedom; all of them are projects in the pursuit 
of my ideal "self." Absurd, irrational projects, to be sure, but I am 
precisely this kind of absurdity. 12 Human freedom, therefore, is not 
a blessing, but a curse and a horrible yoke. 

Sartre next proceeds to trace the "nihilating" function of human 
existence in all directions and dimensions. In every one of them man 
is separated from himself by the insurmountable barrier of nothing- 
ness. Trying to overcome this obstacle to his self-realization, he 
projects the various possibilities of his existence into the warp and 
woof of the world, of time and history, of past, present, and future. 
Man is his own past, and he is not his own past. He can neither 
catch up with his past nor with his future because he remains 



^ Ibid., p. 708. ll Md., p. 565. 

10 Ibid., p. 253. 12 CL ibid., p. 558 ff. 



163 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

separated from both by that "nothingness" which always intervenes 
between him and time. Man is thus relinquished, abandoned by his 
past: it avails him nothing. But the absolute dictate of his present 
freedom commands him and compels him to assert himself, to ma%e 
himself, that is, to invent and set up motivations and values to 
sustain his life. 

Constandy checkmated in his projects, constantly thrown back on 
his fragile momentary existence, man, in his dereliction (dflaissement), 
experiences dread and anguish. He knows that he is completely 
alone, absolutely on his own, under the fearful pressure of his own 
responsibility. The freedom to which he is "condemned" frightens 
and worries him. He would like nothing better than to rid himself 
of this burden, by shifting responsibility for his actions cither to the 
determining forces of environment and heredity or to the decree of a 
superhuman power: by becoming either a nonconscious and non- 
responsible being or a being subject to a superior kw and necessity. 
But such attempts at escape materialistic determinism as much as 
religious predestination are essentially dishonest (de mauvaise foi) 
and foredoomed to failure. Man is what he makes himself, and he 
alone is responsible for what he makes himself. 

Sartre enters a new dimension of human existence when he discusses 
the "being-for-others" (I'itre.pour-autrui). Every philosophic idealism, 
he affirms, suffers shipwreck in view of the actual existence of "the 
other." The world of idealism is a world without human beings. The 
existence of "the other" confronts me with a new and different set 
of experiences and shatters the solipsism of any idealistic dreamworld. 
At once I make the astounding discovery that certain things are no 
longer centered in me but in "the other." As a consequence of the 
existence of "the others" even those things which constituted my 
own personal world are slipping away. The unity of my world under- 
goes a process of dissolution. Lifeless things, such as a road, a lamppost, 
a letterbox, are no longer oriented toward me but toward another or 
toward those others who make me one of their number. 

Two principal attitudes are possible in regard to the phenomenon 
of "the other," says Sartre. The first is illustrated by the phenomenon 
of love. Here I recognize and acknowledge the beloved as a free 
subject, but "the other" in this case regards me as an en-sot, that is, 
as an object or thing. To please, to attract, to fascinate the beloved, 
I try every possible means to present myself as a perfccdy fulfilled 
and integrated being. But the beloved, if he loves me, demands in 



JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 163 

turn that I acknowledge in him the attribute of absolute ontological 
plenitude, and neither of us is willing to enter into a reciprocal rela- 
tionship on such fictitious and self-contradictory premises. 

The second principal attitude in regard to "the other" is illustrated 
by the phenomenon of sexual desire. Here "my regard" transforms 
the other into an object or thing of which I try to gain possession, 
whose freedom I try to appropriate. But blinded by carnal passion, 
I completely lose sight of my original aim: instead of enjoying the 
anticipated rapture of possession, I either forget "the other" in the 
auto-intoxication of lust or I sadistically subdue and enslave him. In 
neither case is the desired union with the other a possibility. 

Out of these futile efforts is born a deadly hatred. Not only in love 
and sexual lust but in all human relationships my own projects may 
at any time be crossed and paralyzed by the projects of "the other." 
Therefore, Sartre claims, the original and natural attitude among 
human beings is not love, harmony, and peace, but hate, conflict, and 
strife. Rather than tolerate the freedom of "the other," I resolve to 
annihilate it and him in mortal combat. And yet, what will all this 
profit me, even assuming that I were to kill all men? It would not 
alter the fact that at one time they existed and made me an object 
of their own projects. Thus even this mortal hatred is futile and 
absurd: it is nothing but a final, abortive effort at self-assertion, 
born of utter despair. 

The total strangeness of "the other" finally confronts me in the 
phenomenon of death. Death is not part of the ontological structure 
of human consciousness: it can never become part of my projects; 
I can neither experience nor anticipate death; it is, in short, not 
encountered among the possibilities of my existence. What, then, is 
death? It is simply the nonsensical destruction of all human possi- 
bilities, the absurd annihilation of the human self. Far from impart- 
ing any meaning to human life, death rather reveals most clearly 
that life in its totality is absurd: "It is meaningless that we were born; 
it is meaningless that we die." 18 

Every human being, Sartre avers, is animated by the radical desire 
to become God. 14 As a means for their self-deification and to demon- 
strate to themselves their creative powers, men make use of the 
various devices of the arts and sciences. But, as has been pointed out, 
all such hopes and endeavors are chimerical because the idea of 

is Ibid., p. 631. 14 Ibid., p. 653- 



164 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

God, the en-soi-pour-soi, is self-contradictory. If there were a God, 
says Sartre, he would either have to be an en-soi and thus possess 
the fullness of being, but his massive objectivity would then be deprived 
of consciousness: he would be incapable of any rational, purposive 
activity. Or, if God were a conscious and personal being, he would be 
a pour-soi like man: he, too, would be divided in himself and invaded 
by nothingness, the inevitable companion of consciousness. This God 
also would then be condemned to a mad and futile pursuit of an 
illusory and impossible goal. Therefore, concludes Sartre, there is no 
God, there can be no God. And man's passionate desire to become a 
god himself remains "une passion inutile." 

It would seem that man's sorry and sordid lot of being condemned 
to a life of futility and absurdity might plunge him into abysmal 
despair. But the conclusions at which Sartre arrives are quite different. 
Beyond despair, he tells his readers, entirely new perspectives are 
opening up, perspectives which even impart an ethical substance to 
human action. To reach this point of a new departure, man must 
first of all renounce what Sartre calls I' esprit de sbieux. This "spirit of 
seriousness" prevails, says Sartre, if one seeks in the world a point of 
departure and of support or if one measures one's own reality and 
value in the terms of one's belonging-to-the-world. It is no accident, 
he claims, that both capitalists and revolutionaries are possessed by 
f esprit de sfrieux: they think only and know themselves only as par- 
ticles of a world which either fulfills their desires or blots out their 
very existence. Thus, every materialism is, according to Sartre, sMeux 
by definition. Materialism simply denotes the abdication of man in 
favor of the world. Within this frame of reference there is no possi- 
bility of escaping the world's crude force: assimilated to the world, 
man becomes hard like a rock, dense and opaque like all those things 
which constitute "the world." Man's subjectivity adapts itself to the 
lifeless objectivity of the en-soi. Karl Marx, whom Sartre calls "/<? prince 
des gens sMeux," was well aware that man becomes definitively 
sMeux as soon as he regards himself as merely one object among 
others. 

The values which I' esprit de sMeux pursues are, in Sartre's view, 
purely illusory. He claims that his "phenomenological ontology" has 
demonstrated once and for all that the attempt of the pour-soi to 
become an en-soi, without ceasing to be a pour-soi, is "the vanity of 

d., p. 708. i Cf. ibid., p. 669. 



JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 165 

all vanities." Such an ambition, he maintains, is both chimerical and 
self-contradictory. The only true and absolute value is embodied in a 
freedom which affirms itself in its profound contingency and turns 
this contingency into a personal adventure. It seizes itself in the very 
vacuity of its being ^niant d'etre"), a being "which is not what it is 
and which is what it is not," and which therefore remains forever 
estranged from itself. And thus, by a "radical conversion" (amounting 
to an absolute renunciation of I* esprit de strieux), freedom affirms 
itself and posits its own foundation. Henceforth, man truly appears 
as that being to whom all values owe their existence, and freedom 
appears as the creative "nought" to which the world owes its existence. 
Man thus has assumed his "absolute freedom" and endows it with the 
quality of the master value. By doing so he will in rare moments 
become sufficient unto himself: he will be like a god, an en-soi-pour- 
soi. In the perspective of this "radical conversion" the modes of 
human action matter litde, provided only that man acts, that he 
"engages himself," and that he entertains no illusions whatsoever as 
to the goals or ends which he sets for himself. Only in the measure 
in which he still clings to l f esprit de sSrieux does man condemn him- 
self to despair, for then he discovers immediately "that all human 
activities are equivalent . . . that all of them are equally doomed to 
ultimate failure." On the basis of an ethics of "engagement," on the 
other hand, any kind of action can be justified, if only the agent is 
courageous or reckless enough to be consistent: "Thus it makes 
little difference whether a man is a drunkard or a leader of nations." 17 

n 

A critique of the main tenets of Sartre's philosophy, as set forth in 
L'itre et Ic nSant, will necessarily have to begin with pointing out 
the complete arbitrariness of many of the French thinker's assump- 
tions and assertions. Among such postulatory and unproven points 
de dipart are the concepts of the en-soi and pour-sot; the reduction 
of human existence to the sphere of consciousness; the contention of 
an aboriginal state of hate and strife between man and man; the way 
the concept of "nothingness" is used (or abused); the apodictic denial 
of the existence of God; and the proclamation of the absoluteness of 
human freedom. 

The entire structure of L'itre et le nfant rests on the arbitrary 

17 ibid., p. 722. 



166 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

postulate of an absolute and massive "being-in-itself (en-sot). With a 
grand sweep Sartre replaces the several philosophic dualisms of the 
past by a simple phenomenological monism: the "being" and the 
"appearance" of things are identical or, in other words, things arc 
exactly what they appear to be; there is no "within" and "without," 
no hidden "nature" or "essence" of things. And since the thing- 
phenomenon thus presents itself wholly and absolutely, it can be 
studied and described both as an ontological and phenomenological 
datum. This description Sartre calls a "phenomenological ontology!' 

The traditional dualisms of act and potency and of substance and 
accident share the fate of all the others: they disappear in Sartre's 
ontology. Since the phenomenon is the entire reality of a being, 
"everything is in act," and the appearance of a thing is its total 
essence. The essence merely ties together the successive "apparitions" 
of cxistents and is thus itself nothing but a phenomenal appearance. 18 
Now if it could be shown that "being" is not only encountered in 
the massive objectivity of an en-sot but also in the conscious ego of 
the "subject" as weU as in the interrelation between object and 
subject, Sartre's entire argumentation would be immediately invali- 
dated. If finite beings subsist owing to their relation to the infinite 
Being of God, a divine creative act becomes a reasonable and plausible 
ontological or metaphysical proposition. 

All the arguments which Sartre adduces against the creation of the 
world and of man by an omnipotent God amount to an apodictic 
postulatory denial of such a "creatio ex nihilo." A rational justification 
for this denial is not even attempted. Sartre simply asserts that the 
created world would by its very subsistence detach itself from its 
"creator." It would immediately claim for itself an absolute autonomy 
("aseitas"). He argues that, if this were not the case, the act of creation 
would of necessity have to be coextensive with the spatiotemporal 
reality of the world, so that the world would then become undistin- 
guishable from its author or would be completely absorbed by him and 
in him. The question which Sartre fails to ask is whether a world 
which is both subsisting and created being (that is, a world of relative 
and limited autonomy) is not conceivable. If the answer is in the 
affirmative, then a "creatio ex nihilo" is possible and plausible. 

The en-soi of the world is for Sartre radical and absolute contin- 
gency; it is uncreated, without any raison d'itre, without cause, and 

18 C. ibid., p. ia. 



JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 167 

entirely "de trap" in view of any conceivable "eternity.** Contingency 
thus signifies in Sartre's opinion the absence of a raison ditre, that is, 
a complete absurdity. This is, to say the least, an unusual concept 
of contingency. Ordinarily, a being is said to be contingent if it does 
not have its raison d'etre in itself but in something else. If it has no 
raison d'etre whatsoever either in itself or in another a being 
cannot even be called contingent: it does not and cannot exist at all. 
God is said to be the Absolute Necessary Being because He has His 
raison d'etre in Himself, in virtue of the perfect plenitude of an 
essence which is its existence. Sartre's en-soi, on the other hand, cannot 
be termed necessary in this sense: since it is wholly without raison 
d'fae, it is, strictly speaking, "absurd." 

All of Sartre's observations concerning human existence are confined 
to the one sphere of consciousness. His anthropological views are 
thus as limited as those of Descartes, his remote intellectual ancestor. 
Like Descartes, he strips the human ego of its ontological and 
psychological richness and vitality by reducing it to a mere res 
cogitans. 

In his phenomenological analysis of the "being-for-others** (Titre 
pour-autrui; l'tre-avec) Sartre mingles half-truths with fully grown 
falsehoods. Man's physical and physiological nature this much is 
true acts for its own good in its striving for self-preservation and 
for the perpetuation of the species. But there is in man, aside from 
this purely biological vitality, a moral and spiritual life principle 
which relates the individual self socially to "the other" in service 
and in love. In Sartre's thinking "the other" never appears as a 
"thou" but always as the enemy or the stranger who wants to 
subdue and dominate me. Is it not truly amazing that in a philosophy 
which calls itself not only "existential" but "humanistic," no mention 
is ever made of the phenomena of friendship, conjugal and filial love, 
moral obligation, mutual understanding? There is only the alterna- 
tive of either the annihilation of "the other" by me, or my own 
annihilation by "the other." There is never a question of both mine 
and "the other's" participation in a "we" that is ontologically superior 
to either of us individually. 

Sartre's world is, in short, an absurd and impossible universe, 
populated by contingent and isolated beings, all sdf-endosed and 
merely physically juxtaposed in a metaphysical and moral vacuum. 
The neighbor is "the other," and he is the enemy, and since God 
(if he existed) would be "the absolute other," he would logically be 



168 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

the most formidable and the most hated enemy. "Hell," Sartre 
writes in Huis-clos (No Exit), "that is the others/* And Orestes, in 
Let Mouches (The Flies), asserts that "being can only affirm itself 
against its Creator.*' Sartre's freedom, like that of Lucifer, aims at 
self-deification, without and against "the others," without and against 
God. It is a freedom which annihilates every value in order to be able 
to choose itself in absolute autonomy as the one and only value. 

"Behind Sartre," writes Roger Troisfontaines, "there opens up a 
satanic abyss. ... It is, however, the great merit of Sartre to have 
described that 'nothing* which is man without divine grace. * . . 
Either man contrary to truth claims for himself the self-sufficiency 
of the deity: he chooses himself in isolation, in contempt of the 
others and of the Creator; he wants to become a god without God: 
this is presumptuous egotism; theologically speaking, it is hell. Or 
in conformity with the laws of being man . . . accepts the divine 
life in Christ, in communion with all his brethren; he desires to 
become godlike with God: this is humble love; theologically speaking, 
it is heaven. Everything depends on our choice between these two 
modes of divinization." The choice between "Non serviam" and "Ecce 
ancilla Dominf is the choice between hell and heaven. 19 

Sartre repeatedly defends himself against the charge of being a 
materialist. While there is no doubt as to the justification of the 
charge, it is equally obvious that Sartre's materialism differs from 
both the primitive atomistic materialism of past ages and the dialectic- 
historical materialism of Karl Marx. His is a subde and refined 
cryptomaterialism which likes to hide behind deceptive disguises. 
Sartre, for example, opposes an "absolute freedom" to the massive, 
material "en-soi." But one soon finds out that the "values" which 
this "freedom" creates are all fictitious and illusory, reflections merely 
of human "projects" and thus without objective reality. These pseudo 
values closely resemble the ideological "superstructures" of Marxian 
materialism, and it is therefore hardly surprising that several of the 
spokesmen of French communism have shown themselves eager to 
welcome Sartre into their ranks. The philosopher, however, flatly 
declared his opposition to the party dogma of historic determinism. 

To communist attacks which took sharp issue with some of the 
most flagrant inconsistencies in Sartre's thinking, the philosopher 

19 CL Roger Troisfontaines, op. cit., pp. 68-90, passim. 



JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 169 

replied in an essay entitled Materialisms et revolution Revolution, 
he says there, is always an individual or collective act of freedom. 
If everything follows a predetermined course, then the call for freedom 
and the revolt of the proletariat become meaningless. While this sounds 
like a valid argument against historic materialism, it might well be 
asked why anyone should rise and fight for a freedom which, accord- 
ing to Sartre's own original thesis, is as void of ultimate meaning as 
existence itself. 

The way Sartre manipulates the concept of "nothingness" reveals 
that he faithfully follows his own precept: to renounce U esprit de 
sfrieux. It is true in a sense that man, in virtue of his freedom of 
saying "no" injects an element of "nothingness" (or rather "negation") 
into the realm of being. It is equally true that man has the faculty 
of comparing that which has been and that which is with that which 
he ideally projects into the future. But to say that the use of negation 
in the statement that the present is not the past or that the past is not 
the future or that the future is not the present, annihilates one or several 
of these dimensions of reality, amounts to a mere jeu d'esprit, a 
juggling of words. The use of negation in such instances, far from 
entailing a diminution of being, may actually bring about an exten- 
sion of the human and historico-cultural horizon and may thus lead 
to an enrichment of being. In short, all dimensions of reality, though 
not alike in appearance and content, are equally essential for human 
existence. And to lay stress on one of them does not mean to 
"annihilate" the others. A genuine phenomenological analysis in 
HusscrPs sense would attempt to illuminate progressively the various 
aspects and dimensions of reality as reflected in human consciousness. 

Finally, Sartre's assertion that the idea of God is self-contradictory 
is an unfounded and unproved assumption. He claims that the exist- 
ence of God is impossible because it involves the idea of a being who 
is infinite self-consciousness and at the same time self-identical or a 
perfectly integrated, undivided self. Consciousness, however, is always 
divided in itself; even in self-consciousness there is a division between 
the self as knowing and the self as known. And since the plenitude of 
being (the en-sot) is undivided, consciousness is eo ipso excluded 
from it* 

What validity is there in this kind of reasoning? The idea of God, 

20 Of. Sartre, Situations (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), Vol. H. 



iyo THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

says Sartre, is self-contradictory. This is, of course, precisely what he 
has to say once he has endowed the cn-soi with the massive density 
and inertness of matter. From an en-sot thus conceived the qualities of 
a pour-sot are excluded by definition. If, however, the cn-soi were con- 
ceived not as matter but as spirit, the attribution of thought and 
reflection would present no difficulty and could be logically and onto- 
logically defended. The "self-contradiction" would disappear. In other 
words, a spiritual en-soi would of necessity be an "en-soi-pour-soi" : 
it would be transparent to itself and identical with itself. 

Sartre moreover applies to the idea of God univocally the character- 
istics of an intramundane contingency, so that such a "god" would 
find himself subjected to all the conditions of the "rSditi-humaine." 
But God's "hold" on the totality of the world cannot be and hardly ever 
has been understood in this manner. God neither looks at the world 
from without (whether under the aspect of "object" or "subject"), but 
by His creative act He confers upon the world its reality: He calls 
into existence that relation to Himself which is the world. The divine 
creative act, understood as issuing from the divine essence posits and 
"holds" the world in its totality. No subject and no object can ever 
limit either the being or the knowledge of God, simply because it is 
the divine creative essence itself which constitutes the world in its 
every aspect of objectivity and subjectivity. 

The simple truth is that the finite human mind can never have 
an adequate idea of God's infinite mind. But it is reasonable to 
assume that the latter has none of the limitations and imperfections 
of human consciousness. Sartre's "argument" proves thus only one 
thing, namely, that the divine mind cannot have the same ontological 
structure as human consciousness. It does not, however, in any way 
support the postulate of Sartre that the existence of God is a logical 
and ontological impossibility. 

in 

Before Sartre espoused his "moral" philosophy in ' the scries of 
novels entitled Les chemins dc la Libertt (The Ways of Freedom) , 
he had published Les Mouches, a play which forcefully underscores 
the central theme of his infernal gospel of hatred and revolt. The 
plot is a modern variant of the ancient Greek tale of Orestes 21 who, 

21 Of. the dramatic versions of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides in ancient times; and 
the modern psychological treatment of the same theme in Goethe's Iphigenia. 



JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 171 

as a small child, was taken from his homeland, after Aegisthus, the 
tyrant of Argos, had slain Agamemnon, Orestes' father, and married 
Clytemnestra, his mother. Grown to manhood, Orestes returns to 
Argos and, aided by Electra, his sister, kills both Aegisthus and 
Clytemnestra and is thereupon pursued by the Furies, the goddesses 
of retribution. 

Sartre uses this piece of Greek mythology to illustrate what he 
means by absolute human freedom. Argos, the petty, provincial 
Greek town (which in Sartre's play takes the place of the austere 
setting of ancient Mycenae) is inhabited by puritanical bigots who 
bask in the musty and moldy atmosphere of bourgeois hypocrisy. 
These are the people "de mauvalsc foi"; their guilty consciences are 
symbolized by "the flies" which swarm all over the city and befoul 
the homes of the citizens. 

When Orestes returns home, he finds Argos in deep mourning. For 
the past fifteen years the inhabitants have been torturing themselves in 
doing penance for their coresponsibility in the assassination of Aga- 
memnon, their king. Aegisthus, the killer and adulterer, does not him- 
self believe in this cult of repentance and remorse. He has instituted 
and perpetuated it in Argos because he is convinced that the fear 
and terror generated by such a morbid religious cult are the most 
effective means to keep his subjects in abject obedience. And this 
conviction is shared by Jupiter, the "god," who rules over the people 
of Greece. Jupiter, too, can maintain his power only as long as human 
beings are weighed down by a guilt complex, as long as the fact 
remains concealed from them that in reality there is nothing at all 
that could justify their sorrow and remorse. 

While away from home, Orestes has been instructed and "enlight- 
ened" by an eminent "pedagogue" who, a Greek Voltaire, has 
"liberated" his pupil from the bonds of faith, love, and religion. 
This "liberation" makes it possible for Orestes to challenge the 
tyrannical hold which both Aegisthus and Jupiter have on the people's 
consciences. From an initial state of lethargy Orestes is aroused by 
Electra who, in defiance of the king's orders and in mockery of the 
sinister cult of remorse, performs a dance of rejoicing on the 
occasion of the annual popular observance of the Day of Atonement. 
Orestes begins to realize that up to this day he has not really lived 
his own life. When he realizes that he has to choose between obedience 
to the kw of Jupiter and rebellion against this law, he chooses the latter. 

Jupiter, the "god," and Aegisthus, the adulterous tyrant, arc cut 



i 7 2 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

out of the same cloth. Both know of only one supreme value: order! 
"For the sake of order," says Aegisthus, "I have killed my king; 
I wanted order to prevail, and I wanted it to prevail through me. 
I have lived without desire, without love, without hope, but I have 
created order." And Jupiter, after the assassination of Aegisthus and 
Clytemnestra, offers the kingship to Orestes with only one stipulation: 
he is to perpetuate the regime of "order." Orestes refuses. In place of 
"resignation and vile humility" he chooses the passionate hatred of 
the rebel. He dedicates himself to the task of "liberation." After the 
double murder he is unrepentant. But he is not quite at ease in his 
newly gained freedom. He knows that "everything has changed. There 
was some warmth about me, something which is now dead. How 
empty everything has become. . . . And this anguish: do you believe 
that I will ever get rid of this gnawing anguish?" 

Electra is in the beginning as revolutionary in her advocacy of 
absolute emancipation as Orestes; without her aid and inspiration 
the might of Jupiter could not have been broken. But in the end 
she weakens: the horror of her deed haunts her, and she seeks 
refuge in repentance and in renewed submission to the abandoned 
law. Orestes has freed himself from the avenging Furies, but he knows 
that his freedom, which absolves him from any obligation to God, 
man, and nature, is the precarious freedom of an exile. He is willing, 
however, to accept its burdens together with its privileges: "I am 
condemned henceforth to accept no other law but my own. . . . My 
crime belongs to me; I claim it as my own in the face of the light 
of the sun: it is my pride and the mainstay of my existence." 

In his preface to Lcs Mouchcs Sartre claims that he has "attempted 
to demonstrate that self-abnegation and self-accusation is not the atti- 
tude the French were permitted to take after their military defeat. . . . 
And for the Germans, too, such an attitude is sterile. By this I do 
not wish to imply that the memory of the faults of the past should 
disappear from their minds. No. But I am convinced that self-accusa- 
tion cannot gain for them the forgiveness of the world. That forgive- 
ness can only be brought about by a total and absolute resolution to 
create a future in freedom and in deed, by a firm will to build this 
future in common with the greatest possible number of men of good 
will." This sounds eminently reasonable. But is it more than an after- 
thought, a belated rationalization of the blasphemous thesis of this 
play? This thesis proclaims without any ambiguity that man, because 
of his absolute freedom, has nothing to repent, nothing to feel sorry 



JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 173 

for. "The man," says Sartre, "who has been smitten by his freedom 
as by a flash of lightning, is beyond good and evil and beyond the 
reach of anyone who would dare to give him orders." 

The thesis of Les Mouches is neither political nor philosophical: 
it expresses an ethico-religious conviction. The real object of the rebel- 
lion of Orestes-Sartre is God and the moral law and order sanctioned 
by Him. His Jupiter is described as the Creator of the world, the 
Lord of nature, the supreme Lawgiver. '1 have created you,** Jupiter 
tells the rebellious Orestes, "and I have created all things. Behold 
these planets pursuing their paths in an orderly manner, without 
ever colliding with each other: I have regulated their course. Listen 
to the harmony of the spheres, this tremendous song of praise, mightily 
resounding from the four corners of the universe." 

The "god" whose "death" Nietzsche announced had actually never 
been alive. The same is true of the "god" against whom Sartre's 
Orestes rises in revolt. This deity inspires no love, but only abject 
fear and the sadness and hopelessness of despair. Nothing but the 
magic wand of his freedom can save man from the nightmare of 
this pseudo divinity. But Sartre no doubt consciously and intentionally 
constructed this caricature of the Christian God and of Christian 
morality. To what end? To justify in the rebellion of his hero his 
own rebellion against Christianity. 

"Two centuries of crisis in religion and science were needed," Sartre 
writes in an essay on Descartes, "so that man could regain his creative 
freedom . . . , so that at last the truth upon which all humanism is 
based might appear: man is the sufficient reason for the existence of 
the world.'* Sartre's Orestes has discovered the secret that freedom, 
the gift of God to man, can be turned by man against the divine 
giver: "I am your king, you shameless wofrn," says Jupiter; "who, 
after all, has created you?" "You," Orestes admits with sovereign 
contempt, "but you should not have created me free? "I have given you 
your freedom, so that you might freely serve me," replies Jupiter. 
"That's possible," sneers Orestes, "but it has turned against you. . * . I 
am a man, Jupiter, and every man has to find his own way, . * . What 
is there between you and me? We shall pass by each other like two 
ships. . . . You are a god, and I am free: we are equally alone in 
our anguish." 

Sartre's Orestes is a kinsman of all those self-styled "supermen" in 
past and present who have been preaching the gospel of selfaedcmp- 
tion. They include historical figures, such as Simon Magus, the gnostic 



174 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

mystagogue, Faustus, the Manichaean, the German Georg Sabellicus 
(who called himself Dr. Faustus and "Magus Secundus"), Schopen- 
hauer, and Nietzsche, as well as characters of religion, mythology, 
and literature, such as Lucifer, Prometheus, Faust, and Zarathustra. 
Sartre merely carries this ancient gnostic theme to a point where self- 
redemption turns into a blasphemous and sacrilegious "counter- 
redemption": Orestes is the "Superman" who achieves his freedom by 
matricide and who in his rebellious pride makes bold to become the 
liberator also of his fellowmen by taking upon himself their guilt and 
their remorse. The perversion of the Christian idea of redemption 
cannot be carried any farther. 

Human existence and human freedom, according to Sartre, grow 
out of and are nourished by despair. Sartre does not wish to affirm 
that man can in freedom choose between good and evil but rather 
that man's absolute freedom rises "beyond good and evil." And, like 
Nietzsche's Zarathustra, he is not insensitive to the horrors which this 
kind of freedom entails. Orestes, trusting exclusively in his own powers, 
defiantly invites the curse of Jupiter. His freedom is the freedom of 
Lucifer, born of stubborn pride and the refusal to serve. 

IV 

Sartre's philosophy as much as that of Nietzsche expresses the 
terrifying experience of man's forlornness in a world without God. 
In his lecture on Humanism 2 * Sartre tries to assuage this terror by 
reassuring his readers, telling them that there is no reason for getting 
very excited about the lamentable state of the world and of man in 
the world. Nothing is really lost as long as man is courageous enough 
to rid himself of all nostalgia for things which are gone and cannot 
be brought back. Everything can still be arranged satisfactorily if 
only man realizes the strength of his freedom; this strength will 
then enable him to start a new existence and a new world, both 
centered in himself rather than in God: "Before you come alive, life 
is nothing; it's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing 
else but the meaning you choose." 28 

In all his rapturous praise of human freedom it never occurs to 
Sartre to inquire into die nature of freedom itself. He takes it for 

22 Sartre, L'Existentialisine est un humemisme (1946) English edition: Existential- 
ism, translated by Bernard Frechtman (New York: Philosophical library, 1947). 
** Ibid., p. 58. 



JEAN-PAUL SARTRE 175 

granted that man can freely posit something which did not exist 
previously; that he can freely forge new chains of causality. Even 
if that were true (and it is only partially true), the question of how 
freedom comes into the world and into man or the question of how 
it becomes possible for man to be or to posit a new beginning, 
remains unanswered. Sartre ceases his questioning before he has 
even faced the real problem of freedom. 

What is freedom? This is the fundamental question, and it cannot 
be answered without asking with Heidegger th equally fundamental 
question, What is truth? Since it is truth that shall make us free, the 
nature of freedom cannot be understood unless it is seen in its 
relation to the nature of truth. But the problem of truth has no 
place in Sartre's thinking, for the barbarically primitive statement 
that truth is what I posit as true cannot in earnest be regarded as 
a philosophical answer. 

Sartre makes much of his dogmatic assertion that "existence pre- 
cedes essence." He even claims that all existentialism teaches the 
absolute prevalence of existence over and prior to essence. Man, he 
says, is "a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept. 
... At first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, 
and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no 
human nature, since there is no God to conceive it." 2 * 

In evident contrast to Heidegger, Sartre uses the terms "existcntict 9 
and "essentia" in their scholastic-Thomistic meaning. But with the aid 
of modern psychological and psychoanalytical analysis, he totally mis- 
represents Thomistic metaphysics and lien attempts the demolition 
of this absurd construct of his own mind. 

Sartre's relationship to Heidegger is rather complex, but Heidegger 
himself has guardedly attempted to ward off responsibility for this 
self-styled disciple. Max Muller goes farther: he points out that Sartre 
has completely perverted the meaning of Heidegger's thought in every 
important point. While in Heidegger's view man is the witness, 
the servant, "the shepherd" of Being, for Sartre man is the autonomous 
creator and master of Being. Man's absolute freedom knows of no 
obedience, no service, no humility, no response to Being. Resting on 
no essence or human nature, man finds himself alone and forlorn 
in the nothingness of his empty existence, trying to fill the void 
with his illusory projects, and actually existing only in this process 
of projecting and acting. 

**lbid., p. 18. 



176 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

For Heidegger the essence of truth is freedom. Sartre's "postulatory 
atheism" demands that "God be dead/' so that human freedom may 
be born. In Heidegger's philosophy freedom is grounded in the Truth 
of Being. In Sartre's philosophy both Being and freedom are grounded 
in nothingness. Heidegger is seeking a new approach to the truth 
of traditional Western metaphysics. Sartre offers his antimoralism and 
antitheology as substitutes for Christian morality and religion. 



CHAPTER SIX 



SHIPWRECK OR HOMECOMING? 
THE EXISTENTIALISM OF KARL JASPERS 



AMONG all those thinkers, past and present, who may roughly be 
classified as "existentialists,** the German philosopher Karl Jaspers 
(1883 ) comes closest to a systematic and integrated presentation of 
his philosophic creed. This is so despite the fact that, in contrast to 
Heidegger, Jaspers does not acknowledge the need for an ontology, 
that is, a fundamental discipline embracing the totality of being. The 
"philosophy of existence" a tide to which the philosophy of Jaspers 
definitely lays claim must be satisfied with the illumination of the 
possibilities of individual, concrete existence in its freedom, unique- 
ness, and ineffability. 

Karl Jaspers 1 is not only a prolific writer but a thinker whose many 
works reveal the wide range of his interests and the prodigious scope 
of the intellectual tradition which is his heritage. His early studies 
in medicine, psychology and psychiatry, and his practical clinical 
experiences yielded two important works, one dealing with psycho- 
pathology and the other with the psychology of different philosophies 
of life. 2 Among the major publications of Jaspers, the philosopher, 



1 Karl Jaspers was born in the east-Frisian city of Oldenburg as the son of a 
banker. He studied law at the Universities of Heidelberg and Munich, and medicine 
at the Universities of Berlin, Gottingen, and Heidelberg. He wrote his doctoral dis- 
sertation at Heidelberg on Heimweh und Verbrechen (Nostalgia and Crime, 1909). 
After having held an assistantship at the local Psychiatric Clinic, he was appointed 
professor of psychology at Heidelberg University in 1916 and professor of philosophy 
in 1921. For political reasons he was relieved of his academic duties in 1937, was 
reinstated after the collapse of National Socialism, in 1945, and was named an 
"Honorary Senator" of the University of Heidelberg in 1946. In 1948, he accepted 
a call to the University of Basel in Switzerland. 

2 Ct Allgemeinc Psychopathologic (Berlin: Springer, 19x3; 4 cd., 1946); Psychologic 
der Wcltanschauungen (Berlin: Springer, 1919; 3 ei, 1925). 

177 



178 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

arc three series of lectures, 8 comprehensive studies on Descartes and 
Nietzsche, 4 and two monumental presentations (the second still unfin- 
ished) of the sum total of his own philosophic position. 5 

Those intellectual ancestors whose influence can be traced in the 
thinking of Jaspers include aside from Kant, Kierkegaard, and Nie- 
tzsche, who are specifically named such ancient and modem thinkers 
as Plotinus, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, and Schelling. Kant in particu- 
lar is for Jaspers the philosopher far excellence ("der PhUosofh 
schlechthin"). The infrequent references to the Aristotelian and 
scholastic tradition are largely negative and betray the lack of an 
intimate, first-hand acquaintance with this important branch of West- 
ern thought. 

Philosophy begins for Jaspers not with an inquiry into the problem 
of being but with an inquiry into the specific situation in which the 
philosopher finds himself in the world. The reason for this point 
of departure lies, Jaspers states, in the fact that the problem of being 
cannot be resolved by way of a rational analysis. It is impossible to 
conceive of a doctrine of being which, in virtue of its rational con- 
vincing force, could command universal assent. Everything that I 
experience as essentially real owes its reality to the fact that I myself 
exist as an individual. The primary philosophic task, therefore, is the 
"illumination" (Existenzerhellung) of the personality of the one who 
asks the philosophic questions. 

When, for example, I ask such questions as "What is being?" or 
"Why is there something rather than nothing?" or "Who am I?" 
these queries arise from my personally and historically determined 
situation. My questions and my answers will fit only this situation in 
its relativity and particularity and thus cannot be of general and abso- 
lute validity. This situation contains some known and knowable as 
well as some unknown and unknowable elements: it is rooted in an 
unfathomable past and tends toward an impenetrable future. It has 
neither a readily definable origin nor a definitely recognizable end. 
I find myself in the midst of things, immersed in a movement that 
is apparently undetermined and undeterminable. 

* QE. Vernunft und Existenz (Groningen, Batavia: Wolters, 1935); Existenzphilosophie 
(Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1938); Der phUosophische Glaube (Munchen: R. Piper, 1948)* 

* CL Nietzsche (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1936); Descartes und die Philosophic (Berlin: 
W. de Gruyter, 1937)* 

C. Philosophic (Berlin: Springer, 1932), 3 vols.; PhUosophische Logfy I: Von der 
Wahrheit (Munchen: R. Piper, 1947)- 



SHIPWRECK OR HOMECOMING? 179 

Although at first glance everything seems very matter of fact and 
almost self-evident, I soon begin to wonder as to myself and the 
world which surrounds me and of which I am a part What docs it 
really mean, I ask myself, when I state that I am or that the world is? 
I know from experience that everything is transitory; I know that I 
myself was not at the beginning of things and that I shall not be at 
the end. And I am anxious to find in this incessant flux a statically 
fixed point which would permit me to arrive at some objective 
certainty concerning myself and the world. I am looking for an answer 
that will give me a firm hold on myself and on life, because the 
incertitude of my present situation fills me with doubt and anxiety. I 
have come out of one darkness in which I was not yet, and I am 
on my way into another darkness in which I shall be no more. In 
the narrow span of light in which I find myself, I am concerned about 
myself and about things, but the reasons for such concern are as 
yet a mystery to me. And so I search for some kind of "being" whose 
existence does not exhaust itself in transitoriness and which may thus 
impart stability and permanence also to my own self. 

Can science and scientific knowledge possibly be of help in showing 
me a way out of my existential incertitude? Philosophy evidently 
differs from science in that it lacks a factual, objective basis on which 
to build the structure of its insight. Is philosophy then for this reason 
inferior to science? Experimental science claims to base its findings 
on tested "facts." This claim, however, is only partially justified: 
all the "exact" sciences start from certain presuppositions which they 
take for granted without attempting to demonstrate their truth. All 
scientific "theories" are intellectual constructs which are open to change 
and correction on the basis of newly discovered "facts." Even if these 
theories approach a maximum of probability, they never yield absolute 
certitude; they never penetrate to the full depth of being; they never 
explore "the whole" of being. Direct scientific "intuitions," such as arc 
occasionally encountered in higher mathematics and in formal logic, 
are so limited in scope, so fragmentary and so incommunicable that 
no doctrine of universal and absolute validity can be founded upon 
them. Science, in short, remains confined to a kind of surface knowledge 
of the objective world: it cannot grasp and comprehend being as 
such, and it cannot provide an answer to questions concerning the 
ultimate values and ends of human life. Philosophy and science are 
thus equally incapable of sustaining any absolute, dogmatic, or final 
certitude of knowledge. 



!8o THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

Thus, in my search for a secure anchor of being, I am thrown back 
again on my own concrete self. Here at least I seem to be able to get 
hold of an authentic reality of which I have an immediate experience. 
While the being of things is unconscious of itself, I, the thinking 
subject, am conscious of the being that I am. The very fact that I 
am able to say, "I am," differentiates my being from the being of 
everything else. The being of things is inaccessible to me because my 
very knowledge of them deprives them of their independence; my 
knowledge relativizes them by transforming them into a reality for >me. 
No being can thus be known objectively or "as it is in itself. This 
is true even of my own being: to the extent that I have a rational 
knowledge of myself, I am not, strictly speaking, myself. The proper 
starting point of philosophy is therefore my personal existence, such 
as it is given to me in the immediate experience of my concrete 

situation: "The situation is the beginning ... of philosophy It is 

for me the one and only form of reality. ... My thinking starts from 
it and returns to it." 6 I must accept my concrete situation in its 
entirety and in its necessity, and I must try to "illuminate" it as com- 
pletely and profoundly as possible. Here, if anywhere, do I have a 
chance of finding my search for "being" answered and rewarded. 

What, then, is this personal, concrete "existence" in a given situation? 
It is, says Jaspers, the hidden ground of my self, that which never 
becomes an object and which therefore can neither be rationally known 
nor conceptually defined. It is the origin ("Ursprung") out of which 
I think and act and of which in rare moments of insight I am in- 
dubitably certain. 

The meaning of "existence" is further "illuminated" when it is 
contrasted with "Dasein;' 7 the simple "being-there" of empirical reality. 
And what is the meaning of Dasein in the terminology of Jaspers? It 
signifies the pure givenness of the temporal life and the conditions of 
the world as experienced by all, philosophers and nonphilosophers alike. 
It is that which is generally designated as the "reality" whose kws 
and structures are studied by science: "The whole of Dasein is the 
world. . . . The world is Dasein which confronts me as the always 
determined being of objects; I myself am Dasein as far as I am an 
empirical being." 8 

Jaspers, Philosophic, I, p. 3. 

7The term Dasein, as will be seen, is used by Jaspers in a sense totally different 
from that connected with it by Heidegger. 
Jaspers, Philosophic, I, p. 28. 



SHIPWRECK OR HOMECOMING? 181 

Human Dasein, according to Jaspers, is of the same order as the 
universal Dasein of the world: it can be regarded as an "object" among 
other objects and can thus be analyzed, studied, described, and ex- 
plained. Such a scientific exploration of human Dasein forms the basis 
of psychology and the several anthropological disciplines which take 
their place side by side with the natural sciences. The empirical 
reality of the world and the empirical reality of human Dasein are 
inextricably intertwined. They cannot even be conceived independent 
of each other: "Neither is the world . . . without me who knows it, 
nor can I be without the world in which alone I am what I am. There 
is no world without me, nor am I without the world." 9 

Human Dasein is not "existence," says Jaspers, but man in his 
Dasein is "possible existence" (mogliche Existenz). Man is "that being 
who is not but who can be and ought to be and who therefore decides 
in his temporality whether or not he is to be eternal. , . ." 10 As 
"possible existence," man is capable of taking steps, of positing acts 
which either bring him nearer the fulfillment of his being or, con- 
versely, carry him away from his being, toward nothingness. While 
the being of human Dasein is transitory, the vitality of human "exist- 
ence" is immbrtal. While Dasein is absolutely temporal, existence is 
both temporal and timelessly eternal. "Dasein realizes itself in the 
being of the world; possible existence is in the world as in a territory 
in which it can manifest itself." 11 

How does "possible existence" realize itself? How does it attain to 
full self-possession? By the decision of an existential choice, answers 
Jaspers. Existential consciousness is the consciousness of personal 
freedom of choice. "Existence is real only as freedom * Freedom is 
... the being of existence." 12 When I cease to observe myself 
psychologically, when I begin to act with jx>sitive enthusiasm and in 
virtue of a certitude which grows out of* my very being at that 
moment I decide what I am going to be. "In the act of choice . . . , in 
the original spontaneity of my freedom * . . I recognize myself for 
the first time as my own true self." 18 Thus "freedom is the beginning 
and the end in the process of the illumination of existence." 14 Only 
in those moments when I exercise my freedom am I fully myself; only 
in my free acts do I have the certitude of absolute being. And no 
abstract intellectual operations nor any emotional, sentimental, or 
instinctive impulses can ever impart to me a comparable experience. 

Ibid., I, p. 62. ll Ibid., H, p. I f. Ibid., H, p. 180. 

H, p. 2. lbid., n, p. 177. **lbid., H, p. 177. 



182 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

In the act of freedom there is no "docility" regarding any object; 
everything lies ahead of me in a fluid state of possibility, and it is I 
who by a creative "fiat 9 impart actuality to one possibility or the 
other. I break out of the limitations of my Dasein and decide what I 
choose to be. The act of freedom is thus an absolute beginning, a 
spontaneous source and origin of true personal authenticity. Existence 
creates itself in this act, fertilizing the desert of being with the life- 
blood of personality. And freedom carries with it and within it its 
own certitude: not in the cogito (I think) but in the eligo (I choose) 
lies the guarantee of existence, so that the Cogito, ergo sum (I think, 
therefore I am) of Descartes becomes an Eligo , ergo sum (I choose, 
therefore I am) in the formulation of Jaspers. "In choosing I am, and 
if I am not, it is because of my failure to choose." 15 

Existential freedom is undefinable. The attempt to resolve the prob- 
lem of freedom by objective rational analysis can never succeed be- 
cause it fails to recognize and respect the nature of freedom. "Free- 
dom proves itself by my action rather than by my insight," says 
Jaspers. 16 Since my free decision is unconditioned, existential choice 
cannot result from any objective conflict of motives. Nevertheless, the 
free act is not a blind act: man is conscious of his action, he knows 
what he is doing, and without such knowledge there would be no 
freedom. But the faculty of choosing among several known possibilities 
is not yet freedom in the full and true sense because it is a pure 
faculty or power without a subject matter or a substantial content. 17 

My freedom, furthermore, presupposes my being conscious of a 
kw or a hierarchy of values. Freedom of choice, that is, a human 
act of freedom in the strict sense, is impossible without a law. But 
this kw the indispensable condition of my freedom must be 
an internal, personal kw rather than an external, universal norm: 
"Existential choice is not obedience to an objectively formulated im- 
perative," but my obedience to an internal imperative. Since the world 
is inexhaustible in its contents and since science is by its very nature 
incomplete and fragmentary, I must act without first acquiring a 
complete and exact knowledge of all the factors involved in my 
decision. Otherwise I will never get beyond the stage of deliberation. I 
must either act now, at this present moment, in this particular situation, 
or I must absolutely refrain from action, and that means (for Jaspers) 

&, n, p. 182. 

. t H, p. 175. 
#tf., p. 178. 



SHIPWRECK OR HOMECOMING? 183 

I must refrain from living. Existential freedom chooses to act, that is, 
it chooses to live. 

It is obvious, of course, that in his doctrine of freedom Jaspers 
defends a strictly anti-intellectualistic position. For any rational philos- 
ophy freedom of action is inconceivable without a prior intellectual 
knowledge which can deliberate and weigh motives. For Jaspers, on 
the contrary, it is precisely the absence of any rational, objective 
knowledge that makes freedom of action possible. Objective knowledge 
for him means constraint: "The science of not-knowing (das Wisscn 
des Nichtwissens) is the condition of freedom. ... If we knew of an 
intelligible answer to the question, Whence guilt, strife, and evil?* 
the possibility of existence would be deprived of its genuine, original 
experience. . . . The breakdown of every theodicy becomes an appeal 
to the spontaneous activity of our freedom." 18 No action that is condi- 
tioned by an external motive or end can be a free action; to be free, 
it must be "unconditioned." 

The question then arises: how is any intelligible discussion of exis- 
tential freedom as well as of other existential realities possible if none 
of them can be expressed and articulated objectively or conceptually? 
Jaspers answers that any such discussion can only be in the nature of a 
"sign language": it does not make the existential reality directly 
visible, but it points the way toward its seizure; it is an appeal rather 
than a revelation or expression of its being. The discussion of existential 
realities, in other words, serves to awaken the individual; it acts as a 
potent stimulus in the individual's efforts at self-realization. 19 

To be free means to be one's self; freedom is loyalty to one's self. 
This self has a history, and the act of freedom is the epitome or the 
fulfillment of the self s "historicity," bringing to fruition its past and 
in anticipation preparing its future. The "historicity" of my self 
narrows down somewhat the margin of individual freedom: whereas 
for Sartre human freedom is absolute, for Jaspers it is limited by the 
individual's historically molded personality. In other words, my past 
actions carry a substantial weight in regard to both the possibilities 
of my future and the actual decisions of my present. Thus freedom and 
necessity meet and fuse not only in my present and future choices 
but in die very individuality of my existence. Each and every decision 
establishes a new foundation for the formation of my real historical 



, m, p. 78. 
tftf,, H, p. 430 . 



184 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

self: I am bound by the decisive character of my choices; in virtue 
of these choices I have become what I wanted myself to be. 

The historical weight of my "original choice" is so great that all my 
subsequent choices are restricted by the fact of this historical continuity. 
This explains, says Jaspers, why the life of each individual is burdened 
by some necessary, inevitable "guilt." My present faults are deeply 
rooted in the historical structure of my being. The original, absolute 
choice, by which I have become what I am, was the one and only 
fully autonomous act in the self-determination of my existence; it 
predestines or predetermines to some extent what I am now and 
what I shall be in the future. My aboriginal freedom which in its 
very nature is boundless in its desire for complete self-realization 
regardless of the claims and rights of others weighs upon me like 
an "original sin." This radical tendency of my original freedom to 
become absolute, imparts to it the character of an original guilt. And 
this original guilt becomes thus the source of all the particular faults 
of my present and future. 

In freedom I seize my existence. Freedom "is" existence, says 
Jaspers. But no matter how free, how independent and personal my 
existence may be, it never can subsist apart from that Dasein which 
is its natural environment and which provides the medium and the 
sustaining subject matter for its action. In view of this linkage with 
Dasein, existence finds itself exposed to two mortal dangers: it may 
mistake Dasein for the actual ground and depth of being and may 
thus lose itself or be dissolved in it; it may, for example, attach itself 
with complete abandon to the objects of sense as if they constituted 
the fullness of reality or existence may behave as if Dasein were 
altogether unreal, of no value and significance whatsoever. The 
proper attitude maintains a precarious "tension" (Spannung) between 
these two extreme possibilities. 

Dasein as such, isolated from existence, is essentially incomplete, 
fleeting, relative, evanescent: a contingent and transitory "nullity" 
(Nichtig\eii). Man therefore succumbs to a monstrous delusion if he 
regards it as an absolute reality, if he endows it with the attributes 
of stability, necessity, permanence, and absolute universal validity. With- 
out the substantial content of the "historicity" of the concrete and per- 
sonal human existence, Dasein is an empty shell. If, on the other hand, 
it is filled with this personal content, it immediately acquires "an abso- 
lute weight and value" and becomes "infinitely important." Dasein, 
in short, is indispensable "as an expression or manifestation of exist- 



SHIPWRECK OR HOMECOMING? 185 

ence." By freely appropriating it, existence, as it were, incorporates 
Dasein; it becomes part of existence or even one with existence. "In 
this 'seizure* existence fulfills its destiny by realizing its being." 20 The 
unity of "existence" and Dasein, in which the individual self becomes 
manifest, constitutes for Jaspers man's "historicity," and "historical 
consciousness" is the conscious experience of this unity. 21 

The unity of existence and Dasein in the concrete, historical self 
a unity in which the depth of being has become incarnate in an 
irreplaceable manner signifies for Jaspers the fusion of the "eternal" 
and the "temporal." "Eternity," in other words, is not the plenitude 
of an existence outside or above time, nor the infinite extension of 
temporal existence, nor an infinite duration of human existence after 
death in a life beyond: "eternity" becomes incarnate in "time"; it 
manifests itself in the fulfilled moment. As soon as the weight of 
eternity is received into the temporality of Dasein, the eternal envelops 
and permeates the temporal. As far as my personal existence is 
concerned, I then exist in time, above time, and beyond rime. Such 
an eternal existence in the fulfilled moment is realized in the uncon- 
ditioned, necessary, and singularly authentic act of freedom, an act 
in which the individual overcomes the constraints of his temporality 
by deciding himself "in time, for eternity." 22 Prompted by my vital 
urges and my desire for lasting happiness, I seek permanence in time, 
and in the unconditional act of freedom I can satisfy this desire: I 
can introduce eternity into time. 

II 

In the act of freedom my existence not only takes possession of 
itself but it also enters into communication with other existences. I 
cannot really become myself in isolation, says Jaspers, but only in 
communication and collaboration with others. Not only do I become 
myself in this "loving strife" of communication with others, but the 
same is- equally true of the others: they also attain to self-realization 
and self-possession in communication. Self-realization in communica- 
tion is, according to Jaspers, like a "creatio ex nihilo": a new richness 
of being is acquired and revealed. And, conversely, the absence or the 
refusal of communication leads to a corresponding absence or loss of 
being. 23 

20 Cf. ibid,, II, p. 122 ff. 22 C . ibid., p. 207 i 

21 Cf. ibid., H, p. 424. 23 iKd. 9 E, p. 58. 



i86 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

The reasons with which Jaspers explains the need for communica- 
tion in the process of self-realization follow the line of argument of 
the Hegelian dialectic: I am an ego, says Jaspers, only by setting 
myself off from a nonego, by asserting myself in the face of "the 
other," by opposing myself to "the other." This kind of self-assertion, 
however, leads me to the edge of "the abyss of absolute estrangement" 
in regard to "the other." And my desire for the unity of being urges 
me to bridge this abyss in the union of "being-with-the-other." Thus 
communication originates and is consummated. 

Existential communication differs from all objectively verifiable 
relationships among human beings. It surpasses ordinary friendship, 
affection, and love as well as reciprocal esteem, mutual psychological 
understanding, and a mere unanimity of thoughts, convictions, and 
aspirations. All these have their proper place in Dasein, not in "exist- 
ence": they are all insufficient to link existences in the profundity of 
their unconditional freedom. This does not mean, however, that exist- 
ences can enter into a relationship of full and unrestricted immediacy. 
Such an immediacy of communication is prevented by the temporal 
condition of existences, that is, by their embodiment in the contin- 
gency of Dasein. But it is in these conditions and circumstances of 
ordinary, everyday life that "communicative situations" arise in the 
various forms of mandate and service, in discourse, in social relations, 
and in social and political action. These contacts and relationships 
within the structure of Dasein are, as it were, "the body" or the 
material substrate of existential communication, the visible and tangi- 
ble manifestation of its "invisible soul." 24 

What in particular, asks Jaspers, entices and attracts my "will to 
communication?" He answers that it is not so much what "the other" 
has as what he is: I want to reach "the other" in the original and 
irreducible ground and substance of his freedom. My own freedom, 
in other words, is in search of the freedom of "the other"; my own 
self requires other selves with whom to enter into a dual relationship 
of opposition and unification. "I cannot become myself," writes Jaspers, 
"if the other does not wish to become his self; I cannot be free if the 
other is not free." 25 In genuine communication those who enter into 
the existential relationship "open themselves" and "reveal themselves" 
to each other without reservation in the original depth of their being, 

24 Cf. Jaspers, Vemunft und Existcnz, p. 63. 

25 Jaspers, Philosophic, n, p. 57. 



SHIPWRECK OR HOMECOMING? 187 

ready to see and to be seen, to penetrate and be penetrated, to mold 
and be molded in a reciprocal give-and-take. In order to gain "exist- 
ence" I am willing to forsake all my attachments to empirical goods 
and values, so that I may become free to experience sympathetically the 
profound existential truth of "the other." 

Existential communication does not lead, however, to a fusion of 
existences. Such a fusion would entail the submersion of the indi- 
vidual in the collective, as happens, for example, in the undifferen- 
tiatcd being en masse of primitive or totalitarian societies. True 
communication, on the contrary, respects and preserves the distinc- 
tions between individual and individual and between their existential 
truths. Existential truth, therefore, is as multiform as are the indi- 
viduals in whom it is incarnate. And these various existential truths 
are not only equally legitimate but they mutually necessitate and 
supplement each other. My existential truth, in other words, is inalien- 
ably my own, and the choice which I am called upon to make is not 
between different forms of truth but between existence and nonexist- 
ence, between my truth and the absence of truth, between my faith 
and the absence of faith. And since I am identical with my truth, I 
cannot "objectivate" it by placing it outside myself and regarding it 
as one object among others. 28 

Like existence, communication is thus undefinable and ineffable: it 
cannot be expressed in abstract concepts; it carries with it a certitude 
which is objectively inconceivable and unknowable. What can be 
objectively known, seen, and appreciated is the material effects of 
existential communication; its "existential" consequences, on the other 
hand, are beyond the reach of any objective criterion. "The conscious- 
ness of possible existence alone is capable of perceiving their truth 
in the bond of communication.** 27 

Jaspers, like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, is aware of 
the dangers which threaten human existence when it surrenders its 
inalienable personal prerogatives to the impersonal, soulless anonymity 
of the masses. The existing individual, even in communication, must 
always preserve the integrity of his "self." His "being-with-others** 
must be in the nature of a voluntary, personal "engagement.** "He 
who only loves 'mankind,'" writes Jaspers, "loves nothing but an 
empty abstraction; he only loves truly who loves this particular human 
being. ... I destroy communication if I seek it in a communion 

*O. ibid., H, p. 419 f. lbid., n, p. 423. 



i88 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

with the greatest possible number." 28 Such a communion must of 
necessity lose in depth what it gains in numerical extension. True 
communication always brings to light something in human beings 
which makes them feel that they did not meet each other by chance 
in the domain of Dascin but that they have been related to each 
other from eternity. 29 

Ill 

The philosophic search for being moves, according to Jaspers, in 
three main directions: toward "the world," toward "possible exist- 
ence," and toward "transcendence." The search for the world leads 
to "world-orientation"; the search for possible existence leads to the 
step-by-step "illumination of existence"; and the search for transcend- 
ence leads into the proximity of the fullness of being. Philosophy must 
"transcend" the world of objects because no being that is given to 
man as an object of his research embodies Being in its fullness. 

The Dascin of everyday life in its satiety and complacency is with- 
out transcendence. In the immanence of Dascin I am capable of 
experiencing pleasure in the brutal vitality of things and beings, but 
I remain empty in my satiety, helpless and forlorn in sudden loss, 
shiftless in the flux of time. The blind vitality of human life differs, 
however, from the kind of vitality which we observe in animals. 
The animal is not helpless, not forlorn, not empty. It lives fully and 
securely within the limits of its specific nature. Man, by foregoing 
transcendence, does not and cannot acquire the singular strength and 
security of the animal nature. If he renounces the prerogatives of 
his human existence, he immediately becomes less than an animal. 
Man, in short, cannot "be there" like other existents: he either 
transcends his "being-there" (Dascin), or he descends below the 
animal level by losing himself and his possibility of transcendence. 

All transcendence originates in the disquietude which man 
experiences in view of the incompleteness, finiteness, and transitoriness 
of Dascin. "The idea," says Jaspers, "which actually seizes transcendence 
in consequence of the fragmentary nature of every communication and 
of the shipwreck of every form of truth in the world, has almost 
the force of a proof of the existence of God: presupposing that truth 
must be, this idea encounters transcendence on the basis of the 
experienced insufficiency of any concept of truth." 



, P . i6;n, P . 438. 

29 Cf. Jaspers, Vernunjt und Existenz, p. 62. 



SHIPWRECK OR HOMECOMING? 189 

Transcendence is realized in the three dimensions of world-orienta- 
tion, the illumination of existence, and the metaphysical penetration 
of the realm of being. To these three dimensions correspond the three 
existential impulses of (i) exploration of the world in order to learn 
what being is; (2) exploration of the interrelationship of the world 
and myself as an agent in the world; and (3) the search for God. 
If any one of these impulses is silenced, philosophy ceases to function. 
For it is precisely in my capacity as a philosopher that I study the 
disciplines which make possible world-orientation; that I am engaged 
in the illumination of my existence in the world; that I have an 
open mind for the metaphysical lucidity and transparency of things. 

Jaspers at times uses the terms "Transcendence" and "God" synony- 
mously. The deity to which the philosophy of Jaspers has reference 
is, however, neither the transcendent God of theism nor the immanent 
God (e.g. Spinoza's "Dcus sive natura") of pantheism. Both of these 
ideas of God are, according to Jaspers, equally at fault in that they 
are "ontological": both imply that metaphysical truth is firmly and 
objectively established, valid always and for all. "After Kant," says 
Jaspers, "all ontology stands condemned." 30 "We can neither conceive 
Transcendence as an individual God, separated from the world, nor 
can we say that 'all* is transcendent or that God is the being which 
contains 'all.'" 31 Such an alternative is valid only for the human 
reason, not for human existence. 

Existential philosophy finds it equally impossible to endorse faith 
in the God of a "revealed religion" founded upon the claim that God 
has manifested Himself once and for all in human history, and 
supporting this claim by the promulgation of fixed dogmas. Existential 
freedom is strictly personal, and its truth is always incomplete; it 
therefore excludes and rejects any truth established once and for all 
and of supposedly timeless and universal validity. 

As to atheism, it is likewise unacceptable for the existential philoso- 
pher: it sustains a negative ontology of its own and is as dogmatic 
and intolerant as any sectarian religion. Since the existential philoso- 
pher can thus neither endorse the religious nor the atheistic position, 
he has to live by the tertium quid of a "philosophic faith." 

Although religion is inaccessible to strict philosophy, it is never- 
theless of eminent value and significance for human existence. Jaspers 
points out that in the religious sphere two fundamental attitudes are 

80 CL Jaspers, Existensphilosopkie t p. 17 f% 

81 Jaspers, Philosophic, I, p. 52, 



190 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

encountered: defiant self-assertion and trusting self-surrender (Trotz 
und Hingabc). Prometheus is a symbol of Trotz; Job is a symbol of 
Hingabe. 

The Christian faith in the contents of revealed religion absolutizes, 
according to Jaspers, a world-historic occurrence of vastest implica- 
tions for the life of all. This "absolutizing" of a segment of history 
leads to the establishment of the institution of the One True Church, 
commanding an absolute authority and sustained by divinely auth- 
orized and revealed scriptural documents. From the point of view 
of philosophy, Jaspers asserts, this process entails the loss of "existential 
historicity" because "philosophic faith" can neither be absolutized nor 
institutionalized. It is and remains alive only in the vast realm of 
individual minds and in their continued discourse through the ages. 
While religious faith is dogmatic, "philosophic faith" is undogmatic. 

To demand universal acceptance of the contents of religious faith 
as an embodiment of universal truth leads, according to Jaspers, to 
intolerance and makes true existential communication impossible. On 
the other hand, Jaspers finds in the biblical religion many sublime 
truths which can be utilized for the synthetic structure of "philosophic 
faith." Among these he mentions specifically the idea of the one God, 
the unconditional choice between good and evil, the emphasis on 
"love" as the basic reality, the confirmation of the presence of the 
eternal in finite man, the idea of an ordered but contingent universe, 
and the idea of God as man's ultimate refuge and anchorage. 82 In 
this connection Jaspers attributes special significance to the fact that 
none of the great thinkers of the West, including even Nietzsche, could 
have elaborated his philosophy without an intimate acquaintance with 
the Scriptures. No other book, Jaspers affirms, can ever serve as a 
substitute for the Bible. 

Although "philosophic faith," then, differs in many respects from 
religious faith, both are grounded in "transcendence," and a philosophy 
without faith in transcendence ceases to be philosophy in the true 
sense. And as to the individual philosopher, "a faithless philosopher 
is an existence-less philosopher." 33 

The individual who is "open" (aufgesMossen) to the sign language 
of tradition and of his surrounding world is able to discern in these 
realities the handwriting of God. "The voice of God becomes audible 

32 Cf. Jaspers, Dcr philosophische Glaube (Munchcn: R. Piper, 1948), p. 82 and 

tsstnt* 

83 Cf. Jaspers, Existenzphilosophic, p. 81 and passim. 



SHIPWRECK OR HOMECOMING? 191 

in the freedom of personal conviction; it has no other organ to make 
itself heard by men. Whenever man decides himself out of the depth 
of his being, he believes he obeys God, without knowing in an 
objectively guaranteed way what it is that God wills." 34 

Divine Transcendence is correlated to human existence, and only 
when man faces Divine Transcendence can he take hold of his own 
existence. Transcendence itself testifies to the fact that "the world is 
not founded upon itself but points beyond itself. If the world were 
all that there is, there would be no Transcendence. But if there is 
Transcendence, then there is in the being of the world something 
that points toward it." 85 

As might be expected, Jaspers makes at least partially his own 
Kant's critique of the traditional proofs of the existence of God. 36 
He denies that they are intrinsically conclusive, but he admits their 
usefulness as tools in preparing the way for an intellectual approach 
to the problem of Transcendence. These traditional proofs, Jaspers 
argues, proceed from various empirical realities of a cosmic, psycho- 
logical, and moral nature; they stress the contingency of the world, 
the imperfection of human planning, of human projects and accom- 
plishments; and they thus lead the human intellect in the end to 
the edge of an abyss where either nothingness or God is experienced. 
But, Jaspers adds, all search for God presupposes already the idea of 
God: "A certitude of the existence of God, may it be ever so intangible, 
is a presupposition, not a result of the philosophic argument." 87 

Much of what Jaspers says concerning God, transcendence, and 
reality follows at least in part the traditional doctrines of Christian 
philosophy and theology. The statement, for example, that "actual 
reality excludes all potentiality" seems in line with Aristotelian and 
Thomistic thinking. And Jaspers evidently stays within the same 
doctrinal frame when he calls transcendence "the true aboriginal 
unity . . . behind the unity visible in the mirror of the world." That 
reality, he continues, "out of which and in which is everything that 
we are and everything that exists for us, is itself infinite and perfect," 
whereas "all immanence is broken and torn by fissures. . . . Trans- 
cendence is, above all, that power in virtue of which I myself exist; 

s * Jaspers, Der philosophised Glaube, p. 57. 
w IW., p. 17. 

86 Cf. the author's A Realistic Philosophy (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Com- 
pany, 1944), pp. 77790. 

87 Jaspers, Der phUosophische Glaube, p. 30 . 



192 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

precisely in my freedom I exist only in virtue of this power." 88 In his 
own somewhat heavy and involved language Jaspers speaks here of 
the finiteness and contingency of both Dasein and human existence, 
of their dependence on the transcendent, divine Reality. 

Jaspers is also familiar with what Christian theologians call the 
"apophatic" or "negative" way (via emincntiae; via negationii) of 
arriving at some predications concerning the "hidden" nature and 
attributes of God. But while Christian theology teaches an "andogia 
cntis" (analogy of being), an analogy between Creator and creature, 
in virtue of which God can be known analogically by natural human 
reason, Jaspers denies with the Neo-Platonists this principle of analogy. 
While he pays tribute to the attempts of "negative theology" to 
acquire a knowledge of God by determining what He is not rather 
than what He is, Jaspers insists that a valid knowledge of God is 
neither positively nor negatively obtainable. God is simply the "totally 
Other" and therefore totally different from anything that is known 
or knowable. 

In my attempt to discover in Divine Transcendence the ground of 
everything that is, it seems to me at times "that God reveals Himself 
to my vision, but . . . He almost immediately disappears again; 
when I try to seize Him, I seize nothing; when I try to penetrate 
to the source of being, I fall into the void. Never can I make His 
Being a content of my consciousness." 30 God is thus "that which 
cannot be thought" (das Unden\bare), "an empty abyss," as far as 
human reason is concerned. "Transcendence," Jaspers concludes, "can 
neither be determined by any predicate, nor represented as an object, 
nor arrived at by any conclusion. All the categories can, however, be 
utilized to signify that Transcendence is neither quantity nor quality, 
neither relation nor causation, neither one nor multiple, neither being 
nor nothing." 40 But, although Transcendence remains without any 
determination, although it can neither be known nor thought, it is 
nevertheless present in thought according to the fact that it is, not 
according to what it is. "It is that which it is," is all that can be 
said of its being. 41 

How is "Transcendence" related to the individual human existence? 
Existence, says Jaspers, always falls short of its goal in its attempt 

88 Jaspers, Existcnzphihsophif, p. 66. 

89 Jaspers, Philosophic, HI, p. 3. 
>lbid. t HI, p. 38 f. 

"Cf. ibid.,m, p. 67. 



SHIPWRECK OR HOMECOMING? 193 

at self-realization, and its unsated freedom urges it incessantly on to 
go beyond that which it is. In Transcendence, on the other hand, there 
is neither privation nor freedom because there is a fullness of being 
which leaves nothing to be decided and nothing to be newly 
acquired. 42 In turning toward "Transcendence" I seek being as such, 
that is, being in its unicity, being as it is not encountered in any 
particularized existent. "Transcendence," asserts Jaspers, "is beyond 
all form." 48 

To elucidate further what he means by "Transcendence," Jaspers 
makes use of a term which recurs again and again in his discussion 
of metaphysical problems: he speaks of "das Umgreifende 9 ' (literally, 
that which "envelops"). Everything we know, Jaspers contends, 
appears to us within the frame of a "horizon," and that which 
"envelops" all horizons is the unknowable "Umgreifende." The latter 
comprises, first of all, the "Umgreifende" that is the world; second, the 
"Umgreifende" of my own self; last, the total "Umgreifende," that is, 
Transcendence in the strict and final sense. There is, however, trans- 
cendence in the sense of a "going beyond" in every one of these 
three phenomena: in the illumination of existence, in world-orienta- 
tion, and in metaphysics. 

There is transcendence in the illumination of my existence: this 
means that there is in my ego an unknown zone which "envelops" 
my knowledge of my own being. I am linked with an enveloping 
Dasein which is without limits and of which I therefore can have 
only a limited and incomplete knowledge. My "consciousness in 
general" (Bewusstsein uberhaupt). Jaspers affirms with Kant, unifies 
and organizes those objects which my mind encounters. And by 
the activity of my mind ("Gets?') I am capable of creating ideal 
syntheses by means of which I try to get hold of everything that 
is real and intellectually conceivable. But even these ideal syntheses 
are only fragmentary and preliminary, never definitive, always subject 
to revision, correction, and addition, owing to new experiences. 

There is transcendence in world-orientation: this means that outside 
myself the unknown "envelops" me on all sides. This unknown is 
"being-in-itself" (Kant's "Ding an sich"). While the forms of the 
perceived object derive, according to Jaspers, from the subject, that 
which fills these forms with content derives from extramental reality, 
and to this matter which is furnished to my mind from the outside 

**Und., HI, p. 5. /&*., m, p. 39- 



194 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

I cannot add even the smallest grain of dust. While "being-in-itself ' 
is unknowable, it manifests itself indirectly: it is experienced as the 
outer limit of human consciousness, a limit which is sensed, felt, 
. and thought but which cannot be intellectually penetrated. 

Both existential illumination and world-orientation are not self- 
sufficient. Their limited horizons therefore call for the all-enveloping 
horizon of total and absolute Transcendence. "My own being," says 
Jaspers, "relates itself ... to that Transcendence by which it is 
given to itself and on which it founds its existence." This ultimate 
"Umgreijende',' however, is even more radically unknowable than 
the "being-in-itself' of the world. The latter manifests itself at least 
indirectly in the experience of "the limit." Absolute Transcendence, 
on the other hand, is inaccessible to any experience and any research. 
It "w" without ever being seen or known. 44 

Human existence, in the act of freedom, touches authentic, uncon- 
ditioned being, but in doing so it remains profoundly aware of its 
limited autonomy, of its dependence on a higher and fuller reality 
without which it could not sustain its own being. I know that I 
can realize myself only in relation to and in virtue of Transcendence 
and that at the moment I should claim absolute autonomy I would 
sink into a bottomless abyss. Transcendence alone offers existence 
the possibility of a boundless expansion of the self: "In Transcen- 
dence, freedom seeks its fulfillment . . . , its perfection, its expiation, 
its redemption." 45 

How can human existence attain to Transcendence? What acts are 
possible on the part of the individual in regard to this end? Trans- 
cendence, answers Jaspers, can be felt in certain "limit situations" 
(Grcnzsituationen), that is, in fundamental human situations which 
"are felt, experienced, and thought on the boundaries of our Dascin 
and whose common denominator lies in the fact that . . . there is 
nothing firm, no indubitable absolute, no support which could with- 
stand the test of thought and experience." In the "limit situations" 
everything "is fluid, in the resdess movement of its constantly being- 
called-in-qucstion; everything is relative, finite, split into opposites; 
never the whole, never the absolute, never the essential." 46 The dread- 
fulness of this experience cannot be overcome by any human planning 
and calculating. As the "limit situations" call upon what is most 

44 CL Jaspers, Vernunft und Existcnz, p. 30 ff.; Existenxphilosophte, p. 15 f. 

45 Jaspers, Philosophic, ffl, p. 5. 

46 C. Jaspers, Psychologic der Weltanschauungen, p. 229 f. 



SHIPWRECK OR HOMECOMING? 195 

fundamental in.man, the proper human response is an entirely different 
sort of activity, namely, "the realization of the possible existence 
within us." In such "limit situations" as extreme suffering, decisive 
struggle, the consciousness of guilt, and the imminence of death, I 
may become truly what I am in the depth of my being: "In my 
solitude, I feel the nearness of God, and yet, He is never actually 
there. He is near, but only as an outer limit of my existence." 47 "We 
become ourselves by entering into these limit situations with open 
eyes. ... To experience limit situations and to exist is one and the 
same thing." 48 In this experience man becomes not only conscious 
of the enveloping frame and "limit" of his existence but simultaneously 
of the enveloping presence of the transcendent Absolute. 

The being of Transcendence "becomes audible for the individual in 
the form of 'ciphers' or symbols" and human existence can experience 
Transcendence in the reading of these "ciphers." Philosophy in its 
search for being seizes the "ciphers" as possible "vestigia Dei" as 
signs and signals pointing toward the ultimate depth and pleni- 
tude of Being. But such a "seizure," such an "enlightening certi- 
tude" of the Divine Reality has, according to Jaspers, nothing in 
common with empirical perception and with objective, rational knowl- 
edge. In this experience "the search becomes the finding." God is 
"already present wherever and whenever I seek Him. . . . Presence 
and search are one." 49 And such seeking and finding is, in Jaspers' 
view, not helped but hindered by any positive religious rites and cultic 
observances. The search must of necessity proceed by way of doubt, 
disquietude, and distress rather than by way of "a daily assurance 
that God is there." Official worship, cult, and religious propaganda 
lead away from rather than into the neighborhood of die "hidden 
God." We can approach God only individually, in the most personal 
of all human acts. The unique God may then reveal Himself, but 
only to me: He will reveal Himself as my God rather than as the 
God of all the world. And thus my existence will be elevated toward 
my Transcendence. 50 

It is, says Jaspers, the function of philosophic metaphysics to prepare 
the way for the experience of Transcendence. Since, according to 
Jaspers' conviction, "a creative metaphysics is no longer possible," there 
remains only the task of appropriating and reinterpreting the historic- 

7 Jaspers, Philosophic, IH, p. 126. 4 *lbid., p. 3. 

**lbid. t H, p. 204. W CL ibid., IH, p. xax. 



196 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

ally conditioned metaphysics of the past. The most important function, 
however, of any metaphysics is the reading of the "ciphers/* The 
language of the "ciphers" is the sign language of the transcendent 
Reality: "The 'cipher' is for philosophy the form of transcendent 
Reality in a world in which everything can be 'cipher/ but in which 
nothing has the power of compelling reason to accept any particular 
thing as 'cipher/ " 51 The world, nature, and man, the starry firmament, 
human history, and human consciousness they are not only given 
narrowly circumscribed in their empirical value: they are all capable 
of acquiring the significance of "ciphers." And it is metaphysics 
which deciphers Transcendence as it manifests itself symbolically 
in these finite realities. 

In becoming "cipher," the realities of the world, hitherto opaque, 
become transparent: they "break open," as it were, and in an infinite 
perspective they allow a glimpse of the Absolute Being of Transcend- 
ence. Religious myths and dogmas as well as the rational arguments 
of natural theology (theodicy) are valid as "ciphers," says Jaspers, 
provided they do not claim to be more than that. The danger is 
precisely that man, in accepting them, "objectivates" them: that lie 
places Transcendence in an objective space above and behind the 
world and thus tries to separate that which is inseparable. 52 

While empirical reality imposes itself upon me with the force of 
necessity, the same is not true of Transcendence: I may decide to 
listen to its voice, or I may refuse to listen and choose to remain 
enclosed in the crude and mute reality of Dasein. In other words, the 
"cipher" imposes upon me no definite, compelling conclusion regarding 
Transcendence; its language is equivocal and ambiguous, lending 
itself to different interpretations. It is for this very reason, asserts 
Jaspers, that the reading of the "ciphers" is an essentially personal 
act: "If I am existentially deaf, I am unable to hear the language 
of Transcendence." 

IV 

Man, as long as he lives, is faced with the alternative of the 
conquest or loss of his self. In view of the possibility of self- 
annihilation he is overcome by dizziness, fright, and dread. But the 
threat of annihilation may point the way to "existence." "There is 
no freedom without the threat of possible despair." 

w Jaspers, ExistenzpMosophie t p. 76. " CL Jaspers, Phiksophic, m, p. 152. 



SHIPWRECK OR HOMECOMING? 197 

There are in human existence contradictions ("antinomies") which 
cannot be resolved, opposites which cannot be reconciled or neutralized. 
There is freedom linked with dependence, communication bound 
to solitude. There is no good without an admixture o evil, no 
truth without falsehood, no happiness without grief, .no life without 
death. While history presents us with many evidences of progress, 
it simultaneously offers the spectacle of progressive destruction. "If 
there were a chance that technical progress could bring about the 
total destruction of all human existence, there is hardly any doubt 
that even this end might be attained." Finally, death comes to every 
living being, annulling all individual and social accomplishments, 
exhausting all possibilities and modes of life. It is, however, the 
privilege of man that he can freely and lovingly accept and embrace 
such a precarious world and existence with all their possibilities, 
risks, and prospects fearful, tragic, and sublime. 

Jaspers illustrates the tragic antinomies of existence by what he calls 
"the law of the day and the passion of the night": the law of the 
day "imparts order to human life; it demands clarity, coherence, 
fidelity, reasonableness. It insists that something worthwhile be realized 
in the world, constructed in time; that temporal Dasein be given a 
definite content in virtue of the eternal and the infinite. But the 
passion of the night breaks down every order and plunges man into 
the abyss of nothingness. . . . The law of the day knows the night 
only as a limit. ... In action, it thinks of life only, not of death. 
But the passion of the night is lovingly and fearfully related to death, 
its friend and its enemy." 58 Day is bound to night, and what has 
been made to stand out in clear profile in the one is converted into 
the dark abyss of the other. 

What, then, is the ultimate term of this polarity and perpetual 
"tension" of human existence? "The ultimate," says Jaspers, "is ship- 
wreck" (Das Schdtcrn ist das Lctzte).** Human existence in the world 
is destined to suffer shipwreck. The unity and unification of the 
world is rationally conceivable but, in practice, it is an abortive enter- 
prise. Even in its desire for Transcendence, existence meets with the 
antagonistic "passion of the night" which cannot be reconciled with 
the good "law of the day." But man is capable of giving a meaning 
to shipwreck and existential despair: existence uses both to gain 
access to Bring and Transcendence. Ultimate shipwreck thus becomes 

**lbid., m, p. 105. *4>Hnd. t HI, p. aaof. 



198 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

the supreme "cipher" which imparts value to all the others: in 
shipwreck Transcendence becomes translucent. Therefore, says Jaspers, 
in the face of the menacing forces which bear down upon my exist- 
ence, it is my duty not only to continue the struggle but to intensify 
its vigor. In shipwreck, consciously experienced, affirmed, and sur- 
mounted by my forward thrust toward Being, my existential freedom 
reaches its vital sphere. The bonds which tied it to Dascin are cut, 
and with its newly released energy it takes hold of Transcendence. 
"The non-being of all being that is accessible to us," concludes Jaspers, 
"that non-being which reveals itself in shipwreck, is the Being of 
Transcendence." 55 

"It is sufficient," says Jaspers, "that the One be. My own being 
which perishes completely as Dascin, is indifferent to me, provided 
I remain in constant ascent as long as I live." The existential philosophy 
of Jaspers thus ends on a strong Neo-Platonic note. 



Karl Jaspers' existentialism is a philosophy of **becoming" rather 
than a philosophy of "being." As such it is anti-intellectualistic and 
voluntaristic. Like many other Germanic thinkers (Jacob Bohme, 
Lessing, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, etc.), 
Jaspers values more highly the Han of an endless seeking and striving 
than the tranquillity of possession regardless of whether it be a 
question of truth or being or God. The "becoming" is said to be 
better, more perfect, richer in content than the "become." Such a view 
is, of course, neither sustained by common sense nor by philosophic 
reasoning. Movement and becoming are as such incomplete, deficient 
realities; they are partial or particularized being, aspiring toward the 
fullness of being. The same is true of the movement we call human 
action. Man moves physically, morally, and intellectually in view of 
an end, in order to attain to a greater richness of his own being 
and existence as well as in order to enrich and enhance the being 
he finds in the surrounding world. It is self-contradictory and non- 
sensical to assume that the fulfillment of such a striving leaves man 
poorer than he was in the state of striving. 

Any truth that is objectively and unquestionably established and 
for which universal validity is claimed is for Jaspers a stifling yoke. 
Life the life of the spirit in particular is in his view a perpetual 

**tind., m, p. 234. 



SHIPWRECK OR HOMECOMING? 199 

becoming. Once it is arrested, death ensues. As far as the sphere of 
moral action is concerned, the German philosopher asserts that it is 
spiritual suicide to submit to any objective, universal rule of thought 
and conduct. The authentic act of freedom is unmotivated. Both 
religious and "philosophic" faith must dispense with or pass beyond 
all "motives of credibility," such as historical testimony and miracles. 
The act of faith is for Jaspers unrelated to any "praeambula" that 
would make it appear to the intellect as reasonable, just, and obliga- 
tory. Faith, according to Jaspers (who in this respect agrees with 
Martin Luther), rejects all rational motivation and justification. Thus, 
in the philosophy of Jaspers as in the "dialectical theology" of Karl 
Earth there exists a radical antagonism between faith and reason. The 
act of faith is generated by an impulse of freedom, rationally 
unjustifiable. 

It is interesting, however, to note the amount of reasoning Jaspers 
has to make use of in order to demonstrate the supposed weakness of 
human reason. "Jaspers deprecates every 'philosophic system,' " writes 
Joseph de Tonqu^dec, "every universally valid 'doctrine,' every teach- 
ing that can be objectively transmitted. And after having made these 
statements, he writes three volumes of philosophy. Whether he admits 
it or not, he certainly attempts to teach his contemporaries the one 
and only way of truth, the only correct attitude regarding reality, the 
only way to attain to being and to relate oneself to Transcendence." 56 
Jaspers, furthermore, rejects any attempt to define rationally the 
nature of man. "What man is, cannot be determined ontologically," 
he writes. 57 But is such an ontological determination not implied in 
the discussion of man's Dasein, of his unique position in the universe, 
of "consciousness in general," of human "Geist' and "Vernunft," or 
in the assertions concerning freedom, conscience, and "possible exist- 
ence"? All such statements are evidently meant to be of universal 
validity, that is, they are meant to be predicable of each and every 
human being. 

To see, as Jaspers does, reality exclusively in its aspect of "becom- 
ing," means to disregard the highest forms of reality. Even Bergson, 
the philosopher of the "durte" and the "tlan vital' 9 acknowledged 
that the highest forms of spiritual life are characterized by quietude 
and utter simplicity. He pointed to the testimony of Christian saints 

** Joseph de Tonqu&ec, L'Existence d'aprls Karl Jaspers (Paris: Beauchesne, 1945), 
p. 100. 
07 Jaspers, Philosophic, m, p. 187. 



200 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

and mystics whose lives are centered and anchored in the profound 
depth and tranquillity of the Divine Reality. Thus it would seem 
that individual beings become more perfect the more they approach 
and approximate the immutability of the Divine Being. 

The "existential freedom" which Jaspers espouses appears equally 
indefensible from the psychological and metaphysical point of view. 
Freedom loses its meaning and vanishes when one tries to detach 
it from both rational knowledge and motivation. Jaspers asserts that 
the authentic act of freedom is an "Ursprung" that is, a first begin- 
ning. If that were true in an absolute sense it would metaphysically 
imply a kind of being that posits itself, an ens a se and per se, 
that is, a divine being. Jaspers does not claim with Sartre that human 
freedom is "absolute," but it is difficult to see why, on the basis of 
his premises, he should not arrive at an identical conclusion. As 
against Jaspers' contention that there are encountered in man acts 
which are totally unconditioned, it must be stated that freedom as 
much as knowledge is bound to the specific modes by which the 
intellect and will of a particular subject are constituted. As Joseph de 
Tonqu&lec points out, the scholastic axiom, Quidquid recipitur, ad 
modum recipients recipitur (whatever is received [into the mind] is 
received according to tie mode of the recipient), is equally valid for 
knowledge and for action: quidquid agitur, ad modum agentis agitur 
(whatever is done [by an agent], is done according to the mode of 
the agent). 88 "Man stands in need of certitude," adds the same French 
critic, "and this is not the first time that a skepticism regarding knowl- 
edge issues in a mysticism of action. . . . Knowledge is not a screen 
placed in front of being . . . , it is, on the contrary, the only means for 
the apperception of being in its reality." 59 

The existentialism of Jaspers and this is a great merit and defi- 
nitely a step forward is equally opposed to determinism, positivism, 
and scientific materialism, on the one hand, and to the Cartesian and 
Hegelian types of idealism, on the other. Jaspers centers his philosophy 
in the concrete situation of the concretely existing and unique indi- 
vidual (St. Thomas' individuum inefiabile), emphasizing the elements 
of personal courage, risk, and venture, and the anguish which the 
individual experiences in view of imminent shipwreck and death. 
What counts in the drama of human existence is not the generalities 

58 C, Joseph de Tonqu&cc, op. cit., p. 118. 
p. 119. 



SHIPWRECK OR HOMECOMING? 201 

o scientific laws but the unique and irreplaceable value of human 
personality. While all this is, of course, not as new as it might 
appear at first glance, the fervor and convincing force with which it is 
restated are indicative of a healthy and encouraging trend in con- 
temporary philosophy. 

In the existentialism of Jaspers, however, as much as in that of 
Kierkegaard, the reaction against the many aberrations of modern 
philosophy overshoots the mark. While it is perfectly true that 
thought is not being, that thinking the good is a far cry from being 
good or doing the good, the conclusion that thought is void of being 
is entirely unwarranted. The fact that knowledge does not comprise 
or exhaust the totality of being, hardly justifies the assumption that 
knowledge is impotent and reality unintelligible. The tertium quid in 
the dialectic of idealism (i.e., the contention that thought and reality 
are identical, or that thought creates reality) versus agnosticism (Le., 
the assertion that thought is totally incapable of having any certain 
knowledge of reality) is the acknowledgment of the capacity of 
thought to take hold of the being of reality, but imperfectly or only 
to a certain degree. The epistemological presumptuousness of the ideal- 
ist and the epistemological despair of the "existentialist" are both 
unrealistic because they both misjudge the nature and the capacities 
of the human intellect. 

"He who wants to be true must take the risk of erring and of 
placing himself in the wrong," writes Jaspers; "he must push matters 
to an extreme; he must place them on the knife's edge, so that 
there may be a true and real decision." 60 To carry out this precept 
with logical consistency would evidently lead to the suspension of all 
the laws and rules of thought and action. Whatever course of action 
I may have decided to choose, I can then justify both my deeds and 
my misdeeds by stating that in my present historical situation I was 
forced by an internal necessity to act as I have acted; to have enacted 
my truth, in obedience to the commandment of my personal existence. 
My action was not due, I am bound to say, to an arbitrary movement 
of my will, but it proceeded from the full authentic depth of my 
being. And might it not happen that, as in the case of Sartre, this 
"depth of my being" may have become a prey of the "passion of 
the night" and may thus have turned against all laws, human and 
divine? 

60 Jaspers, Philosophic, n, p. 69. 



202 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

Human existence itself appears gravely endangered by the assertion 
that every existing individual has his truth, his way of reading the 
"ciphers/' his Transcendence, and his God. This danger can only be 
warded off by the affirmation of a moral law which, anchored in 
the supremely "existential" law of Divine Transcendence, guides indi- 
viduals and groups and makes possible true communication within 
the frame of a genuine human civilization. 



CHAPTER SEVEN 



"FROM REFUSAL TO INVOCATION": 
GABRIEL MARCEL 



"THERE is only one suffering: to be alone," says Rose, the main 
character in Lc Coeur des autres, one o Gabriel Marcel's plays. This 
sentence expresses one of the basic experiences of the most prominent 
representative of the Christian philosophy of existence in France. 
Though influenced to some extent by such thinkers as St. Augustine, 
Pascal, Schelling, Bergson, and F. H. Bradley, Marcel stood for a 
long time alone also as a philosopher, and he developed an "exis- 
tential philosophy" at a time when he was as yet unfamiliar with 
the writings of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Jaspers. 

Born in Paris, in 1889, Nlarcel lost his mother when he was only 
four years of age, and in the lonely years of his early youth he learned 
to communicate with the creatures of his imagination. He wrote his 
first two plays at the age of eight, and from then on the theater, 
because of its "significant bearing on other existences," never lost its 
fascination for him. "In the drama and by means of the drama 
metaphysical thought seizes itself and determines itself in the concrete," 
Marcd wrote many years later. 1 Drama and philosophic reflection are 
for him "two summits of equal height." While his plays numbering 
almost an even score present variations of the themes of human 
loneliness, misunderstanding, and disappointed love, his longing for 
communication, friendship, fidelity, and happiness finds expression in 
his musical compositions and in his philosophic and critical writings. 2 

Marcel's father was a state councilor in the French government, 

1 Gabriel Marcel, Positions et Approches concretes du Mysore ontologiquc (in Lc 
Monde cassf), p. 277. 

*Cf. the bibliographies in Existenttalisme Chretien: Gabriel Marcel (Paris: Plon, 
*947) P- * 8 5 a* 1 * 1 Paul Ricocur* Gabriel Marcel et Karl Jaspers (Paris: Editions du 
Temps Present, 194?). P- 439 f- 

303 



204 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

for some time French ambassador at Stockholm, and later on director 
of the National Library and the National Art Galleries in Paris. "My 
father," writes Gabriel Marcel in retrospect, "had been brought up in 
the Catholic religion, but he had detached himself from it at an 
early age. His intellectual attitude was that of so many agnostics of 
the end of the nineteenth century whose minds had been imbued 
with the ideas of Taine, Spencer, and Renan. Catholic thought appeared 
to him antiquated and infested with absurd superstitions.'* Yet, "few 
men, I think, have led a more rigidly disciplined life and have had 
a higher sense of their professional duties than my father." 8 "Not 
only my entire childhood but my entire life," Marcel confesses, "were 
dominated by the event of the sudden death of my mother. ... In 
a mysterious way she has always remained present to me."* 

The aunt under whose guidance Gabriel, after his mother's death, 
grew from childhood into adolescence, was, he says, "an admirable 
woman." She was a Jewess, "but her family had renounced any 
religious beliefs. She herself had embraced Protestantism. . . . She 
imposed upon me an extremely strict moral discipline. . . . She 
shared my father's agnosticism, with the difference that his had a 
moral and hers an aesthetic tinge; the result was that I grew up in 
an atmosphere of instability and aridity." 5 

At school Gabriel excelled as a student, although he detested the 
pedagogical system which, it seemed to him, was founded on a 
radical misconception of reality. "I do not hesitate," he writes, "to 
attribute to those school years an actual arrestation of my intellectual 
development as well as the poor state of my health which has remained 
with me as a heritage of that period of my life. . . . This kind of 
education produced in my mind a state of revolt. ... I am tempted to 
ask myself today whether my aversion to the lycte was not responsible 
for the increasing horror with which the spirit of abstraction filled 
me as it was cultivated ... in that school." 6 

Traveling extensively in the company of his father, the young 
Gabriel Marcel visited the great art centers of Europe and made the 
personal acquaintance of many prominent political and literary per- 
sonalities in several countries. He soon familiarized himself with the 
great Anglo-Saxon and German writers and thinkers of the past and 

8 Gabriel Marcel, Regard en Arritre (in Existentitdisme Chrttien), p. 299. 
* Ibid., p. 303. 
d., p. 300. 

pp. 302, 304. 



"FROM REFUSAL TO INVOCATION" 205 

present. At the age of eighteen he wrote an academic thesis on The 
Metaphysical Ideas of Coleridge and Their Relationship to the Philo- 
sophy of Schelling (1908). Two years later he received his credentials 
as a teacher in philosophy, and he subsequently taught intermittently 
in secondary schools and colleges at Vend6me (1912), at Paris (1915- 
1918), at Sens (1919-1922), and, during World War II, again at 
Paris (1939-1940), and at Montpellier (1941). The intervening years 
and all his spare time Marcel devoted to philosophic and literary 
research and to creative writing. During World War I he served 
with the Red Cross. His special assignment was the search for the 
missing, a task which involved him deeply in the drama and tragedy 
of human existence. In recent years Marcel has filled many lecture 
engagements in several European countries, and in 1949 and 1950 he 
was honored with an invitation to deliver the "Gilford Lectures" in 
Scotland. 

The strictly philosophic works of Gabriel Marcel are few in number. 
The presentation of his ideas is informal and unsystematic. Although 
outwardly these books seem little more than collections of diary frag- 
ments and philosophic essays, there is found in them a coherence and 
continuity of thought which add up to a consistently integrated 
philosophy of life. 7 

Having been exposed to the influence of agnosticism at home and 
in school and thus lacking any personal contact with positive religion, 
Marcel, even as a young man, felt in himself and in his environment 
an emptiness which oppressed and perplexed him. His philosophic 
inquiry soon brought him face to face with the phenomenon of re- 
ligious faith. The opening pages of the Journal mitaphysique, written 
in 1914, give evidence of Marcel's early preoccupation with the idea 
of God. Though himself an unbeliever, he had begun to take a 
profound interest in the faith of others and to analyze philosophically 
the inner structure of the act of faith. During the war years, at the 
time he served with the Red Cross and was deeply shaken by the 
daily inquiries he received from the grief-stricken parents of soldiers 
missing in action, Marcel turned to psychic research and parapsychology 
and engaged in spiritistic experiments. 



7 C. Journal mttaphysique (Paris: Gallimard, 1947). Le Monde casse, suit* d'une 
meditation philosophique intitulte: Positions et Approches concretes du Mystere onto- 
logique (Paris: Desde de Browcr, 1933). Etre et Avoir (Paris: Aubier, 1935). Du 
Refuf a ^Invocation (Paris: Gallimard, 1940). Homo Viator (Paris: Aubier, 1944). 
La Metaphysique de Royce (Paris: Aubier, 1945; originally written in 1917). 



206 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

In 1928, as a member of the Sociite franfcdse de Philosophic, in the 
course of a discussion on the problem of atheism, Marcel defended the 
validity of religious faith against the attacks of Leon Brunschvicg. A 
few months later, he received a letter from the French Catholic writer 
Francois Mauriac which ended with the question, "Why, after all, 
are you not one of us?" This question struck Marcel with the force 
of a personal call, and shortly afterward (in 1929) he became a 
convert to Catholicism. 

n 

Marcel's philosophic inquiry starts out from the experience of the 
individual's "being-m-the-world." The philosopher is a human being 
who seeks to illuminate the human situation. My "being-in-the-world" 
and in history particularizes and limits me. How can I accept my 
human situation and make it the starting point of my becoming a 
human person? The answer, says Marcel, cannot be given in the 
abstract, in a theory; it can only be found in steady contact with 
concrete reality, in personal engagement, and, ultimately, in a per- 
sonal act of f aith. To philosophize in the concrete means to philosophize 
hie et nunc; it means to be seized by reality and to be and remain ever 
ready to stand in wonderment in view of the unfathomable richness 
of reality. "The problem of the reality of the external world," writes 
.Marcel, "was among those philosophic problems which posed them- 
selves for me with a frightening actuality. ... I believe I have never 
accorded any interest to that extreme form of idealism which denies 
this kind of reality." 8 

Philosophy is for Marcel a phenomenological analysis with an onto- 
logical goal. Philosophic rationalism, he is convinced, misses this goal 
because it regards as true only that which can be either rationally or 
scientifically verified. It defines truth as an accord of minds reached by 
the submission of individual thought to "thought in general." And it is 
the supreme ambition of rationalism to reconcile and harmonize the 
partial views of individuals in the absolute and definitive synthesis of 
a total explanation of the universe. The religious absolute, however, 
can never be related to a truth conceived in this manner. Why not? 
Because religious experience is always personal and incommunicable. Is 
the claimed truth of religious faith then purely subjective? Is it ir- 
rational, illusory, or fictitious? Is the verifiable truth of reason and 

8 Regard en Arr&re, op. cit. t p. 308. 



"FROM REFUSAL TO INVOCATION" 207 

science the only valid kind of truth? In other words, how can the 
believer justify his faith? How can he establish its authenticity with- 
out having recourse to "objective" criteria? Perfect faith, replies Mar- 
cel, rises above the objectivity of the world and of history and experi- 
ences God in the pure actuality of an Absolute Presence. 9 

Beginning with the second part of his Journal mitaphysique, Marcel 
attempts to find a way to escape the subjectivism and partial fideism 
implied in many of the earlier passages. While the first part of this 
philosophic diary evinces a sincere but largely unsuccessful effort to 
attain to concrete reality without sacrificing certain remnants of 
Kantian and post-Kantian idealism, the entries of Part II and the 
opening sections of Etre ct Avoir, following the lead of such thinkers 
as St. Augustine and Pascal, seek to discover in the experience of the 
individual destiny a link with the consciousness of universal history. 
In that vital act by which I constitute myself as a person in my own 
historical situation, I simultaneously take cognizance of the universal 
history of the race and of that Creator-God who is both the "envelop- 
ing" and transcendent Reality of myself, of the world, and of my 
"being-in-thc-world." There is, as Marcel emphasizes, no connotation 
of pantheism in such a view: "Pantheism has never held any attraction 
for me, above all because it seemed to me incapable of tolerating per- 
sonal life in its concrete plenitude." 10 

Marcel's discussion of tie individual destiny begins with the ques- 
tions, Why am I in the world? Why am I immersed in matter and 
in history? It is rather difficult for me, according to Marcel, to accept 
my human situation with all the checks and limitations imposed upon 
me by my physical constitution, my family ties, my inherited charac- 
teristics, my education, the age and society in which I live, and, in 
addition, by all those unforeseen events which invade my day-by-day 
existence and often cross my projects* How can I persuade myself to 
accept willingly and loyally such a precarious existence? By clearly 
and realistically recognizing my limitations, answers Marcel, I shall 
be able to overcome them. But philosophic rationalism can be of 
no help in resolving the many problems and dilemmas of human 
existence; all its attempts to this effect must of necessity fail, because 
it removes all these problems from the concreteness of reality. Its 
craving for "objective" verification leads to the artificial dualisms of 

9 C. Journal mttaphysique, p. 48 . 

10 Regard en Arricre, op. cit., p. 308. 



208 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

subject and object, "appearances" and "things-in-themsclves," the em- 
pirical and the thinking ego, individual thought and "thought in 
general." What is "thought in general" (Kant's Bewusstsein ubcr- 
haupi) but thought without a thinker, thought emptied of personal- 
ity? It is thus impotent in regard to the concrete, individual human 
destiny. 

What is impossible for speculative reason becomes, however, an ac- 
tuality in the act of faith, which arouses and rescues the individual from 
the perplexity, anxiety, and even despair engendered by the uncertainty 
and instability of the human situation. In the act of religious faith the 
individual constitutes himself as a person by affirming the infinite 
personality of God. Faith is thus a union of two freedoms: the free 
appeal of God and the free response and homage of man. In the act 
of faith man is restored to that unity of which he was deprived by 
rationalism and idealism. "I now understand my situation in the world 
by relating it to the creative will of God. I realize my engagement in 
history by becoming aware of my divine vocation." 11 

The act of faith thus marks the birth of both human personality and 
human freedom. But what is commonly called the "freedom of choice" 
is for Marcel only a prelude to the true and authentic "freedom of 
engagement." In relating myself as a subject to the world and to 
history, I accept and fulfill the destiny prescribed for me by my particu- 
lar human situation. In the act of faith I respond to the divine call 
to become a free person. The Fatherhood of God, in other words, makes 
it possible for me to become truly myself. 

The mutual relationship between human and divine personality 
is, in the opinion of Marcel, of fundamental significance for philosophy. 
If such a relationship exists, then the thinking subject is no longer 
the pure intellect of the Cartesian "Cogito" an intellect detached 
from all material contingencies but a concrete human being: suffer- 
ing, struggling, hoping, and loving. In my personal situation I will 
then be able to understand and affirm myself as a creature here and 
now, and everything relating to this situation will then acquire a 
new weight and significance. That I was born in that particular year 
in this particular town and country and in this specific social environ- 
ment: all such previously more or less irrelevant facts will then be 
understood "existentially," that is, in terms of my irreplaceable 
existence here and now. 

11 Journal mttaphysique, p. 41. 



"FROM REFUSAL TO INVOCATION" 209 

Whereas for Sartre the human situation threatened, hemmed in, 
and potentially frustrated and annihilated by the pressures and proj- 
ects of "the others" begets la nausic, for Marcd the free acceptance 
of this same human situation becomes the source of religious humility. 
And, like Jaspers, Marcel finds in the "tension" which exists between 
human freedom and the limitations imposed by the human situation 
the way to "transcendence." This is why Marcel had chosen as a motto 
for his academic thesis the saying of Hugh of St. Victor, the mediaeval 
mystic, "To raise oneself to God is to enter into oneself, and not 
only that, but in the depth of the self to transcend oneself." There 
exists the closest possible interrelation between the understanding of 
my human situation, my affirmation of the Fatherhood of God, and 
the birth of my personality. 

But how am I related to those things which exist in the world outside 
myself? Marcel conceives of this relationship in analogy to the way 
in which I am related to my body. To explaia this relationship, Mar- 
cel makes use of the term "incarnation": as I am incarnate in my body, 
so the world is incarnate in me, and God is incarnate in the world, 
manifesting Himself by means of sensible signs, symbols, and vestiges 
(Jaspers' "ciphers"). In other words, to conceive of God "objectively," 
that is, as a separate, objective entity, apart from myself and apart from 
the world, is an impossibility. Such a concept of God, Marcel claims, 
would amount to a denial of His very essence, for the "living God" 
(Ic Dieu vivanf) is an "incarnate" God, who is present per csscntiam 
in myself and in all things. 

In this connection Marcel devotes special attention to what has some- 
what inappropriately been termed the "soul-body problem." I am . 
tempted, he says, to regard my body as a mere tool, but a simple 
reflection convinces me that this is a misconception: my body can 
hardly be a mere tool, since it is itself a necessary condition for the 
manufacture of tools. It would be more correct to say that adopting 
the terminology of Heidegger my body is the mode of my "being- 
in-the-world." And this means that, since I am compelled to rely 
on my body for the study of the world of objects, my body cannot 
itself become for me "an object." I can study my body scientifically 
(i.e^ as an object) only by a fictitious detachment or a "disincarnation," 
by positing with Descartes an artificial dualism between myself as a 
thinking substance, and myself as a chunk of matter. In reality, says 
Marcel, the bond which unites me to my body is concrete and exis- 
tential. My body becomes intelligible only as an incarnate ego if my 



210 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

body and myself in unison have been willed by the supratemporal, 
suprahistorical, and supramundane creative act of an Absolute Mind. 
If, on the other hand, this transcendent support is lacking, both 
rationalism and existentialism turn into atheism; human existence in 
the world becomes utterly absurd, and man is handed over to forlorn- 
ness and despair. 

The foundation on which the Christian existence rests is supra- 
temporal and absolute. The mystery of my "incarnation" is illumined 
in the act of faith which "fills the void which exists between my 
empirical and my thinking self, in the affirmation of their transcendent 
union." 12 And "from the idea of that God who has willed me I can 
then pass on to the idea of that God who has willed the world" 13 
I am ready to accept my "being-in-the-world" with its limitations in 
understanding myself as a creature of God. This newly gained insight 
into myself is thus not the result of any rational or objective knowledge, 
but the work of faith, that is, the work of a personal consecration of 
my life. The believer, says Marcel, is like a lover who offers his own 
self and the whole world to his beloved. In the same way the man 
who has faith offers to God everything that he is and everything 
that he has, saying, "All this belongs to Thee." But this act of 
consecration is simultaneously an act of restitution: what I offer to 
God is His already; in offering my gift I discover that the thing 
offered is His own handiwork, for He is the creator of the gift as 
He is the creator of myself. The world of sense is no longer estranged 
from the life of the spirit: it has become a manifestation of the Divine 
Existence, the Word of God addressed to man. 

Ill 

The individual human existence is linked with time and with history. 
The world in which I exist is in perpetual flux, moving toward its 
dissolution. Not only my body, but the entire psychophysical structure 
of my being is involved in this universal mobility. At times I abandon 
myself to this flux and allow myself to be carried to new and un- 
known shores. In my temporary refusal to will and to choose, I hold 
myself open to exhilarating experiences which may enrich and trans- 
form my being. But as long as I let myself thus drift, I renounce judg- 
ment and evaluation of my life, and I am in constant danger of losing 
my real self and substance in the excitement and agility of the moment: 



p. 45. lbid., p. 6. 



"FROM REFUSAL TO INVOCATION" 211 

"Nothing is closer to despair, that is, closer to the refusal to exist 
and closer to suicide than a certain way of celebrating life as it is 
embodied in the pure instant." 14 

I transcend the fleeting moment by exercising my freedom in a 
threefold "engagement?: in confronting my present, in accepting my 
past, and in projecting my future. By thus affirming myself in the 
continuity of my personality I oppose myself to the featureless collective 
(Heidegger's "das Man"). In the perspective of the impersonal "Man" 
I cannot confront my present, I rob myself of my past, and I cannot 
build my future. 

Only in voluntary engagement can I impart meaning to that series 
of events which constitute my past. I assume full responsibility for 
all my past acts, in saying to myself: it is 7 who have acted in this 
way; / am what I have done. In disavowing my past, on the other hand, 
I disavow myself by introducing into my being one of those unreal 
dualisms which divide and destroy human existence. 

But while I thus depend on my past, my past no less depends on 
me. It receives its meaning from my present as soon as it is incor- 
porated into the whole of my destiny. By affirming my past and con- 
fronting my present I am laying the foundations for the possibilities 
of my future. Thus my fidelity toward both my past and my present 
becomes creative in view of my future. To face and accept my future 
trustingly and with the pledge of fidelity means to affirm it with all 
the uncertainties it entails and with a high sense of responsibility for 
whatever it may hold in store. In this way hope and fidelity triumph 
over time without denying it; they establish and rnaintain "the 
ontological permanence of my life." 15 . 

In virtue of these three distinct phases or temporal dimensions 
which constitute the act of voluntary engagement, I impress upon 
my life an enduring orientation which in its continuity supersedes 
mere temporal succession. The acknowledgment of my individual 
destiny is then no longer a blind submission to the dialectic of history, 
but a free appropriation on the basis of valuation, judgment, and 
choice. And in my choices I am guided by a Light which, while it 
surpasses and transcends me, is nevertheless more intimately present 
to me than I am to myself. It is this Light which, while it surpasses 
time and history, mpmtams in my own temporal and historical cxist- 



14 Gabriel Marcel, Etre et Avoir, p. 290. 
138. 



212 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

ence a continuous and yet flexible orientation. To its sheen I owe 
the partial illumination of those shadows which accompany me on 
every one of my steps. And thus I accept humbly, yet freely, my 
particular limited situation, embodying in my concrete, personal 
"incarnation" as loyally as possible the creative intention of that God 
who has willed me. 

Once I have freely accepted my human situation and my life has 
become unified by my fidelity to my vocation as a human person, 
every one of my acts is organically integrated in the totality of my 
existence. And it is only in this totality that I acquire my authentic 
freedom and my full human stature. The refusal, on the other hand, 
to thus engage and dedicate myself leads to a cumulative loss of both 
freedom and personality. Authentic freedom manifests itself in choice; 
it fulfills itself in engagement; and the highest form of engagement 
is the act of faith. 

The world is, in the words of Keats, "the vale of soul-making/' That 
means that in the sequence of my choices my freedom may depend- 
ing on the nature of my choices become authentic, or it may die; 
my personality may realize itself, or it may disintegrate. 

Whereas for Sartre man is "thrown" into a hostile world and 
abandoned to his own devices and projects, for Marcel man, as an 
"incarnate" being in an "incarnate" world, is not left to realize his 
destiny in absolute solitude. His voyage through time and history is il- 
lumined by certain "values," which are not of his own making but arc 
themselves "incarnate" in "being." "Value denotes the seizure of being 
by the human intellect," says Marcel. "Value can only be safeguarded 
where being is safeguarded as a mystery of which I partake from 
the moment I begin to exist." 16 Whereas in Sartre's philosophy it is 
the human "choice" which creates values, it is Marcel's contention 
that it is the values which command a choice. But he adds that a 
value can only exercise this function if it is recognized and acknowl- 
edged as such and if it becomes "incarnate" in the human subject. 
Thus understood, value is the basis of choice, although it does not 
determine the choice: the value can always be negated in favor of 
the absurd. But such a negation is a self-betrayal of human freedom. 
In the light of the incarnate value, being is encountered, revealing 
itself in its enduring quality and appealing, like Jaspers' "ciphers," 
to a creative interpretation on the part of man. 

* Aperfus sur la Ubertt (in La Nef, No. 19, 1946), p. 73. 



"FROM REFUSAL TO INVOCATION" 213 

The mystery of "incarnation" is most sublimely real in the Incarna- 
tion of Christ. In His Incarnation man's two great aspirations his 
longing for the authentically human and for the divine are ful- 
filled. In His humanity, Christ is like unto man and thus satisfies on 
the horizontal plane the need for an incarnation according to the 
maximal human measure. Inserted into historical space and time, 
Christ's humanity is related to my own temporal existence. In His 
divinity, Christ calls upon me to surpass all purely human dimensions 
in a movement of transcendence, a movement toward the fulfillment 
of all human aspirations in the vertical direction. Having taken our 
departure from our temporal human existence, we are drawn by 
Christ's Incarnation toward the supratemporal Divine Existence. 

IV 

In his search for a new and concrete approach to the mystery of 
"being," Marcel speaks of two different kinds of "reflection." 17 While 
the "first reflection" has its place in scientific research, the "second 
reflection" is strictly philosophical. 

The "first reflection" proceeds from human experiences that are 
confined to the categories of "seeing" and "having" (voir et avoir). 
Within these categories the existing subject disappears: in the process 
of the "objectivation" of the thinking ego and of the empirical 
contents of consciousness, both subject and object are totally detached 
from existence. Thus the "thinking substance" of Descartes and the 
"transcendental ego" of Kant are no longer "real" subjects. 

Links between thought and reality are established by dialectics, 
that is, by questions and answers based on observation and verification. 
Although the knowledge thus gained is valid and can be communi- 
cated, it is a knowledge confined to the sphere of "seeing" and 
"having," that is, a purely scientific and technical knowledge. Its 
frame of reference is not the existing individual, but "thought in 
general," the impersonal thinking of "das Man." It is Marcel's con- 
viction that every cpistemology which rests on "thought in general" 
inevitably leads to a "democratization of knowledge" which ultimately 
means the self-destruction of knowledge. Such an epistemology tends 
to glorify the purely "technical man," the "man in the street," the 
"common man." Philosophical and metaphysical knowledge, on the 
contrary, is essentially opposed to "das Man." 1 * "The immortal glory 

17 Of. Position et Approches concretes du Mysterc ontologique, op. cit., passim. 

18 CL Etre et Avoir, p. 182. 



2i 4 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

of a Kierkegaard or a Nietzsche," writes Marcel, "consists ... in 
having demonstrated, not so much by rational arguments as by their 
lives, that a philosopher worthy of the name is not, cannot be, and 
must not be a man of the public, of meetings and conventions; that 
he debases himself to the extent that he allows himself to be deprived 
of that solitude which is his proper vocation." 19 

The "second reflection" is based upon the first, but it transcends 
it as philosophy transcends science and technics. Philosophic reflec- 
tion is aware of the fact that it is deeply rooted in reality and 
therefore incapable of looking at reality from the outside as upon 
an object of scientific investigation. Philosophic reflection is not con- 
cerned with "problems" but involved in "mysteries." "A problem," 
states Marcel, "is something which one hits upon, something which 
blocks one's way. It is wholly 'in front of me' (devant mot). A 
mystery, on the contrary, is something in which I find myself engaged, 
whose essence it is consequently not to be wholly 'in front of me.' 
It seems that in this realm (of the mystery) the distinction between 
the 'within myself (I'en-moi) and the 'in front of myself (le devant 
moi) loses all significance." 20 

Philosophic reflection, says Marcel, transcends all objective knowl- 
edge and all objectivity. But this transcendence carries a meaning 
totally different from both the negation of the Hegelian dialectic and 
the "nihilation" (ntantisation) of Sartre. In 'Hegel's "logical" progress 
from thesis to antithesis to synthesis, the antithesis "negates" the 
thesis, and the synthesis both "negates" and "sublates" (hcbt auf) 
thesis and antithesis* The Hegelian synthesis establishes a new logical 
term, but not a new reality. And in Sartre's dialectic, the proper act 
of the "four-soil' is "negation." Condemned to freedom, the "four- 
soi" first exhausts itself in negation and then remakes itself in the 
ultimately absurd &m of a "futile passion." Marcel's "negation" and 
"transcension" of objectivity, on the other hand, are essentially the 
endeavor of human thought to escape its limitations by reaching 
beyond itself into the realm of "being." 

Marcel claims that every problem of knowledge becomes eventually 
involved in an endless regress: that which is sought in the end is 
always presupposed at the outset. In trying, for example, to arrive at 
self-affirmation, my reflection tells me that to attain to that end it 

19 Regard en ArriZre, op. cit., p. 315. 

20 Etre et Avoir, p. 145. 



"FROM REFUSAL TO INVOCATION" 215 

must start out from sett-affirmation. Similarly, the validity of my 
knowledge could never be ascertained in the end if this validity 
were not taken for granted from the start. "Thus," says Marcel, 
"the problem of knowledge destroys itself qua problem." To avoid 
such a petitio principii, my questioning must pass on from the 
problematical to the "meta-problematicaT: it must penetrate to a 
sphere in which thought and being are no longer separated but par- 
take both of a higher unity. "To posit the meta-problematical means 
to think the primacy of being in its relation to knowledge . . . , to 
recognize that knowledge is enveloped by being." 21 

The union of body and soul, the phenomena of evil, of love, of 
freedom they all pose no problems: they are mysteries. They 
"envelop" me; I am enclosed in them. It is equally improper, ac- 
cording to Marcel, to speak of the "problem of being"; there is only 
a "mystery of being." But if thus everything that is "meta-problema- 
tical" is shrouded in mystery, will it not become necessary to resort 
to a Kierkegaardian "leap" to capture this mysterious meaning? 
Marcel answers in the negative. The genuine "Cogito" is for him 
ontological (i.e., fraught with "being") rather than epistemological. 
All vital thought is centered in a real subject capable of acquiring red 
knowledge, that is, knowledge of reality. 

There remains, however, in the very core of thought an element 
of obscurity, owing to the mystery which surrounds the manner in 
which through the medium of the knowing ego thought par- 
takes of being. But this mysterious element, though obscure, is not 
entirely unintelligible. While it is true that a mystery cannot be known 
in the way scientific facts are known, this does not mean that nothing 
can be known about it. Since "being" has been the inseparable com- 
panion of thought on all of its dialectical exploits, philosophic reflec- 
tion discovers that genuine thought and knowledge are always 
grounded in and enveloped by "being." And in this discovery thought 
finds itself, as it were, in its own home. 

The meta-problematical mystery is indubitably real, although its 
reality cannot be proven either logically or empirico-scientifically. It 
transcends both objective thought and empirical consciousness and 
can therefore, like Jaspers* "enveloping transcendent," be misjudged, 
misinterpreted, or rejected outright. It appeals strongly (yet not 
irresistibly) to the spontaneity of human freedom: 'This philosophic 

Position et Approches concretes du Mys&rc ontologiquc, p. 264. 



216 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

reflection functions only in virtue and for the sake of freedom. . . . 
The very idea of constraint is void of all possible meaning in this 
sphere. .... I can freely choose the absurd because I may easily 
persuade myself that it is not absurd, or because I may even give 
preference to it precisely because it is absurd." 22 

The recognition of the meta-problematical is thus a free act. My 
reflection, face to face with a mystery, may always degrade this 
mystery by reducing it to a mere "problem." In other words, I am 
always free to apply to it the "first reflection" and to close myself to 
its mysterious call. 

The real subject is a free subject. "It is undoubtedly necessary," 
writes Marcel, "to renounce once and for all the naively rationalistic 
idea of a system of affirmations valid for 'thought in general' or for 
any consciousness whatsoever. . . . The ontological order can only 
be recognized personally by the totality of a being engaged in a 
drama which is his own, while at the same time it surpasses him 
infinitely in every sense a being to whom has been imparted the 
unique power of affirming himself or negating himself, depending 
on whether he affirms being and opens himself to it or negates 
being and thereby closes himself to it; in this dilemma resides the 
very essence of human freedom." 23 In the "logic of freedom," says 
Marcel, objective knowledge also has its place, but only as an initial 
phase in an "ascending dialectic." Objective knowledge is neither 
definitive nor total knowledge. In order to remain loyal to itself it 
must transcend itself and give way to "the ontological mystery." 

What, then, is the new "concrete approach" to the ontological mystery 
which Marcel proposes? Since an objective knowledge of being is 
impossible, the knowledge which can partially unveil the ontological 
mystery must be of a different kind. Adopting the method and 
terminology of "negative theology," Marcel states that, first, this 
knowledge must be negative, that is, a knowledge arrived at by ex- 
clusions rather than by positive affirmations; second, it must be 
concrete. The ontological mystery must be surrounded, as it were, 
by a series of predications, stating what it is not rather than what it is, 
until in the end "being" can be envisaged in its transcendent integrity. 
"Being," says Marcel, "is a sort of ontological permanence, to which 
we are linked and owing to whose endurance we ourselves endure; 

22 Marcel, Du Rejus a ^Invocation f p. 35. 

23 Etrc et Avoir, p. 174 f. 



"FROM REFUSAL TO INVOCATION" 217 

it is a permanence which implies or demands a history; it is definitely 
not the inert or formal permanence of an abstractly valid law." 24 

The ontological mystery includes both history and eternity. Being 
as such can neither be phenomenologically described nor psychologically 
appropriated: it is neither a source of desire nor a theme for discussion 
nor an object of demonstration. It would be equally erroneous, how- 
ever, to profess agnosticism in regard to being. All the several negative 
predications want to emphasize is the fact that "being" is more than 
any object and any idea: it is more because it is a presence of inex- 
haustible concreteness. It is thus thoroughly positive, and the strength 
of its reality is such that it "negates all negations." While "being" can 
neither be observed nor exhausted, it can be encountered in beings. 
In other words, that kind of "being" with which the "second reflec- 
tion" is concerned and of which it partakes, is not the "universal 
being" or "being in general" of metaphysics, nor the being of an 
abstract idea or essence, but always a real and personal being, always 
this or that being. The more personal it is, that is, the more it is a 
being, the more it is red. In short, the more we recognize the in- 
dividual being qua individual, the more we approach "being as such." 28 

The existential concreteness of being is further enriched by what 
Marcel designates as the category of "the encounter" He illustrates this 
category by referring to an entry in his Journal mitaphysique: "I meet 
someone unknown to me in the train. We talk about the weather and 
about the war news. But although I speak to him, he remains for me 
'someone,' 'this man there.' Little by little . . . I learn some biographical 
data; it is as if he were filling out a questionnaire. . . . But the remark- 
able thing is that the more this man is external to me, in the same 
degree I remain external to myself. ... I am like the pen which puts 
down words on a piece of paper, or like a registration machine. . . . 
Yet it may happen that between 'the other' and myself a bond is 
established as, for example, when I discover that we have a certain 
experience in common (we have visited the same place; we have been 
exposed to the identical danger . . . , we have read and loved the 
same book) ; thus a unity is created in which the other and I are 'we' 
which means that he ceases to be for me a mere 'he,' and becomes a 
'thou; the words, 'thou also,' assume here a most essential significance. 
We now actually communicate with each other: a vital union is 



. 173 . 

25 OL Du Refut & I'lnvocation, p. 192 f. 



218 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

formed between him and myself." 26 And from the moment that real 
communication is established between ourselves, we pass from one 
world into another, from the problematical world where the cate- 
gories of "sameness" and "otherness" in relation to the perceived object 
are valid to the meta-problematical world, where these categories 
lose their meaning. The "given object" is surpassed, and in its place 
appears the ontological plenitude of the encountered being. 

The newly discovered "thou" is an immediate presence and as such 
neither a physical fact which can be seized and verified in sense 
perception, nor an idea which imposes itself on my mind. This presence 
may therefore always be misjudged, forgotten, called in question, or 
obliterated. The response to the call of being, in other words, is an 
act of freedom. The positive response is an expression of fidelity, hope, 
and love. The negative response, or the refusal to respond, though 
no less free, is a betrayal of both being and existence. 

Marcel takes great care in analyzing the attitudes of fidelity, hope, 
and love. They are for him the looked-for "concrete approaches" to 
the ontological mystery. He wants us to listen to the "ontological call" 
incarnate in these attitudes. But, he warns, these concrete approaches 
are always threatened, because the structure of human existence and 
of the world is such that infidelity and the ensuing despair remain 
always possible. The acknowledgment of the ontological mystery is 
a free, creative act, but an act which involves a crucial test and which 
requires the fearless "testimony" of the individual. And thus "we 
recognize the hidden identity of the way which leads to sanctity and 
the way which leads the metaphysician to the affirmation of being. 
The reflection on the nature of sanctity is perhaps the real introduction 
to ontology." 27 



Philosophic idealism, according to Marcel, labors under "a fatal 
illusion when it fails to see that to be a subject is not a fact or a 
point of departure but rather a conquest and a goal." 28 The primary 
and basic aspect of the condition of man is, as has been pointed out, 
his "being incarnate": he is "a being who finds himself united to a 
body." 29 When I say, "I exist," I refer not to the Cartesian "Cogito" 

"/** p. 49. 

2T Etre et Avoir, p. 123. 

28 Position et Approches concrete* du Mytt&re ontologique, op. cit., p. 296. 

M Du Refuf & I'lnvocation, p. 236. 



"FROM REFUSAL TO INVOCATION" 219 

but to my "incarnate being," that is, to "this body of mine, of which 
I can neither say that it is myself, nor that it is not myself, nor that 
it is an object for myself." 80 Thus there exists between myself and my 
body neither separation, nor a complete fusion, nor, strictly speaking, 
a relation, but a participation. And my linkage with the world, with 
"the others," and with God has the same mysterious character as my 
being incarnate in my body. In neither case can this mysterious bond 
be made the subject of scientific investigation or the object of scientific 
knowledge. 

"Participation" denotes the actuality of human rapports as revealed 
in the reality of "myself," of the "thou," of "the other," and of the 
"Absolute Thou" (Iff Toi absolu) of God. This means that God is not 
"somebody" who entertains objectively dcterminable rapports with 
myself and with the world. The real God is a supremely personal 
God, who can never become for me a "he" (/*). "God can be given 
to me only as an Absolute Presence in the act of worship, and any 
idea which I form of Him is merely an abstract expression or an 
intellectualization of this Presence." 31 And so the "problem" of God 
disappears together with the "problem" of the union of body and soul 
and the "problem" of the world, to give way to the "mystery" of the 
"Absolute Thou." 

I can regard my body as something that "I have" (an avoir), that 
is, as an object. But I can also refrain from positing such an artificial 
"alienation" between myself and my body and acknowledge in my 
body a constitutive element of my self. The "I have" then becomes 
an "I am," and the moment I transcend the sphere of the "avoW 
my body turns from a tyrant into a servant. The same applies to my 
linkage with the world: the more I regard the world as a mere spectacle 
which I watch from the outside, the more the world becomes meta- 
physically unintelligible and absurd. A scientifically "objectivated" 
universe, ruled by technology, set apart from man and regarded as 
a thing in and by itself, becomes a strange monster incomprehensible, 
evil, and destructive. 

Again, the same applies to my rapport with God. But if God 
cannot be thought as a "IuF or as a "cela? am I not thrown back into 
pure subjectivity? Marcel denies that this is the case, for, he says 
in effect, the order of the divine mystery is both transsubjective and 
transobjective. "If God is essentially a 'Thou,' for whom I exist, 

80 Etre ct Avoir p. 1 1 . 
. 248. 



220 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

for whom I count ... it is easy to imagine that perhaps for my 
neighbor He is not real in the same way." 82 

Participation is never so much an accomplished fact, says Marcel, 
as it is an appeal to the will to participate. In other words, the 
human situation in its dramatic tenseness is and always remains in 
this earthly life the situation of an itinerant, a wayfarer ("homo via- 
/of"). In this scintillating universe of possibles the only thing that is 
fixed and certain is death: the death of my sentiments and enthusiasms; 
the death of the being whom I love; and my own death. 

Death poses for me the problem of "being-no-more," a thought 
from which the man of ordinary everyday life (das Man) shrinks 
in horror and cowardice. No dialectic reasoning and no method of 
concealment, however, can either obscure or enhance the reality 
and certainty of death. And thus absolute despair in view of this 
seemingly irreducible mystery remains always a temptation and a 
possibility. But to human freedom and only to it is given the 
power to triumph over this abysmal prospect by recognizing in 
death an appeal to being; an appeal which calls for a response that 
carries me even beyond death itself: "If we speak of an ontological 
counterpoise of death, it cannot be life as such . . . nor can it be 
some objective truth. This ontological counterpoise can only reside 
in the positive employment of a freedom which turns into devoted 
dedication (adhtsiori), that is, into love, which is 'the essential onto- 
logical gift.' When that happens, death is ... transcended." 88 

Thus the "existential dialectic" and the "ascending dialectic of 
reflection" are joined together on the plane of salvation. The appeal 
to being, which issues from the "I exist," is answered by an "I believe." 
Human existence is always trapped and human freedom stifled 
within the limited perspective of any "to have." To have a body, 
to have a friend, to have faith: as soon as this body, this friend, 
this faith become "possessions," they turn into possessive attachments. 
"By this term 'to have,'" writes Marcel, "I mean not exclusively 
visible possessions ... but also those ingrained habits both good 
and bad opinions, prejudices, which make us impervious to the 
breath of the spirit; in short, everything which paralyzes in us what 
the Apostle calls the freedom of the children of God." 8 * 

Marcel distinguishes between two modes of "detachment," that of 

82 Journal mitapkysique, p. 254 f. 

88 C. Etre et Avoir, p. 244. Dtt Rfftts a ^Invocation, p. 186 f. 

84 Marcel, Homo Viator, p. 128. 



"FROM REFUSAL TO INVOCATION" 221 

the spectator and that o the saint: "The detachment of the saint 
has its habitat, if I may say so, in the very heart of reality; any 
curiosity regarding the universe is absent from it. This kind of 
detachment is a participation, the highest that there is. The detach- 
ment of the spectator, on the other hand, is the exact opposite: it is a 
desertion. . . ." 38 

"In the last analysis," Marcel contends, "everything can be reduced 
to the distinction between that which one 'has* and that which one 
'is.' ... In the precise measure in which I am attached to things, 
they exert upon me a power which derives from this attachment 
and increases proportionately with it. ... The tyranny which my 
body exercises over me depends ... in a considerable degree on the 
attachment which I have for it. ... I disappear in this attachment; 
it is as if my body were devouring me; and the same may be said 
of all my possessions . . . : inasmuch as I treat them as possessions, 
they tend to suppress me. . . . And this is, strangely enough, the 
more true the more inert we are in regard to inert objects; and it 
is less true if we are actively linked to something ... in a personally 
creative way as happens, for example, when the gardener cultivates 
his garden, when the farmer attends to his farm, when the musician 
plays his violin, when the scientist works in his laboratory. In all 
these instances the 'avoir' no longer, if one may say so, tends toward 
its own annihilation, but toward its sublimation in an 'fare! When- 
ever there is pure creation, the 'avoir' is transcended . . . : the dualism 
of the possessor and the possessed disappears in a new living reality." 86 

The perspective of "le voir, V avoir ct la wort' (seeing, having, and 
death) is decisively overcome and transcended in that creative reflec- 
tion which pays homage to reality in an act of absolute engagement, 
that is, in the act of faith. In this act the total reality of my self 
addresses itself to the totality of being and is absorbed in the presence 
of that totality. 87 

VI 

Man is called upon by being, and he is to respond to this call by 
a total dedication. This response, taking either the form of faith (as 
opposed to "refusal") or of hope (as opposed to "despair"), is always 
in the nature of a "testimony" (un tfmoignage) manifesting itself in 

**Etre ct Avoir, p. 25. 

86 C. Etrc ct Avoir, pp. 225, 239 ff. 

3 7 Cf. ibid., p. 63. 



222 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

works. Man is "a witness," and "bearing witness" is of his very 



essence. 88 



What, then, is a witness? Instead of being a mere spectator, looking 
at facts and events as a stranger from the outside, the witness tests 
things by receiving them into himself in virtue of a personal act 
which engages him in his entire being. Such a receptivity is, above 
all, an existential "overtness" toward the world, toward "the others/* 
and toward God. 

Man, the free subject, is, however, capable of transforming his 
receptivity further by projecting it into those creative works which 
are his gifts to that realm of being of which his existence partakes. 
He gives testimony by his works, and in his creative consciousness 
appeal and response, receiving and giving, fuse: "To work means 
to become a prey of reality in such a way that we do no longer know 
exactly whether it is we who work upon reality or whether it is 
reality that works in us. ... Wherever creative consciousness asserts 
itself . . . giving and receiving converge. . . . We give in receiving 
or, better yet, giving is already a kind of receiving." 39 

On every plane of human existence there is found a vital unity of 
fassio and actio (pdtir et agir: passive receptivity and creative activity). 
In sense perception the world is received by the senses, and the latter 
respond by that "work" which psychology so inadequately calls an 
"image." This "image" is by no means the mental double of the 
physical thing, just as the work of art is not a photographic double of 
some segment of the universe. "There is no difference in kind but 
only a difference of degree or of power between our aptitude to 
'sense' and our aptitude to 'create'; both aptitudes presuppose the 
existence not only of a self, but the existence of a world in which 
the self recognizes itself, upon which it works, into which it expands." 40 
And the intellect, like the senses and yet more profoundly than the 
senses, is a witness: it receives being, and its act is a creative 
attestation of being. 

Philosophy, too, is a "creative attestation." The thinking being, 
that is, the philosopher, is "a witness." While the "first reflection" 
posits the ens cogitans as an epistemological subject, as a mere 
spectator of reality, the "second reflection" reveals to the subject its 
participation in being. The subject finds itself Engaged in a certain 

88 QL ibid., p. 140. 

* 9 Homo Viator, p. 203. 

40 Du Re jus h I'Invocation, p. 16. 



"FROM REFUSAL TO INVOCATION" 223 

adventure involving risks and dangers, but oriented toward being 
and reality. 

If philosophy is essentially a "creative attestation," a personal "bear- 
ing witness," then the central question of metaphysics must needs 
concern the one who bears witness, that is, the philosopher. He 
therefore must begin his inquiry into being by asking, "What am 
I?" Extricating himself momentarily from the functional mechanisms 
of the world which is his temporal abode, the philosopher begins to 
wonder about his own existence, and he interrogates himself concern- 
ing his "being-in-the-world." If everything is not to be reduced to a 
meaningless play of fleeting appearances "a tale told by an idiot, 
. . . signifying nothing" then there must be an absolute ground of 
being. The fervent aspiration to partake of this "ontological mystery 
may itself already be a rudimentary form of participation." 41 There 
is no doubt, on the other hand, that the philosopher can arbitrarily 
deny himself to the call of being: "The pure and simple abstention, 
in the presence of being, which characterizes a large number of philo- 
sophic doctrines, is in the last analysis an untenable attitude."* 2 

The authentic philosopher is "the fully awakened human being," 
says Marcd. Philosophic reflection the "second" reflection is the 
ensemble of all those acts in which thought bears witness to the 
presence of being. Philosophy, too, is thus a kind of fidelity: it is 
the perpetuation of a testimony which at any moment might be 
revoked. As long as it is sustained, it is a continuous and creative 
attestation, and it is the more creative the more eminent the onto- 
logical value is of that to which it bears testimony. 48 

Explicating in its ultimate consequences the fundamental situation 
of human existence, that is, the situation of each and every human 
being, philosophy is universal; but its universality is concrete rather 
than logical. "There arc," explains Jeanne Ddhomme in her excellent 
commentary on Marcel's philosophy, "a thousand different and 
mutually irreducible ways of saying that Mr. X is an honest man. 
These thousand ways arc as many concrete approaches to the moral 
value of Mr. X. But, underneath all these differences, it is the same 
reality that is envisaged, and that which is expressed is the same truth. 
Similarly, there arc a thousand different ways of exploring the onto- 
logical mystery; there are an infinite number of concrete approaches 

41 CL Position ct Approches concrete du Mysore ontologiquc, p. 361. 

42 Etre ct Avoir, p. 168. 
"CLibid.,?. 174. 



224 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

to it, none of which exhausts the inexhaustible concrete reality, but 
each of which testifies to the same presence. Philosophic universality 
is thus realized by the unanimity (yet certainly not the identity) of 
testimonials. While the condition of the existing being (d'existani) 
is common to all, every existence is personal. Philosophy, or the 
ascending dialectic of reflection, is the concrete unity of these two 
elements of the ontological mystery." 44 

VII 

Gabriel Marcel began with the refusal to acknowledge the tradi- 
tional rationalist distinction between subject and object. His entire 
work is oriented toward the recognition of a reality which is both 
transsubjective and transobjective. This reality he calls the "meta- 
problematical" or the "ontological mystery." As against the philosophers 
and philosophies of nihilism and of the absurd he holds that both 
reflection and existence are steeped in the Truth of Being. 

Marcel adds his own voice to that of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, 
Heidegger, and Jaspers, warning of the dangers which modern man 
faces, as the forces of an almost exclusively technical civilization 
threaten to engulf his personality and thereby to annihilate the very 
substance of the "ontological mystery." He insists that today perhaps 
more than in any other historical epoch it is necessary to rescue 
human existence from these tyrannical forces of the inhuman and 
the infrahuman, so that the path to the suprahuman and eternal may 
be found again. 

The French thinker also joins his fellow "existentialists" in con- 
demning the increasing degeneration of human relations and the 
virtual impossibility of genuine communication in a society which in 
growing measure is losing the understanding for speech and language 
the means of communication and the respect for the individual 
the subject of communication. He deplores with Heidegger that 
social relations in the contemporary world have as their frame of 
reference the cold egalitarian irresponsibility of das Man rather than 
the personally creative polarity of the "I" and the "thou." On this 
basis he criticizes the shortcomings of a "democracy" which no longer 
rests on the twin pillars of Truth and Freedom and which therefore 
condones relativistic pragmatism, moral license, and mass stupor. 

44 Jeanne Delhomme, T&noignagf et DlcUcctiquc; in Existcntiallsmc Chretien (Paris: 
Plon, 1947)* P- 200. 



"FROM REFUSAL TO INVOCATION" 225 

In his praise of the virtues of the private personal existence, of the 
"ontological weight" of friendship, fidelity, and love, Marcel some- 
times seems to forget that there is an "ontological weight" also 
embodied in the creative manifestations of communal life, in economic 
and political organisms, in the institutions of science and learning, 
in the Church and in the State. It can hardly be denied that without 
at least some of these communal bodies the private human existence 
would be left unsheltered. There is a middle term, after all, between 
individualistic anarchy and authoritarian collectivism. 

Marcel finally criticizes the aberrations of philosophic idealism, 
rationalism, and positivism. This critique could be even more convinc- 
ing if it were implemented by a more positive acknowledgment of 
the legitimacy of certain indispensable objective and rational requisites 
and categories of any strictly philosophic and metaphysical reflection 
which refuses to be led into the blind alleys of either fideism or 
agnosticism. Marcel himself seems to feel the need for such an imple- 
mentation when, in the final pages of Etrc et Avoir, he states emphatic- 
ally that "it would be foolish indeed to believe that the speculative 
work of the intellect is a luxury. I repeat: it is a necessity, and not 
only from the point of view of the intellect, but from the point of 
view of love (charitf). I believe that those who with disarming frank- 
ness regard Christianity above all as a social phenomenon, as a sort 
of doctrine of mutual aid, as a sort of glamorized philanthropy, commit 
a grave and dangerous error. Here again the word 'life* reveals itself 
as charged with ambiguity. To say, 'it matters little what you thinly 
as long as you live like a Christian,' is, I believe, to make oneself 
guilty of the most serious offence against Him who said, 'I am the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life/ The Truth. It is, above all, on this 
territory of Truth that the religious battle must be fought; it is on 
this territory that it will be won or lost. And by this I mean that 
man will show on this territory of Truth whether or not he has 
decisively betrayed his destiny and his mission, and whether therefore 
fidelity may have to remain the privilege of a small number of elect, 
of saints, pledged without doubt to martyrdom, and praying untiringly 
for those who have chosen darkness." 45 

VIII 

Immanuel Kant's saying, "It is man's highest task to know what 
one must be in order to be a human being," can still serve as a 

45 Etre et Avoir, p. 395. 



326 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

guidcpost for any philosophy of human existence, even if in Kant's 
own system the existing individual was eventually absorbed by a 
"transcendental ego" and a "consciousness in general." 

Kant wanted philosophy to answer four main questions: (i) What 
can we know? (2) What are we to do? (3) What may we hope 
for? (4) What is man? The fourth of these questions is the one that 
Kant should have asked first, because on the answer to it depend to a 
large extent the answers to the others. It is also the question with 
which the thinkers whose teachings have here been discussed are 
chiefly concerned. And their answers differ according to their positive 
or negative attitudes regarding "being" and "Truth." Whether they 
admit it or not, it is their metaphysical concepts, presuppositions, or 
even prejudices that determine their anthropological views. 

In St. Augustine's and Pascal's thinking that is, long before the 
modern crisis of human existence gave rise to "existentialism" 
philosophy is born of the vital and tragic conflicts and contradictions 
in the mind and heart of man. The same, with some qualifications, 
may be said of John Henry Newman's conception of philosophy. And 
it is this dramatic tension in human life, aggravated by the many new 
perplexities and uncertainties introduced by the age of science and 
technology, that again in the modern age, and especially in recent 
decades, has centered the philosopher's quest in the situation, the 
condition, and the being of man. 

The modern "existential" philosophers are united in their protests 
against the claims of philosophic idealism and in their attempts to 
rescue the individual from the bloodless and lifeless generalities of 
abstract ideas and essences as well as from his submersion in the 
anonymous, impersonal collective. They are divided, however, in 
their interpretation of the nature of that personality and that freedom 
which are to be saved. The Kierkegaard-Nietzsche and the Marcd- 
Sartre antitheses illustrate perhaps best this parting of the ways: on 
the one side the preservation and salvation of human personality and 
human freedom in the supereminent Reality of Divine Existence 
and Divine Love; on the other side the self-destroying nihilistic 
frenzy and the final perdition of the man without God. The "Super- 
man" is no antidote against the "collective man": they arc not as far 
apart as it may seem; they rather mutually condition each other, 
and they are both symptomatic of the ontological dissolution of the 
human person. Only the God-Man can save man from the clutches 
of both the Man-God and "das Man." 



"FROM REFUSAL TO INVOCATION*' 227 

It is not true that man, as most of the contemporary "existentialists" 
claim, possesses unlimited possibilities. Man is, on the contrary, limited 
on all sides except one: he is, as Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Marcel 
have well seen and lucidly described, open toward "transcendence": 
he is "capax Dei." In every other respect and dimension man encount- 
ers limits: in his thought and consciousness, in his willing and doing, 
in his social and political relations. Even in freely willed self-destruc- 
tion the human limit is not transcended but, on the contrary, radically 
confirmed. 

Within the limits imposed by his situation in the world, man lives, 
as Jaspers has pointed out, in tensions, conflicts, and contradictions, 
moving back and forth between the extreme possibilities of salvation 
and perdition, sanctity and satanic rebellion, self-realization and self- 
annihilation. In addition, in his striving to explore the secrets and 
utilize the forces of nature, man commands vast possibilities of eco- 
nomic and scientific planning, possibilities which he turns into actuality 
in his attempts to gain the technical mastery of life. But these efforts, 
too, are beset with temptations and dangers. Here, too, lurks for the 
human intellect and will the possibility of self-betrayal: possessed by 
the will to power, man may in demonic passion debase his human 
stature by becoming the slave of those tools and machines which 
owe their being to his creative genius. 



Pestalozzi, the serene, high-minded, and warmhearted Swiss edu- 
cator, was no "superman," no "existentialist," and not much of a 
thinker. But in his calm and sober ways he knew of the intimate and 
intrinsic values of human existence as well as of the dangers which 
constantly threaten it. Addressing himself to "the innocence, the 
earnestness, and the noble sentiments of my age and my fatherland," 
he wrote in 1814: "Human kind forms itself essentially not in massa, 
but individuditer, from face to face, and in a human way from heart 
to heart. The education for humanity, the formation of humaa 
beings and all the means used to that end are in their origin and 
essence eternally a concern of the individual and of such institutions 
as are close to the individual's heart and spirit. They are never a 
concern of the crowd. Individual man, as he stands before God, his 
neighbor, and his own self, seized in his innermost being by Truth, 
and filled with love for God and the neighbor, is the only pure 
basis of the true ennoblement of human nature." 



CONCLUSION 



THE THEMATIC STRUCTURE OF EXISTENTIALISM 



ALL philosophy begins as the ancient Greeks so well knew with 
astonishment and wonder. But this attitude may be caused either by 
the mere fact that things and beings are or exist, or it may be caused 
by a consideration of what these existents are, that is, by their essence 
or nature. A. A. Maurer, in the introduction to his translation of St. 
Thomas Aquinas' early treatise DC Ente ct Essentia, points out that 
St. Thomas inaugurated a real revolution in metaphysics when he 
turned the philosopher's interest "from form and essence, where it 
had lingered for so many centuries, to the act of existing." It was a 
decisive moment in the history of metaphysics, he says, "when philoso- 
phers became aware of the specific problems which attach to existence 
as distinct from essence. . . . The Angelic Doctor was the first to 
recognize the primacy of the act of existing over essence. . . . Even 
in his youth St. Thomas was regarding being from an existentialist 
point of view.*' 1 

Jacques Maritain, following a similar line of argument, asserts that 
Thomism is "the philosophy of existence and existential realism." 2 He 
distinguishes between an "authentic," Thomist, and an unauthentic or 
"apocryphal" philosophy of existence. In the latter category he places 
all atheistic forms of existentialism in general and the philosophy of 
Jean-Paul Sartre in particular. Both "authentic" and "apocryphal" 
existentialism affirm, according to Maritain, the primacy of existence, 
but whereas the former preserves essences and thereby the intelli- 
gibility of existents, the latter denies essences and thus marks the 
self-defeat of the intellect and despairs of intelligibility. The French 
thinker finds the basic error of the atheistic existentialists in their 

1 St. Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence (translated with an introduction and 
notes by Armand Augustine Maurer, CS.B.; The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval 
Studies, Toronto, 1949), p. 9. 

2 Jacques Maritain, Existence and the Existent. The Christian Answer (translated by 
Lewis Galantiere and Gerald B. Phelan; Pantheon, New York, 1948), p. 2 fL 

228 



THEMATIC STRUCTURE OF EXISTENTIALISM 229 

false presupposition that "existence done is the nourishing soil of 
philosophy. They treat of existence without treating of being." 3 For 
the Thomist existentialist (who is a "theist"), on the other hand, es- 
sence and existence in their correlation make up the one concept of be- 
ing which, analogically, permeates all things as their very act of exist- 
ing. Being is "that which is" or "that which is able to exercise existence," 
and at the summit of all beings, in the unity of "Him Who Is," the 
intelligibility of essence fuses with the superintelligibility of existence. 
Thus the entire metaphysics of St. Thomas "is centered not upon 
essences but upon existence." 4 

While it is of the essence of God to be or to exist (csse), "creatures 
... do not exist by their very nature. If they exist, their act of existing 
is given to them by God. They receive their act of existing: God is 
His act of existing. That is why in every creature essence is really 
distinct from the act of existing, whereas in God the two are 
identical." 5 

The essence or nature of a thing can be defined, and St. Thomas 
devotes the first chapter of his treatise De Ente et Essentia to the 
definition and explication of such terms as bring, essence, form, and 
nature. He does not attempt, however, to define the act of existing 
(esse), for the simple reason that this act (which is expressed in 
English by the verb "to be") "cannot properly be conceptualized or 
defined. It is ... the ultimate and most perfect of all acts" and "is 
grasped ... as exercised (existentia ut exercita) 9 as possessed poten- 
tially or actually by a subject." 6 Kierkegaard unwittingly follows St. 
Thomas when he states that "There is something which cannot be 
thought conceptually: the act of existing." And Maritain acknowledges 
that Kierkegaard's "central intuition of the absolutely singular value 
and the primacy of the act of existing was in the last analysis the 
same as that which lies at the heart of Thomism." 7 

The conviction of the primacy of existence is shared by all existen- 
tialist thinkers, ancient, mediaeval, and modern. Their concern with 
the individual, personal aspects of being, with the mysterious recesses 
of their own selves, places them in opposition to those philosophers 
who, like Plato or Hegel, in an attitude of detached reflection, allow 
the act of existing to be submerged in ideal forms or essences. Existen- 
tial thinking may thus be defined as a type of speculation that is not 

8 Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., p. I2. 

+ lbid., p. 42. 7 Maritain, op. cit., p. 130. 

9 A. A. Maurcr, op. cit., p. 15. 



230 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

only related to the concerns of actual life but decisive for human 
existence and human action. It is a kind of thinking that arouses 
and "makes'* the human self. This is of course not quite as new 
as it may at first appear: both the "Socratic method" (the philosopher 
acting as a "midwife") and the Christian way of the "imitatio" (the 
"following of Christ") are types of existential thinking. Both have 
their center of gravity not in pure thought or pure knowledge as 
ends in themselves, but both gravitate toward "existence," that is, 
toward a "way of life." 

The modern Philosophy of Existence may be said to have taken its 
start from the attacks launched by the "Young Hegelians" against 
the idealistic "system" of their master. This "existentialist" revolt was 
gready encouraged by the Berlin lectures (1841) of the German 
philosopher F. W. Schelling, who in the final stage of his thinking 
turned against the main theses of that same philosophic idealism to 
which he had himself formerly adhered. Among his listeners were 
Kierkegaard, Bakunin (the Russian anarchist), Friedrich Engels (the 
coauthor of the Communist Manifesto), and Jacob Burckhardt (the 
Swiss historian). 

Against Hegel's "essentialism" (the identification of essence and 
existence in the general "idea") Schelling insisted that pure thought 
cannot explain the transition from the "idea" to "nature" or to 
concrete reality. He calls Hegel's idealism "absolute" in the sense that 
it posits being without existents (das Sein ohne das Seiende). As soon 
as "the system" attempts to take the decisive step from pure logic to 
reality, the thread of the dialectical movement of the "idea" is cut, and 
there remains nothing but "a broad and ugly ditch" between what 
a thing is and the fact that it is. Schelling concludes that pure 
rationality is incapable of ever reaching concrete reality and that 
Hegel's "pure being" is actually "nothing," just as "pure whiteness" 
remains an empty concept unless there is something that is white. 
Thus Schilling's "positive philosophy" begins with "existence": it 
does not (like Hegel's dialectic) proceed from thought to being, but 
from existing beings to thought. His starting point is, to use his own 
words, an "a priori empiricism." 

Kierkegaard had undertaken his first trip to Berlin after the com- 
pletion of his academic dissertation. He wanted to attend Schilling's 
lectures because he had high hopes that the latter's "positive philosophy" 
might offer a corrective to those features in Hegel's interpretation of 
reality which he had found most objectionable. But his Journals reveal 



THEMATIC STRUCTURE OF EXISTENTIALISM 231 

that he was greatly disappointed. "I am too old to listen to lectures, 
and Schelling is too old to lecture," he wrote. He evidently found 
even Schelling's new "positive philosophy" too much steeped in abstract 
idealism, too far removed from "existence." From then on Kierke- 
gaard turned polemically against any attempt to comprehend reality 
by way of rational speculation. While he did not deny the universally 
human, he remained henceforth convinced that it could only be 
reached by starting from the individual: "What reality is cannot be 
expressed in the language of abstraction." By making the act of exist- 
ing the criterion of reality, Kierkegaard thus shifts the problem of 
being from the abstract to the concrete, from being in general to 
human existence. 

Following Kierkegaard's lead, modern and contemporary existen- 
tialism designates as the center of thought the existing thinker. But 
it remains preoccupied with the problem of the interrelation of thought 
and existence (essentia and existentid), of "whatness" and "thisness." 
In stressing, however, the fact that the thought of the existing thinker 
is determined by the uniquely concrete tasks of his Dasein, existential- 
ism claims to be a philosophy of the "I" rather than a philosophy 
of the "It " While the "abstract thinker" is a "disinterested" theorist, 
the existentialist thinker is inwardly concerned. With this principle 
of "existential thinking" as a general frame of reference, it may now 
be attempted to recapitulate in a summary fashion the major themes 
of existentialism. 

i. Subjective Truth. It is the common conviction of all modern exis- 
tentialists that there is no knowledge independent of a knowing subject. 
Any abstract universality they regard as an illusion of formal logic, 
and they put in its place a "concrete universality" which they identify 
with "ethical reality." This means that even in the sphere of thought 
and knowledge true universality is only possible in the concreteness 
of moral action, that is, in personal existence. In this sense, they say, 
"subjectivity" is truth. In other words, for the existentialist, knowledge 
is not an end in itself, but it proceeds from and terminates in the 
question, "What does this thought or this knowledge mean to me, 
the knower, the existing thinker?" All true knowledge includes the 
dimension of existence. 

Kierkegaard, for example, does not deny that there is an "objective" 
truth, an "objective" knowledge, and even (for God) a "system" 
of objective truth and knowledge. But for the individual human being, 
he says, the important thing is not the "what" but the "how": the con- 



232 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

tent of knowledge must become the content of personal life; the abstract 
conceptual truth must be transformed into the concrete inwardness of 
a spiritual existence. This is why Kierkegaard defines truth as an 
"objective certitude, held fast in the appropriation of the most passion- 
ate inwardness." Knowledge is for him not mere passive receptivity 
but simultaneously a creative productivity, in which the "how" of the 
thinker and knower is of decisive importance. 

2. Estrangement. In Franz Kafka's novel, The Trial, human exist- 
ence is symbolically described as a paradoxical legal process or trial 
in which man finds himself entangled without being able to discover 
the precise nature of the charge brought against him. In the same 
author's novel, The Castle, man is subjected to the arbitrary decrees 
of a mysterious sovereign power, and despite his desperate efforts he 
cannot penetrate the mystery, that is, he cannot gain access to "the 
castle." In both instances man appears as a stranger to the world 
into which he has been "thrown" and in which he is inescapably 
involved. The same motif of "estrangement" recurs again and again 
in the poetic work of Rainer Maria Rilke. In the poem, The Great 
Night, for example, the German author vividly describes the human 
experience of total strangeness and forlornness in regard to lifeless 
objects. The big city is said to be "inaccessible," and the landscape 
"darkens unpersuaded" as if the human ego were nonexistent. "Even 
the nearest things made no effort to become intelligible. The street 
drew oppressively near, and I found myself a stranger to it." The 
poet finds himself hemmed in by "angry towers" and "inscrutable 
mountains." Everywhere man finds himself locked out and alone 
with himself. He feels himself handed over to uncertainty and inse- 
curity, "exposed on the mountains of his heart." 

The animal is sheltered, Rilke asserts with Jaspers, but man is 
homeless. He is the most helpless and defenseless of all creatures. He 
is surrounded by a world of utter strangeness and beset by dangers 
on all sides. If he wants to prevail in the face of estrangement, he 
must persevere in the midst of danger rather than hide in an illusory 
security. But in trying to meet the challenges of his surrounding 
world, man experiences most profoundly the finiteness of his exist- 
ence, the outer limit of all human striving and achievement. He recog- 
nizes, in Heidegger's terminology, his "being thrown" into a place 
and situation not of his own choosing. In courageous "resolve" 'he 
must take upon himself the risks which such a precarious existence 
implies and thus eventually "transcend" the crisis of estrangement. 



THEMATIC STRUCTURE OF EXISTENTIALISM 233 

The experience of "estrangement" is equally fundamental in the 
thinking of Sartre. Here, too, the "crisis" begins with the discovery of 
a hostile objective world (Ten-sot), a world of the nonego advancing 
aggressively upon the ego (le pour-sot) which, aided by science and 
technology, had prided itself of having conquered and subjected the 
world of matter. But now man witnesses with horror the nonego 
rising in revolt against the ego. He faces the "totally other" which 
calls in question himself, his thinking, his doing, and his "values." 
"Being-in-itself" begins to oppress him like a nightmare, seizing and 
enveloping him with an iron grip. The constructs of abstract rational 
thought are crumbling. The "autodidact," the "humanist," the "abstract 
thinker": they are shaken out of their complacent detachment, their 
disinterested "objectivity." Antoine Roqucntin, the author of the 
diary in Sartre's novel, La Nauste, pities the tragicomical fate of the 
"autodidact": he does not condemn his noble sentiments but his 
perverted notion of human existence, his abstract and unreal "human- 
ism" and humanitarianism. Man, Sartre proclaims with Antoine 
Roquentin, is not an abstract essence or idea that is to be realized but, 
conversely, the idea of man must grow out of the concreteness of 
human existence: "Existence precedes essence." 

"Estrangement" is overcome hi the novel La Peste (The Plague) 
by the French writer Albert Camus. The theme is developed negatively 
in the same author's earlier biographic narrative, L'Etranger (The 
Stranger). The "absurdity of existence" is the initial thesis in both 
works, but in La Peste the main characters serve to illustrate a newly 
discovered meaning of human life. The novel delineates a Jasperian 
"limit situation": the plague which strikes the North African town 
reveals hi a step-by-step denouement the illusory nature of the most 
cherished conventions, customs, traditions, and ideologies. Under the 
hammer blows of fate they dissolve and decompose simultaneously 
with the bodies of the sick and the dying. But in the sea of general 
disintegration the eternally human, the authentically "existential" reap- 
pears and remains in great purity and lucidity. The "self-estrangement" 
of man is conquered by the forces of neighborly love and unselfish 
friendship. Man rediscovers his true self in distress and suffering and 
in service to his fellowmen. Rieux, the "atheistic" physician, and 
Paneloux, the Jesuit priest, are like two grand symbols of this "real" 
reality. They represent the self-evident, matter-of-fact human existence 
which no longer depends on ideological superstructures. They are the 
embodiment of a "new order," a kind of hidden "natural law." But 



234 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

this new order is born of chaos and in the abyss of "nothingness." 

Man, in "existential experience," learns that all the experiences of 
his "everydayness" are in the last analysis nonessential, that even in 
total loss he can preserve the integrity of his human personality. He 
may gain a new existential authenticity by cither forced or voluntary 
detachment from everyday experiences and earthly possessions. 

3. Existence and Nothingness. The mysterious and uncanny back- 
ground of existential thinking appears in the experience of nothingness 
or "the nought." This experience tears to shreds all the familiar rela- 
tions and proportions of everyday life; it forces man into an existential 
"crisis," in which the marks of his finiteness or contingency his 
"temporality" and his "historicity" are strikingly revealed. Face to 
face with nothingness man enters into a state of "existential despair," 
from which he may be rescued by "resolve" (Heidegger) or "faith" 
(Kierkegaard). This experience is impressively described in Miguel 
de Unamuno's Life of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Don Quixote 
is for the Spanish-Basque writer the heroic man who is willing to 
take upon himself the dangers and risks of total incertitude and who 
therefore is in the view of "everydayness" a mere fool and phantast. 
He is blamed by those who live "unauthentically" for having dragged 
Sancho Panza out of his comfortable life and peaceful pursuits, for 
having persuaded that simple peasant to leave his wife and children to 
become involved in mad adventures. "There are small minds," writes 
Unamuno, "who assert that it is better to be a contented pig than an 
unhappy human being. . . . But he who has once tasted the flavor 
of humanity, he will even in profound unhappiness prefer the 
unhappiness of man to the contentment of the pig. ... It is well, 
therefore, to cause disquietude in human souls and to kindle in them 
a mighty yearning." 

4. Existential Anguish and Nothingness. All modern existentialists 
stress the creative significance of anguish. The problem is first dis- 
cussed in Kierkegaard's, The Concept of Dread (1844), *&& the theme 
is philosophically elaborated by Heidegger who, like Kierkegaard, 
insists on the distinction between "anguish" and "fear," It is the 
peculiarity of anguish that it cannot be rationally understood or 
explained. In existential anguish man is not threatened by something 
definite (as is the case with "fear"), something that could be named 
or defined. If the object of anguish could be thus determined, man 
might be able to rise in defense, ward off the danger, and regain his 
security. But in existential anguish man's relationship to the world is 



THEMATIC STRUCTURE OF EXISTENTIALISM 235 

totally shaken and becomes wholly questionable. Something utterly 
mysterious intervenes between him and the familiar objects of his 
world, between him and his fellowmen, between him and all his 
"values." Everything which he had called his own pales and sinks 
away, so that there is nothing left to which he might cling. What 
threatens is "nothing" (no thing), and he finds himself alone and 
lost in the void. But when this dark and terrible night of anguish has 
passed, man breathes a sigh of relief and tells himself: it was "nothing," 
after all. He has experienced "nothingness." 

"If we now ask specifically," writes Kierkegaard, "what constitutes 
the object of anguish, we must answer: it is nothingness. Anguish 
and nothingness are correlative." Thus anguish is the necessary effect 
of the experience of nothingness: the two are inseparable. And it is 
anguish, according to Heidegger, that arouses man from the false 
tranquillity of his everyday life and makes him free for the fulfillment 
of his existential tasks. Anguish, thus understood, is the positive 
privilege of man; it is "an expression of the perfectibility of human 
nature" (Kierkegaard). It destroys all artificial security and hands 
man over to that total abandonment in which "authentic existence" 
originates. "He who has truly experienced anguish," says Kierkegaard, 
"has learned to walk as in a dance . . . , while the apprentices of 
finiteness lose all reason and courage." In the passage through 
anguish man gains a new kind of security, "a hold in the infinite" 
(Jaspers). 

Boredom (ennui), melancholy, and despair are degrees, modes, and 
variations of anguish. These "moods" too can be authentic and unau- 
thentic. In authentic ennui man is seized by a nameless emptiness: 
everything seems to become equally unimportant and indifferent. And, 
as in the case of anguish, escape can be sought in distraction, in 
sensual or aesthetic pleasure. But authentic ennui forces man into 
decision and choice and thus aids him in gaining his authentic 
existence. 

The same is true of melancholy: "Whoever sorrows and grieves," 
writes Kierkegaard, "knows exactly what causes his sorrow and grief. 
But if you ask the melancholy person as to the cause of his melancholy 
... he will answer: I do not know; I cannot tell." Anguish and 
melancholy reach their greatest intensity in existential despair. But 
once despair has seized man in the depth of his personality, the 
possibility of a decisive change can be envisaged: man has .readied 
himself for the "leap" into authentic existence: "To despair truly, he 



236 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

must truly will to despair. But if he truly wills to despair, he is truly 
already beyond despair" (Kierkegaard). In his freely willed despair 
man has freely chosen himself in his eternal existential significance. 
Thus, despair is the "crisis" through which man passes on his way 
to authentic existence. 

The greatest significance, however, of existential despair lies in the 
fact that in this "mood" the Dasein which man is becomes most 
luminously manifest. The understanding of anguish points the way 
to the understanding of "being." What is actually dreaded in anguish 
is man's "being-in-the-world" as such. But because what is dreaded 
is "nothing," no human being and "no thing" can help man in this 
dreadful experience. In the night of the nothingness, of anguish, 
however, originates the "overtness" toward existence as such. Noth- 
ingness, according to Heidegger, reveals to man "the favor of Being": 
under the veil of nothingness he becomes a partaker of Being. 

5. Existence and "the Others!' The existentialist thesis asserts that 
authentic existence can only be realized in and by the solitary indi- 
vidual. The social collective can be of no help in the attainment of 
this kind of authenticity; it can only retard or frustrate it. This is 
why "the individual" is the basic category in the thinking of Kierke- 
gaard The "self* and "the masses" are at opposite poles. And what 
is true of "the masses" applies equally to "the world." For the existential 
thinker the world is at best a kind of testing ground of existential 
authenticity, the matter to be used in the process of self-realization. 
Nevertheless, authentic existence cannot do without the world and 
"the others." It demands, however, a new "existential community" 
which in turn is to make possible "existential communication." The 
individual existence of the human person remains therefore always 
"overt** toward the existence of "the other." According to Jaspers, 
existence even fulfills itself and becomes authentic in genuine com- 
munication: "I cannot become myself without entering into com- 
munication, and I cannot enter into communication without being a 
human self." In existential communication every association which 
rests merely on habit, custom, or tradition must be either freely 
affirmed or freely rejected. If affirmed, it must be inwardly appro- 
priated. Because existential communion must be reconquered again 
and again, it can never become stale and inert. 

6. Situation and "Umit Situation" Human existence is essentially 
"being in a situation." Man has not chosen the particular situation in 
which he finds himself "in the world," and he feels himself oppressed 



THEMATIC STRUCTURE OF EXISTENTIALISM 237 

and hemmed in by a strange and hostile environment. These limita- 
tions of his human situation are not only of a physical but also of a 
psychological nature. In certain moods man feds himself not only 
as a prisoner in his surrounding world but also, as it were, imprisoned 
and enslaved by his changing emotional reactions, by his instincts and 
urges. In his attempts to gain mastery of his "situation" he meets 
with new and stubborn limitations which he recognizes as conditioned 
by the finiteness and contingency of his existence. While he may 
succeed in improving or mastering certain individual circumstances, 
he inevitably must confess his inability to cope with the most funda- 
mental limits of his human condition, such as he encounters in 
suffering, guilt, and death. These are, according to Jaspers, integral 
elements of human existence as such. They are the walls which 
resist every attack, and they are the causes of human shipwreck. They 
inject into human life the elements of contradiction, insecurity, risk, 
and constant danger. The realization that they are an integral part of 
the lot of finite man shakes human existence to its depths. 

"Limit situations" are thus situations in which man faces the 
insurmountable walls surrounding his existence and becomes pro- 
foundly conscious of the many clefts and abysses which cannot be 
closed or bridged over by any exertion of human thinking. These 
"paradoxes" of life impress upon man the actuality of his imperfection, 
his fragility, his homelessness. But by opening his eyes to his precarious 
human situation, they intensify his efforts toward self-realization. 

7. Temporality and Historicity. These are, in the view of modern 
existentialism, the most conspicuous marks of human finiteness and 
contingency. Attention is called to the difference between "subjective 
time" and "objective time": the pulse of "subjective time" is faster or 
slower than that of "objective time" because this pulse depends in the 
case of the former on the personal experiential content with which 
time is filled. While the hours filled with gaiety and laughter fly 
rapidly, those filled with boredom stretch out interminably. 

Man plans, hopes, fears, and anticipates, and thus in everything 
he embarks upon in the present there is implicit an element of the 
future. But man also remembers and at every stage of life's road 
finds himself confronted with set factual circumstances and with 
historically conditioned structures and events, and thus in every 
present there is implicit an element of the past. To the deeper view 
the present moment reveals a rich temporal structure of several 
dimensions. 



238 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

The future, the existentialist contends, is not something wholly 
indefinite that will occur at some later date and therefore does not 
concern me at this present moment. The future is already alive in 
human hopes and fears, in human planning and designing: it is a 
formative force and an integral part of the present. Similarly, the 
fast is not something that merely "has occurred" at some earlier date 
and therefore no longer concerns me at this present moment. In its 
aspects of both good and evil it reaches into the present and determines 
it to a considerable extent. The present, finally, is not an unextended 
point in the transition from past to future but the firm bond which 
ties together the dimensions of time. Future, fast, and present are 
thus for the "inward temporality" of the human mind three dimensions 
or directions into which the human sense of time extends and which 
in their togetherness constitute the present moment. Heidegger calls 
them the three "ex-stases" of time. And Kierkegaard describes the 
present moment as the point in which time and eternity meet and 
intertwine. "Such an (existential) moment," he writes, "though short 
and temporal ... is yet decisive because it is filled with eternity. , . . 
It is, as it were, eternity's first attempt to make time stand still." In 
the moment, thus understood, there is an absolute "halt" and "hold" 
in which temporality is transcended and overcome. 

While "history" is the recording of the "objective" course of events 
which have run their course in time, "historicity" is the "subjective" 
structural form in which man experiences historical events. In his 
given situation man finds himself always to some extent determined 
and limited in his action by the past; not only by his own past 
decisions and choices but by those massive historical structures (states, 
societies, social and family groups) of which he partakes. He is, says 
Heidegger, an "heir" who lives in his "heritage." His projects for 
the future can therefore never ignore or circumvent the historical 
past. Positively and negatively, in his affirmations as much as in his 
negations, he must take account of his heritage and is therefore never 
absolutely free in his existential choices. His existential task in view 
of his "heritage*' consists in penetrating and appropriating the external 
subject matter of history, so that it becomes part of his authentic 
inward life. In other words, the impersonal "it" of "objective" history 
must become a personal "mine" in the appropriation of its contents. 
In the category of "the existential" the idea of "progress" ^becomes 
meaningless: each generation and every individual in each generation 
has to face the essentially identical human and moral problems and 



THEMATIC STRUCTURE OF EXISTENTIALISM 339 

has to make his own choices. 'The truly human," writes Kierkegaard, 
"no generation can learn from the one that preceded it. In this 
respect every generation is 'primitive' its tasks differ in no way 
from those of every preceding generation, nor does it progress beyond 
any of them. Thus, for example, no generation has learned from the 
preceding one how to love- none can start at any point except from 
the beginning." And the same holds true of faith: "No generation 
can begin at a point differing from that of the preceding one; none 
can start otherwise than from the beginning; and none progresses 
beyond the preceding one." The task of the individual consists thus 
not in enlarging or transforming the enduring essence of love or of 
faith but in intensifying the passionateness of personal appropriation. 
This, according to Kierkegaard, is not "progress," but a "repetition," 
consummated in the inwardness of personal existence. In its own 
inwardness the authentic human being gains an ultimate and absolute 
value which transcends the fluctuating relativity of history. 

This existential interpretation of history is closely related to what 
Nietzsche called "monumental" historiography. The authentically 
existing individuals in every age are "contemporaries": they greet each 
other as they tower like mountain peaks above the dividing valleys. 
They represent the "continuity of greatness" in the history of mankind. 

8. Existence and Death. The existential thinker is not interested in 
death as an "external" event objectively considered but in the way in 
which the individual is related to his own death. He asks himself: 
what does my death signify for this day and this hour of my exist- 
ence? How does the knowledge of the inevitability of my death 
(which may occur at any moment) affect my life here and now? 
The existentialist thus regards death as a constitutive part of life and 
he demands that it be incorporated into the texture and pattern of 
his existence. He sees in death (if we disregard the lone dissenting 
voice of Sartre) the decisive motivating power which spurs man on 
to the highest existential resolve. Any stoic indifference to death, he 
argues, is not courage but cowardice, a kind of escapism which shies 
away from the real abyss of life. 

To the everyday view life appears as a temporal continuum sufficient 
unto itself and comprehensible without the prospect or horizon of 
death. In this perspective death, if envisaged at all, is merely a 
remote external event that casts no shadow on life. But this view 
of life, existentialism argues, does not take into consideration the 
nature and internal structure of human "temporality." As has been 



240 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

pointed out, in his hopes and fears, in his plans, projects, and expec- 
tations, man always outruns and outweighs the present moment. The 
actual present life of the individual receives its meaning and direction 
from its links with his past and future. If this is the case, then death 
as the final existential link with the dimension of futurity conclusively 
implements the individual's past and present. Man, in short, must 
adapt the pattern of his existence to the prospect of his certain death, 
his ultimate and inexorable "limit situation." 

While the death of the individual is certain, the day and hour of 
his death are uncertain. The non-authentically existing individual veils 
and beclouds his knowledge of the inevitability of death by living 
thoughtlessly and distractedly from day to day and never facing realis- 
tically the possibilities and the boundaries of his Dasein. And yet, 
death may occur at any moment and at a time when it is least 
expected. The authentically existing individual therefore, according 
to the "categorical imperative" of existentialism, must live in such a 
way that he is prepared to die at any moment and that such a sudden 
end does not render his life meaningless. "It is true," writes Heidegger, 
"that in death existence reaches the end of its course, but does this 
necessarily mean that it has also exhausted its specific possibilities? An 
unfulfilled existence also ends while, on the other hand, existence may 
have reached and surpassed the stage of ripeness even before death 
puts an end to it." 

In the vertigo of the "fear of death" man is overcome by the 
dreadful thought of "being-no-more," and it is this experience which 
reveals to him the final and total threat to which his existence is 
exposed. But this fear of total annihilation may also have a very 
salutary effect : in existential perseverance in the face of the certainty 
of death man may reach an absolute "hold" beyond time and death. 
By forcing man to ask himself as to what is absolutely essential in 
his existence and by making him free and resolute in his action, 
death becomes the final challenge and supreme test of existence. 

9. Existence and God. For Kierkegaard and for theistic and 
Christian existentialism in general, human existence is grounded in 
the realization of the eternal in the temporality and finiteness of 
Dasein. The Danish thinker believed that such a realization was 
possible only in the religious stage of existence and in the religious 
personality. If God is omitted (as in Heidegger's speculation) or if 
God is denied (as in Nietzsche's and Sartre's thinking), then there 
remains only the yawning abyss of nothingness, a void which cannot 



THEMATIC STRUCTURE OF EXISTENTIALISM 241 

be filled because He who alone could fill it is refused admission. 

When man arrogates to himself the tide and function of divine 
creativeness, his efforts are foredoomed to failure: they terminate in 
"nothing." Since God is the author of "Being" as well as of "beings," 
no being can exist or be creative without Him Who Is, and wherever 
He is not, there is the void. These fundamental truths concerning 
"religious existence" are discussed by Kierkegaard in the Postscript 
preparatory to the elaboration of the third of the "stages on life's 
road." Here he distinguishes clearly between what he calls "religion 
A" and "religion B." While "religion A" is described as possibly 
the highest attainment of "humanity" a deep emotional aware- 
ness of the divine, or an ardent longing for eternal happiness 
"religion B" is the highest attainment of a specifically religious inward- 
ness that is informed by faith in the historical revelation and Incarna- 
tion of Christ. Whereas "religion A" may exist both in paganism and 
in a nominal "Christendom," "religion B" is the expression of authentic 
Christian faith, hope, and love. "The abstraction of religion A," by 
positing the immanence of human existence as a quasi-religious 
absolute, cuts itself off from real "transcendence" and leaves the 
individual enclosed in the circle of finitudc. It may be said therefore 
that "religion A" actually illustrates the futility of all attempts to 
absolutize the human self. While it is true that "religion A" must 
be present before the individual can become aware of "religion B," 
it is equally true that if such an awareness or "awakening" does not 
ensue, the individual inevitably moves toward his eventual self- 
annihilation. 

Applying Kierkegaard's distinction to contemporary existentialism, 
it seems evident that both Heidegger and Jaspers have penetrated to 
the threshold of "religion B." Jaspers emphatically relates human 
existence to transcendence, but he halts short of "stepping over" the 
threshold: he confines the human "overtness" toward transcendence 
to the "limit situations" of suffering, strife, guilt, and death, in which 
man is "enveloped" by transcendence as by an impassable boundary 
of his existence. In the context of Jaspers' philosophy, transcendence is 
thus only experienced under the aspects of "religion A": in crisis, in 
existential despair, and in "shipwreck." Of the thinkers whose 
philosophies have been discussed in the preceding pages, Gabriel 
Marcel is the only one who is familiar with authentic religious 
existence in the sense of Kierkegaard's "religion B": like Kierkegaard, 
he sees in Christianity a unique spiritual force which, breaking into 



242 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

the temporal and finite self, consumes it, and raises out of its ashes 
the eternal and infinite self. 

Atheistic existentialism, much against its avowed intention, demon- 
strates conclusively the utter futility of every endeavor to save man 
after having abandoned God. It unwittingly testifies to the fact that 
human existence is inseparable from human nature or essence and 
that both human existence and human essence must wither away 
without the supporting force and grace of God, of Him Who Is and 
Whose essence is His act of existing. 

Christianity, by illuminating further the aboriginal relationship be- 
tween the existence of man and the existence of God, has shown 
a sure way to save the human person from disintegration and dis- 
solution. The essential Truth, embodied existentially in Christ, the 
God-Man, secures and consecrates human existence and offers in the 
call for an "imitatio Christi" the direction which points toward its 
fullest realization. There is no truth in the Christian sense save 
"existential truth," that is, "living" truth or truth incarnate in the 
act of existing. 

The unity or congruity of theory and practice, of religious doctrine 
and individual devotion, of essential and existential truth was re- 
garded as a matter of course until the time when philosophy proclaimed 
its full emancipation from theology and henceforward developed its 
own autonomous concepts of truth. There was no danger to the in- 
tegrity of truth as long as Christian thinkers continued to understand 
philosophic concepts as "preliminary tools," as aids in securing the 
way to the ultimate, supernatural, and divine Truth. Though granting 
to philosophy a relative autonomy in its own particular sphere, they 
still regarded the entire body of rational and natural philosophy as 
part of a unified theological world view. The danger began when 
the "emancipated" thinkers set themselves up as final arbiters and 
judges of supernatural truth. This total emancipation of reason from 
faith, of philosophy from theology, led eventually to the fatal radical 
dualisms of thought and extension (Descartes), theoretical and practical 
reason (Kant), Apollo and Dionysos (Nietzsche), essence and exist- 
ence (Sartre). 

The Christian thinker is always an "existential" thinker in the 
sense that he is not concerned with abstract and universal ideas and 
essences that bear no relation to actual life. "He is not so much in- 
terested," writes the Swiss Jesuit theologian Urs von Balthasar, "in 
God as a philosophical ens a sc as in God, the Father of Christ Jesus; 



THEMATIC STRUCTURE OF EXISTENTIALISM 243 

not so much in the spirit as an abstract principle of general laws 
and values as in the spirit of the fiery tongues. . . . He is not worried 
about a synthesis of nature and supernature, knowledge and faith, the 
secular and ecclesiastic orders, because he knows that he who un- 
compromisingly abides in Christ is relieved of such worries." And, 
pointing to St. Anselm of Canterbury, the same author concludes: "In 
prayer he approaches the mystery . . . and he is fully aware that even 
God's natural revelation in the created universe and in human reason is 
a genuine revelation. . . . From the point of view of faith he under- 
stands that reason too was created for the sake of faith, and nature 
for the sake of grace, and that nature and grace in their togetherness 
are the one interlinked and unified revelation of the One incomprehen- 
sible love of the Tri-Une God." 



AP P E NDIX 



EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY AND THE SYNTHESIS 
OF EXISTENCE 



I 

Two contemporary schools of philosophic thought discussed in the 
chapters of this book Phenomenology and Existentialism have in 
recent years gained increasing significance in psychotherapeutic 
methodology. Phenomenology, understood in Husserl's sense as a 
"hermeneutics" or descriptive analysis and exploration of the onto- 
logical structure of human existence and human essence (or nature), 
has proved of substantial value in the attempt to penetrate to the 
interiority of the human soul. Such creative thinkers as Alexander 
Pfander, Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, and Ludwig Binswanger 
in Germany, or Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eugene Minkowski, and 
Gaston Bachelard in France (to name only a few) have adopted 
Husserl's phenomenological method and used it to great effect in 
their otherwise vastly differing philosophical and psychological re- 
search. As a matter of fact, it is seldom realized what an immense 
amount of work both in theory and practice has been done by 
these scholars and some of their associates in several fields bordering 
on psychology and psychiatry. 

The recent impact of Phenomenology and even more of Existential- 
ism is most noteworthy in depth-psychology or psychoanalysis (in 
the broadest sense of the term), that is, in that scientific discipline 
which aims at an adequate understanding of both the conscious and 
unconscious life of the psyche, from the theoretical-scientific as well 
as from the practical-therapeutic point of view. It is by disclosing or 
making accessible the unconscious life of the soul that the several 
schools of depth-psychology have cumulatively deepened and widened 
also the understanding of man's conscious life. 

As far as Phenomenology is concerned, its current representatives 
are convinced that its methodology makes it possible to explore the 
subjectivity and the subjective experiences of both the healthy and 

244 



APPENDIX 245 

the mentally sick person more thoroughly than is possible with the 
methods of "classical" or Freudian psychoanalysis. The spokesmen 
of "existential psychotherapy" however, claim that an "existential- 
ist" approach to mental illness provides even more efficient tools for 
psychotherapy than those furnished by phenomenology. Since most 
of the "existential psychotherapists" do not reject phenomenology 
but in many instances have gratefully appropriated its methodologi- 
cal principles, it would seem that these two schools of thought do not 
exclude but rather supplement each other. 

The most striking documentary evidence available in the English 
language of the influence of phenomenology and existentialism on 
psychotherapy is presented in a volume entitled "Existence," edited 
by Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenberger, and dedi- 
cated to Eugene Minkowski, "Pioneer in Phenomenological Psychi- 
atry," and Ludwig Binswanger, "Explorer in Existential Analysis" 
and "to all those in the science of man who have opened new realms 
in our understanding of what it means to be a human being." ! This 
work, arranged in die manner of an international symposium, in- 
cludes, in addition to the contributions of the editors, a number of 
scientific treatises by leading psychiatrists and psychologists in Europe 
and the United States. Minkowski, for example, writes on a case of 
schizophrenic depression, V. E. von Gebsattel on "the world of the 
compulsive, 9 ' and Binswanger on existential analysis (presenting in 
particular the illuminating case histories of "Ilse" and of "Ellen 
West"). 

In the following pages I shall attempt to paraphrase some of the 
main ideas advanced by some of the contributors. This may serve to 
bear out the contention of several reviewers that this publication is 
of universal importance for all those who are personally and profes- 
sionally interested in the ontological and existential structure of the 
human psyche. 

Rollo May sees the most significant affinity of existentialism with 
psychotherapy in the fact that both are concerned with individuals in 
crisis, that is, with human beings who in one way or other deviate in 
their life-structure from the pattern of the "normal" condition 
humaine. Psychotherapeutic existential analysis therefore has as its 
goal an ever deepening understanding of the life-history of the pa- 



1 Existence. A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology (New York: Basic 
Books, 1958). 



246 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

tient, and, in Binswanger's phrasing, "it understands this life-history 
as modifications of the total structure of the patient's being-in-the- 
world." 2 The existential analyst moreover calls upon the aid of 
philosophy, art, and literature, in the conviction that they are or 
contain expressions and genuine self-revelations of human beings. 
And he observes that similar authentic insights may be gained by the 
analytic study of certain cultural movements which are expressive of 
the anxieties and conflicts of contemporary man. 3 

It is quite in line with William Barrett's recent astute analysis of 
existentialism 4 when Rollo May describes this movement as "the 
endeavor to understand man by cutting below the cleavage between 
subject and object which has bedeviled Western thought and science 
since shortly after the Renaissance." 5 As we have pointed out our- 
selves, the existentialists are vitally concerned with the rediscovery 
and re-formation of the human person amid the fragmentation and 
collectivization of modern culture and society. Depth-psychology and 
existential analysis are today regarded as efficacious tools in achieving 
that end in cases where human beings have individually fallen vic- 
tim to the collective neuroses and psychoses of the age. 

Both Rollo May and William Barrett make specific reference to 
the relations which exist between existentialism in the West and the 
eastern wisdom embodied in Taoism and Zen Buddhism, especially 
as far as the ideas of being and existence and their interrelatedness 
are concerned. Like existentialism, these oriental modes of thought 
are trying to overcome the fatal subject-object dichotomy and there- 
with the estrangement of man from the world, from nature, and 
from himself, by leading the individual back to that "ground of 
being," from which all action springs and wherein it must remain 
anchored if it is to retain meaning and vitality. 6 

Both existentialists and existential psychotherapists analyze limit 
or crisis situations as they reveal themselves in anxiety, estrange- 
ment, despair and their concomitants and derivatives. Rollo May 
regards Kierkegaard as one of the great geniuses in the history of 
psychology because antedating Nietzsche and Freud by about half 

a Quoted by Rollo May in Existence, p. 5 ( The Origins and Significance of the 
Existential Movement in Psychology). 

8 Cf. loc. fit., p. 8. 

4 Cf . William Barrett, Irrational Man. A Study in Existential Philosophy (New 
York: Doubleday Anchor, 1958, passim). 

5 Rollo May, loc. cit., p. n (italics in the text). 

6 Cf. William Barrett, loc. cit., p. 18 sq. 



APPENDIX 247 

a century he not only offered (in The Concept of Dread) a most 
profound analysis of anxiety but had already gained clear insight into 
the problems of self-consciousness, the nature of neurotic conflicts, 
self-alienation and loss of selfhood, and even into some of the com- 
plex questions with which psychosomatic medicine is presently pre- 
occupied. 7 Binswanger, in his presentation of the case history of 
Ellen West, states that "she suffered from that sickness of the mind 
which Kierkegaard, with the keen insight of genius, described and 
illuminated from all possible aspects under the name of 'Sickness 
Unto Death/ " "I know," he continues, "of no document which 
could more greatly advance the existential-analytic interpretation of 
schizophrenia. ... For at the root of so many 'cases' of schizophrenia 
can be found the 'desperate 1 wish . . . not to be oneself, as also its 
counterpart, the desperate wish to be oneself" 8 

In Rollo May's view, Kierkegaard even anticipated the standpoint 
of such eminent contemporary physicists as Bohr and Heisenberg 
when he asserted that nature cannot be separated from man and that 
the observed object can be divorced from the observing subject only 
by an artificial disjunction, or, to use Heisenberg's words, that "the 
ideal of a science which is completely independent of man (i.e., 
completely objective) is an illusion." 9 If applied to psychotherapy, 
this means that the therapist must be an existential participant in the 
doctor-patient relationship if he may hope to gain true insight into 
the psyche of the mentally ill person; it means that personal engage- 
ment, involvement or commitment increases rather than decreases the 
chances of such insight and understanding. We have here the iden- 
tical thesis which Nietzsche had advanced in his "Meditation on 
History" (cf. p. 77 sq. supra) when he referred to the dangers in- 
herent in an "antiquarian" approach to historical events and castigated 
the sterile attitude of the "mad collector" of "pure facts." With re- 
spect to the understanding of the psyche of the mentally ill person, 
"pure facts," mere statistical data collected by observing a person's 
external behavioral pattern, are not enough, even though the ob- 
servation may be correct or "true." These observed facts and data 
remain meaningless unless and until they are related to the total 

7 Cf. Rollo May, loc. tit., p. 23 sq. 

8 Ludwig Binswanger, The Case of ElUn West. An Anthropological-Clinical Study 
(in Existence, p. 297). 

9 Cf . Existence, p. 26 (qouted from a mimeographed address by Werner Heisen- 
berg, delivered at Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., October 1934) 



248 THE EXISTENTIAUST REVOLT 

Dasein of the individual, that is, to the ontological ground of his 
existence. The lament over the loss of the "sense of being" which 
permeates all of Heidegger's philosophy and which prompts his 
search for a new "fundamental ontology," constitutes also one of 
the main themes of existential psychotherapy. The loss of the "sense 
of being" results in the subordination of existence to professional 
and vocational specialization and submission to the demands of the 
conformist life structure of the "organization-man." 

What the existential psychotherapist adopting the terminology 
and methodology of Husserl and Heidegger designates as Daseins- 
analyse, has as its goal the reconquest of the core of the being of the 
individual or the reactivation of the full scope of the "inner possi- 
bilities" (i.e., the "entelechy" in the sense in which Aristotle uses 
this term) of the human person. At the end of this often arduous and 
always time-consuming process of "individuation" (Jung) or self- 
realization stands to use Rollo May's phrase the all-important 
tr l-am" experience. In illustrating this point he relates the case his- 
tory 10 of an intelligent woman of twenty-eight who suffered from 
severe claustrophobia, morbid scrupulosity, and compulsive outbursts 
of rage and who in the fourth month of therapy reported that it was 
this "I-am" experience which made it possible for her to accept and 
eventually transcend all the adverse conditions of her very complex 
actual situation. This is the way she described this awakening to her 
true selfhood: "Since I Am, I have the right to be. ... It is my 
saying to Descartes, t( I Am, therefore I think, I feel, I do." To this 
the author adds the cautioning remark that the "I-am" experience is 
not in itself the solution to a person's problems but rather the pre- 
condition for such a solution. 11 

In his discussion of the implications and ramifications of Heideg- 
ger's phenomenological description of the existential mode of "being- 
in-the-world," Rollo May accepts and further elaborates on several 
aspects of this Bepndlicbkeit. The existential analyst distinguishes 
between Umwelt (the "biological world," the material environment), 
Mitwelt (the social world, the world in which I live with my fellow- 
men), and, most important in the existential frame of reference, the 
Eigenwelt (the world of the self and the mode of the individual's 
relationship to himself) . Both Umwelt and Mitwelt are fairly ade- 
quately dealt with in modern psychology and classical (Freudian) 

10 Cf. Ludwig Binswanger, The Case of Ellen West (in Existence, p. 269 sq.). 
11 Cf. Existence, p. 43. 



APPENDIX 249 

psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. The Eigenwelt, on the other hand, 
is virtually ignored or, if taken into consideration at all, it is mis- 
understood owing to the massive materialistic and naturalistic philo- 
sophic biases of orthodox psychoanalysis. And yet it is precisely the 
Eigenwelt and its structural dimensions which in the case of the 
mentally sane makes it possible for the individual to see reality in 
true perspective or in the case of psychopathologically disturbed 
persons accounts for the fact that the individual sees both Umwelt 
and Mitwelt in distorted perspective. It is thus correct to say that 
these three modes of "being-in-the-world" are strictly interrelated 
and mutually condition each other: "they are three simultaneous 
modes of 'being-in-the-world.' " 12 And it is a matter of historic 
record that Freud and his school never took real cognizance of that 
particular mode of "being-in-the-world" with which Kierkegaard 
and all modern and contemporary existential thinkers were and are 
primarily concerned the mode of the relation of the self to itself. 
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the exploration of the Ei gen- 
welt is one of the primary concerns also of the existential psycho- 
therapists. 

Heidegger's discussion of the structure of " temporality* ' (the 
three dimensions or ex-stases of time [cf. p. 139, supra}) has proven 
eminently fruitful in existential psychotherapy. In appraising the 
relative significance of the dimensions of past, present, and future, it 
appears that, as far as human existence is concerned, the future far 
outranks the past and the present. The future is that dimension of 
time in which or into which the individual actualizes or realizes 
himself, unless he is prevented from doing so by some mental dis- 
turbances or blocks. Whereas the past is the domain of the Umwelt 
and its determining forces, and the present to a large extent the 
domain of the Mitwelt, the future is that temporal dimension in 
which the Eigenwelt displays its genuine dynamic and determining 
force, even to the extent of shaping the individual's past and present: 
"What an individual seeks to become determines what he remembers 
of his has been. In this sense the future determines the past. . . . 
Whether or not a patient can even recall significant events of the past 
depends on his decision with regard to the future." 1S 

In proportion to the degree of his self-awareness and his Seins- 



"Rollo May, Contributions of Existential Psychotherapy (in Existence, p. 63). 
13 Rollo May, loc . cit. t p. 69 sq. 



250 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

verstandnis (Heidegger), the human being can avail himself to a 
greater or lesser extent of his faculty of free choice in selecting 
among several possible relationships between his self and the world 
and thus among several modes of "being-in-the-world." In the case 
of psychopathological disturbances, on the other hand, the margin 
of freedom is more or less reduced, and in serious forms of mental 
illness (as, for example, in the case of Ellen West) the person's 
"being-in-the-world" is quite rigidly determined and may be strictly 
confined to either past or present, while the dimension of the future 
may be totally blocked. It is Binswanger's contention that the gap 
which separates the "world" of the healthy person from the "world" 
of the mentally ill and "which makes communication between the two 
so difficult is not only scientifically explained but also scientifically 
bridged by existential analysis." H He further asserts that this new 
methodological approach has succeeded beyond all earlier hopes in 
penetrating the life-history of patients and in understanding and 
phenomenologically describing their world-designs, especially in cases 
of hypochondriacal paranoids who are otherwise hardly accessible. 15 

Finally, with respect to the ultimate "limit situation" death 
there are likewise far-reaching parallels observable between existen- 
tialists and existential psychotherapists in the evaluation of death's 
existential meaning and significance. In his comments on the suicide 
of Ellen West, Binswanger points out that existential analysis should 
"suspend any judgment derived from any [preconceived} stand- 
points . . . , be they ethical or religious, psychiatric-medical or psy- 
choanalytic explanations or psychological interpretations based on 
motives. . . . We must neither tolerate nor disapprove of the suicide 
of Ellen West, nor trivialize it with medical or psychoanalytic ex- 
planations, nor dramatize it with ethical or religious judgments. In- 
deed, the saying of Jeremias Gotthelf applies well to an existential 
totality such as Ellen West: Think how dark life becomes when a 
poor human wants to be his own sun.' . . . Instead of raising the 
question of fate or guilt in the face of suicide . . . , love attempts 'to 
get to the ground of existence' and from this ground to understand 
die existence anthropologically." 16 

If we try to fit the tragic life and death of Ellen West into the 

14 Ludwig Binswanger, The Existential Analysis School of Thought (in Existence, 
p. 213). 

15 Cf . Ludwig Binswanger, ibid. 

16 Ludwig Binswanger, The Case of Ellen West, loc. cit., p. 293 sq. 



APPENDIX 251 

categories of existential thinking, it appears that her suicide was a 
consistent and thus almost "necessary" termination of an existence 
that found itself not, indeed, as an individual "alone before God" 
(as does Kierkegaard's "singular individual"), that is, in the last 
analysis, in a most felicitous "I-Thou" relationship (as described by 
Marcel and Buber) but rather "alone before Nothingness." In this 
instance, then, the existential meaning of Ellen's life was in Kierke- 
gaardian terms not that of being herself but rather that of being 
not herself. 17 In other words, Ellen West suffered from the "Sickness 
Unto Death," a sickness which in her case proved fatal because it 
was not healed by faith. "When the torture of the despair consists 
precisely in this, that one cannot die . . . , that one cannot get rid of 
oneself, then suicide . . . , and with it Nothingness, take on a 'des- 
perately' positive meaning. . . ." 18 Death comes as a friend, because it 
promises freedom and liberation from the chains of finite existence. 
The dialectic implicit in this desperate struggle of the self is not 
only that of an either/or but that of an all/or nought, and death may 
stand for either all/ or nought, depending on whether the being of 
the individual is grounded in the plenitude of the All or in the 
emptiness of the Nought. Thus, when Santa Teresa of Avila pro- 
nounces her famous "Muero porque no muero" (I am dying because 
I cannot die), she too conceives of death as holding out a promise 
of liberation from the fetters of this contingent existence, but 
her yearning for this kind of liberation implies the hoped-for and 
divinely secured ascent to a supra-temporal mode of existence in 
which the dimensions of temporality past, present, and future 
will have given way to the festive rebirth of the person in an eternal 
present. 

II 

A somewhat different approach to the main objective of existential 
psychotherapy the restoration of the existential integrity or whole- 
ness of the human person is being attempted by several groups of 
therapists who are united in only two essential points: (i) their 
common endeavor to overcome certain shortcomings and limitations 
of classical psychoanalysis; (2) their adherence to some definite re- 
ligious persuasion as well as a positive evaluation of religion and 



17 Cf . Ludwig Binswanger, ibid., p. 297. 

18 Ludwig Binswanger, ibid., p. 298. 



252 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

religious faith as such. Prominent among the representatives of these 
several groups are to name only a few Dr. Francis J. Braceland, 
Director of The Institute of Living (Hartford, Conn.), Dr. Karl 
Stern, Director of the Institut Albert Prevost (Montreal, Canada), 
and, on the other side of the Atlantic, the members of the School of 
Psychotherapy of Vienna and Innsbruck (often referred to as the 
"Vienna Circle"), headed by Dr. Igor A. Caruso. These therapists 
and their associates are accredited physicians as well as practising 
psychiatrists and analysts. 19 They not only aim at a strictly personal- 
istic or existentialistic psychotherapy but also stress the need for in- 
creasing cooperation between psychiatrists and psychologists, on the 
one hand, and social workers, philosophers, and theologians, on the 
other. Most of them are also interested in psychosomatic and pastoral 
medicine. 

The two most important publications that have come forth from 
the Vienna Circle are Caruso's work on "Psychoanalysis and the Syn- 
thesis of Existence" and Daim's extensive treatise on "Depth Psy- 
chology and Salvation." While all the members of this group 
acknowledge their indebtedness to Freud, Alfred Adler and C. G. 
Jung, they have all, on the basis of clinical experience, arrived at the 
conclusion that classical analytical psychotherapy is in some respects 
seriously defective and therefore stands in need of correction and 
supplementation. 

Caruso's point of departure is the analytic description of what he 
calls the "defection from the hierarchy of values." 20 By this he 
means a relativization of absolute values and a corresponding abso- 
lutization of relative values. It is his contention that, for example, 
the absolutization of an abstract theory of individualism leads of 
necessity to nihilism and that the absolutization of an abstract theory 
of society leads just as necessarily to some form of totalitarianism. 
He points out that contemporary man, who has made his own the 
creeds of Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and Sartre, has come to deny the 

w Cf. F. J. Braceland (Ed.), Faith, Reason and Modern Psychiatry. Sources for a 
Synthesis. (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1955). Karl Stern, The Third Revo- 
lution (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co, 1954). Igor A. Caruso, Psycho- 
analyse und Synthese der Existenz (Wien: Herder Verlag, 1952). I. A. 
Caruso, Bies, Psyche t Person (Freiburg-Miinchen: Karl Alber, 1957). Wilfried 
Dafm, Tiefenpsychologie und Erldsung (Wien-Miinchen: Verlag Herold, 1954). 
Albert Niedermeyer, Arztliche Ethik (Wien: Verlag Herder, 1954). A. Nieder- 
meyer, Philosophiscbe Propadeutik der Medizin (Wien: Verlag Herder, 1955). 

20 1. A. Caruso, loc. cit. t p. 7 sqq. 



APPENDIX 253 

existence of any objective values and, consequent upon this denial, 
tends to regard himself as the sole originator and autonomous trans- 
former of all values, pledging allegiance only to his subjective in- 
stincts, urges, and interests, and to his own "will to power." 
Contemporary man takes pride in designing ingenious "systems of 
order/' such as the classless, stateless, or racially pure society sys- 
tems whose innate relative values are vitiated by their absolutization 
and idolization. 

In his attempt to account for these social and sociological phe- 
nomena in terms of psychopathology, Caruso succeeds in establishing 
important links between certain interrelated trends in the evolution 
of modern psychology and anthropology. Although psychology was 
originally regarded as an integral part or branch of philosophy, it 
came to be classified as a natural science toward the end of the nine- 
teenth century. Man, one of the objects of experimental scientific 
psychology among others, was more and more looked upon as a sort 
of automaton whose reactions were measured with great precision 
but whose "mind," according to Caruso, remained a greater mystery 
to the experimental psychologist than it ever was to the medicine 
man of a primitive tribe. 21 Moreover, the almost frantic attempt to 
refrain from all value judgments eventually amounted to an ironclad 
bias and prejudice. 

Then, in Caruso's words, came the "Freudian revolution." The 
theory (not the method) of this "last great humanist of the West" 22 
contained two specifically modern errors: (i) the reduction of all 
values to the subjective sphere of pure immanence; (2) the unques- 
tioning acceptance of certain false imperatives of the social collective 
(Freud's Super-Ego ). Caruso states that it is possible to discern 
between the lines of Freud's works the beginnings of that "philoso- 
phy of despair" which was later on elaborated by atheistic existential- 
ism. Freud, "this freedom-loving and upright man with his keen 
eye and the bitter lines of his mouth," 2S had started out from his 
discovery of the "pleasure-principle" (Lustprinzip) as the basic 
human drive, but he eventually arrived at the conclusion that "the 
purpose and goal of all life is death" (the Todestrieb). In Freud, 
then, we meet with the paradox of a skeptical mind unconditionally 
devoted to the search for truth. 

21 Cf. I. A. Caruso, loc. cit., p. n. 

22 Cf . I. A. Caruso, loc. cit., p. 13. 

23 Cf. I. A. Caruso, ibid. 



254 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

Caruso states unequivocally that present-day psychology is incon- 
ceivable without Freud. The "Freudian revolution" had two major 
aspects, the one social and sociological, the other individualistic. The 
"individual psychology" of Alfred Adler attempted to work out both 
the sociological and individualistic implications of Freud's work. 
Adler's system of social adjustment rests on the bases of Freudian 
psychology. Girl Gustav Jung went one step further: he made it the 
object of his labors as a psychologist and psychiatrist to penetrate to 
the very core of human personality, to that borderline which guards 
the mystery of the "individuum ineffabile" (Aquinas). Here for the 
first time a natural scientist succeeded in reaching depths of which 
hitherto only philosophers and poets had had a dim presentiment. 
Jung discovered, among other things, that the veil of the unconscious 
covers not only the unsatisfied pleasure-drives of the child but also a 
vast territory of primitive or archaic experiences which are the prop- 
erty of the collective unconscious life of the human race. 

In probing into the instinctual drives of animate beings, Jung 
points out that bees and ants, for example, achieve astonishing re- 
sults by solely relying on their instincts; they can do exceedingly well 
without individuality because they act as instruments of a collective 
will. Are there, then, typical and essential differences between animal 
instincts and human instincts? Jung answers categorically in the af- 
firmative. While in animals the instinctive drives are relatively un- 
determined, in human beings they require definitive determination 
at the hands of conscious, rational and individual life. This is why 
man strives of necessity for growing individuation and for an ever 
higher degree of consciousness. And it is, according to Jung, one of 
the crucial problems of human existence whether the individual re- 
mains ignorant of or hostile to that collective unconscious which acts 
as a motivating force in human life only to be destroyed in the 
end in his specific individuality by this force or whether he has 
learned to listen to the voice of the collective unconscious, illumines 
it with the light of his conscious life and thus uses it for the enrich- 
ment of his personality. 

Even those who are only superficially acquainted with Jung's 
theory, method and terminology know that he has coined several 
poetic names to designate the diverse functions of the unconscious. 
They serve to describe the relationship in which the individual stands 
with respect to the opposite sex, to society, and to the negative or 
"shadow" side of reason and morality (e.g., anima, animus, persona, 



APPENDIX 255 

the shadow, the Old Wise Man, the Earth Mother). The most im- 
portant of these functions of the unconscious the one which regu- 
lates and directs all the others is fulfilled by what Jung calls the 
Self. The Swiss psychotherapist has repeatedly refused to define this 
somewhat mysterious entity, on the grounds that in his opinion he 
would overstep the boundaries of empirical psychology by attempting 
such a definition. Nonetheless, it is obvious that Jung regards the 
gradual attainment of knowledge of the Self as part of the process of 
individuation. It would appear that individuation, in Jung's sense, 
tends toward an eventual unification of human existence and human 
essence. The self seems to represent for Jung something like that 
"ground of the soul" (Seelengrund) or even the "divine spark of 
the soul" (das Seelenfunklein) of which Meister Edchardt and other 
mystics speak. In line with his general theory of "archetypes," Jung 
goes at times so far as to refer to the Self as the "divine archetype," 
adding immediately, however, that it cannot be his business as a 
psychologist to offer any arguments concerning the existence or non- 
existence of God. He has nonetheless made the significant statement 
that, on the basis of empirically observed facts, it is possible to con- 
clude that the human soul is intentionally proportioned and oriented 
to the recognition of a transcendent God. 24 

The remaining ambiguity in Jung's depth-psychology hinges then 
on this somewhat vague and indefinite concept of the Self. In pro- 
testing against a pantheistic interpretation of this archetypal entity, 
Jung probably went farthest in revealing his basic convictions in a 
private letter addressed to the Rev. Gebhard Frei. The Self, he says 
here, is an empirical totality which as such defies description. "It 
can certainly never take the place of God, but it may well be a vessel 
or receptacle of divine grace." ** 

In comparing the relative merits of the theories and practical ac- 
complishments of Freud, Adler, and Jung, Caruso emphasizes the 
fact that, while Freud was a genius in methodical scientific research, 
he was a stranger to philosophy. He admitted that much himself when 
he spoke of his "constitutional incapacity" for philosophic specula- 
tion. In his reductive analysis he adhered to a strict determinism 
which admitted of no accidental occurrences. "If someone violates 
this strict natural determinism in one single instance," Freud wrote in 

24 Igor A. Caruso, Bios, Psyche, Person. Eine Einfuhrung in die allgemeine 
Tiefenpsychologie (Freiburg-Munchen: Karl Alber, 195?), P- 377* 
35 Quoted by I. A. Caruso, loc. cit., p. 382. 



256 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

his "Introduction to Psychoanalysis," "he thereby upsets the entire 
scientific world view. We must then tell him that even the religious 
view of life is much more consistent when it assures us emphati- 
cally that no sparrow falls from a roof without the special will of 
God." 26 

This psychological determinism is much less pronounced in Adler's 
"individual psychology." Adler contends that his explanations are 
finalistic rather than causalistic. By this he means to say that the 
"hidden goal" of life is determined by its teleological tendency or 
direction, and that it is the task of education in general and of psy- 
chotherapy in particular to harmonize the individual striving with 
social demands and norms and thus to provide "compensations" for 
feelings of inferiority. 

In Jung's psychology the Freudian psychological determinism is 
almost totally abandoned. In his analytical theory and therapy reli- 
gious faitA appears no longer (as it does in classical psychoanalysis) 
as "nothing but" an illusory "sublimation" of the sexual drive. The 
belief in God is for Jung an innate, verifiable datum of the indi- 
vidual psyche: it is an "archetype" of the human soul and must be 
acknowledged as such by analytical psychology. "One might call this 
merely another kind of illusion," says Jung; "but what, after all, do 
we mean by illusion? . . . What we call an illusion is perhaps a 
psychical reality of preeminent importance." 27 And yet, Jung has so 
far refused to relate what he calls the "autonomous content," that 
is, the "divine archetype" (or the idea of God) in the individual 
soul, to any objectively existing reality. Martin Buber and other crit- 
ics of Jung therefore suspect that the Swiss analyst sees in the "arche- 
types" little more than symbolic or mythical representations of the 
collective unconscious in the individual psyche. 28 

The question then arises whether Jung's theory of "archetypes" 
provides the therapist with a fully adequate method of analytical 
psychotherapy. Or, more specifically, how successful can such a ther- 
apy be in curing neuroses? To answer this question, it is necessary to 
consider briefly the nature of neurosis. Caruso distinguishes in every 
mental disturbance of this type a negative and a positive aspect: 
every neurosis is characterized by a negation of wholeness and by a 

26 Sigmund Freud, Votlesungen zur Einfubrung in die Psychoanalyse (jth ed., 
1926), p. 21. 

27 C. G. Jung, Seelenprobleme der Gegenwart (Zurich: Rascher, 1931), p. 113. 
88 Cf. Martin Buber, Gottesfinsternis (Zurich: Manesse Verlag, 1953), p. 157 sqq. 



APPENDIX 257 

corresponding overemphasis on partial truths an overemphasis 
which results in a distortion of the entire world view. Owing to his 
failure to see the whole, the neurotic person bases his judgments on 
his fragmentary or fractional view of reality. This distorted world 
view Caruso designates as an "existential lie." M But, in addition, 
there is in every neurosis a violent conflict between affirmation and 
negation, between "good" and "evil," between "truth" and "false- 
hood." Every neurosis thus makes manifest a tragic conflict, and in its 
limited circumference the private problem of the neurotic person re- 
veals all the characteristics of the universal human problem of evil 
and of suffering. The neurotic is vaguely aware of having been un- 
faithful to .his existential vocation. He is dissatisfied with his abso- 
lutization or idolization of relative values, and he feels that his 
anxieties might be relieved if only he could get hold of some true 
Absolute. These then are some of the positive elements of neurosis, 
and the most effective method of psychotherapy will be the one which 
best understands to utilize them for the healing process. 

For Caruso and his associates the problem of neurosis is thus 
essentially the problem of man's proper or improper relationship to 
the hierarchy of values. While in its negative aspect neurosis is a 
metaphysical life-lie, in its positive aspect neurosis is characterized 
by the more or less conscious desire to restore the lost orientation in 
the objective world and its values. Caruso states in effect that a 
neurosis is always simultaneously a flight from the Absolute and a 
longing for the Absolute and that the psychotherapist must take 
account of this twofold striving. First of all, however, he must reject 
the dogmatic assertion of the Freudians that the problem of the 
Absolute or the problem of God and religious faith and the wrestling 
with this problem is itself a sign and symptom of neurosis. 

It seems legitimate, then, to conclude that neurosis is, when seen 
in this new perspective, not only a disturbance of the equilibrium of 
the psyche: it is simultaneously a more or less concealed effort on the 
part of the neurotic person to restore the lost equilibrium. The same 
kind of ambivalence, however, applies to the psychotherapeutic 
method: if the therapist takes as his frame of reference a purely 
naturalistic anthropology, his very method and perspective tend to 
absolutize relative values. Depth-psychology like experimental psy- 
chology is a natural science in so far as it tests, explores, and 

39 Cf. I. A. Caruso, Psychoanalyse und Syntbese der Existent, pp. 46-57 . 



258 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

systematizes psychical phenomena, but it ceases to be a natural science 
when it faces the problem of transforming a living personality and 
pointing the way to a new goal of life. At this point it turns into 
ethics or a substitute thereof. Caruso insists that every practical psy- 
chology whether it be clinical psychology, psychotherapy, medical 
pedagogy, or psychological counseling must have as its frame of 
reference a "realistic" or "objective" scale of values. When the person 
suffers shipwreck as a consequence of certain "fixations" or false 
absolutizations (that is, in servitude to fictitious values), it becomes 
the task of the educator, the physician, the psychologist, the psycho- 
therapist, to liberate the individual from his fixations by leading him 
back to the "real" world of objective values. Wilfried Daim points 
out that any absolute attachment to that which is by its nature relative 
implies the total surrender of the person to some object or subject 
which by their very nature are incapable of fulfilling the exorbitant 
demands and expectations imposed by such a "fixation." 30 As a re- 
sult, the person for whom a relative good assumes the character of an 
Absolute, experiences extreme terror and oppressive compulsion. And 
it is quite obvious that as long as the ethical concepts and categories 
of depth-psychology merely absolutize the partial truths established 
by scientific observation, they are insufficient to liberate the neurotic 
person from the tyranny of his idols and false absolutes. In conse- 
quence of this consideration, Caruso sees the principal error of Freud- 
ian psychoanalysis in its attempt to treat neurosis as a purely biologi- 
cal phenomenon. According to Viktor von Weizsacker, not only 
every neurosis but every disease is a psycho-physical phenomenon or 
the symptomatic expression of some psychosomatic disturbance. 
Natural science as such including somatic medical science has not 
and cannot have a clear conception of what constitutes "health" of 
mind and soul. Unfortunately, it is often unaware of its blindness in 
this respect. And it is thus hardly surprising that even the supposedly 
purely deterministic and naturalistic psychoanalysis of Freud con- 
stantly works with both biological and metaphysical concepts. Caruso 
also deplores that classical psychoanalysis is usually not cognizant of 
the fact that a neurotic conflict may be of great existential signifi- 
cance and that therefore a psychotherapy which merely resolves the 
conflict without projecting it to a higher plane of existential values, 

80 Cf. Wilfried Daim, Tiefenpsycholo&e und Erlosung (Wicn: Verlag Herold, 
1954), P. 131 sqq. 



APPENDIX 259 

leads frequently to an impoverishment of the human person. There is 
certainly ample justification for asking the question: what would a 
therapy with such a limited perspective have done to the restless 
heart of St. Augustine, the anguished soul of Pascal, the melancholy 
mind of Kierkegaard? S1 

As Kierkegaard pointed out in the Concluding Unscientific Post- 
script, every absolutization of relative values leads eventually to solip- 
sistic solitude. For Kierkegaard the symbols or "archetypes" of such 
a solipsistic existence are the eternally restless Ahasverus, the end- 
lessly searching and striving Faust, and the interminably emoting 
Don Juan all of them divorced from the realm of objective truth 
and value and therefore forever in pursuit of some absolutized ego- 
centered fractional truth and never finding true self-fulfillment 

In speaking of the neurotic guilt complex, Caruso observes that 
the disease of a guilty conscience is by no means confined to neurot- 
ics: it is the most conspicuous and universal disease of modern 
civilization. The inflated ego, knowing of no law but its own, feels 
itself paradoxically drawn toward the philosophies of self-abasement 
and self-annihilation. The more inflated the ego, the more the guilty 
conscience asserts itself. And the more self -sufficient or absolutely 
autonomous modern societies strive to be, the more absurd and des- 
perate become their creeds. In Sartre's "existential psychoanalysis," 
for example, man aspires to become an en~soi-pour-soi a minor 
or even a major "god" a being that creates himself ex nihilo and 
that feeds on his supposed absolute freedom and responsibility (cf. 
p. 1 60 sq. supra). With a sort of weird consistency, Sartre's existen- 
tialistic psychotherapy proposes to treat the neurotic person as an abso- 
lutely jree subject. Caruso asserts on the basis of clinical evidence 
that the practical achievements of this kind of psychotherapy are nil. 32 

Viktor von Weizsacker makes the interesting observation that both 
the theory and the method of Freudian psychoanalysis could develop 
only within a Christian frame of reference, since in Freud's anthro- 
pology man appears as a being which, in its present state, is com- 
pletely out of order or disorganized. With equal justification it might 
be argued that atheistic existentialism as a sort of inverted theology 
could have originated only within the setting of a profound crisis 
of Christendom. Atheistic existentialism regards man as a being that 



31 Cf. I. A. Caruso, Psychoanalyse und Syntbese der Existenz, p. 126. 

32 Cf. I. A .Caruso, loc. cit. t p. 130 sqq. 



2<Jo THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

is disorganized to the point of absurdity but that bears within itself 
the ultimate measure of order. 

Existentialistic psychology of every shade is willing to acknowledge 
the reality of the mind or spirit of man. It heralds a break with nine- 
teenth century psychology in that it no longer regards man as a mere 
mechanism of associations, moved by the motor of consciousness. It 
makes, in addition, a valiant effort to understand man in his freedom, 
in his intellectual resolve, in his concrete situation. There is no doubt, 
on the other hand, that atheistic existentialist psychology like athe- 
istic existentialism shows an unrealistic inflation of the concepts of 
freedom, responsibility, choice, and resolve. For the classical psycho- 
analyst man was the product of his conscious and unconscious drives; 
for the existential psychologist of the Sartrian school he is the prod- 
uct of his free choices: "Man is the invention of man. . . . There is no 
human nature. Man is whatever he creates himself to be." Man is 
therefore fully and exclusively responsible for what he makes of him- 
self; he is "condemned to freedom." 3S 

Once more Caruso sees the major flaw in this kind of apodictic 
reasoning in the false absolutization it implies. Is it true that man 
"invents himself?" Is it true that man is identical with his designs 
and projects? Is it true that man is an absolutely free agent? It would 
rather seem that man always carries with him the limiting heavy 
weights of chance and circumstance prodigious burdens which slow 
down and narrow his freedom (Freud's Id). It would seem that 
the Ego is constantly conditioned by this weight of the Id. And 
every neurosis presents a tragic illustration of what happens when 
the Ego proceeds on the assumption that its plans, projects, and 
acts are absolutely free! It seems safe therefore to conclude that abso- 
lute indeterminism is as unrealistic and impracticable as absolute 
determinism. 

Historically speaking, existentialist psychologists owe much of 
their methodology and terminology to a man of genius whose name 
the atheists among them would rather erase from their family tree: 
Kierkegaard, as we know, was an existential thinker and psychologist 
who cannot be divorced from Christianity and the Christian under- 
standing of the individual person. 84 For Kierkegaard, too, every mo- 

33 Cf . p. 160 sq,, supra; and Jean-Paul Sartre, UExistentialisme est un Humanisms 
(Paris: Nagel, 1946), passim. 

34 Cf. I. A. Caruso, loc . /., p. 132 sq. 



APPENDIX 

ment of existence calls for decision, choice, resolve an either/or: 
either freedom or servitude, either a divinely sanctioned being or the 
emptiness of non-being, the domain of Nothingness. Kierkegaard as 
much as Marcel and every Christian existentialist understands the 
freedom and responsibility of the human person as a free choice 
between unconditioned self -surrender and refusal; either: "Thy will 
be done!" or: ff my will be done!" 

Despite these and several other reservations, Caruso considers ex- 
istentialism as the most important philosophic movement of the 
present age and existential psychotherapy as the most significant de- 
velopment in modern psychology and psychiatry. In principle, all 
existentialist psychotherapy aims at "individuation" in Jung's sense 
of the term: it endeavors to dissociate the concrete irreplaceable indi- 
vidual from the impersonal, undifferentiated, collective life patterns, 
to guide the individual to a point where he is ready to assume his full 
personal responsibility. Because this kind of psychotherapy regards 
the spiritual principle as the essential character mark of man, V. E. 
Frankl applies to it the term "logotherapy." 85 But, quite independent 
of any nomenclature, it is evident that an integrated psychotherapy 
must in theory as well as in practice do justice to both the unfree, 
determined, -and the free and determining factors and forces that 
work in and upon the human psyche. Psychosomatic medicine in its 
attempt to get a hold of the human person as a whole (the "psyche" 
and the "soma") marks a milestone on the way to a truly "person- 
alistic" psychotherapy. 86 It is one of the basic contentions of psycho- 
somatic medicine that every disease calls for a two-fold diagnosis: 
one that is strictly causal-nosological, and one that is strictly person- 
alistic. Such an integral psychotherapy thus involves both analysis 
and synthesis. While the analysis tries to penetrate to specific "child- 
hood situations," the synthesis strives for genuine personal integration 
and is never satisfied with any fictitious or merely partial syntheses. 
For example, both the reduction of all the drives and acts of the 
psyche to material conditioning influences exclusively, and a "spirit- 
ualism" or "angelism" which pays no heed whatever to the material 
or "shadow" side of the psyche, represent at best incomplete and at 
worst abortive syntheses. It is highly improbable that they will liberate 

85 Cf. V. E. Frankl, Arztlicke Sedsorge (Wien: 1948). Of. also Henri 
Psychiatrie morale experimentde, individuelle et sociale (Paris; 1945)* 
36 Cf. Paul Tournier, Die neue Sendung des Antes (Innsbruck: 1950). 



262 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

the patient from the vicious circle in which his neurosis holds him 
captive. 37 

To avoid any misunderstanding it should be pointed out here that 
it cannot be the purpose of "integration" to lead the patient to a 
closed or fully "harmonious" system or pattern of life. The goal of 
integration is not the dubious harmony of uniformity but rather a 
heightened awareness and overtness together with a retention and a 
strengthening of the person's creative potentialities. The human Self, 
in consequence of the faulty organization of its psychical energies 
and of its false absolutizations, had become rigidly fixed and captive 
in a past stage of its life, and this fixation amounted to a stopping 
up of the life source and a drying up of the very roots of person- 
ality. 58 In the overtness gained by re-integration, the person recovers 
not only a realistic relationship to himself but also to the world and to 
reality as a whole. The world is not being robbed or devalued when 
one recognizes and acknowledges that nothing in it is absolute. The 
world thus merely receives its due. 

The ultimate aim of the existential synthesis then is the relativiza- 
tion of those values which the neurotic fixation had previously abso- 
lutized or idolized. An integrated psychotherapy in the sense proposed 
by the therapists of the "Vienna Grcle" will thus lead the patient, 
first, to a recognition of an objective scale of values and then aid him 
in appropriating these values in a free and conscious choice. Caruso 
insists, however, that unless the intended existential synthesis is pre- 
ceded by a precise scientific analysis, it runs the risk of substituting 
an abstract-theoretical concept of freedom for a concrete creative 
freedom. In short, the truth which is capable of liberating the neu- 
rotic from his pathological anxiety cannot be an abstract truth but 
must be a lived, experienced truth. To become effective in the pa- 
tient, it must become bis truth, that is, a truth which permeates his 
being and doing. It should be kept in mind, moreover, that a neurosis 
is in most instances a flight from a decisive either/or: it results from 
an inability to make an existential choice, for the simple reason that 
valid criteria of choice are lacking. Ernest Jones's analysis of Shake- 
speare's "Hamlet" is very illuminating in this respect. 39 An integrated 
psychotherapy, therefore, must be in possession and able to supply 

87 Cf. I. A. Caruso, loc. cit. t p. 144. 
Cf. Wilfried Daim, loc. /., p. 154 sq. 

39 Cf. Ernest Jones, Das Problem des Hamlet und der Qdipus-Komplex. Vber- 
setzt von Paul Tattst's (Leipzig und Wicn: Frank Deutidce, 1911). 



APPENDIX 263 

such criteria of choice if and when the need arises. This is why C G. 
Jung insists that the pedagogical aim of psychotherapy cannot be 
realized without the aid of ethical and religious norms and values. 
Caruso goes even further when he states that "medical psychotherapy 
is a preliminary to an eventual religious metanoia or conversio" that 
is, a metaphysico-religious awakening, rebirth, and reorientation. It 
is at this crucial juncture that the ways part between the secularized 
and religiously "neutral" Daseinsanalyse of Binswanger and his 
school, on the one hand, and the religiously oriented therapy of the 
members of the "Vienna Circle," on the other (most of whom are 
Roman Catholics with a more or less pronounced Aristotelian-Thom- 
istic philosophic background). As Binswanger states quite explicitly, 
"A valid consideration of the basic forms of human Dasein can only 
proceed along the lines of a neutral or secularized 'anthropology/ " * 

Regardless, however, of any specifically religious frame of refer- 
ence, all existential analysis shows very clearly that anxiety or anguish 
(Angst) attaches in varying degrees to every human being. But in 
certain individuals this anxiety assumes especially grave forms. 
Kierkegaard distinguishes three graduated stages of melancholy: (i) 
aesthetic melancholy, which is haunted by the frightening experience 
of the illusory and fleeting nature of human emotions and sensations 
and by the dread of the limited possibilities of sensual pleasure. He 
presents the personalities of Don Juan and the Emperor Nero as 
types or symbols of the melancholy aesthete; (2) ethical melancholy, 
which has its origin in the conscious experience of the finite and 
ambivalent character of the world and of the limitations of a fragile 
and threatened existence; (3) religious melancholy, which is a nos- 
talgic longing for the eternal, likewise originating in the experienced 
ambivalences of an existence suspended between sin and and grace. 
As we know, Kierkegaard's entire life was a continuous struggle to 
raise his own melancholy from the lowest to the highest plane. 

If, for the sake of argument, it may be granted that Kierkegaard's 
personality was to a certain degree "abnormal," the situation is with- 
out doubt not radically different in so-called "normal" individuals. 
There is in every human being a constant tension caused by the dis- 
crepancy between actuality and "inner possibility," between thought 
and action, faith and life, essence and existence. It is this discrepancy 



*Ludwig Binswanger, Grundformen und Erkenntnh mtnscblicben Dasetiu 
(Zurich: Niehans, 1942), p. 18. 



264 EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

which often becomes the source and cause of a guilty conscience. In 
ordinary circumstances, however, this feeling of guilt is not repressed. 
As long as the individual remains attuned to objective reality, he is 
usually willing and able to wrestle with the difficult task of bridging 
the gap between thinking and doing, theory and practice, ideal de- 
mands and freely creative realizations. Neurosis develops when the 
individual loses his trust in objective norms and values and begins 
to live instead in a more or less unreal world of emotional fixations, a 
world of superstitions and idolatries. A person who finds himself in 
such a situation feels himself torn, as it were, by an ambivalent emo- 
tional experience: he feels oppressed and enslaved by his fixations, 
and he feels at the same time a strong desire for liberation, a desire 
which may reach such an intensity that the corresponding psychologi- 
cal mood can adequately be described as "existential despair." But 
this despair is again ambivalent: on one side stands the system of 
idolizations, the distorted system of values, while on the other side 
beckons the possibility of overtness and liberation. While the idolized 
false absolutes are consciously adhered to and loved, they are uncon- 
sciously dreaded. This, according to Wilfried Daim, leads to an 
ambivalent attitude also with respect to the "true Absolute": the 
more strongly the neurotic person clings to his idol, the more intense 
becomes his hatred of God who, as Nietzsche phrased it, is then 
experienced as "a thief behind the clouds," a jealous tyrant who is 
trying to steal one's dearest possessions, who demands detachment 
from what appears to be the very cornerstone of existence. It is this 
hatred that lies at the root of the neurotic's "resistance" against the 
analytic treatment as well as against reality as such. Tortured by this 
dialectic of love and hatred (August Strindberg's "love-hatred"), the 
patient would rather retain his neurosis than allow the analysis to 
continue. 41 

What asserts itself at this crucial stage of the analysis is, phenom- 
enologically speaking, a drive toward Nothingness, that is, a tendency 
to negate and annihilate reality as a whole. The neurotic person feels 
totally abandoned, exposed to all demons, completely disoriented. 
But once this crisis is overcome, the idol assumes a radically different 
character: its arrogated absolute power is unmasked, its purely de- 
structive force stands revealed. The perverted "act of faith" is recog- 
nized as an illusion; the former attachment turns into revulsion, and 

41 Cf . Wilfried Daim, loc. cit., p. 162 sqq. 



APPENDIX 265 

the resistance against reality collapses. This revolt against the idol is 
usually accompanied by a feeling of "rebirth" or "resurrection." The 
patient finds himself in a new world the real world and a corre- 
sponding realistic adjustment has become possible. 42 

These last considerations bear a direct relationship to the role 
which the analyst plays in the analytic process. Although it would be 
a mistake to underestimate this role, it should be emphasized that 
the really decisive work has to be done by the analysand rather than 
by the analyst. It is quite certain that the analyst does not play nearly 
as imporant a part in the healing process as the patient attributes to 
him. It is well known that the analysand tends to see in the analyst 
his "savior" and therefore often endows him with quasi "divine" at- 
tributes. Such a projection of the "savior-archetype" to the analyst 
technically known as "transference" should be strongly opposed 
from the outset. Wilfried Daim suggests that every attempt on the 
part of the patient to make himself dependent on the analyst should 
be categorically rejected. He claims that, if this advice is followed, the 
development of a massive "transference" can be warded off before it 
has gained momentum. The personality of the analyst should always 
remain in the background. This is the reason why Freud, when con- 
ducting an analysis, preferred to remain invisible behind a screen, so 
as to be as inconspicuous as possible. 45 

To sum up: A personalistic existential synthesis is the fruit of a 
painstaking analysis, and the analysand who accomplishes such a 
synthesis has become more personal, more conscious of his Self, and 
more responsible in his thinking and doing. From the point of view 
of a materialistic or naturalistic depth-psychology, moral, spiritual, 
religious values are regarded as "nothing but" illusory superstructures 
of the massive substructure of biological drives and instincts. Error 
and Guilt are said to be "nothing but" symptoms and syndromes of 
repression and pathological fixation. From the point of view of an 
existentialist^ psychotherapy (as practised by the members of the 
"Vienna Circle"), repressions and fixations result from false abso- 
lutizations or idolizations. Such absolutizations mean that the person 
has been moving from the center to the periphery of the Self and has 
thus become "ex-centric." 

According to Caruso and his associates, one of the main requisites 



43 Cf . Wilfried Daim, he. /., p. 176. 
43 Cf . Wilfried Daim, loc. cit., p. 242 sqq. 



266 THE EXISTENTIALIST REVOLT 

for a successful psychotherapy is absolute respect for the free person- 
ality of the patient. But such a respect is not equivalent to the much 
heralded "neutrality" of the analyst If for no other reason, complete 
"neutrality" would be difficult to achieve because of the frequently 
encountered phenomenon of "transference." When a chemist experi- 
ments with chemical elements, no energy is transferred to the experi- 
menting chemist. The mental patient, on the other hand, is prone to 
transfer enormous amounts of energy-charged emotions to the ana- 
lyst, even to the point where he comes to identify himself with the 
analyst. If such a high degree of transference is allowed to develop, 
the analyst faces a very serious problem. For, after the patient's 
fixations have been released and the false absolutizations are rela- 
tivized, there still remains that fixation upon the analyst which is 
embodied in the phenomenon of transference and which looms as a 
formidable residual false absolute that has to be cleared away by a 
continuing analysis. Only when this task has been accomplished can 
the analysis be called complete. 

Caruso points out that, historically speaking, psychology and psy- 
chotherapy have passed through the following main stages: the first 
stage is marked by a defection from the hierarchy of values and a 
concomitant naturalistic anthropology which adopted the totalitarian 
view of natural scientism. It was the belief (or superstition) of the 
nineteenth century that every kind of knowledge must be conformed 
to the model of natural science and reduced to the "scientific method." 
Even theology, philosophy, art and literature followed this general 
trend, as is documented by the several schools of positivism and by 
the naturalistic theories of H. Taine and E. Zola. No knowledge 
was considered valid unless it could be fitted into a system of meas- 
urable causes and effects. It is only in the past few decades that psy- 
chology has tried to surmount this narrow anthropological frame. In 
the second stage, then, we meet with a violent reaction against 
"scientism" in the form of an equally integral or totalitarian sub- 
jectivism ("psychologism" and atheistic existentialism). In the third 
stage finally these one-sided positions are gradually giving way to an 
integrated personalistic synthesis. As far as the art of healing is 
concerned, this new understanding of the human person finds per- 
haps its most striking expression in psychosomatic and anthropological 
medicine (Paul Tournier's "midecine de la personne"; Albert Nieder- 
meyer's "universalistic medicine"). 

With special reference to personalistic existential psychotherapy. 



APPENDIX 267 

Wilf tied Daim cautions that what it can offer is at best a partial 
(not a total) liberation or "salvation." In other words, even after 
the successful completion of the analysis, the patient is not "in 
heaven" but still on this earth and thus confronted with many con- 
flicts and difficulties the solution of which lies outside the province of 
psychotherapy. There are many evils physiological, social, political, 
moral problems and contradictions of every kind which are not due 
to any pathological fixations. Psychotherapy can be successful in aiding 
the individual in overcoming his neurotic fixations and in thereby 
establishing the preconditions for personal creative living and for 
realistic adjustments. In brief, the "salvation" worked by psycho- 
therapy falls of necessity short of religious salvation. If this limitation 
of even the best therapeutic method is lost sight of, psychotherapy 
may succumb to the danger of absolutizing itself by mistaking itself 
for a substitute of religion (as is actually demonstrated by the ex- 
istence of a goodly number of psychotherapeutic "sects"). 

On the other hand, existential analysis and synthesis acquire their 
true significance if they are related and ordained to total "salvation" 
in the religious sense. For, as Wilfried Daim states convincingly, if 
such a relationship did not exist, suicide would in many instances 
offer a much simpler and swifter solution or "way out" (cf. the "case 
of Ellen West!") than the complex and lengthy procedures of psy- 
chotherapy. It was, according to the same author, a fortunate incon- 
sistency on the part of Freud to have posited a Todestrieb as the 
ultimate victor over the Lebenstrieb and yet to have continued un- 
daunted in his arduous work as a psychotherapist. If it were true 
that all life ultimately and definitively terminates in an all-engulfing 
Nought, then euthanasia universally practised would without any 
doubt be the most effective remedy for all conflicts and all suffering. 
That Freud did not advocate euthanasia but rather gave preference 
to the often frustrating labors of psychotherapy, seems to indicate 
that his unconscious mind contradicted certain nihilistic implications 
of his metaphysical theory. His method was directed toward "heal- 
ing" or "saving" in an all-encompassing sense and thus bears elo- 
quent testimony to his "anima naturditer christiand* (Tertullian) .** 

44 Cf. Wilfried Daim, he. cit., p. 3x3 sqq. 



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INDEX 
to the main text 



Anguish and fear, 234 

Ansclm of Canterbury, St., on faith and 
reason, 243 

Aristotle on Heraclitus, 149 

Atomic power and existential "choice," n 

Augustine, St.: on death, 137; and existen- 
tialism, 121, 226; on knowledge and 
truth, 127 

Balthasar, Urs von, S.J., on nature and 

grace, 242 f 

Barth, Karl, and Kierkegaard, 5, 16 
Being and having, sec Marcel, Gabriel 
"Being-in-the-world," see Heidegger, 

Marcel 
Bcrgson, Henri, on Christian mysticism, 

199 f 
Bolzano, Bernhard, Wissenschaftslehre of, 

122 

Brentano, Franz, 122 

Camus, Albert, 9; on estrangement, 233; 
La Pcste, 233; L'Etranger, 233 

Christianity: and "Christendom," 33; and 
ethics, Kierkegaard on, 51; and Euro- 
pean civilization, 10; and existentialism, 
242; and human existence, 119 f* 
Nietzsche's view of, 117 ft and noth- 
ingness, 155 

Communication, direct and indirect, 23 

Comte, Auguste, and Young Hegelians, 4 

Dasein, sec Heidegger and Jaspers 
"D&adence" and nihilism, 109 
Delhomme, Jeanne, on Gabriel Marcel, 

223 f 
Descartes: Kierkegaard's critique of, 49 ft 

rationalism of, 19 

Essence of existence, 150 f> 228 ft Sartre 
on, 175 



Essences, intuition of, Husserl on, 123 
Esscntialism, 151 
Estrangement, 232 & 
Eternal recurrence, 99, 100 f 
Eternity, Nietzsche's view of, 101 f 
Existence: authentic, 54; and death, 239 f; 
and essence, 150 f, 228 ft and God, 
240 ft and nothingness, 234; and "the 
others," 236; philosophy of, 121; pri- 
macy of, 229; problem of, 14 ft reli- 
gious stage of, 240 ft Sartre's analysis 

of, 159 & . 

Existential anguish and nothingness, 234 n 

Existential communication, 236 

Existential despair, 55, 235 f 

Existential faith, 57; of Kierkegaard, 31 f 

Existentialia, tee Heidegger 

Existentialism: atheistic, 15; "authentic" 
and "apocryphal," 28 f; "categorical 
imperative" of, 240; Christian and athe- 
istic, 156, 240 f, 242; and Christianity, 
242; and collectivism, 14; and essential- 
ism, 1515 existence, 15; and idealism, 
17; main themes of, 121 f, 231 ft and 
modern crisis, 14; theistic, 15; two 
kinds of, 226 f 

Existential thinking, 16, 229 f; and 
Christianity, 57 f; and ethics, 50; of 
Kierkegaard, 47 

Existential truth, of Kierkegaard, 39 

Feuerbach, Ludwig, on God and religion, 

118 
Fideism and gnosticism, 37 

Gilson, Etiennc, on being and truth, 140 

God and existence, 240 ff 

Goethe, J, W. von, on modern crisis, 3 

Haecker, Theodor, on Kierkegaard, 31, 
39 f 



277 



2 7 8 



INDEX 



Hegel, G. R: and Christianity, 4; and 
Young Hegelians, 3 f 

Hegel, J. G.: esscntialism of, 230; gnosti- 
cism of, 38; idealism of, 115; and 
Kierkegaard, 36 ff; metaphysics of, 114; 
the "system" of, 41 f; and Young 
Hegelians, 114, 230 

Heidegger, Martin: on "Atttaglichfat," 
134; on anguish and fear, 234; on 
"authentic" existence, 135, 137; on be- 
ing, 132; on being and existence, 154; 
on "being-in-the-world," 134, 148; on 
being and nothingness, 143, 154 f, 236; 
Being and Time, 130, 132 ff; on being 
and truth, 140 f, 149 f; on "care,** 
135 f; and Christian theology, 154; on 
Dasein, 133 ff; on "das Man" 134 f, 
138, 141; on death, 137 f, 240; on 
"dread," 135 f; on Entschlossenheit 
(resolve), 138; essays on Holderlin, 
130 f; On the Essence of Cause, 130; 
on essence and existence, 150 f; on 
"existence," 15, 132; on existence and 
being, 129, 133; on "existentialia," 134 f; 
and existentialism, 121 f, 131, 132; on 
freedom and truth, 175 f; on "funda- 
mental ontology,'* 129, 132; on "Getuor- 
fenheit," 136; on God,i48 f; on God and 
gods, 142; on God and holiness, 147; on 
Heraclitus, 149 f; on "historicity," 153; 
Holderlin essays of, 141 f; Holzwege, 
131; on human nature, 145; on ideal- 
ism, 153 f; Kant and the Problem of 
Metaphysics, 130; and Kierkegaard, 135, 
138; Letter on Humanism, 131, 132, 
144 ff; on logic, 147 f; main ideas of, 
130 ff; on Marxian and Christian 
"humanism," 145; on modern godless- 
ness, 142; and National Socialism, 130; 
and Nietzsche, 139, 146; on nihilism, 
148; on "nothingness," 136, 143; 
phenomenology of, 129; philosophic 
background of, 130; on philosophy, 22; 
on philosophy and literature, 139 f; on 
philosophy and science, 143 f, 144; 
Plato's Doctrine of Truth, 131; on 
poetry, 142; on positivism, 153 f; and 
Sartre, 131, 175 f; self-defense of, 147 ff; 
on "self-estrangement," 135; on "tem- 
porality" and "historicity," 136 f, 139; 
terminology of, 131; and Thomism, 
140 f, 152 f; on thought and action, 
150; on transcendence, 143; on "val- 



ues," 147 ff; What is Metaphysics?, 130, 
142 ff 

Heraclitus: and existentialism, 121; on 
human existence, 19 ff; on introspection, 
20 ff; metaphysics of, 21 f; and Par- 
menidcs, 73 f 

Historicity: see Heidegger; and history, 
238; and "temporality," 2375 

Holderlin, Friedrich, 141 f n; see Heidegger 

Humanism, see Heidegger 

Husserl, Edmund: on "cidetic" knowledge, 
123 f; epistemological realism of, 123; 
and Kant, 128 f; Meditations Carte- 
siennes, 122; opposed to idealism, 128; 
on "phenomenological reduction," 125, 
128; phenomenology of, 121 ff; and 
philosophia perennis, 126 ff; and Plato, 
123; on "pure essences," 124; on "pure 
phenomena," 124; and St. Thomas 
Aquinas, 126 ff; on Truth, 123; Wcsens- 
schau and Wesensurisscnschaft of, 124 

Idealism: and existentialism, 17; German, 

107 f; Kierkegaard's critique of, 50 f 
Individualism and collectivism, 236 

Jaeger, Werner, on Heraclitus, 19 f 
Jaspers, Karl: anti-intellectualism of, 183, 
199; on antinomies of existence, 197; on 
being and becoming, 198 ff; on being 
en masse, 187 f; biographical and bibli- 
ographical data, 177 f; on "ciphers," 
195 f; criticism of existentialism of, 
198 ff; on Dasein and world, 181; on 
das Umgreifende, 193 f; and Descartes, 
182; on eternity and time, 185; on 
existence, 20; on existence and Dasein, 
1 80 f, 184 f, 186, 188; on existential 
communication, 185 ff, 236; on existen- 
tial despair, 196 f; on existential free- 
dom, 200; on existential incertitude, 
179; existentialism of, 177 ff; on exis- 
tential "shipwreck," 197; on existential 
truth, 187; on Existenzerhellung, 178; 
on faith and reason, 199; on freedom 
and choice, 181 ff; on freedom and com- 
munication, 1 86 ff; on God and trans- 
cendence, 189 ff; on "Historicity," 183, 
185; on human "situation," 178, 180; 
and Kant, 178, 191; on law and values, 
182; on "limit situations," 194 f, 237; 
on metaphysics, 195 f; on natural theolo- 
gy, 196; on "negative theology," 192; 



INDEX 



279 



and Neo-Platonism, 192, 198; on on- 
tology, 199; on "original guilt," 184; 
on "philosophic faith," 189 tf; on phil- 
osophy and science, 179 ; on "possible 
existence," 181; on revealed religion, 
189; and Sartre, 183; subjectivism of, 
201 f; and Thomism, 191 f; on trans- 
cendence, 1 88 

Jolivet, Regis, on Kierkegaard's "existen- 
tial faith," 31 f 

Kafka, Franz, on estrangement, 232 
Kant, Immanuel, 17; on human existence, 

22 5 f 

Kierkegaard, Michael Pedersen, 24 ff 
Kierkegaard, Sorcn: on anguish and fear, 
234; on anguish and nothingness, 235; 
on "becoming a Christian," 48; child- 
hood of, 24 f; on Christianity and 
"Christendom," 5, 33; on Church and 
priesthood, 34 f; The Concept of Dread, 
30; Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 
discussion of, 40 ff; on death, 47; 
Diary of the Seducer, 55; Edifying Dis- 
courses, 30; Either/Or, 29, 55; on 
existence, 16; and existentialism, 5, 121; 
on faith, 54; Fear and Trembling, 30, 
56; and Georg Brandes, 5; and Hegel, 
4, 36 tf; and Ibsen, 5; on idealism, 
50 f; The Instant, 33; life and works of, 
23 ff; on melancholy, 235; melancholy 
of, 24; on modern crisis, 4 f; and mo- 
dern existentialism, 39; and Nietzsche, 
115; Point of View, 32; The Present 
A&* 355 on "progress" and "repetition," 
239; on Protestantism, 4; pseudonymous 
works of, 23; on reason and faith, 4; 
and Regina Olsen, 27 ff; on "religion 
A and B," 57, 241; on Schelling, 230 
f; on science, 40; Sickness unto Death, 
32 f; on subjective truth, 231; on sub- 
jectivity, x6, 42; theological convictions 
of, 31; on the three "stages" (aesthetic, 
ethical, religious), 54 f; In Vino Veritas, 
30, 55 

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, theological 

views of, 43 f 
limit situation, 236 f 
Lotz, Johannes B., S.J., on Heidegger, 132 
Luther, Martin, on nature and grace, 118 

Marcel, Gabriel: on the "Absolute TTiou," 



219 f; on act of faith, 208; on "ascend- 
ing dialectic," 216, 220; on authentic 
freedom, 212, 216; on authentic philoso- 
phy, 223 f; on "bearing witness," 221 ff; 
on "being" and "having," 219 ff; on 
"being-in-the-world," 206 f, 210; on 
being and knowledge, 215 f; on being 
and sanctity, 218; on being and truth, 
225; biographical and bibliographical 
data, 203 ff; on Christ, 213; on Chris- 
tianity, 225; and collectivism, 225; on 
"consecration," 210; on das Man, 213; 
on death, 220; and Descartes, 208, 
209, 218 f; on detachment, 220 f; on 
"encountered being," 217 f; on "engage- 
ment," 211; Eire et Avoir, 207; on ex- 
istentialism, 22, 224; on faith and rea- 
son, 206 ff; on fidelity, hope, love, 211, 
218; on "first" and "second" reflection, 
213 f, 2x6, 222 f; on freedom of en- 
gagement, 208; on God, 208 F; 2x9 f; 
and Hegel, 2x4; on human and divine 
existence, 2x3; on human existence, 15; 
on human "situation," 206; oh "incar- 
nation," 209 f, 2x2 f; Journal meta- 
physique, 207; on the "ontological mys- 
tery," 216 f, 224; on "ontological per- 
manence," 2i x; on "participation," 
219 if; on past, present, future, 2x1; on 
philosophic idealism, 218 f; on "prob- 
lem" and "mystery," 214 ff; on ration- 
alism, 206 f; on religious experience, 
206; and Sartre, 209, 2x2, 2x4; on soul- 
body problem, 209; on time and his- 
tory, 2x0 f; on values, 212 

Maritain, Jacques: on existentialism, 228 f; 
on modern crisis, x 

Maurer, A. A., on existential realism of St, 
Thomas Aquinas, 228 f 

Metaphysics, see Heidegger 

Meysenbug, Malwida von, Memoirs of an 
Idealist, 84 

Mounier, Emmanuel: on modern crisis, 9; 
on nihilism, xx; on peace and war, 12 

Mueller, Max, on Heidegger, 132; on 
Heidegger and Sartre, 175; on Plato's 
essentialism, 151 f 

Mynster, Bishop, 24 f; and liberalism, 34 

Newman, John Henry, 226 

Nietzsche, Elisabeth, 1x3; and marriage 

of, 104 f 
Nietzsche, Friedrich: on age of war and 



28o 



INDEX 



revolution, 91 ; in ambulance corps, 
67; Anti-Christ, 105, no if; anti-intel- 
lectualism of, 118; and anti-Semitism, 
104 f; on "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" 
art, 69 f; Appeal to the Germans, 76; 
on art, 80; on "atomistic" revolution, 6; 
Aurora or the Dawn of Day, 89; at 
Basel university, 66; Beyond Good and 
Evil, 105; Birth of Tragedy, 68 ff; and 
Bismarck, 66 ; at Bonn university, 64 f ; 
on "bourgeois philistinc," 75 f; and 
Buddha, 89; Case of Wagner, 105; on 
"chance," 106; on Christ, in; and 
Christianity, 7, 60, 62, 65, 106 f, no ff, 
117 ff; critical evaluation <of, 116 ff; 
and Darwinism, 82; on "death of God,'* 
1x5 ; on "death of God," in Zarathus- 
tra IV, 103; on "democratic socialism," 
92, no; on Descartes, 80; on Ding an 
sick, 71 f; on Dionysos, 72; Ecce Homo, 
96 f, in f; and Elisabeth, 95 f; on 
"Eternal Recurrence," 90 f; on "Eternal 
Recurrence," in Zaratktutra n, 99; on 
"Eternal Recurrence," in Zarathustra 
ni, zoo ; on Eternity, in Zarathustra 
HI, xoi ; on European crisis, 3; on 
European nihilism, 60; and existential" 
ism, 121 ; existential thinker, 60; Fate 
and History, 65; on . Franco-Prussian 
War, 67; and Cast, Peter, 85; Genealogy 
of Morals, 105; on German "Kultur" 
75 ; on Greek tragedy, 68 ff; and 
Hegel, 6x ; on Heraciitus, 73 ; on 
the "higher man," in Zarathustra IV, 
102 f; on historical "objectivity," 78 f; 
on historiography, 76 ff; Human, All- 
too-Human, 86 ff; on humanism, 7; in- 
sanity and death of, 112 ; on "inspira- 
tion," 96 f; Joyful Wisdom, 91, 93; 
and Kierkegaard, 60 f, 115; at Leipzig 
university, 65; life and works of, 59 ff; 
and Lou-Salom, 94 ff ; and Luther, 
Martin, 70, 118 ; and Malwida von 
Meysenbug, 84; and materialism, 64, 
91; on modern barbarism, 12; on mo- 
dem crisis, 7, 105 ff; on modern opera, 
70; on new barbarism, 74; on "new 
Germany," 75 ; on nihilism, 6, 107 ; 
Oedipus, 74; on "people" and "masses," 
92; on philosophic existence, 7; philo- 
sophic idealism of, 107 ; on power- 
worship, 79; on Pre-Socratics, 73; on 
Prussia, 68; and Ree, Paul, 84 ; on 



religion, 80; on "scholarship," in Zara- 
thtistra II, 99; on science, 6, 78 f, 80; 
and Schopenhauer, 65, 70; at Schulpfor- 
ta, 62 ; self-contradictions of, 116 f; 
self -deification of, 117; at Sils -Maria, 
89 f; on "Socratic spirit," 69, 70; on 
State and Society, in Zarathustra I, 98; 
and Strauss, D. F., 75 f; on the Super- 
Man, 97 f; on the "Super-Man" in 
Zarathustra III, 101; Thoughts out of 
Season I, on Strauss, D. F., 75 f; 
Thoughts out of Season II, on history, 
76 ff; Thoughts out of Season III, on 
Schopenhauer, 81 f; Thus Spa^e Zara- 
thustra, 95 ff; on "transvaluation of 
values," 105, 116; on "true existence," 
81; at Turin, 112 f; Twilight of Idols, 
105; and Wagner, Richard, 66 , 68, 74, 
76, 83 , 88; and Wagner, Richard, 
Wagner in Bayreuth, 83; Will to Power, 
105; on will to power, 109 f; on world 
government, 92 ; and Zarathustra, 91, 

93 

Nihilism: and "death of God," 116; and 
"decadence," 109; Nietzsche's view of, 
107, 108 f; two types of, ix 
Northrop, F. S. C., on modern crisis, x 
Nothingness: and being, 154 , see also 
Heidegger; and existence, 234; and ex- 
istential anguish, 234 ff; experience of, 
235 

Ontology, fundamental, see Heidegger 
Ortega y Gasset, Jose: on human existence, 
114; on modern atheism, 9 

Parmenides: on being, 146; and Heracii- 
tus, 74 

Pascal, Blaise, and existentialism, 121, 226 
Pestalozzi, J. H., on human existence, 227 
Phenomenological method, 122 ff 
Phenomenological reduction, see Husserl, 

Edmund 
Phenomenology: imminentism of, 126; 

and philosophic perennis, 126 ff 
Philosophia perennis: and certitude, 17; 

and phenomenology, 126 ff 
Philosophy: and certitude, 16 f; and 

science, 2; and theology, 242 
Plato: essentialism of, 151; on philosophy, 

3 
Positivism, 2; and German materialism, 4 



INDEX 



281 



"Religion A and B," see Kierkegaard, 

Soren 
Rilkc, Rainer Maria, on estrangement, 232 

Salome*, Lou, on Nietzsche, 94 

Sartre, Jean-Paul: atheism of, 163 f, 166, 
169 f, 173 f, 176; on being, 175 ; on 
being and existence, 157 f; concept of 
contingency of, 167; on consciousness, 
159 f; on death, 163; and Descartes, 
158; on en-soi and pour-soi, 159 ff, 165 f, 
169 f, 233; on f sprit de serieux, 164 f; 
on essence and existence, 175; on 
estrangement, 233; on existence and es- 
sence, 233; on freedom, 160 ff, 172 ff, 
174 ff; and Heidegger, 175 f; on "hu- 
manism," 174, 233; La Nauste, 157 ff, 
2335 let Mouches, 170 ff; L'ttre et le 
niant, 156 f; Uetre et le nfant, analysis 
of, 159 ff; Uetre et le nfant, criticism of, 
165 ff; L'itrc pottr*autrui, on love, 
162 f; and Marxism, i68f; on ma- 
terialism, 164; materialism of, 168 f; 
nihilism of, 9; on nothingness, 160, 
162, 169; phenomenological monism of, 
166; and philosophic idealism, 158, 162; 
on revolution, 169; on sexual desire, 
163; and Thomism, 159 n. 

Schelling, F. W,, existential philosophy of, 
230 f 

Schimanski, Stefan, on Heidegger, 129 f, 

131* 13* 
Schopenhauer, Arthur, Nietzsche's view of, 

81 f; on self-redemption, 65; The World 

as Will and Idea, 65 
Schurl, Edouard, on Nietzsche, 84 
Sdence and philosophy, 2 
Socrates, 19; and existentialism, 121 
Socratic method, Kierkegaard's use of, 23, 

3* 

Spengler, Oswald, materialism of, 8 f; on 

modern crisis, 8 



Strauss, David Friedrich: Life of Jesus, 
64, 75; The Old and the New Faith. 

75 

Subjective truth, 231 f 
Super-Man, 97 f, 116 f; and collective 

man, 226 

'Temporality"; see Heidegger; and "His- 
toricity," 237 ff 

Thomas Aquinas, St: on being and ac- 
tion, 114, 152; De ente et essentia, 
228 f; on essence of existence, 152; 
existentialism of, 228 f; on hierarchy of 
being, 152; on human and divine intel- 
lect, 127; and Husserl, 126 ff; on in- 
tellect, 119; on truth, 140 f 
Tliomism, 140 f; and analogia entis, 37 f; 
on essence and existence, 150 f; and 
existentialism, 228 f 

Time, dimensions of, 237 f ; past, present, 
future, see Heidegger, Sartre, Marcel; 
"subjective" and "objective," 237 
Tonqu&cc, Joseph de, on Jaspen, 199 * 
Transcendence in Jaspers, 188 ff 
Troisfontaines, Roger, on Sartre, 168 
Truth: existential, of Kierkegaard, 39; ob- 
jective, 16; philosophic, 2; scientific, 2 

Unamuno, Miguel de: on authentic exist- 
ence, 234; Life of Don Quixote and 
Sancho Panza, 2345 on modern man, 
114 

Vogt, Karl, materialism of, 4 

Waehlens, A. de, on Heidegger, 132 
Wesensschau, see Husserl, Edmund 
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von, on 

Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, 72 f 
Will to Power, 109 f 
Wust, Peter, on philosophic "awakening," 

18