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Since the world as we now know it is not definitive, our hopes, no longer anchored in Transcendence, have turned towards the sublunary sphere, alterable by our own endeavours, so that we have faith in the possibility of earthly perfectionment. On the other hand, since (even in favourable situations) the individual has no more than restricted powers of intervention, and cannot fail to recognise that the actual results of his doings depend far more upon general environing conditions than upon the aims he is trying to fulfil; since, therefore, he is made poignantly cognisant of the small extent of his sphere of influence as compared with the vast possibilities of which he is abstractly aware; and since, finally, the course of the world (which no one is satisfied with) seems to him in many ways undesirable—a feeling of powerlessness has become rife, and man tends to regard himself as dragged along in the wake of events which, when in a more sanguine mood, he had hoped to guide. One inspired with a religious conviction that man was as naught in the face of Transcendence was unperturbed by changing events. Changes were the outcome of God’s will, and were not felt to clash with other conceivable possibilities. Today, however, the pride which aims at universal understanding, and the arrogance of one who regards himself as master of the world and therefore wants to mould it to his liking, knock at all doors, while their frustration arouses a feeling of terrible impotence. How man is to accommodate himself to this and rise superior to it, is one of the most vital questions of the present situation. Man not only exists but knows that he exists. In full awareness he studies his world and changes it to suit his purposes. He has learned how to interfere with ‘natural causation’, insofar as this is merely the unconscious repetition of immutable similars. He is not merely cognisable as extant, but himself freely decides what shall exist. Man is mind, and the situation of man as man is a mental situation.
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Without Transcendence Existenz becomes a barren and loveless demonic obstinacy.
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The teacher of philosophy reveres the individual great philosophers, who are not specimens of a type but creators (such do not exist today), but he rejects the idolization of men, which began even in the academy of Plato, for even the greatest are men and err, and no one is an authority who must be obeyed by right.
And the teacher of philosophy has respect for each science whose insights are binding—but he condemns the scientific pride which imagines that everything can be known in its ultimate foundation or even goes so far as to suppose that it is known.
His ideal is that of a rational being coexisting with other rational beings. He wants to doubt, he thirsts for objections and attacks, he strives to become capable of playing his part in the dialogue of ever-deepening communication, which is the prerequisite of all truth and without which there is no truth.
His hope is that in the same measure as he becomes a rational being he may acquire the profound contents which can sustain man, that his will, in so far as his striving is honest, may become good through the direct help of the transcendent, without any human mediation.
As a teacher of philosophy, however, he feels that it is his duty not to let his students forget the great minds of the past, to preserve the various philosophical methods as an object of instruction, and to see to it that the sciences influence philosophical thinking; to elucidate the present age and at the same time to join his students in conquering a view of the eternal.
One might wish for a philosophy that would encompass and assimilate the whole tradition, that would be equal to the intellectual situation of our time, that would express the contents common to all of us, and this both in sublime intellectual constructions and in simple propositions capable of finding resonance in every man. Today we have no such philosophy.
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Yet in this intellectual transcendence, which is proper to philosophy and which is analogous to scientific forms, philosophy is less than science. For it does not gain any tangible results or any intellectually binding insight. There is no overlooking the simple fact that while scientific cognition is identical throughout the world, philosophy, despite its claim to universality, is not actually universal in any shape or form. This fact is the outward characteristic of the peculiar nature of philosophical truth. Although scientific truth is universally valid, it remains relative to method and assumptions; philosophical truth is absolute for him who conquers it in historical actuality, but its statements are not universally valid. Scientific truth is one and the same for all—philosophical truth wears multiple historical cloaks; each of these is the manifestation of a unique reality, each has its justification, but they are not identically transmissible.
The one philosophy is the philosophia perennis around which all philosophies revolve, which no one possesses, in which every genuine philosopher shares, and which nevertheless can never achieve the form of an intellectual edifice valid for all and exclusively true.
Thus philosophy is not only less but also more than science, namely, as the source of a truth that is inaccessible to scientifically binding knowledge. It is this philosophy that is meant in such definitions as: To philosophize is to learn how to die or to rise to Godhead—or to know being qua being. The meaning of such definitions is: Philosophical thought is inward action; it appeals to freedom; it is a summons to Transcendence. Or the same thing can be formulated differently: Philosophy is the act of becoming conscious of genuine Being—or is the thinking of a faith in man that must be infinitely elucidated—or is the way
of man's self-assertion through thinking.
But none of these propositions is properly speaking a definition. There is no definition of philosophy, because philosophy cannot be determined by something outside it. There is no genus above philosophy, under which it can be subsumed as a species. Philosophy defines itself, relates itself directly to Godhead, and does not justify itself by any kind of utility. It grows out of the primal Source in which man is given to himself.
To sum up: The sciences do not encompass all of the truth but only the exact knowledge that is binding to the intellect and universally valid. Truth has a greater scope, and part of it can reveal itself only to philosophical reason. Throughout the centuries since the early Middle Ages, philosophical works have been written under the title "On the Truth"; today the same task still remains urgent, i.e., to gain insight into the essence of truth in its full scope under the present conditions of scientific knowledge and historical experience.
Philosophy can be called science in so far as it presupposes the sciences. There is no tenable philosophy outside the sciences. Although conscious of its distinct character, philosophy is inseparable from science. It refuses to transgress against universally binding insight. Anyone who philosophizes must be familiar with scientific method.
Any philosopher who is not trained in a scientific discipline and who fails to keep his scientific interests constantly alive will inevitably bungle and stumble and mistake uncritical rough drafts for definitive knowledge. Unless an idea is submitted to the coldly dispassionate test of scientific inquiry, it is rapidly consumed in the fire of emotions and passions, or else it withers into a dry and narrow fanaticism.
Moreover, anyone who philosophizes strives for scientific knowledge, for it is the only way to genuine nonknowledge, it is as though the most magnificent insights could be achieved only through man's quest for the limit at which cognition runs aground, not seemingly and temporarily but genuinely and definitively, not with a sense of loss and despair but with a sense of genuine internal evidence. Only definitive knowledge can make definitive nonknowledge possible; it alone can achieve the authentic failure which opens up a vista, not merely upon the discoverable existent but upon being itself.
In accomplishing the great task of dispelling all magical conceptions, modern science enters upon the path that leads to the intuition of the true depth, the authentic mystery, which becomes present only through the most resolute knowledge in the consummation of nonknowledge.
Consequently philosophy turns against those who despise the sciences, against the sham prophets who deprecate scientific inquiry, who mistake the errors of science for science itself, and who would even hold science, "modern science," responsible for the evils and the inhumanity of our era.
Rejecting superstitious belief in science as well as contempt of science, philosophy grants its unconditional recognition to modern science. In its eyes science is a marvellous thing which can be relied upon more than anything else, the most significant achievement of man in his history, an achievement that is the source of great dangers but of even greater opportunities and that from now on must be regarded as a prerequisite of all human dignity. Without science, the philosopher knows, his own pursuits eventuate in nothing.
These pursuits can continue to be called scientific because philosophy proceeds methodically and because it is conscious of its methods. But these methods differ from those of science in that they have no object of inquiry. Any specific object is the object of a particular science. Were I to say that the object of philosophy is the whole, the world, being, philosophical critique would answer that such terms do not denote genuine objects. The methods of philosophy are methods of transcending the object. To philosophize is to transcend. But since our thinking is inseparable from objects, the history of philosophy is an account of how the progress of human thought has succeeded in transcending the objects of philosophy. These objects, the great creations of philosophy, function as road signs, indicating the direction of philosophical transcending. Thus there is no substitute for the profound discourse of the metaphysician, which speaks to us from the centuries; to assimilate it from its source in the history of philosophy is not only to know something that once was but to make it come to life.
At a time when confusion prevails regarding the meaning of science, three tasks are imperative...
First, the idea that total philosophical knowledge is scientific knowledge must be exposed as false. The sciences themselves critically explode this false total knowledge. It is here that the opposition to philosophy has its root, and in this respect contempt of it is justifiable.
Second, the sciences must be made pure. This can be accomplished through constant struggle and awareness in the course of our scientific activity itself. By and large, the need for basic clarity concerning science and its limits is readily admitted even by those who sin against such clarity in practice. But the essential is to achieve this purity within the specific sciences. This must be done largely through the critical work of the scientists themselves. But the philosopher who wishes to test the truth-meaning of scientific knowledge, to auscultate it, so to speak, must participate in the actual work of these scientists.
Third, a pure philosophy must be worked out in the new conditions that have been created by the modern sciences. This is indispensable for the sake of the sciences themselves. For philosophy is always alive in the sciences and so inseparable from them that the purity of both can be achieved only jointly. The rejection of philosophy usually leads to the unwitting development of a bad philosophy. The concrete work of the scientist is guided by his conscious or unconscious philosophy, and this philosophy cannot be the object of scientific method.
Neither the modern concept of science nor science in the sense of a total philosophical system coincides with the strictly philosophical conception of science which Plato formulated in a way that has never been surpassed. How far removed is the truth, the knowledge of which Plato interprets in his parable of the cave and touches on in his dialectic, this truth that applies to being and to that which is above all being how fundamentally different it is from the truth of the sciences, which move only amid the manifestations of being without ever attaining to being itself, and how different from the truth of the dogmatic system which holds itself to be in possession of the whole of being. What a distance between the truth which can nowhere be set down in writing but which, according to Plato's seventh epistle, though it can only be attained by thought, is kindled in a favourable moment of communication among men of understanding, and the truth which is written, universally cogent and intelligible, distinct and available to all thinking creatures!
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We have spoken of an analogy between the history of philosophy and the authority of religious tradition. True, philosophy has no canonical books such as those possessed by the religions, no authority which need simply be followed, no definitive truth which simply exists. But the historical tradition of philosophy as a whole, this deposit of inexhaustible truth, shows us the roads to our present philosophical endeavour. The tradition is the profound truth of past thought, toward which we look with never-ending expectancy; it is something unfathomable in the few great works; it is the reality of the great thinkers, received with reverence.
The tradition is an authority that cannot be obeyed with certainty. It is incumbent upon us to come to ourselves through it by our own experience, to find our own source in its source.
Only in the seriousness of present philosophical thinking can we gain contact with eternal philosophy in its historical manifestation. It is through the historical manifestation that we gain the profound ties that can unite us in a common present.
Thus historical research is conducted on various levels. In his approach to the texts the conscientious student of philosophy knows on which plane he is moving. He must gain intelligent mastery of the "facts." But the end and summit of historical study lies in the moments of communion in the source. It is then that the light dawns which gives meaning and unity to all factual research. Without this centre, this philosophical source, the history of philosophy would be a mere record of fallacies and curiosities.
Once it has awakened me, history becomes the mirror of what is my own: in its image I see what I myself think.
The history of philosophy—a space in which I think and breathe—reveals in inimitable perfection prototypes for my own searching. By its attempts, its successes and failures, philosophy raises the question. It encourages me through the example of those men who have unswervingly followed its arduous path.
To take a past philosophy as our own is no more possible than to produce an old work of art for a second time. At best we can produce a deceptive copy. We have no text, like pious Bible readers, in which we may hope to find absolute truth. We love the old texts as we love old works of art, our hearts go out to them, we immerse ourselves in their truth, but there remains in them something remote and unattainable, unfathomable, though it is something with which we always live, something which starts us on the way to our present philosophizing.
For philosophy is essentially concerned with the present. We have only one reality, and that is here and now. What we miss by our evasions will never return, but if we squander ourselves, then too we lose being. Each day is precious: a moment can be everything.
We are remiss in our task if we lose ourselves in the past or future. Only through present reality can we gain access to the timeless; only in apprehending time can we attain to that sphere where all time is extinguished.
The total view of the history of philosophy as a progressive development is misleading. The history of philosophy resembles the history of art in that its supreme works are irreplaceable and unique. It resembles the history of science in that its tools—categories and methods—have multiplied and are used with greater understanding. It resembles the history of religion in that it constitutes a succession of original acts of faith, though here expressed in terms of ideas.
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From Lessing and Kant to Hegel and Schelling we have a series of thinkers who perhaps excel all previous Western thought in contemplative depth. Without the background of a great political and social reality, working in privacy and seclusion, filled with the whole of history and the cosmos, rich in the speculative art of thought and in visions of human contents, though they had no real world, they erected great works which contained a world. For us it remains to gain from them as much as possible of the depth and scope which otherwise would be lost.
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Philosophy is as old as religion and olden than the churches. In the stature and purity of its champions and in the integrity of its spirit it has usually, though not always, been on a level with the world of the church, whose rights it recognizes in its specific sphere. But without sociological form of its own it has been helpless in its confrontation with the church. It has enjoyed the accidental protection of powers in the world, including the church. It requires favourable sociological situations in order to reveal itself in objective works. Its authentic reality is open to every man at all times, and it is in some form omnipresent wherever there are men.
The churches are for all, philosophy is for individuals. The churches are visible organizations, wielding power over masses of men in the world. Philosophy is an expression of a realm of minds linked with one another through all peoples and ages; it is represented by no institution which excludes or welcomes.
As long as the churches have ties with the Eternal, their outward power exploits the innermost energies. As they draw the Eternal into the service of their power in the world, this power, like every other power in the world, grows sinister and evil.
As long as philosophy remains in contact with eternal truth it inspires without violence, it brings order to the soul, from its innermost source. But when it places its truth in the service of temporal powers it beguiles men to delude themselves for the benefit of their practical concerns, it leads to anarchy of the soul. And when it aspires to be no more than a science it becomes an empty game, which is neither science nor philosophy.
Independent philosophy comes to no man of itself. No one is born into it. It must always be acquired anew. It can be apprehended only by him who perceives it out of his own source. The first ever-so- fleeting perception of it can fire a man with enthusiasm. The enthusiasm for philosophy is followed by the study of philosophy.
The study of philosophy takes three forms: practical study, in the inward action of each day; specialized study, in the learning of the contents, the study of the sciences, of the categories, methods and systems; historical study, by which we make the philosophical tradition our own. The reality that speaks to him from the history of philosophy is for the philosopher what authority is for the churchman.
Having oriented himself on secure dry land through realistic observation, through the special sciences, through logic and methodology—the philosopher, at the limits of this land, explores the world of ideas over tranquil paths. And now like a butterfly he flutters over the ocean shore, darting out over the water; he spies a ship in which he would like to go on a voyage of discovery, to seek out the one thing which as Transcendence is present in his existence. He peers after the ship—the method of philosophical thought and philosophical life—the ship which he sees and yet can never fully reach, and he struggles to reach it, sometimes strangely staggering and reeling.
We are creatures of this sort, and we are lost if we relinquish our orientation to the dry land. But we are not content to remain there. That is why our flutterings are so uncertain and perhaps so absurd to those who sit secure and content on dry land, and are intelligible only to those who have been seized by the same unrest. For them the world is a point of departure for that flight upon which everything depends, which each man must venture on his own though in common with other men, and which can never become the object of any doctrine.
Only when we exist entirely in this time of our historicity can we experience something of the eternal present.
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To philosophize is... to learn how to live and to know how to die.
Because of the uncertainty of temporal existence life is always an experiment. In this experiment the essential is that we dare to immerse ourselves in it, neither shunning nor closing our eyes to the extreme, and that we let unlimited integrity govern our vision, our questioning and our answering. And then let us go our way, without knowing the whole, without tangibly possessing the authentic, without letting false arguments or illusory experience provide us with a peephole, as it were, by which to look objectively and immediately out of the world into Transcendence, without hearing any direct and unequivocal word of God, but reading the symbols of the polyvalent language of things and yet living with the certainty of Transcendence. Only Transcendence can make this questionable life good, the world beautiful, and existence itself a fulfillment.
If to philosophize is to learn how to die, then we must learn how to die in order to lead a good life. To learn to live and to learn how to die are one and the same thing.
[W]e live in a movement, a flux, a process, in virtue of which changing knowledge enforces a change in life; and, in turn, changing life enforces a change in the consciousness of the knower.
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Special attention should be paid to a certain kind of posthypnotic effects ("delayed suggestion"). The hypnotized person obeys the hypnotist's order (for example, goes to a particular place) a few days or weeks after the hypnotic session: at a certain point after a session of hypnosis, in a way that is completely incomprehensible to himself, the person suddenly feels the need to perform some action , and he does it, unless the counter-stimuli rooted in his personality outweighs the hypnotically suggested need. As a real reason for this kind of action, some apparently suitable motive is often invented by the person.
(Translated from Russian)
So long as the philosopher retains his integrity, he is modestly aware of the limits of his knowledge.
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Through research and study the university strives to achieve the great practical unity of the sciences and philosophy. At the university a philosophical view of the world has always been made manifest through scientific method. The university is the meeting place of all sciences. In so far as these remain an aggregate, the university resembles an intellectual warehouse; but in so far as they strive toward unity of knowledge, it resembles a never-finished temple.
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The mass of sham philosophical knowledge taught in the schools originates in the hypostatization of entities that have served for a time as the signpost of philosophy but are always being transcended by it. Such hypostatized entities are nothing but the capita mortua, the ossuaries of the great metaphysical systems. To imagine that they confer knowledge is a philosophical perversion. In philosophizing we must not fall under the spell of the object that we use as a means of transcendence. We must remain masters of our thoughts and not be subjugated by them.
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Science left to itself as mere science becomes homeless. The intellect is a whore, said Nicholas of Cusa, for it can prostitute itself to anything. Science is a whore, said Lenin, for it sells itself to any class interest. For Nicholas of Cusa, it is Reason, and ultimately the knowledge of God, that gives meaning, certainty, and truth to intellectual knowledge; for Lenin, it is the classless society that promotes pure science. Be that as it may, awareness of all this is the business of philosophical reflection. Philosophy is inherent in the actual sciences themselves; it is their inner meaning that provides the scientist with sustenance and guides his methodical work. He who consolidates this guidance through reflection and becomes conscious of it has reached the stage of explicit philosophizing. If this guidance fails, science falls into gratuitous convention, meaningless correctness, aimless busyness, and spineless servitude. A pure science requires a pure philosophy.
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[S]cience leads us to the understanding of the principles, limitations, and meaning of our knowledge. It teaches us to know, in full consciousness of the methods by which each stage of knowledge is achieved. It produces a certainty whose relativity, i.e., dependence on presuppositions and methods of investigation, is its crucial characteristic.
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Modern scientists have understood that an all-embracing world-system, which deduces everything that exists from one or a few principles, is impossible. A world-system has other sources and can only claim universal validity if scientific critique is relaxed and particulars are mistaken for absolutes. Such unprecedented systematizations as those achieved by modern physics cover only one aspect of reality. Through them reality as a whole has become more split up and deprived of foundations than it ever before seemed to the human mind.
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Philosophy endures in every catastrophe, in the thoughts of a few men, and in the isolated works which somehow appear in ages that are otherwise spiritually barren. Philosophy like religion exists at all times.
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In the twentieth century there has been an accelerated tendency to forget the millennial foundations in favour of diffuse technical knowledge and skills, of scientific superstition, illusory worldly aims, and intellectual passivity.
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We must rid ourselves of the idea that philosophical activity as such is the affair of professors. It would seem to be the affair of man, under all conditions and circumstances, of the slave as of the ruler.
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Трансцендировать себя самого я могу только к собственной своей основе, а это я могу сделать лишь вследствие того, что все более решительно прихожу к себе самому.
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The goal of a philosophical life cannot be formulated as a state of being, which is attainable and once attained, perfect. Our states of being are only manifestations of existential striving or failure. It lies in our very nature to be on-the-way. We strive to cut across time.
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Thought is the beginning of human existence. In accurate knowledge of objects I experience the power of the rational, as in the operations of mathematics, in the natural sciences, in technical planning. As my method grows purer, the logic of my syllogisms becomes more compelling, I gain greater insight into chains of causality, my experience becomes more reliable.
But philosophical thought begins at the limits of this rational knowledge. Rationality cannot help us in the essentials: it cannot help us to posit aims and ultimate ends, to know the highest good, to know God and human freedom; this inadequacy of the rational gives rise to a kind of thinking which, while working with the tools of the understanding, is more than understanding. Philosophy presses to the limits of rational knowledge and there takes fire.
He who believes that he understands everything is no longer engaged in philosophical thought. He who takes scientific insight for knowledge of being itself and as a whole has succumbed to scientific superstition. He who has ceased to be astonished has ceased to question. He who acknowledges no mystery is no longer a seeker. Because he humbly acknowledges the limits of possible knowledge the philosopher remains open to the unknowable that is revealed at those limits.
Here cognition ceases, but not thought. By technically applying my knowledge I can act outwardly, but nonknowledge makes possible an inner action by which I transform myself. This is another and deeper kind of thought; it is not detached from being and oriented toward an object but is a process of my innermost self, in which thought and being become identical. Measured by outward, technical power, this thought of inner action is as nothing, it is no applied knowledge that can be possessed, it cannot be fashioned according to plan and purpose; it is an authentic illumination and growth into Being.
The understanding (ratio) broadens our horizons; it fixates objects, reveals the tensions of the existent, and also permits what it cannot apprehend to stand forth in full force and clarity. The clarity of the understanding makes possible clarity at its limits, and arouses the authentic impulses which are thought and action, inward and outward act in one.
The philosopher is expected to live according to his doctrine. This maxim expresses poorly the thought that lies behind it. For the philosopher has no doctrine if by doctrine is meant a set of rules under which the particular cases of empirical existence might be subsumed, as things are subsumed under empirical species or men's acts under juridical norms. Philosophical ideas cannot be applied; they are a reality in themselves, so that we may say: in the fulfillment of these thoughts the man himself lives; or life is permeated with thought. That is why the philosopher and the man are inseparable (while man can be considered apart from his scientific knowledge); and that is why we cannot explore philosophical ideas in themselves but must at the same time gain awareness of the philosophical humanity which conceived them.
If in my meditation I achieve awareness of the Encompassing out of which I live and can live better, meditation will provide the dominant tone that carries me through the day in its countless activities, even while I am being swept along by the technical machine. For in these moments when I return home as it were to myself I acquire an underlying harmony which persists behind the moods and movements of the day, which sustains me and in all my derailment, confusion, emotional upheaval does not let me sink into the abyss. For these moments give to the present both memory and future, they give my life cohesion and continuity.
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