Life's Basis and Life's Ideal: The Fundamentals of a New Philosophy of LifeEucken, Rudolf
Philosophy
Life's Basis and Life's Ideal: The Fundamentals of a New Philosophy of Life
Eucken, Rudolf
Life; Ontology
arouse other feelings and stimulate to other efforts, so their demands
may be directly opposed to those of individual self-preservation. Man
sees himself compelled to decide whether he will pursue his own welfare
or that of the whole: from the necessity of a decision it is impossible
to escape. However much in the majority of cases self-interest may
preponderate, we cannot dispute the possibility of his acting in direct
and conscious opposition to his own interest; of his subordinating and
sacrificing himself; and of his doing this "not grudgingly nor of
necessity," but willingly and gladly; of his feeling this subordination
to be not a negation and a limitation, but an affirmation and an
expansion of his life. All who strive for some essential renewal and
elevation of human life base their hope and trust upon such a
disposition. A renewal and an elevation of life involve far too much
toil, conflict, and danger; they demand a renunciation and a sacrifice
far too great for them to be commended to us by consideration of our own
welfare, or for them to dispense with the necessity of counting upon an
unselfish submission, a sincere sympathy, a genuine love. That which was
produced with glowing passion in heroic beginnings must with a quieter
warmth pervade all progress also. An inner community of minds is
indispensable if the whole of culture is not to become a soulless
mechanism and inwardly alien to us. It is true that the external way of
regarding the facts of life often fuses together as one, lower and
higher, a continuation of nature and the beginning of a new life.
Language also supports this tendency, since it indicates fundamentally
different psychical states with the same terms. Yet the love in which
the union with others is sought only in order to advance one's own
interests, and the love which finds in this union a release from the
limitations of the natural _ego_, and gains a new life, remain distinct.
The sympathy which feels the sufferings of others to be unpleasant
because one's own complacency is disturbed by them, and which in
consequence fades away and disappears as soon as the sight of the
suffering comes to an end, is absolutely separated from a sympathy which
extends to the soul of the other, and possessing which, in order to
contribute to the relieving of the other's need, one willingly
sacrifices one's own complacency: a sympathy, therefore, which extends
its interest and help without limit beyond all that simply has to do
with the relation to the environment. How much real love and genuine
sympathy the experience of humanity shows is a question in itself. Even
as possibilities of our being, as matters of thought which occupy our
attention, and as tasks and problems, they give evidence of a
development of our life beyond the limits of nature.
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