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
However, it is not an increase of activity alone that is sought in the
multiplicity of relations, but a growth of being--a being not beyond all
activity, but existent within it. It is necessary not only that the
life-process achieve more, but also that it grow in itself, change that
which is alien to it into its own, and display more reality within
itself; life must experience every single activity as the manifestation
of the activity of the whole, and thus, along with unlimited extension,
preserve self-consciousness.
The demand for a self-conscious life, the demand for an elevation of
activity to the organisation and development of being, by no means
excludes other forms of activity, if only for the reason that this
demand presents a high ideal to which man can only very slowly
approximate. But this ideal constitutes an aim and a standard for all
other activity; the giving of form and the increasing of force must aid
in the development towards this aim if they are not to become devoid of
real worth. The more necessary it is to insist upon an animation of
reality through the development of self-conscious life, the more must we
guard against the danger of anthropomorphism, which, when we are hasty
and impatient, inevitably finds an entrance to and corrupts the whole of
our thought and life. Only with much toil and with continual
self-criticism can life be brought to the point where the transition to
self-consciousness is possible; and even then the whole cannot, under
human circumstances, be attained at one stroke; but at first life must
endeavour to concentrate, to form a nucleus so that in this way it may
acquire a firm basis, and from this take up a struggle for its further
spiritualisation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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