Life's Basis and Life's Ideal: The Fundamentals of a New Philosophy of Life — John Shaqi
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
capacity of the subject--which fondly imagined itself independent--it
fell into unspeakable error. Only when delivered from subjectivity, only
when fixed within the web of the whole of nature, does life seem to
awaken out of a dream, and to become fully real, a genuine, securely
grounded life.
The energy of negation which this theory employs and with which it
drives out everything which has become old adds strength to the elements
of assertion and positive achievement in these changes. In this theory
there is nothing indefinite which could soften the opposition, nothing
mediatory which could overcome it, but, distinctly and harshly,
affirmation and negation stand face to face and call for a plain
decision between them. Whatever remains in doubt and under suspicion is
forced into the background, indeed eliminated altogether, through the
victorious onward march of modern Natural Science and the increasing
triumphs of technical skill, which seem to demonstrate, immediately, the
truth of the naturalistic type of life. Thus, this movement spreads in a
mighty flood through humanity, and seizes with a particular power the
classes which are struggling upward, and which meet science and culture
with a faith yet undisturbed. In matters temporal there is hardly
anything which seems able to withstand such an attack.
Nevertheless, that which gains the support of many contemporaries is not
thereby proved to be the supreme power and the final truth. In that
movement there may be far more, and something far more important than it
itself admits. It may be that it achieves that which it does achieve
only with the help of elements of another kind; perhaps, indeed, it is
able to maintain its truth only in so far as it enters into broader
relations in a wider whole and thereby changes its meaning essentially.
Whether such is the case can be ascertained not by reference to
subjective opinion, but by an examination of the life of humanity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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