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
Finally, the attempt to give to life stability and peace by turning to
the subject, to personality, as to a point removed from all perplexity,
also fails. We should be the last to place a low estimate upon
personality, but the conception receives its meaning and value only in
its spiritual connections, and without these it soon becomes nothing
more than a mere term, which blurs and blunts the great antithesis of
existence. If that which is called personality exists as a merely
individual point by the side of things, then we can never discover how
occupation with things is capable of transforming life as a whole. If,
however, in this activity we should win an inward relation to infinity
and a spontaneity of life, then this admission involves a confession
concerning reality as a whole which can never be justified by a theory
which regards the mere individual as the starting-point. That the idea
of personality implies a problem rather than a fact is indicated by the
different conceptions of it which we meet in the different systems of
life. In considering personality, Religion thinks of the immediate
relation of the soul to God; Immanent Idealism, of the presence of the
infinite at the individual point; Individualism, of the supremacy of the
free subject over against the social environment. It is only by reason
of the common terminology that we fail to recognise how great the
differences are in the thought on the matter; how that which one regards
as of value in personality is severely attacked by another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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