Table Of ContentREASON AND WORLD
WERNER MARX
REASON AND WORLD
BETWEEN
TRADITION AND ANOTHER BEGINNING
MARTINUS NIJHOFFJTHE HAGUEjI971
Originally published in German under the title VERNUNFT UND WELT
in Phaenomenologica (No. 36), © 1970 by Martinus Nijhofl, The Hague
© I97I by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
ISBN-\3: 978-90-247-5048-1 e-ISBN-\3: 978-94-010-2994-0
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-2994-0
To my associates in the "Philosophisches
Seminar 1" 01 the University 01 Freiburg i. Br.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENT IX
PREFACE XI
1. THE MEANING AND TASK OF PHILOSOPHY IN GERMAN
IDEALISM I
2. REASON AND LANGUAGE 21
3· REASON AND THE LIFE-WORLD 46
4· THE LIFE-WORLD AND ITS PARTICULAR SUB-WORLDS 62
5· THE MEANING AND TASK OF PHILOSOPHY IN ANOTHER
BEGINNING 77
6. THE WORLD IN ANOTHER BEGINNING: POETIC DWELLING
AND THE ROLE OF THE POET 97
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The preface and all of the essays in this book were translated
from the original publication Vernuft und Welt (Phaenomenologica
No. 36) by Thomas V. Yates, an American graduate student at the
University of Freiburg, with the exception of "Reason and the Life
World," which was translated by R. Geuss, a graduate student
at Columbia University. Prof. Joseph P. Fell of Bucknell Uni
versity was extremely helpful in proofreading and correcting the
manuscripts.
PREFACE
At a time when the traditional principles of many fields have
lost their power and validity, the task of philosophy may well be
to look back at these traditional principles and at their inherent
determinations and basic problems, while heeding every indi
cation of a transition to something new, in order to be critically
open for all attempts at "another beginning." A philosophizing
which thus sees its proper place "between" tradition and another
beginning has grasped its own basic dilemma: It remains in search
of the true even though it has no valid concept of truth. A concept
of truth grounded solely in transcendental subjectivity convinces
it no longer, and the essence of truth as it "occurs" for experiential
understanding has not yet been sufficiently determined. A phi
losophizing which has understood itself in this way will not want
to commit itself one-sidedly to one position or the other. Instead
it will consider its task to lie in keeping thought in flux.
The present collection of essays may be understood as an ex
ample of such a conception of present-day philosophizing. Thus
the first essay isolates the guiding thoughts of the traditional
philosophy of reason and spirit as they fulfilled themselves in
German idealism, in order to make the traditional concept of
truth visible and to bring to light those basic determinations
formed in certain contemporary philosophical tendencies which
are either related to it or altogether new. The second essay pre
sents language in its relationship as servant to reason, where
reason is conceived in its ultimate fullness of power; it may there
by become clear that contemporary philosophy withdraws its
recognition of the power of reason in the same measure as it attri
butes power to language. The third essay shows how with Hussed
a ·philosophizing appeared which first attempted out of critical
XII PREFACE
responsibility to save the power and purity of reason by means of
a method especially developed for this purpose, but which later
turned to an everyday life-world not at all constituted from pure
reason and considered this life-world to be the realm which is able
to "ground" everything which tradition considered to be reason.
The fourth essay uses a special problem in Husserl's philosophy
as a vehicle for showing how this notion of the life-world leads
automatically to the notion of a world which is "primordial" in a
broader sense: one which is no longer the world of man but rather
the cosmos itself. In Martin Heidegger's later thinking the world
becomes a realm in which man might dwell in a creative manner,
provided that "another beginning" were to occur - i.e. "another"
beginning over against that first beginning which according to
Heidegger was founded by pre-Socratic thinking. Thus the fifth
essay presents Heidegger's conception of a thinking which,
through a new determination of the essence of truth, sees as its
task the preparation of the arrival of this world of another be
ginning. The concluding essay discusses Heidegger's determi
nation of the essence of language and the role which he attributes
to the poet in the founding of another beginning; through im
manent criticism of the possibility of another beginning of
"world" this essay would question whether world could indeed
take the place of reason as the "principle" of a future philoso
phizing.
Philosophisches Seminar I
Freiburg im Breisgau
September 1970
Werner Marx
THE MEANING AND TASK OF PHILOSOPHY IN
GERMAN IDEALISM
I should like to explain at least in a word, why I have chosen
German idealism as the topic of my first course of lectures in
Germany.
German idealism brought under principles not only the utmost
possibilities of human knowledge but also, and above all, the ut
most possibilities of human morality, and presented them in such
a way that they were teachable and learnable for all of humanity.
In his first lecture in 1794,1 Fichte already saw as the criterion of
the scholar the determination to be an educator of humanity and
to bring about its "ennoblement"; according to Fichte, man is
here in order to become morally better. Fichte declared with Kant:
"As means for his ends, man may utilize things, which are without
reason, but not entities possessing reason." This lofty conception
of the essence and determination of man is not something which
Fichte merely asserted. In the same year, in his Wissenschafts
lehre, he attempted to substantiate it in a laborious conceptual
work.
Ladies and gentlemen: the fact that such words were once
spoken in Germany, and the fact that out of the deepest con
viction, morality - as the goal of all humanity - was made the
content of most profound systems - this fact alone was of greatest
importance for many of my generation. As, not too long ago,
barbarism ruled in Germany and many persons of German birth
here and in emigration despaired of their origin, it was a conso
lation and a source of strength and hope that there were such
works in which Germans had aspired to the highest morality for
all men. I am convinced that you, who are separated from those
1 Einige Vorlesungen fiber die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, Siimtliche Werke (Berlin,
1845), VI, 331, 332, 300, 309.
2 PHILOSOPHY IN GERMAN IDEALISM
events by only one generation, are eager to join me in paying a
debt of thanks to these works, by taking them seriously - not
merely reflecting on them in the sense of the history of ideas, but
taking up the thoughts themselves from their own beginnings.
I
Let us begin this attempt immediately, by asking: how did the
tenets of German idealism come about? What are its presuppo
sitions? Its goal? Its task?
The question of the presuppositions can be asked in two ways:
First, it can be asked what the philosophers themselves recog
nized as the presuppositions, as the impetus, which drove them
into philosophizing. But the question can also be asked in another
way: What do we see today as the guiding thoughts of this phi
losophizing? The first question makes it necessary that we think
the problem through right along with the German idealist phi
losophers. The second question allows us to assume the distance
necessary for criticism.
We want to think right along with the German idealists, but at
the same time we want to remain free to ask our own questions.
Precisely this is what is of the essence for philosophizing. The
question of the presuppositions will be asked in both senses, and
the question of the goal will be asked at the same time - all in the
expectation that the answers will throw light on the presuppo
sitions and the goal of our questioning today.
The following sentence should stand at the beginning: "When
the power of unification disappears from the life of mankind and
the opposing moments have lost their living relation and inter
action and have gained autonomy, then there arises the require
ment of philosophy."
2
It is thus that Hegel expresses himself on the presuppositions,
the goal, and the task of his philosophizing. The essay from which
this sentence was taken appeared six years before he began the
execution of this task by raising the first section of the edifice of
his system. This essay served only to provide him with the cer
tainty that the foundations on which this edifice was to be raised
2 Di//erenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems de, Philosophie, Werke
(Berlin, 1832-40), I, 174.
Description:At a time when the traditional principles of many fields have lost their power and validity, the task of philosophy may well be to look back at these traditional principles and at their inherent determinations and basic problems, while heeding every indi cation of a transition to something new, in
