Page 52 - Eclipse of God

Religion and Philosophy 25

losophy is founded on the duality of subject and object. The
duality of I and Thou finds its fulfilment in the religious rela-
tionship; the duality of subject and object sustains philosophy
while it is carried on. The first arises out of the original situation
of the individual, his living before the face of Being, turned to-
ward him as he is turned toward it. The second springs from
the splitting apart of this togetherness into two entirely distinct
modes of existence, one which is able to do nothing but observe
and reflect and one which is able to do nothing but be observed
and reflected upon. I and Thou exist in and by means of lived
concreteness; subject and object, products of abstraction, last
only as long as that power is at work. The religious relationship,
no matter what different forms and constellations it takes, is in
its essence nothing other than the unfolding of the existence
that is lent to us. The philosophical attitude is the product of
a consciousness which conceives of itself as autonomous and
strives to become so. In philosophy the spirit of man gathers
itself by virtue of the spiritual work. Indeed, one might say that
here, on the peak of consummated thought, spirituality, which
has been disseminated throughout the person, first becomes
spiritual substance. But in religion, when this is nothing other
than simple existence which has unfolded as a whole person
standing over against eternal Being, spirituality too becomes a
part of personal wholeness.
Philosophy errs in thinking of religion as founded in a
noetical act, even if an inadequate one, and in therefore re-
garding the essence of religion as the knowledge of an object
which is indifferent to being known. As a result, philosophy
understands faith as an affirmation of truth lying somewhere
between clear knowledge and confused opinion. Religion, on
the other hand, insofar as it speaks of knowledge at all, does
not understand it as a noetic relation of a thinking subject to a
neutral object of thought, but rather as mutual contact, as the