Page 63 - Eclipse of God

36 Chapter 3

himself and that which is to be experienced there and there
alone. Artistic communication, which ought not remain un-
mentioned here, takes place in the Gestalt, from which a com-
municated content cannot be detached and given independent
existence. A content of being is objectively communicable and
translatable only in and through philosophy, consequently only
through the objectifying elaboration of the situation.
A sceptical verdict about the ability of philosophy to lead
to and contain truth is in no way here implied. The possibility
of cogitative truth does not, indeed, mean a cogitative posses-
sion of being, but a cogitative real relation to being. Systems
of thought are manifestations of genuine thought- relations to
being made possible through abstraction. They are not mere
“aspects,” but rather valid documents of these cogitative voy-
ages of discovery.
A similarity and a difference between the ways in which
religion and philosophy affect the person remain to be men-
tioned.
In religious reality the person has concentrated himself into
a whole, for it is only as a unified being that he is able to live
religiously. In this wholeness thought is naturally also included
as an autonomous province but one which no longer strives
to absolutize its autonomy. A totalization also takes place in
genuine philosophers but no unification. Instead, thinking
overruns and overwhelms all the faculties and provinces of the
person. In a great act of philosophizing even the finger- tips
think— but they no longer feel.

9

For man the existent is either face- to- face being or passive ob-
ject. The essence of man arises from this twofold relation to the
existent. These are not two external phenomena but the two