What Is Existenz Philosophy?
HANNAH ARENDT
A S DISTINCT from existentialism, a French literary moverr:'ent
of the last decade, Existenz philosophy has at least a century-old
his–
tory. It began with Schelling in his late period and with Kierkegaard,
developed in Nietzsche along a great number of as yet unexhausted
possibilities, determined the essential part of Bergson's thought and
of the so-called life-philosophy (
Lebensphilosophie),
until finally in
postwar Germany, with Scheler, Heidegger, and Jaspers, it reached
a consciousness, as yet unsurpassed, of what really is at stake in fi!Odern
philosophy.
The term "Existenz" indicates, first, nothing more than the being
of man, independent of all qualities and capacities that can be psycho–
logically investigated. Thus far, what Heidegger once rightly remark–
ed of "life-philosophy," that the name was about ·as meaningful as
the botany of plants, also holds for Existenz philosophy. Except that
there is no accident that the word "Being" is replaced by the word
"Existenz." In this terminological change one of the fundamental
problems of modern philosophy is, in fact, concealed.
Hegel's philosophy, which with a completeness never attained
before, had explained and organized into a weirdly coherent whole
all natural and historical phenomena, was truly "the owl of Minerva,
that takes flight only in the evening." This system, immediately
after Hegel's death, appeared to be the last word in the whole of
western philosophy, in so far as western philosophy-despite all its
variety and apparent contradictions- since Parmenides had not dared
to doubt that :
to gar auto esti noein te kai einai,
being and thought
are identical. What came after Hegel was either derivative, or it was
a rebellion of the philosophers against philosophy in general, rebellion
against or doubt of this identity.
This derivative character is peculiar to
all
the so-called schools
of 'modern philosophy. They all seek to re-establish the unity of
thought and being; whether they aim at this harmony in making
matter (the materialists) or mind (the Idealists) dominant, is indif-
