EXISTENZ PHILOSOPHY
37
which he is sucked, could once again become a theme of philosophy.
This separation has become much more important than Husserl's
positive philosophy, in which he seeks to make us tranquil about a
fact over which modern philosophy cannot become tranquil-that
man is compelled to assent to a Being which he has never created
and to which he is essentially alien. With the transformation of alien
Being into consciousness he seeks to make the world again human,
as Hofmannsthal with the magic of little things sought to awaken in
us again the old fondness for the world. But what this modern human–
ism, this good will towards the modest and homely, is always
wrecked
upon is the equally modern
hubris
which lies at its basis and which
furtively (irf Hofmannsthal) or openly and naively (in Husser! )
hopes, in tlus inconspicuous way, to become what man cannot be,
creator of the world and of himself.
In opposition to the arrogant modesty of Husser! the modern
philosophy which is underivative seeks along many paths to come
to terms with the fact that man is not the creator of the world. To–
wards this end it searches further and further in the direction where
it shows its best inclinations, to place man in the position where
Schelling, in a moment of self-misunderstanding, placed God-in the
position of "Master of Being."
Kant's Demolition of the Old World and Schelling's
Cry for a New One
The word "Existenz" in the modern sense appears, to my
knowledge, for the first time in the later Schelling. Schelling knew
exactly what he was rebelling against when over against "negative
philosophy," against the philosophy of pure thought, he placed "posi–
tive philosophy," which proceeds from Existenz, which ·it has only
as the pure
"That."
He knew that with this the philosopher said goodbye to the "con–
templative life"; knew that it is the I AM, "which has given the signal
for the revolution" of pure thought, no longer able "to explain the
contingency and actuality of things,"
is
overcome by "final despair."
All modem irrationalism, all the modern hostility to mind and reason,
has its basis in this despair.
With the knowledge that the What can never explain the That,
modern philosophy begins with a dreadful collision against bare
reality. The more one empties Reality of all qualities, the more im-
