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PARTISAN REVIEW
says: "There exists nothing universal but only the individual, and the
universal being exists only if it
is
the
absolute individual."
With this position, which resulted immediately from Kant, the
absolute and rationally conceivable kingdom of Ideas and universal
values was at one stroke lopped off; and Man was placed in the middle
of a world where he could no longer rely on anything, neither on his
Reason, which clearly could not arrive at a knowledge of Being, nor
on the Ideals of
his
Reason, whose existence was not provable, nor
on the universal, since this existed only as he himself.
From now on the word "existing" is used always in opposition to
that which is only thought of, only contemplated; as the concrete in
opposition to the mere abstract; as the individual in contrast to the
mere universal. Which means nothing more nor less than that philo–
sophy, which since Plato has thought only in concepts, has now be–
come mistrustful of the concept itself. Henceforth, philosophers never
get rid of their bad conscience, so to speak, in the pursuit of philoso–
phy.
J
Kant's destruction of the ancient conception of Being had as its
purpose the estabEshing of the
autonomy
of man, what he himself
called the dignity of man. He is the first philosopher who wishes to
understand Man according to his
ovm
law, and who frees man from
the universal context of Being, in which Man would be a thing among
things (even if as
res cogitans
he is opposed to
res extensa) .
In Les–
sing's sense, Man's coming of age is here established in thought, and
it is no accident that this philosophic clarification of Man's coming
of age coincides with the French Revolution. Ka..Tit is truly
the
philo–
sopher of the French Revolution.
As
it was decisive for the develop–
ment of the nineteenth century that nothing be quicker demolished
than the new revolutionary concept of the
citoyen)
so was it decisive
for the development of post-Kantian philosophy that nothing be
quicker demolished than this new concept of Man, here for the first
time developed in gem1. Neither was an accident.
Kant's destruction of the ancient conception of Being accom–
plished only half the job. He destroyed the old identity of Being
and thought and with it the notion of the pre-established harmony
between Man and the world. What he did not destroy, but im–
plicitly held on to, was the concept, equally old and intimately as–
sociated, of Being as the given, to whose laws Man is in all cases
subject. Man could suffer this notion only so long as he had, in the
feeling of his security in Being and his belonging to the world, at
least the certainty that he could know Being and the course of the
