44
PARTISAN REVIEW
In the exception man realizes the universal structure of human reality.
It is characteristic of all of Existenz philosophy, that by "existential"
it fundamentally understands what Kierkegaard had presented in the
category of the Exception. The existential attitude turns about the
realizing (in opposition to that which is only contemplated) of the
most universal structures of life.
The passion to become subjective flares up in Kierkegaard with
the realized anxiety before death as the event in which I alone am
guaranteed as an individual, separated from average everyday life.
The thought of death becomes an action, since in it man makes him–
self subjective, withdraws from the world and from everyday life
with other men. Psychologically, this inner technique of reflection has
simply as its basis the supposition that with the thought that I shall
no longer be, my interest in what is must also be extinguished. On
this presupposition ;ests not only modern "Inwardness," but also the
fanatical resolutene...c;s, which enters likewise in Kierkegaard, to seize
earnestly the moment,-since only in the moment is Existenz, namely
Reality, guaranteed.
This new earnestness towards life, which recoils from death, did
not at all imply necessarily a Yea to life or to the human reality of
man as such. In fact, only Nietzsche and, following him, Jaspers, have
made such a Yea the groundwork of their philosophy; and this is
also the reason why a positive way leads from their philosophical in–
vestigations to philosophy. Kierkegaard, and Heidegger after him,
have always interpreted death as the peculiar "objection" against the
Being of Man, as proof of his nothingness-in which, possibly, Heideg–
ger's analysis of death and the character of human life bound up with
it surpasses that of Kierkegaard in cogency and precision. The new
French school, especially Camus and Sartre, if they have not thought
out Heidegger's results to the end, have at least perceived what the
end is, and have consequently arrived at a philosophy, which has
scarcely a place for the anxiety before death, since it is so full of
nausea towards life,-as it were, overcome by the sheer
That
of Being.
"Quelle salete, quelle salete," Sartre cries out (in
La N ausee),
as he
discovers that he cannot think the Nothing, since everything, ab–
solutely everything "exists," has reality.
It is clear that Kierkegaard's peculiar inner activity, his "becoming
subjective," immediately leads us out of philosophy. It goes with
philosophy only in so far as philosophic grounds for the philosopher's
revolt against philosophy must be found. Similarly, though at the
