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being--or is the thinking of a faith in man that must be infinitely
elucidated--or is the way of man's self-assertion through thinking.
But none of these propositions is properly speaking a defini–
tion. There is no definition of philosophy, because philosophy cannot
be determined by something outside it. There is no genus above philo–
sophy, under which it can be subsumed as a species. Philosophy de–
fines itself, relates itself directly to godhead, and does not justify it–
self by any kind of utility. It grows out of the primal source in
which man is given to himself.
To sum up: The sciences do not encompass all of the truth,
but only the exact knowledge that is binding to the intellect and
universally valid. Truth has a greater scope and part of it can reveal
itself only to philosophical reason. Throughout the centuries since the
early Middle Ages, philosophical works have been written under the
title "On the Truth"; today the same task still remains urgent, i. e.,
to gain insight into the essence of truth in its full scope, under the
present conditions of scientific knowledge and historical experience.
The foregoing considerations also apply to the relation between
science and philosophy. Only if the two are strictly distinguished
can the inseparable connection between them remain pure and truth–
ful.
Through research and study, the university strives to achieve the
great practical unity of the sciences and philosophy. At the university
a philosophical view of the world has always been made manifest
through scientific method.
The university is the meeting place of all sciences. In so far as
these remain an aggregate, the university resembles an intellectual
warehouse; but in so far as they strive toward unity of knowledge,
it resembles a never-finished temple.
A century and a half ago, this was still self-evident: the philo–
sophical ideas that were assumed by the scientists in the various
disciplines were brought to the highest light of consciousness by the
philosophers. But the situation has changed. The sciences have be–
come fragmented by specialization. It has come to be believed
that scientific cognition, marked by the neatness of universally valid
particular knowledge, could break away from philosophy.
Is the present dispersion of the sciences the ultimate and nec-
