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PARTISAN REVIEW
our energies on things that are not worth knowing, and which animates
scientific inquiry, is the concrete philosophy that is embodied in the
totality of a specific science. This philosophy thus becomes in a sense
the spokesman for knowledge in general, provided that constant care
is taken to see this particular domain in relation to all the knowable,
and thereby to anchor it in depth.
The teacher of philosophy in the service of such efforts is not
a leader who lays down the law, but an attentive and patient listener,
eager to find meaning in the broadest interrelations.
The teacher of philosophy reveres the individual great philo–
sophers, who are not specimens of a type, but creators (such do not
exist today), but he rejects the idolization of men, which began
even in the academy of Plato, for even the greatest are men, and
err, and no one is an authority who must be obeyed by right.
And the teacher of philosophy has respect for each science
whose insights are binding-but he condemns the scientific pride
which imagines that everything can be known in its ultimate founda–
tion, or even goes so far as to suppose that is is known.
His ideal is that of a rational being coexisting with other ra–
tional beings. He wants to doubt, he thirsts for objections and at–
tacks, he strives to become capable of playing his part in the dialogue
of ever-deepening communication, which is the prerequisite of all
truth, and without which there is no truth.
His hope is that in the same measure as he becomes a rational
being, he may acquire the profound contents which can sustain
man, that his will, in so far as his striving is honest, may become
good through the direct help of the transcendent, without any human
mediation.
As a teacher of philosophy, however, he feels that it is his duty
not to let his students forget the great minds of the past, to preserve
the various philosophical methods as an object of instruction, and
to see to it that the sciences influence philosophical thinking; to eluci–
date the present age and at the same time to join his students in con–
quering a view of the eternal.
(Translated from the German
by
Ralph Manheim)
