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PARTISAN
REVIEW
which comprehends itself not as thesis but as method and gives
precedence to the facts. For philosophers, the discovery of limits be–
gins to play an important, if also a highly problematic role. The
physicists too are aware of the problem, and in our ability to split
the atom it can perhaps one day become a practical problem-if the
enlightened experiment could destroy the earth. But this is the ex–
perience not only of numerous sciences: it is also the experience of
every man who, in the complex of human relations, unmasks,
dis–
covers,
disabuses,
enlightens his neighbor and himself, and, in ac–
complishing this enlightenment, encounters many limits: limits of
intellectual capacity and of capacity in general, but also limits where
responsibility calls a halt, although,
"in
itself," one could go on en–
lightening further
if
one wished and dared.
Kant gave us the fine formula that enlightenment is the freeing
of man from a state of minority for which he is himself guilty. In
this formula are both the greatness and the limits of enlightenment.
Its greatness--because here enlightenment aims solely at the truth,
which makes free. Its limits--because the formula contains the ad–
mission of human finiteness: there can be a minority which is not
self-incurred but which is posited with man himself. Enlightenment
cannot abolish these limits of man himself; "autonomy" cannot be
absolute autonomy but the maturity of man, who, in the work of en–
lightenment, discovers his own limits.
We must remember both that we have to respect such limits
when we discover them, and that we must not overhastily give up
the game if we find ourselves encountering what was referred to
above, in a very general way, as "the unknown." This unknown can
be the not-yet-known, which we shall know tomorrow or the day
after; it can also be something we shall never know, or even can
never know; finally, it can also be something above the possibility
of knowledge, that is, a positive mystery, perhaps, indeed, one with
which I am thoroughly familiar, which is a part of my daily life–
perhaps the love and the freedom of a friend- or the love and the
freedom of God.
All that has been discussed here actually takes place in the real
history of man. This means: all the errors which can here be com–
mitted are presumably committed, and nevertheless the right thing
