THE
SOCIOLOGY OF EXISTENTIALISM
299
promise and new security come into view. Man who had been dis–
placed from the truth of Being is again to find his home in the neigh–
borhood and the light of Being, in order to dwell there. To this end
a kind of new saving knowledge- to use Max Scheler's expression–
is to be revealed: knowledge which has nothing to do with the
science of the aggressive will and its denumerating and calculating
logic, let alone logistics. So we hear again one of the dominant themes
of German philosophy in our century, the wish for a "second knowl–
edge," which assures man what the exactitude of science denies him.
Heidegger withdraws in his last works from phenomenology as too
"scientific," and turns to the "thought of the truth of Being."
Wherein actually this "more thinking thinking"-thinking more pro–
found than the calculation with objects- is really supposed to consist,
Heidegger can say only in hints and circumlocutions. This thought
speaks of "the ecstatic stance within the truth of Being," and signifies
the "shining-hiding advent of Being itself."
It
is "what the singers
say" whose "singing turns aside from all premeditated achievement";
a saying which "desires nothing and seeks for no contrivable object,"
but as a proclamation of redemption "brings for mortals the trace of
the vanished gods into the night of their world.'"
The thinking of Being lies beyond the distinction of theory from
practice. It is thinking toward Being and nothing more. Thus it
cannot furnish any maxims for daily life or give it a helping hand.
To be sure, "the guidance for those guideposts which must become
law and maxim for man, can come from Being itself." But how one
can tell real from merely seeming or even false guides to Being, re–
mains unsaid. Such questions do not even appear very significant,
since "what is more essential than all contrivances of rules of thumb
is that man find his way into the truth of Being to abide there. Only
this abiding affords the experience of durability." Thus Heidegger
withdraws into the contemplative region of the "neighborhood of
Being.,,8
Thus a new Erich von Kahler could arise today and pose his
sybilline question not to value-free science but to existential phil–
osophy: "And the other, the genuine, which threatens us all so ur–
gently in our extreme distress; the great root question of Wisdom:
'What is to be done?' Who answers it? And
if
existential philosophy
cannot answer it, is it not then meaningless, yes, more meaningless
