THE
SOCIOLOGY OF EXISTENTIALISM
303
world, and everyday speech will always be the most important instru–
ment for such an orientation. This entwinement of knowledge and
value is often created by the great human institutions and in its turn
strengthens them. Therefore those powers mistrust the separation of
reality and value, which allows the "truth" taught by them to appear
as one among many possible world views. Yet it is precisely in its
in–
stitutional crystallization that the peculiarity of practical human rule
and of its specific instruments is clearly distinguished from all scien–
tific investigation of facts: what rules is not the indicative, but the
imperative. Not confirmation in experience, but authoritative decision
within, victory or defeat without, are here the final criteria. Deviating
doctrines are not tested for their objective foundation, instead they
are prejudged and where possible excluded altogether: even the
mere doubting of the necessary principles is already regarded as repre–
hensible. The social structure of such systems is to a large extent inde–
pendent of the world view which they serve or which serves them,
and the most extreme ideological opponents have nearly identical
social structures. It
is
obvious that the fate of institutionalized phil–
osophies depends on the fates of the societies which bear them and
not on scientific results.
The union of its members through a rational and objectivistic
metaphysics basically superior to all preferences, experiences and sub–
jective beliefs of individuals corresponds best to institutional systems
in their struggle for self-assertion. On the other hand, the life situation
of floating intellectuals, displaced from immediate practical tasks,
favors an individual and often even sublime striving for redemption.
The vision of the value-free and irrational character of the cosmic
process and of the conceptual untenability of previous metaphysical
constructions combines with the loss of ties to objective aims and
social arrangements to form a specific experience of meaninglessness.
Under the pressure of this objectless "dread," which is often united
with unadmitted fear of concrete threats and various experiences of
inadequacy, man seeks a last hold in an indeterminate inwardness.
This plasticity, like the emptiness of the tautologies, has contributed
essentially to the success of the movement. Sometimes an illusory
world of objectless acts, which only veils the flight from real action–
corresponding to the illusory object world of an hypostatizing meta–
physics-has been constructed in the name of existence. Sometimes
