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PARTISAN REVIEW
The estrangement of the eXIStmg self is not capable of being
grasped by the objective-empirical method simply because the for–
mer is specified by the latter as its reverse. I would like to avoid a
polemical tone here. I do not wish to be understood as attacking the
objective-empirical method and contemning its truth and beauty and
fruitfulness-which the European existentialists do indiscriminately
while at the same time living very well on its fruits-but as stating the
fact of the reversal: it does happen that the
Dasein
or existing self
characteristically reverses objective-empirical sociological categories
and discovers in them not the principle of its health but the root–
source of its alienation.
To illustrate the specific character of the reversal: it is just
when the Method tries to grasp and categorize the existential trait
that it is itself reversed and becomes a powerful agent, not of progress,
but of alienation.
It
is just when the alienated commuter reads books
on mental hygiene which abstract immanent goals from existence that
he comes closest to despair. One has only to let the mental-health
savants set forth their own ideal of sane living, the composite reader
who reads their books seriously and devotes every ounce of his strength
to the pursuit of the goals erected : emotional maturity, inclusiveness,
productivity, creativity, belongingness-there will emerge, far more
faithfully than I could portray him, the candidate for suicide. T ake
these two sentences: "The most profound of all human needs, the
prime requisite for successful living, is to be emotionally inclusive.
Socrates, Jesus, Buddha, St Francis were emotionally inclusive."
These words tremble with anxiety and alienation, even though I
would not deny that they are, in their own eerie way, true. T he al–
ienated commuter shook like a
leaf
when he read them.
To go back to the aesthetic reversal of alienation by
art:
litera–
ture, like a polarizing crystal, makes a qualitative division among ex–
istential traits accordingly as it transmits some more or less intact, re–
verses some, and selectively polarizes others, transmitting certain
elements and canceling others. Alienation is reversed : there can no
more be a re-presenting of alienation than Kierkegaard's category
of trial, for it, like trial, absolutely transcends the objective-empirical ;
J ob's and Abraham's trial are lost in the telling. The categories, ro–
tation and repetition, on the other hand, not being purely existential
