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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] ambiguous world. This world is also a prerequisite of the decision. In order that personality can live in it as the material of its decision, it must stand opposite the Ego as a reality, foreign to it and yet capable of interpretation by it. Here, of course, no evidence but probability is demanded. The material is foreign to the Ego; it is given. It has the quality of not being part of the Ego. Its knowledge therefore can approach the ideal of evidence only in a slow progress. Here the Logos is estranged from itself, not, as before, remaining in itself. But even here the Logos is not in the Kairos, not in the sphere of decision. An epistemology whose problems lie between formal evidence and material probability, that is, an epistemology which lies between rationalism and empiricism, must miss the element of decision in all knowledge. But such a doctrine overlooks a third element of knowledge which is neither formal nor material, and through which alone knowledge becomes a spiritual matter. It is not a question of the application of the form to the material, of the evident to the probable, that is, a question of "judgment." Judgment can be enhanced to the point of genius, but it does not therefore cease to be a technical function, withdrawn from decision in our sense. The third element of which we speak, is the meaningful interpretation of reality. We are not speaking of a religious-metaphysical interpretation of our world as a special task, but of an understanding of reality, such as is inherent in all scientific work. All knowledge, even the most exact, the most subject to methodical technique, contains fundamental interpretations rooted neither in formal evidence, nor in material probability, but in original views, in basic decisions. This third element is to be found not only in the method, not only in the philosophic and categorical foundations, with which the sciences work; rather does it penetrate deep into material knowledge. This becomes immediately clear in the productive understanding of norms, the religious, the moral, the esthetic, and so forth. The formal evidence here reaches only as far as the constitution of the field of meaning itself, no further, and no norm at all can be taken from the material. Where it comes to a concrete formation of norms, concrete decisions are effective, and only insofar as this is true are concrete sciences of norms meaningful. The situation is just as distinct in history. Where the collection of material and even ingenious judgment concerning the facts stop, historical understanding has manifestly the character of concrete decisions. But even in the three sciences that I would call sciences of Gestalt (biology, psychology, sociology) there is an element of interpretation, derived neither formally nor materially. And even in the physical sphere, yes, in the conceptions of logic and mathematics, this third element is noticeable. The formative power of knowledge, its actual life as distinguished from its technical tools, is achieved in this third element. Now it is important to ascertain whether this aspect is not something which could become the object of perception itself in the act of knowing. If that were attempted, the third element itself, which is beyond the plane of form and material, would become a formed material. This, however, would rob it of its special character, and knowledge would again be withdrawn from the sphere of decision. Only in the metaphysical view can that which must remain in the background in science gain suggestive, symbolic expression. The assertion that there is an element of decision in knowledge has nothing to do with the doctrine of the primacy of practical reason. The decision which is spoken of here is not a moral one. It is moral just as little as it is intellectual. It lies in the deeper stratum upon which both of these rest and which we designate but indistinctly when we term it religious, for it is also not a question of decision in the sense of a specifically religious attitude. What is meant is the attitude toward the Unconditioned, an attitude which is freedom and fate at the same time, and out of which action as well as knowledge flows. Therefore, in every period in which religion is dominant in social life, the will to truth is subject to a special and outstanding [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |