Karl Jaspers: Way to Wisdom (1951)

  What is philosophy?

What philosophy is and how much it is worth are matters of controversy. One may expect it to yield extraordinary revelations or one may view it with indifference as a thinking in the void. One may look upon it with awe as the meaningful endeavour of exceptional men or despise it as the superfluous broodings of dreamers. One may take the attitude that it is the concern of all men, and hence must be basically simple and intelligible, or one may think of it as hopelessly difficult. And indeed, what goes by the name of philosophy provides examples to warrant all these conflicting judgments. For the scientific-minded, the worst aspect of philosophy is that it produces no universally valid results; it provides nothing that we can know and thus possess. Whereas the sciences in their fields have gained compellingly certain and universally recognized insights, philosophy, despite thousands of years of endeavour, has done nothing of the sort. This is undeniable: in philosophy there is no generally accepted,definitive knowledge. Any insight which for cogent reasons is recognized by all has ipso facto become scientific knowledge and ceased to be philosophy; its relevance is limited to a special sphere of the knowable. Nor is philosophical thought, like the sciences,characterized by progressive development. Beyond any doubt, we are far more advanced than Hippocrates the Greek physician. But we are scarcely entitled to say that we have progressed beyond Plato. We have only advanced beyond his materials, beyond the scientific findings of which he made use. In philosophy itself we have scarcely regained his level.

It lies in the very nature of philosophy, as distinguished from the sciences, that in any of its forms it must dispense with the unanimous recognition of all. The certainty to which it aspires is not of the objective; scientific sort, which is the same for every mind; it is an inner certainty in which a man's whole being participates. Whereas science always pertains to particular objects, the knowledge of which is by no means indispensable to all men, philosophy deals with the whole of being, which concerns man as man, with a truth which, wherever it is manifested, moves us more deeply than any scientific knowledge.

Systematic philosophy is indeed bound up with the sciences. It always reckons with the most advanced scientific findings of its time. But essentially philosophy springs from a different source. It emerges before any science, wherever men achieve awareness. The existence of such a philosophy without science is revealed in several striking ways : 

First: In philosophical matters almost everyone believes himself capable of judgment. Whereas it is recognized that in the sciences study, training, method are indispensable to understanding, in philosophy men generally assume that they are competent to form an opinion without preliminary study. Our own humanity, our own destiny, our own experience strike (is as a sufficient basis for philosophical opinions. This notion that philosophy must be accessible to all is justified. The circuitous paths travelled by specialists in philosophy have meaning only if they lead man to  awareness of being and of his place in it.

Second: Philosophical thought must always spring from free creation. Every man must accomplish it for himself. A marvellous indication of man's innate disposition

of philosophy is to be found in the questions asked by children. It is not uncommon to hear from the mouths of children words which penetrate to the very depths

of philosophy. A few examples:

A child cries out in wonderment, "I keep trying to think that I am somebody else, but I'm always myself."This boy has touched on one of the universal sources of

certainty, awareness of being through awareness of self. He is perplexed at the mystery of his I, this mystery that can be apprehended through nothing

else. Questioningly, he stands before this ultimate reality.

Another boy hears the story of the Creation : In the beginning God made heaven and earth . . . and immediately asks, "What was before the beginning?"This child has sensed that there is no end to questioning, that there is no stopping place for the mind, that no conclusive answer is possible.

A little girl out walking in the woods with her father listens to his stories about the elves that dance in the clearings at night . . . "But there are no elves ..." Her father shifts over to realities, describes the motion of the sun, discusses the question of whether it is the sun or the earth that revolves, and explains the reasoning for supposing that the earth is round and rotates on its axis . . . "Oh, that isn't so," says the little girl and stamps her foot. "The earth stands still. I only believe what I see." "Then," says her father, "you don't believe in God, you can't see Him either." The little girl is puzzled for a moment, but then says with great assurance, "If there weren't any God, we wouldn't be here at all." This child was seized with the wonder of existence: things do not exist through themselves. And she understood that there is a difference between questions bearing on particular objects in the world and those bearing on our existence as a whole. 

Another little girl is climbing the stairs on her way to visit her aunt. She begins to reflect on how everything changes, flows, passes, as though it had never been!

"But there must be something that always stays the same . . . I'm climbing these stairs on my way to see my aunt” that's something I'll never forget." Wonderment and terror at the universal transience of things here seek a forlorn evasion.

Anyone who chose to collect these stories might compile a rich store of children's philosophy. It is sometimes said that the children must have heard all this from their parents or someone else, but such an objection obviously does not apply to the child's really serious questions. To argue that these children do not continue to philosophize and that consequently such utterances must be accidental is to overlook the fact that children often possess gifts which they lose as they grow up. With the years we seem to enter into a prison'of conventions and opinions, concealments and unquestioned acceptance, and there we lose the candour of

childhood. The child still reacts spontaneously to the spontaneity oflife; the child feels and sees and inquires into things which soon disappear from his vision. He

forgets what for a moment was revealed to him and is surprised when grownups later tell him what he said and what questions he asked.

Third : Spontaneous philosophy is found not only in children but also in the insane. Sometimes -raraely- the veils of universal occlusion seem to part and penetrating truths are manifested. The beginning of certain mental disorders is often distinguished by chattering metaphysical revelations, though they are usually formulated in terms that cannot achieve significance : exceptions are such cases as Holderlin and Van Gogh. But anyone witnessing these revelations cannot help feeling that the mists in which we ordinarily live our lives have been torn asunder. And many sane people have, in awaking from sleep, experienced strangely revealing insights which vanish with full wakefulness, leaving behind them only the impression that they can never be recaptured. There is profound meaning in the saying that children and fools tell the truth. But the creative originality to which we owe great philosophical ideas is not to be sought here but among those great minds, and in all history there have been only a few of them ,who preserve their candour and independence.

Fourth: Since man cannot avoid philosophy, it is always present: in the proverbs handed down by tradition, in popular philosophical phrases, in dominant convictions such as are embodied in the idiom of the emancipated, in political opinions, but most of all since the very beginnings of history, in myths. There is no escape from philosophy. The question is only whether a philosophy is conscious or not, whether it is good or bad, muddled or clear. Anyone who reject philosophy is himself unconsciously practising philosophy.  What then is this philosophy, which manifests itsell so universally and in such strange forms?

The Greek word for philosopher {philosophos) connotes a distinction from sophos. It signifies the lover of wisdom (knowledge) as distinguished from him who considers himself wise in the possession of knowledge. This meaning of the word still endures : the essence of philosophy is not the possession of truth but the search for truth, regardless of how many philosophers may belie it with their dogmatism, that is, with a body of didactic principles purporting to be definitive and complete. Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question. But this on-the-wayness- man's destiny in time- contains within it the possibility of deep satisfaction, and indeed, in exalted moments, of perfection. This perfection never resides in formulable knowledge, in dogmas and articles of faith, but in a historical consummation of man's essence in which being itself is revealed. To apprehend this reality in man's actual situation is the aim of philosophical endeavour.

To be searchingly on the way, or to find peace- and the fulfilment of the moment these are no definitions of philosophy. There is nothing above or beside philoophy. It cannot be derived from something else. Every philosophy defines itself by its realization. We can determine the nature of philosophy only by actually experiencing it. Philosophy then becomes the realizition of the living idea and the reflection upon this idea, action and discourse on action in one. Only (???) thus experiencing philosophy for ourselves can we understand previously formulated philosophical thought.

But we can define the nature of philosophy in other ways. No formula can exhaust its meaning and none can be exclusive. In antiquity philosophy was defined by its object) as the knowledge of things divine and human, the knowledge of being as being, or it was defined (by its aim) as learning how to die, as the striving for happiness by the exercise of thought; as an endeavour to resemble the divine; and finally (in the broadest sense) as the knowledge of all knowledge, the art of all arts, as the science  confined- to no particular field.

Today perhaps we may speak of philosophy in the following terms ; its aim is to find reality in the primal source; to apprehend reality in my thinking attitude toward

myself, in my inner acts; to open man to the comprehensive in all its scope; to attempt the communication of every aspect of truth from man to man, in loving contest; patiently and unremittingly to sustain the vigilance of reason in the presence of failure and in the presence of that which seems alien to it. Philosophy is the principle of concentration throught which man becomes himself, by partaking of reality. 

Although philosophy, in the form of simple, stirring: ideas, can move every man and even children, its conscious elaboration is never complete, must forever be

undertaken anew and must at all times be approached! as a living whole, it is manifested in the works of the great philosophers and echoed in the lesser philo-

sophers. It is a task which man will face in one form or another as long as he remains man.Today, and not for the first time, philosophy is radically attacked and totally rejected as superfluousi, or harmful. What is the good of it? It does not help us in affliction.

Authoritarian church thought has condemned independent philosophy on the ground that it is a worldly temptation which leads man away from God, destroys his soul with vain preoccupations. Political totalitarianism has attacked it on the ground that philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways, when the important thing was to change it. Both these schools of thought regarded philosophy as dangerous, for it undermined order, promoted a spirit of independence, hence of revolt, deluded man and distracted him from his practical tasks. Those who uphold another world illumined by a revealed God and those who stand for the exclusive power of a godless here and now would equally wish to extinguish philosophy.

And everyday common sense clamours for the simple yardstick of utility, measured by which philosophy gain fails. Thales, who is regarded as the first of Greek

philosophers, was ridiculed by a slave girl who saw him fall into a well while observing the sky. Why does he search the remote heavens when he is so awkward in his dealings with the things of this world? Must philosophy then justify itself? That is imossible. It cannot justify itself on the basis of a something else for which it is useful. It can only appeal to the forces in every man which drive him toward philophical thought. It is a disinterested pursuit, to which questions of utility, or injuriousness have no relevance, an endeavour proper to man as man, and it will 
continue to fulfil this striving as long as there are men alive. Even those groups which are hostile to it cannot help harbouring their own peculiar ideas and bringing forth pragmatic systems which are a substitute for philosophy, though subservient to a desired end - such as Marxism or fascism. The existence of even these systems shows how indispensable philosophy is to man.

Philosophy is always with us. Philosophy cannot fight, it cannot prove its truth, but it can communicate itself. It offers no resistance where it is rejected, it does not triumph where it gains a hearing. It is a living expression of the basic universality of man, of the bond between all men. Great systematic philosophies have existed for two and one-half millennia in the West, in China, and in India. A great tradition beckons to us. Despite the wide variety of philosophical thought, despite all the

contradictions and mutually exclusive claims to truth, there is in all philosophy a One, which no man possesses but about which all serious efforts have at all times gravitated: the one eternal philosophy, the philosophia perennis. We must seek this historical foundation of our thinking if we would think clearly and

meaningfully.

                                                                       

                                                                                 Translated by Ralph Manheim

Karl Jaspers: Way To Wisdom (1883- 1969)

  IV. THE IDEA 
                    OF GOD

Our western idea of God springs from two historical roots: the Bible and Greek philosophy. When Jeremiah saw the ruin of everything for which he had worked all his life, when his country and his people were lost, when in Egypt the last remnants of his people turned aside from their faith in Yahweh and offered sacrifices to Isis, and when his disciple Baruch despaired, "I fainted in my sighing, and I find no rest," Jeremiah answered, "Behold, that which I have built will I break down, and that which I have planted I will pluck up, even this whole land. And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not. In such a  situation  these  words  mean:  It  is  enough  that  God  is.  Do  not  ask  whether  there  is immortality;  the  question  of  whether  God  forgives  is  no  longer  important.  Man  no  longer  matters,  his defiance as well as his concern for his own beatitude and eternity is extinguished. It is also impossible that the world should have a purpose susceptible of fulfilment, that it should endure in any form; for everything has been created out of nothing by God and is in His hand. When everything is lost, but one thing remains: God is. If a life in this world, even with faith in God's guidance, has failed, this overpowering reality still remains: God is. If man fully renounces himself and his aims, this reality can be manifested to him as the only reality. But it does not manifest itself in advance, it does not manifest itself abstractly, but descends into the existence of the world, and only here manifests itself at the limit. Jeremiah's words are hard words. They are no longer bound up with any will to historical efficacy in the world, though such a will has preceded them throughout a lifetime and ultimately, through total failure, made them  possible.  They  are  simple  words,  free  from imaginative flight, and they contain unfathomable truth, precisely because they are without finite content or any fixation in the world. The Greek philosophers expressed a similar thought in different terms. At about 500 B.C. Xenophanes proclaimed: There is only one God, resembling mortals neither in his aspect nor in his thoughts. Plato conceived of the godhead he called it the Good as the source of all knowledge. Not only is the knowable known in the light of the godhead; it also derives its being from the godhead which excels being both in rank and power.

           The Greek philosophers understood that the many gods were decreed merely by custom, whereas in nature there was only one God; that God is not seen with our eyes, that he resembles no one and can be recognized in no image. God is conceived as cosmic reason or cosmic law, or as fate and providence, or as demiurge. But this God of the Greek thinkers is a God originating in thought, not the living God of Jeremiah. In essence  the  two  coincide.  From  this  twofold  root  Western  theology  and  philosophy  have,  in  infinite modulations, reflected that God is and pondered on what He is. The philosophers of our day seem to evade the question of whether God exists. They do not say that He exists nor do they deny His existence. But anyone engaging in philosophical thought must answer for his opinions. If a philosopher doubts, he must say why, else he cannot progress beyond the sceptical philosophy which asserts nothing at all, which affirms nothing and denies nothing. Or, limiting himself to determinate object knowledge, that is to scientific cognition, he ceases to philosophize, saying: It is best not to talk of what we do not know. The question of God is discussed on the basis of conflicting propositions which we shall examine. The theological proposition is: We can know of God only because He revealed Himself to certain men from the prophets to Jesus. Without revelation God can have no reality for man. God is accessible not through thought but through faith and obedience. But long before and far outside the world of biblical revelation there was certainty as to the reality of the godhead. And within the world of the Christian West many men have derived certainty of God without the guarantee of revelation. 

         There is an old philosophical proposition opposed to this theological doctrine: We know of God because His existence can be proved. The proofs for the existence of God form an impressive document. But if the proofs for the existence of God are construed as scientifically compelling proofs such as we find in mathematics or the empirical sciences, they are false. In this light Kant radically confuted them. Then came the reverse proposition: Since all proofs of the existence of God can be refuted, there is no God. This inference is false. For the nonexistence of God can be proved no more than his existence. The proofs and their confutations show us only that a proved God would be no God but merely a thing in the world. The truth, as against all supposed proofs and refutations of the existence of God, seems to be this: The so-called proofs of the existence of God are fundamentally no proofs at all, but methods of achieving certainty through thought. All the proofs of the existence of God and their variants that have been devised through the centuries differ essentially from scientific proofs. They are attempts to express the experience of man's ascent to God in terms of thought. There are roads of thought by which we come to limits at which the consciousness of God suddenly becomes a natural presence. Let us consider a few examples: The oldest of proofs is the cosmological proof. From the existence of the cosmos (the Greek name for universe) we infer that God exists; from the world process, in which everything is effect, we infer a last cause; from motion the source of all motion; from the accident of the particular the necessity of the whole. If by this syllogism we mean to infer the existence of one thing from the existence of another thing, as we do for example in inferring from the existence of the side of the moon which faces us the existence of the other side which we never see, it is inapplicable. In this manner we can only infer the existence of things in the world from the existence of other things. 

           The world as a whole is not an object, because we are always in it and we never confront the world as a whole. Hence we cannot, from the existence of the world as a whole, infer the existence of something other than the world. But  this  notion  takes  on  a  new  meaning  when  it  is  no  longer  regarded  as  a  proof.  Then metaphorically, in the form of an inference, it expresses awareness of the mystery inherent in the existence of the the  world  and  of ourselves  in  it.  If  we venture  the  thought  that  there  might  be  nothing,  and  ask  with Schelling: Why is there something and not nothing? we find that our certainty of existence is such that though we cannot determine the reason for it we are led by it to the Comprehensive, which by this very essence is and cannot not be, and through which everything else is. True, men have looked on the world as eternal and said that it existed out of itself and hence was identical with God. But this is not possible: Everything  in  the  world  which  is  beautiful,  appropriate,  ordered,  and  embodies  a  certain perfection, the vast abundance of things that fill us with emotion in our immediate contemplation of nature, all this cannot be apprehended through any fully knowable worldly thing, through matter, for example. The design  of organic life, the beauty of nature in all its forms, the order of the universe in general become increasingly mysterious as our knowledge advances. But if from all this we infer that God, the benevolent creator, exists, we must call to mind all that is ugly, disordered, base in the world. And this gives rise to fundamental attitudes for which the world is alien, frightening, terrible, and it seems as plausible to infer the existence of the devil as of God. The mystery of transcendence is not thereby solved but merely grows deeper. 

        But what clinches the matter is the imperfectibility of the world. The world is not finished, but in continuous change; our knowledge of the world cannot be completed, the world cannot be apprehended through itself. Far from proving the existence of God, these so-called proofs mislead us into placing God within the

real world, or second cosmos, which is as it were ascertained at the limits of the cosmos. Thus they obscure the idea of God.  But  they  move  us  deeply  when,  leading  through  the  concrete  phenomena  of  the  cosmos,  they confront Nothingness and imperfectibility. For then they seem to admonish us not to content ourselves with the world as the sole meaning of our life in the world. Again and again it is brought home to us that God is not an object of knowledge, of compelling evidence. He cannot be experienced by the senses. He is invisible, He cannot be seen but only believed in. But whence comes this faith? Its source is not in the limits of worldly experience but in the freedom of man. The man who attains true awareness of his freedom gains certainty of God. Freedom and God are inseparable. Why? This I know: in my freedom I am not through myself, but am given to myself, for I can fail myself and I cannot force my freedom. Where I am authentically myself, I am certain that I am not through myself. The highest  freedom  is  experienced  in  freedom  from  the  world,  and  this  freedom  is  a  profound  bond  with transcendence. We also call man's freedom his existence. My certainty of God has the force of my existence. I can have certainty of Him not as a content of science but as presence for existence. If  certainty  of  freedom  encompasses  certainty  of  God's  existence,  there  must  be  a  connection between the negation of freedom and the negation of God. If I do not experience the miracle of selfhood, I need no relation to God, I am content with the empirical existence of nature, many gods, demons.

               There is, on the other hand, a connection between the belief that there can be freedom without God and the deification of man. This is an illusory, arbitrary freedom, in which man's will is taken to be absolute and independent. I rely in the force of my will and in a defiant acceptance of death. But this delusion that I am

through myself alone turns freedom into perplexity and emptiness. A savage drive for self-assertion turns to a despair, in which Kierkegaard's ''desperate will to be oneself" and "desperate will not to be oneself" become one. God exists for me in the degree to which I in freedom authentically become myself.  But the illumination of our existence as freedom does not prove the existence of God; it merely points, one might say, to the area in which certainty of his existence is possible.  The  thought  that  strives  for  compelling  certainty  cannot  realize  its  aim  in  any  proof  of  God's existence. But the failure of thought does not result in nothingness. It points to that which resolves into an inexhaustible, forever-questioning, Comprehensive consciousness of God.  God never becomes a tangible object in the world and this means that man must not abandon his freedom to the tangibilities, authorities, powers of the world; that he bears responsibility for himself, and must not evade this responsibility by renouncing freedom ostensibly for the sake of freedom. He must owe his  decision  and  the  road  he  chooses  to  himself.  

           Kant  has  said  that  God's  unfathomable  wisdom  is  as admirable in what it gives us as in what it denies us. For if God's wisdom in its majesty were always before our eyes, if it were an absolute authority, speaking unequivocally in the world, we should be puppets of its will. But God in his wisdom wanted us to be free.  Instead  of  the  knowledge  of  God,  which  is  unattainable,  we  gain  through  philosophy  a Comprehensive consciousness of God.  "God is." The essential in this proposition is the reality to which it points. We do not encompass this reality  in  thinking  the  proposition;  merely  to  think  it  leaves  us  empty.  For  it  means  nothing  to  the understanding  and  to  sensory  experience.  We  apprehend  its  meaning  only  as  we  transcend,  as  we  pass beyond the world of objects and through it discover authentic reality. Hence the climax and goal of our life is
the point at which we ascertain authentic reality, that is, God.  This reality is accessible to existence through the orientation toward God that lies at its source.
Hence faith in God, springing as it does from the source, resists any mediation. This faith is not laid down in any definite articles of faith applicable to all men or in any historical reality which mediates between man and God and is the same for all men. The individual, always in his own historicity, stands rather in an immediate, independent relation to God that requires no intermediary. 

         This historicity, which can be communicated and described, is in this form not absolute truth for all, and yet in its source it is absolutely true. God is reality, absolute, and cannot be encompassed by any of the historical manifestations through which He speaks to men. If He is, man as an individual must be able to apprehend Him directly. The reality of God and the immediacy of our historical relation to God exclude any universally compelling knowledge of God; therefore what matters is not our knowledge of God but our attitude towards God. From time immemorial God has been conceived in empirical forms, including a personification after the image of man. And yet every such conception is at the same time in the nature of a veil. God is not what we may see with our eyes.  Our true attitude toward God has found its profoundest expression in a few biblical injunctions: 

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or likeness. This meant, to begin with, that because God is invisible man must not worship Him in statues, idols, effigies. Gaining in depth, this tangible prohibition developed into the idea that God is not only invisible but also inconceivable, unthinkable. No symbol or metaphor can describe Him and none may take His place. All metaphorical representations of God without exception are myths, meaningful as such when understood to be mere hints and parallels, but they become superstitions when mistaken for the reality of God Himself.  Since every image conceals as much as it discloses, we come closest to God in the negation of images. But even in the Bible this Old Testament commandment was not fulfilled: the image of God's personality remained, His wrath and His love, His justice and His mercy. It is a commandment that cannot be fulfilled. Parmenides  and  Plato,  with  their  speculative  doctrines  of  being,  the  Indian  Brahman  philosophers,  the Chinese  Taoists  attempted  to  apprehend  without  images  the  Suprapersonal,  pure,  intangible  reality  of God but in this they did not succeed. Human thought and human vision cannot dispense with the image. And though in philosophical thinking sensation and object almost vanished, perhaps ultimately some wisp of God's presence remains, with power to engender life. Then, even after philosophy has rationally elucidated the deification of nature, the purely demonic, the aesthetic and superstitious, the specifically numinous, the deepest mystery is still not expelled. Perhaps we can give some paraphrase of this presence of God at the end of philosophical endeavour. It is the silence in the face of being. Speech ceases in the presence of that which is lost to us when it becomes object. This ultimate can be attained only in the transcending of all thought. It cannot itself be transcended. Before it lies contentment with one's lot and the extinction of all desire. Here is a haven and yet no fixed home. Here is a repose that can sustain us amid the inevitable unrest of our wanderings in the world. Here  thought  must  dissolve  into  radiance.  Where  there  is  no  further  question,  there  is  also  no answer. In the philosophical transcending of question and answer we arrive at the limit, at the stillness of being. Another biblical injunction runs: 

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. At first this commandment implied a rejection of alien gods. Gaining in depth, it became a simple and unfathomable idea: there is only one God. The life of the man who believes in the one and only God rests on a foundation entirely different from that of a life with many gods. Concentration on the One gives to the decision of existence its real foundation. Infinite wealth implies diffusion; God's glory is not absolute unless it is grounded in the One. The quest for the One as the foundation of his life is an  enduring problem for man, as actual as it was thousands of years ago.

          A third biblical saying:  Thy will be done. This fundamental attitude toward God means: Bow down before that which defies understanding, confident that it is situated above and not below the understandable. "Thy thoughts are not our thoughts, thy ways are not our ways." Trust in this basic attitude makes possible an all-encompassing sense of thankfulness, a wordless, impersonal love. Man stands  before the  godhead  as  the hidden  God  and  can  accept  what  is  most  terrible  as  His decision, fully aware that in whatever finite form he expresses this God it is spoken in human terms and hence false. 

           To sum up: Our attitude toward the godhead is defined by the commandments "No image and no likeness," "No other god," and by the attitude of acceptance expressed in the words ''Thy will be done." Reflection on God clarifies our faith. But to believe is not to see. God remains in the distance and remains question.   To live by God does not mean to base oneself on calculable knowledge but to live as though we staked our existence on the assumption that God is. To believe in God means to live by something which is not in the world, except in the polyvalent language of phenomena, which we call the hieroglyphs or symbols of transcendence. The God of faith is the distant God, the hidden God, the indemonstrable God. Hence I must recognize not only that I do not know  God but even that I do not know whether I believe. Faith is no possession. It confers no secure knowledge, but it gives certainty in the practice of life. Thus the believer lives in the enduring ambiguity of the objective, in enduring willingness to hear. He listens patiently and yet he is unswerving in his resolve. In the cloak of weakness he is strong, he is open, though in his real life he is resolute.

             Reflection  on  God  is  typical  of  all  significant  philosophical  thought:  it  does  not  bring  secure knowledge, but to authentic self-hood it gives a free area for decision; the whole emphasis is on love in the world, on the reading of the symbols of transcendence, on the depth and breadth of that which is illumined by reason.  That is why all philosophical discourse is so incomplete. It calls for completion out of the being of him who hears it.  Philosophy does not give, it can only awaken. it can remind, and help to secure and preserve.  In it each of us understands what he actually knew before.

Translated by D.W. Ross