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Tillich Lectures

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[86] immediately--but I don't follow this immediacy now in this moment--to the limits of scientific analysis. Scientific analysis is analysis by that kind of abstraction which can be verified technically. But it never goes beyond this. And about this we must think later on. Second: The relationship of a and the arts. The first point I want to make here is the intrinsic duty of the perfect b. "Intrinsic"-- c called this εντελεχεια, "entelechy," the inner aim. And d has used this idea of the inner aim--I would prefer the Greek word τελος, the inner telos of a thing-- in order to compare organic structures, aesthetic structures, and machine structures. In all of them there is an inner form which is at the same time the form of beauty. e, in this sense, is the adequacy of the special part to the inner life of a thing. In this sense we can say: the perfect machine doesn't only serve its end--that, she also does--but it also shows the beauty of the inner purposefulness it has. Therefore a machine shouldn’t be trimmed with assumedly beautiful additions--this makes it ugly, because it prevents us from seeing the inner meaning of its structure. This is the one side. The other side is the unity of f and tool. Now this is a very interesting philosophical problem and has, for instance, religious speaking, immediate consequences for the problem of church buildings. In the primitive magic relationship to the tool, we have a kind of identity between the religious and the technical. The tool can become a fetish. It can be laden with magic power, and therefore formed in such a way that the magic power is expressed in the form it gets. This is possible because the primitive tool is in a vital relationship to man. But this identity of the religious, the artistic and the technical, disappeared because of the machine-production of tools and ends. But there are two realms to which I want to draw your attention, from a religious point of view, in which there is still a fight going on between the possibility of their becoming in the image of a machine, or in the image of a magic tool. These two are "clothing" and "home." Both are in a great analogy. Clothing and home adapt the human body to the realities of the external world--clothes, more directly and intimately; the house, farther away, but also so that it creates

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aTechnology
bMachine
cAristoteles
dKant, Immanuel
eBeauty
fArt

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TL-0089.pdf