Facs
Transcript
means that the world-as-it-is is good, and that there is no demonic power beside the one all-embracing and all-producing power, which is called Yahweh, the God of Israel, in the Old Testament; and that this idea has consequences today in every philosophical discussion. This weekend I was in Washington and had to give several lectures, two of them under the title “Psychoanalysis and Religion” and “Existentialism and Psychoanalysis.” These two lectures continuously came to a point which later on came out very clearly in the discussion, that the fundamental decision about existentialism is a decision about the Christian doctrine of creation, whether the world is distorted in its not only existential nature (which also is the Christian doctrine), but also that it is distorted in its very nature, or in its essential nature also—which then is nothing else than its existential nature.
Now this was the real point of discussion: Is the world, in its essential structure, evil? Or is the world, in its essential structure, good? Is d right when he says “Being as being is good” (Esse qua esse bonum est), or is e the existentialist right when he says that “man's essence is his existence,” there is nothing except his existence; and what he calls his essence is only a reflection of his existence?—This was the point of discussion. And this is the point in which the problem of creation becomes actual for every present-day philosophical discussion insofar as it transcends the realm of mere logic. I am very glad for this experience I had this weekend, that this came out so clearly in the preparation of these lectures and later in the reaction to them.
Now this dogma—if you call it a dogma—or this fundamental attitude towards reality