Lecture XIIb (Nr. 0137)
Facs
Transcript
[134] of feeling responsibility, guilt, hope, ecstasy, ultimate concern. And there is no materialistic theory which can prove to us that we cannot have this--so we simply have it! And if somebody nevertheless tries to do it, then we can tell him, "Now listen, you want to tell us the truth, with your materialistic interpretation of man. What is truth?" And in this moment, if he really understands the meaning of this question--"a is the result of deliberation and decision, of the b of research and the freedom of error"-- now this lies in a dimension which has nothing to do, although it may be based on, the movement of atoms and electrons. I don't deny that it is based on them, that without them it doesn’t exist. But the interesting thing is that these movements of electrons--or formerly atoms, in the primitive materialistic period--that these have the possibility of producing the atomistic theory and the materialistic philosophy. No materialist ever has explained how c can produce a materialistic theory, how matter and its movement can produce this. Or he must do something which, today, d does--that is a very interesting movement, which shows how right we are here, in these discussions. The naturalists explained everything away. Now they have seen this is an impossible state because they would explain away themselves and their theory... So they say: What we mean by nature is that it includes the aesthetic function of man, the possibility of creating works of art and even, if you want, they hesitatingly admit something like "religious experience." All this is nature. All right! Let us call all this "nature" instead of "universe," "totality," or "reality"--I don’t mind. But in the moment in which e has ceased to be reductionist--reducing everything to one level of reality--it has seen the impossibility in itself to refute things like what we called ultimate concern.