[265] AWARE OF HIS FINITUDE^a. Now EVERYTHING is finite, everything in time and space is finite. BUt [sic.] not everything is aware of its finitude. Man is aware that he IS finite. We can, so to speak, describe man as that being which is aware of his finitude. But how CAN one be aware of one's finitude only by being BEYOND it? You cannot be aware of that with which you are identical. Awareness always presupposes some presupposition, some element of subject-object separation. You can be aware of yourselves only because you are in the process of self-consciousness, separated from yourselves, although united with yourselves. When I ask how can man be aware of his finitude^b, then my answer is: because he is aware of his potential infinity. But now the next step comes. This potential infinity^c, which we experience, has at the same time the character of nonactualized potentiality, or, expressed even sharper, it is an infinity to which we belong and from which we are excluded. Now let me make this clear by a word to which I always draw my attention---the word "the mortals." It is very interesting that in [the] Homeric ^dwritings and later on in the classic tragedy, the Greek uses not the word anthropoi, which means "men," but it uses the word "the mortals." Why? What does that mean? EVERY living being is mortal. Why are MEN the mortals, and not animals or plants, which are certainly also mortal? Because for man it is something which draws the attention: there is something about his being mortal which is