Facs
Transcript
worth[y] of asking a question. And therefore the Greeks gave this name to man. But why is it astonishing that man is mortal? Because man knows about immortality – or the immortal (“immortality” is a bad word). And the Greeks knew about it: they called the gods “the immortals,” i.e., their own potential immortality they put symbolically into the figures of their gods; they were aware – and this is the interesting meaning of these two names, “the mortals” and “the Immortals” – of their potential immortality from which they were excluded and which they put into the figures of their gods. They must have known something about immortality – this word must have a meaning, otherwise they could not have called the gods “immortal.” And man is that being which is aware of his mortality, his finitude, because he participates potentially in the infinite from which at the same time he is excluded.
Next time I will speak about existentialism, psychoanalysis, and the healing problems, as the last and perhaps the most important step of man's “return” to himself.