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When you are in a state of anxiety – let us say about an examination – you can say “Now alright, what can happen?” ... and if you face, exactly in terms of a content, what the anxiety might be occasioned by, and can find it, then you can say, “Alright, I can stand that!” But anxiety is anxiety of not being able to resist nonbeing. And that is also a very fine analysis given by modern psychologists and neurologists: fear is the fear not of something, but fear is the fear of falling into anxiety. And if we are able to develop this courage to fight the occasioning cause, then we are beyond this moment of anxiety, but we can never get rid of anxiety as such, because of our finitude.

And in man the anxiety is not only caused by his knowledge of his having to die, but also by guilt consciousness and by the question of the meaning of life. These forms of anxiety are added to the anxiety of all creature[liness].

Now if we understand this, then we understand that depth psychology, in unity with existentialism, have given us really the return of Odysseus^f to his homeland, to a certain extent. There are still the dangers of the Odyssey, and we don't know how far we will go, but we have at least taken one step toward the self-interpretation of man.

Now in the semester starting in February, I want to go into the problems of the expression of the human situation, as I just have described it, in the visual and partly in the other arts, and then go the social surroundings and implications of this human situation, and the relationship of religion to the legal, ethical, social and political problems. Now I wish you a good New Year ! [end of semester]