[390]

but it's not impossible. And this is something quite different from a special style^a. There is great art in naturalistic^b styles as much as in expressionistic styles, in pictures of religious content and of non-religious contents. So the problem of greatness lies on a quite different level, namely that of aesthetic valuation, from the level of the style and its expressive power.^c LECTURE: I discussed the situation in which we have to discuss religion and culture, because we found that art^d has a tremendously expressive ability. It so to speak reveals, more than any other expression, including philosophy^e, the situation in which a period finds itself. We described this period, its character, and we must now continue and discuss two points which are still left in this analysis of our period. The first is: what happened to religion in this period? The second: which kind of resistance against this situation arose and formed a part of the whole situation? Let’s take the first question: religion in this situation. The situation was described as

man in danger of becoming an object in the world of objects created by himself--this was the general characteristic. We considered this from different points of view. We called it, with some critics, dehumanization, because man loses that which makes him man, his finite freedom^f, his existence as a deciding person, as an incomparable individual^g of infinite value; he becomes a means himself, instead of an end of all that he creates as means. This situation was the general character. We also found that this situation creates something I like to call patternization^h, namely being subjected to a pattern. Not conformismⁱ