[600] is the general presupposition of this whole year of lectures--often tried to rule culture^a in a heteronomous way, namely by ecclesiastical laws coming from outside and justified in the name of a divine revelation. This is against the structure of man and his predicament^b. Against this, therefore, the other side has always arisen, often very much underground, if the heteronomy ^cof the churches was strong enough to keep it down, sometimes open and victoriously, as in the ancient world and in the modern world. Then autonomy^d has arisen, in all cultural realms, in opposition to heteronomy. And something of this, we all have experienced. When we first started thinking and some laws of authority^e which were not the laws of our OWN being were ruling us, we came into the conflict between autonomy and heteronom [sic.] through which almost every child and adolescent has to go. These conflicts are often terribly hard because the heteronomy is tied up with the highest object of love^f, be it directly divine, be it representing the divine ([such] as parents, or ministers, or friends). And one HAS TO BREAK with them in the moment in which one starts to think autonomously, because the nature of autonomous thinking is the question--questioning everything--the radical doubt. History^g, especially modern history, has repeated this individual ^hscheme in a complete way. The fight between the churches and modern autonomous cultureⁱ is going on, even in the Middle Ages^j, and certainly in the modern time, and has produced martyrs on both sides--whoever was more powerful. Even today, such conflicts (and they are real) between theological^k faculties and the other faculties, reflect this fundamental problem of human existence. Autonomy^l, if it is left alone, becomes empty because it has lost the depth-dimension, or the