Facs
Transcript
is the general presupposition of this whole year of lectures – often tried to rule culture 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. Against this, therefore, the other side has always arisen, often very much underground, if the heteronomy of 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 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 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, 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, especially modern history, has repeated this individual scheme in a complete way. The fight between the churches and modern autonomous culture is going on, even in the Middle Ages, 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 faculties and the other faculties, reflect this fundamental problem of human existence.
Autonomy, if it is left alone, becomes empty because it has lost the depth-dimension, or the