Antioch - April 1960 Religion and Culture: Fundamental Concepts 1. The general subject of {all} the two lectures and the discussion is religion and culture. These two words belong to the many who have fallen into the abyss of last words which must be saved before we can use them for anyone's salvation. - This is always necessary: Socrates^c, Aristotle^d, the scholastics, the encyclopedist, the epistemologist of the Kantian school, the semanticists of today. - But always the danger to stick to words, forgetting that {words} in genuine words the power of the subject matter is present. (Hebrew: "dibar" = word and matter grasped in it. Greek: logos = word and rational structure of reality). Therefore dealing with words is never dealing with words alone, but with encounters with reality: The justification of philo - logie, "love of words."

[2] 2. Since Rel. and Cult. are {exp} life-processes, a short consideration of such processes is desirable. ... Life is the {act} process in which being actualizes it- self. That which is potential{,} or has the power to be, uses this power and becomes actual; it gets a here and a now, just as we do when we are born. ... There is one universal process of all life: It oscillates between selfidentification and selfalteration. We want to preserve our identity; but not immovably; we want to go beyond it; and we may lose it (the search for identity; the two reasons for disease). This general process (which is a matter of experience within oneselves) is effective in three main proscesses [sic.]. 3. Selfintegration, selfproduction, selftranscendence of life. Every {life} being from the {stars to} atoms and stars

[3] to the living bodies and the psychological selfs drive towards centeredness in conflict with decentralizing trends. It oscillates between integration and desintegra- tion. - And it drives toward growth in itself {and} or by propagation, against the destructive tendencies inside and outside itself. - And it drives vertically beyond itself towards sublimation in conflict with the tenden- cies towards profanisation. {secularisation} - These processes appear everywhere, but in a special way in the human realm. Here - in contrast to all others we have the dimension of spirit. Man's life {under} in the dimension of spirit, the basis of everything is language: Living in meanings, the unity of life power and meaning. (This is more than mind with its intellectual connotations. Can it be saved?)

[4] 4. The three functions in the dimension of spirit of spirit are Morality, Culture and Religion. The two latter ones are real subject; but the former in itself funda- mental and a problem (as I have been briefed) in your dis- cussions. Therefore a thought, dedicated to it. 5. Morality as the selfactualisation of a centered self, able to look at a world, to ask questions to subject it- self to norms. These norms are not strange commands, but they are our own being put against us. This contents are changing, their validity is unconditional. If one ac- cepts  [...] a moral command as a moral command, one can- not make it dependend on anything. It is unconditional, because in it the ultimate significance of our own being appears to us. (Keep in mind this ultimacy. For this is the religious

[5] element in morality, not religious laws. The divine in the moral act is its unconditional seriousness, not the particular contents. The internal character of the law. - - At the same time its root in the person-to-person encounter. The unconditional limit of the thou for the ego. The se- riousness of the moral imperative appears as the other one, whom I cannot make into an object, use, penetrate etc. This is the principle of justice. 6. This is the backbone of morality, but not its flesh and blood. That is love (its essence: Reunion, its qualities, its criterion: agape). --- Its source: the "third" beyond the ego and thou, in which the "inspite of" of reunion is rooted. "I want justice, but not love" . the emotional misunderstanding of love. But of the right

[S. 6 fehlt]

[7] 8. Now the other concepts. Culture as selfpro- duction of life in receiving and transforming reality. The personal and social realm + the cognitive and aesthetic realm. The four principles under which cul- ture works: Humanity itself, justice itself, the true itself, the expressive itselve [sic.].  The two latter (theoria) tomorrow. The two former already given in their foundation, but not in their cultural actualisation) e.g. the {humanist} personality and its humanity; the justice in family, sex, poli- tics in our period. - Only the indication of between legalism and lawlessness in our concrete relations. - Beyond this the relation of social bodies which belong to another order.

[8] 9. The concept of religion, applied upto now and the traditional concept. a] the relation of the two. The larger concept contained in the smaller. The smaller judged by the larger. b] The larger as ultimate concern or taking something ultimately seriously. This universal and appliable to everything. But not everything is worth it (examples); only that which concerns the ultimate meaning of our existence. c] The significance of the narrower concept. - Fight against profanisation for sublimation. d] Here the conflicts and the quest for theonomy.