bMW 649/50(20)- Religion and Culture 1963, 2

1. Dimension, sector, level. The first concept of re- ligion makes "dimension" possible. 2. The process of secularisation = making covered the dimension of the ultimate. It is expressed in the con- trolling attitude to nature reality including man. The two ways questions, how this is done and for what it is done. a] objectivation [turn page!!] b] forwardism: the lack of an aim. The symbol of space exploration etc. 3. Even this originally religious: Kingdom of God! The dimension depth ??? depth ??? ultimate meaning is covered, which once was also in the horizontal indirectly.

4. The character of objectification: Better than in philosophy expressed in visionary litterature of the type of the "brave new world": Deprivation of the self as a deci- ding center. – The drug – method of totalitarism. (??? manuscript). – The loss of eros both to nature and to work; only analysis and crontrol. – ???-ana- lytic tendencies to determine; the school education to adjustment. – The organisation man

to take with the very old problem, "religion and culture. I do not believe that anything human can be separated from its basis in nature on which it rests. And so I shall give the three basic functions of all life and point to what becomes of them in the realm in which spirit first appears in nature, namely in man. 2. Every life-process includes three elements. 2. Life has the character of going out of itself and re- turning to itself. A living thing moves between selfalteration, becoming something else and selfpreservation, keeping its identity. In both directions it is threatened: It can lose itself in dis- rupting selfaltera going out of itself and never finding its identity again; or it can be afraid of going out and remai- ning in an empty and rigid selfidentity. This can realize in our ethical life, but it is so in all dimensions, the bio- logical as well as the psychological and historical and ???-

gically even in the inorganic realm. 3. I suggest to distinguish three basic life processes in which life actualises its potentialities, that which it has power to be: Selfintegration or centeredness, selfgene- ration or growth, selftranscendence or sublimation. In a diagramm I would signify the first by a circle, the se- cond by a horizontal and the third by a vertical line. (Ref. to the three periods of the history of Western culture; 1.3.2 4. The dimension of life which is based on the often have been called levels or strata. But this metaphor conceals the with-in-each-otherness of all elements of life. (biological, psychological, mental, sociological). Therefore dimensions preferable The multidimensional unity of life." – Each dimension is in every other; but one of them is predominant and constitutes a realm. (the biological is present in the inorganic potentially, in the

psychological and all the following actually.) 5. The dimension of our concern is the spiritual Its destiny and its unavoidability for the doctrine of man (and God). The intellectualistic connotations of mind. Spirit as man's spirit is his life in meanings and can be described as the unity of vital power and valid mea- nings. The three functions of man's a spirit are the sub- ject of our consideration. They are the three functions of life under the dimension of the spirit: Selfintegration with the principle of centeredness is under the dimension of the spirit morality, selfgeneration is culture, selftrans- cendence is religion. They are functions of life as a whole; but only in man they are actualized. 6. We have to deal in all 4 lectures with culture and religions. But neither of the two is possible without morality.

as he demands to be aknowledged by them. In this mutua- lity we have the principle of justice. While this principle is unconditional, the ethical contents are changing, dependent on culture. Ethical relativity is no argument against the unconditional character of the concrete moral demand in which justice is actual in however many ways. Without this imperative no person and no culture or religion. (Ref. to the educational process and the cultural unseriousness) 7. Culture is the selfgeneration of life under the dimension of the spirit