The idea of philosophy

pp. 1-21

in: Helmut Dahm, Vladimir Solovyev and Max Scheler: attempt at a comparative interpretation, Berlin, Springer, 1975

Abstract

The duality of human life and consciousness is the actual ground* of all reflection and philosophy. Man finds in himself the feeling of inner freedom and the fact of external necessity. He is firmly convinced that the ground of his being (Sein) and life lies in himself. Still at the same time he is clearly conscious that this ground is independent of him, that man is determined by something else which is external to him. This fundamental absurdity, this radical contradiction evokes in a thinking being the greatest wonder. It is just this wonder, not the amazement about some facts of external nature, which constitutes that chiefly philosophical feeling, mála philosophikòn páthos, which is the start of every philosophy: "Dià gár tò thaumàcesthai hoi ánthrōpoi kaì nyn kaì tò prōton aérxanto philosophēin. " [For it is owing to their wonder that men both now and at first began to philosophize.]