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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
The question whether western civilization as a whole constitutes a structured and coherent unit poses insoluble problems for any pure historiography. It is, however, a real problem for history, and in our day and age when this civilization is constantly in contact with the civilization of other continents, this question becomes daily more important. In what does the essential structure of the European universe reside? What, in relation to oriental civilization, are its specific characteristics? By producing an insurmountable disproportion between this problem, produced by history, and empirical historiography, this question leads necessarily to a philosophy of history.
1 R. Aron, "Unité et pluralité des civilisations," in L'Histoire et ses interpré tations (Colloquium of Cérisy-la-Salle 1958), p. 44.
2 We shall explain ourselves more fully with regard to this in the particular case of religion. On the other hand we draw the reader's attention to the fact that this approach to a total comprehension of western civilization is made in successive stages, the consequent one always giving rise to a correction of the preceding.
3 As Bergson remarks with reference to metaphysics: "They will depend on the theory of knowledge, as knowledge will have to depend on metaphysics" (Creative Evolution).
4 Bergson, Creative Evolution.
5 Nietzsche, Will to Power.
6 Descartes, Lettre à l'abbé Claude Picot (Preface to the Principes de la Philosophie). The image proposed by Descartes underlines on the one hand that the mathematical character of physics comes from metaphysics and on the other that all sciences are essentially linked, knowledge as a whole being called "philosophy."
7 We have developed this as well as the following point in "Horizon élargi de la philosophie de l'art," Revue de l'université de Bruxelles (1966-1967), 19, No. 1-2, pp. 88-115. In addition we permit ourselves to make mention here of a work entitled L'Art et la dialectique du sensible, which will be published in the near future and which deals with this theme.
8 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1, 1013 a.
9 The Genealogy of Morals trans. by Henri Albert, p. 265. The same text figu res in the paragraph entitled "En quoi nous sommes, nous aussi, encore pieux" of Le Gai Savoir trans. by Vialatte, p. 286-289, which H. Birault has penetratingly commented on in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (1962), 67, pp. 25-64.
10 The expression belongs to P. Ricœur who uses it frequently in his recent work De l'Interprétation. Essai sur Freud. Paris, 1965.
11 Op. cit., p. 454.
12 Heidegger, Die Frage nach der Technik, Vorträge und Aufsätze, Pfullingen, 1954, pp. 13-44.
13 Essais et Conférences, p. 26, note.
14 We may note in passing a notable attempt to conceive the divine without God in the thought of Jean Nabert. By the simple slant of a reflective philosophy, Nabert defines the divine as the desire of consciousness to be its own equal: "The desire for God is the desire for what would effectively answer the demands of consciousness inscribed in its structure." (Le Désir de Dieu, Paris 1966, p. 23) (Posthumous).
15 F. Châtelet, Platon, Paris, 1965, p. 245.
16 With regard to "Christianism" (Christentum) and "Christianity," Heidegger observes in the Holzwege, pp. 202-203: "Christianism is for Nietzsche the histor ical, secular and political manifestation of the Church and of its appetite for power, in the frame of the formation of western mankind and modern civilization Christianism in this sense and the Christian life of the evangelical faith are not the same thing. A non-Christian life can easily adhere to Christianism and use it as a factor of power, the same as, inversely, a Christian life does not necessarily need Christianism. This is why a basic discussion on Christianism is in no way, nor absolutely, a struggle against what is Christian, no more than a criticism of theology is at the same time a criticism of the faith that theology is supposed to interpret."
17 Heidegger, Holzwege, p. 218.
18 Ibid.
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