Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Seinsvergessenheit; Bruch zwischen dem Sein der Welt und dem Sein des Menschen

Kurzinhalt: The forgetfulness of Being consists precisely in the misperception that the center of our world is not the same as the

Textausschnitt: 71a There can be no doubt that human judgment has been installed at the center. The forgetfulness of Being consists precisely in the misperception that the center of our world is not the same as the center of the world. That amnesia, as we have seen in the ideological movements, was capable of giving rise to the most grandiose schemes of self-perfection. Fueled by the outbreak of revolt against God, the nineteenth-century messiahs and their epigones sought to assume the role themselves of creating the world anew. Despite their Promethean will, reality itself has eventually exhausted their drive to master it. At the end of the age of ideological militancy, we are left with the more moderate (and therefore more enduring) expressions of the modern spirit. It is not the ideological revolutionaries that shape our world, but the more rational and more pervasive voices of technological science and individual rights. Apocalyptic dimensions are not for that reason irrelevant. They bring the theoretical character of modernity into focus with unparalleled power and thereby make plain the depth of reorientation required of our world. However, they do not touch the constructive achievements of the modern spirit or do so only indirectly. The revolutionary convulsions of our age have been a powerful expression of the spirit of destruction and a lesson we cannot forget. The task of reconstruction, however, demands another spirit, and this is still best found in the dimensions of modernity that held themselves apart from the ideological madness. (Fs)