Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Phenomenolgy and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism

Titel: Phenomenolgy and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism

Stichwort: Existentialismus (Jaspers, Heidegger, Satre, Marcel); allgemeine Bestimmung; Was ist der Mensch (Kierkegaard); der Mensch als Ergebnis seiner Entscheidung

Kurzinhalt: 'Being a man' in that sense results from a decision. It is consequent to the use of one's freedom. It is something we have to be. It makes one the sort of a man one is, and it involves risks.

Textausschnitt: 3 'Being a Man'1

221b A fundamental feature found among all these writers is that they are concerned with what it is to be a man, not in the sense of having a birth certificate but in a simple sense that is obvious to everyone and that has no technical backing of any kind. Last fall, when questioned during the Egyptian crisis, President Eisenhower - I think it was at a press conference - was asked by someone if it wasn't risky sending a fleet or making some other move in the Mediterranean, and he answered very briefly, 'We have to be men.'2 'Being a man' in that sense provides a very brief clue to what the existentialists are concerned with. 'Being a man' in that sense results from a decision. It is consequent to the use of one's freedom. It is something we have to be. It makes one the sort of a man one is, and it involves risks. (In the present instance, the risk of nuclear warfare was in the back of the mind of the journalist asking the question.) (Fs)

222a Now that simple notion of being a man as something that one has to be and that one is not necessarily, that comes about freely and makes one what one is, is perhaps an extremely complicated notion when one gets to analyzing one's ethical foundations, but it is a notion that anyone can grasp, and it is common to existentialists generally. It is a laicization of Kierkegaard's 'being a Christian.' Kierkegaard wanted to know whether he was a Christian. And he proposed to himself the answer, 'Well, after all, I'm a Dane, and everybody in Denmark automatically is a member of the Lutheran Church of Denmark as by law established. So what is this nonsense of asking me whether I'm a Christian?' Then he showed that the question had a deeper meaning. A similar question can be asked about 'being a man.' (Fs)