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HEGEL'S philosophy of freedom and Comte's philosophy of progress have one trait in common, in spite of the basic differences in their starting points. Although Hegel's panlogistic dialectics and Comte's sociological scientism present various levels and antagonistic tendencies of philosophical thought, they share the same indifference concerning the philosophical and structural problems of human existence. While Kant was aware that the basic questions of philosophy referred to the fundamental elements of human life, these new synthetical systems of the historicity of the race did not care about the character and the nature of the human being. They helped to bring to the fore that tendency in thought which was described as the autonomous movement of a universal principle of determination, spiritual or naturalistic, in the process and as the meaning of history. In these philosophical and sociological systems man is only the tool and the actor (the Roman persona in the literal sense) in the self-realization of a universal principle, inherent in the process of society. Thus, human action and attitudes are predetermined by the principles that represent die pseudo-religious meaning of the historical development. So far as this is true, human personality, as centered around the actuality of freedom, spontaneity, responsibility, no longer exists. The hybris of Hegel and Comte to make die dynamic institutions "concrete universals" and to suppress the concreteness of individuals is one symptom of the human situation in the modern world. Slowly developing since the sixteenth century, this situation is completely realized in these philosophical systems that proclaim the immanence of life, the reality of a universal principle of determination and the weakness and frailty of the human personality. This trend of thinking got supremacy in philosophical and scientific modes of investigation, in particular in the powerful stratification of positivist and of empiricist methods in the social sciences. The discovery of Historicism and of Sociologism is the logical result of this basic position. It expresses correctly the stage of consciousness in which man realizes the demonry of the world of institutions which, although his very own achievement, is becoming emancipated from man and developing autonomously like the forces of nature.

Contents include:ForewordEditor's PrefaceIntroduction by the EditorPrefaceIntroductionBOOK ONE: The Objective Problem Concerning the Truth of ChristianityIntroductory RemarksChapter I: The Historical Point of View 1. The Holy Scriptures 2. The Church 3. The Proof of the Centuries for the Truth of ChristianityChapter II: The Speculative Point of ViewBOOK TWO: The Subjective Problem, The Relation of the Subject to the Truth of Christianity, The Problem of Becoming a ChristianPART ONE: Something About LessingChapter I: An Expression of GratitudeChapter II: Theses Possibly or Actually Attributable to Lessing 1. The subjective existing thinker has regard to the dialectics of the process of communication 2. The existing subjective thinker is in his existential relation to the truth as negative as he is positive; he has a much humor as he has essential pathos; and he is constantly in process of becoming, i.e. he is always striving 3. Lessing has said that accidental historical truths can never serve as proofs for eternal truths of the reason; and that the transition by which it is proposed to base an eternal truth upon historical testimony is a leap 4. Lessing has said that, if God held all truth in His right hand, and in His left the lifelong pursuit of it, he would choose the left hand A. A logical system is possible B. An existential system is possiblePART TWO: How the Subjectivity of the Individual Must be Qualified in Order that the Problem May Exist for HimChapter I: The Task of Becoming Subjective. The conclusion that would be forced upon ethics if the attainment of subjectivity were not the highest task confronting a human being—Considerations left out of account in connection with the closer understanding of this—Examples of thinking directed towards becoming subjectiveChapter II: The Subjective Truth, Inwardness; Truth is Subjectivity Appendix. A Glance at the Contemporary Effort in Danish LiteratureChapter III: Real or Ethical Subjectivity—The Subjective Thinker 1. Existence and Reality 2. Possibility as higher than Reality—Reality as higher than Possibility—Poetic and Intellectual Ideality—Ethical Ideality 3. The Simultaneity of the Individual Factors of Subjectivity in the Existing Subject—The Constrast between this Simultaneity and the Speculative Process 4. The Subjective Thinker—his Task, his Form, his StyleChapter IV: The Problem of the Fragments: How can an Eternal Happiness be based upon Historical Knowledge?Section I. For Orien ...