"The greater part of present-day object knowledges has, in fact, freed itself from any relation to a self and confronts our consciousness in that extracted matter-of-factness from which no path is any longer bent “back” to a subjectivity. Nowhere does an ego experience it-“self” in modern scientific knowledge. Where this ego still bends over itself, with its obvious tendency to a worldless inwardness, it leaves reality behind. Thus, for present-day thinking, inwardness and outwardness, subjectivity and things, have been split into “alien worlds”; at the same time, the classical premise of philosophizing falls away. “Know thyself” has long since been understood by modern people as an invitation to an ego trip for an escapist ignorance. Modern reflection expressly renounces any competency in embedding subjectivities without rupture into objective worlds. What it uncovers is rather the gulf between both."
Modernity

January 1, 1970

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Original Language: English