THE CHALLENGE TO THE TRADITIONAL IDEAL OF SCIENCE 463 



with idealism, is regarded as hollow abstractism; and philoso- 

 phy is centered on man, being given the name and character of 

 humanism. What draws the attention of these philosophers in 

 man is not the relatively clear life of reason, but the irrational, 

 subconscious, instinctive and primitive life, the lived experience 

 of man as he actually is situated in a universe that appears to 

 be brutal and incoherent. The highest form of philosophy, 

 metaphysics, is not to be thought of as an objective and im- 

 personal investigation into the nature of being as such, but as 

 an intimate and personal reflection welling up from the depths 

 of one's individual experience, in the face of one's real situation 

 in the world, about such problems as death, freedom, responsi- 

 bility, and such states as dread and failure. 



Generally speaking, philosophers today seem to be pre- 

 occupied with the pre-rational, the pre-conscious, the ante- 

 predicative aspects of immediate experience. Principles hitherto 

 regarded as self-evident are no longer conceded to be such; 

 reason cannot be assumed to be self-transparent, for thought 

 is not pure, abstract, self-sufficient, but conditioned by the 

 human structure and by lived experience. One must note, how- 

 ever, that the pre-rational is not the same as the irrational, the 

 world of blind emotion and ignorance. It is the Lebenswelt, 

 that which is lived before all reflection; it is not opposed to 

 reflection, but is its source and foundation. It comprises the 

 whole man, his affectivity and impressions as well as his 

 thought, his stored-up experiences and instinctive drives; for 

 this is the pre-rational soil of all mental growth. Philosophy 

 today reduces thought to this domain; psychoanalysis reduces 

 activity to it; and much of the art of today traces its inspira- 

 tion to it, and seeks to express it. In effect, we witness the 

 general discredit of rationalism, the questioning of all received 

 norms, the challenging of all received traditions, and the object- 

 ing to all that purports to be self-evident. 



Modern man seems to be in search of a new type of philoso- 

 phy, which will be essentially a humanism, with a new object: 

 the individual, in his actual life, in its pre-rational roots; with 

 new powers: the whole soul of man, with all its powers as 



