Existentialism and Metaphysics

Author(s): Helmut Kuhn

Source: The Review of Metaphysics , Dec., 1947, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Dec., 1947), pp. 37-60
Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20123095

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 EXISTENTIALISM AND METAPHYSICS

I.

Every negation is the counterpart to an affirmation. A phil

osophy that begins with an emphatic negation, generally clears
the ground for an affirmation. In the movement of thought from
pole to pole affirmation springs from negation through a dialecti
cal rebound.
This observation applies, e.g., to ancient Scepticism. The nega
tion?the thesis of the unattainability of reliable truth?is the
counterpart to the affirmative idea of an art of living practiced
best by one who suspends judgment. It applies equally to Kant.
Metaphysical competency is denied to reason in order to make
room for faith. We find the same dialectic in existentialist phil
osophy. The negation, in this case, is of utmost radicalism and
so is the corresponding affirmation. Hence the movement of
thought from pole to pole is of unparalleled vehemence.
Through an analysis of our cognitive powers Kant arrives at
a denial of the metaphysical competence of reason, and by
"metaphysical competence" is meant the power to understand
reality as a meaningful whole. He does not, however, suggest
that reality lacks meaning or rationality, far from it. Man as a
reasoner, he affirms, is debarred from access to the rational order
of things-in-themselves, and only by recognizing this limitation
of his does he learn as much of reality as is vouchsafed him.
Kierkegaard, the father of existential philosophy, thinks that
Hegel's speculation is nonsense, for it is an attempt to achieve
what man could achieve only if he were God rather than man.
While attacking Hegel, Kierkegaard actually carries Kant's nega
tion one step further. Man's reason does not enable him to under
stand reality as a meaningful whole. On this Kant and Kierkegaard
agree; and by way of explanation we may add that 'meaningful'
signifies here rational in the sense of "including the rationale
of human life," or "providing guidance for human life." But
Kierkegaard goes beyond Kant by drawing a conclusion which,

37

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 38 Helmut Kuhn

it seems, Kant never considered. If reason fails to supply infor

mation on a "rational" reality (rational in the just defined sense
of the word) the idea of a rational reality itself falls to the ground.
By rescinding it we are confronted with Nought and so arrive at
the fundamental concept of existential philosophy. All existential
thought turns on the idea of Nothingness or Nought, and it may
be characterized, therefore, as a form of nihilism?a term used
here for the sake of its descriptive potency. The negative move
with which existentialism starts as a prelude to its affirmation
consists in positing the Nought. Consequently a metaphysics
founded on this basis might be described as a negative ontology
or meontology, in contradistinction to traditional affirmative
ontology.
Speaking of Nought?the substantive noun denoting nega
tion?would be to use an empty word unless it is made clear
what precisely is being denied by this negation. In the present
case the reference to the negated something is clear enough
though it is not always very clearly expressed in the writings of
the existentialist philosophers. The obvious answer is, of course,
to say that Nought is the negation of Being. But this answer,
as Plato has shown in his Parmenides, involves the great difficulty
of maintaining a distinction between the two. The concepts of
Being and Nothing seem to collapse into each other, and by
asserting with Hegel that they dialectially pass into each other
we get a fresh expression of the fact, but the difficulty is still
with us. Since Being is no one particular thing (no "this," in
Aristotle's terminology), nor a particular class of things (no
"such"), it is nothing either in particular or in general. In short,
it is nothing. This being so the difference between ontology and
meontology is reduced to a merely verbal distinction, and
Parmenides affirming that only Being is would be saying in
different words what after him Gorgias maintained with his well
known paradox: "Nothing is."
To escape this absurdity we may place an alternative inter
pretation upon the "obvious" answer to the question after the
meaning of Nought. It is, to be sure, the negation of Being,
but Being we now try to understand as the act of Being, thereby
relating it closely to the multiple totality of actually existing
things. Life has no existence independent of living things. It

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 Existentialism and Metaphysics 39

is "in" whatever is alive, as a mode of actuality distinctive of

the living. Similarly Being might be understood as that actuality
of being things which distinguishes them from non-existing
things, e.g., the real horse in the stable from the fabulous
Pegasus. Life, it is true, defines a class and as a class concept it
involves a generic difference by means of which we distinguish
living things from inanimate things. Evidently no such relationship
obtains between existing and non-existing things, and Being,
therefore, is not a class. Yet it might still be conceived as
analogous to a class. As we accept this as a justifiable answer,
Nought as the negation of Being assumes an assignable meaning
which, vague though it otherwise be, is at any rate safe against
suffering a dialectical sea-change into its own opposite. We
arrive at that meaning of nothing which makes intelligible such
sentences as: "God created the world from nothing," or "why
is there something rather than nothing?" The evanescent Nought
takes on a measure of ontological concreteness.
Being, we affirm, should be understood as the act of Being,
an act performed in various modes and degrees by the totality
of existing things. Let us now add (introducing what might be
called the principle of classical rationalism) the further observa
tion that this Being, in order to become the object of a rational
study, metaphysics, should be conceived of as intelligible or
rational; and again we take this latter term as involving the
idea of meaning, i.e., as defining a goal or purpose for us, for
man as an agent. This enrichment of the concept of Being reflects
on its antithetical partner: Nought must be understood not only
as the void of non-existence but also as the vacuity of meaning
lessness. It may be difficult to separate completely these two
components or polar aspects of the Nought?the void (of exist
ence, of simple "there-ness") and the vacuity (the privation of
meaning), for with their complete separation the first of the
two elements would again collapse and become undistinguishable
from its own opposite, Being. Nonetheless, this bipolarity of
the Nought and the distinction which it involves ought to be
borne in mind. The failure to make that distinction is a cause of
much suggestive obscurity in existentialist writings.
On the basis of these elementary clarifications we obtain the
idea of philosophy (or metaphysics) as confronted with a choice

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40 Helmut Kuhn

between two fundamental and diametrically opposed hypotheses.

The first, which may be called ontological affirmation, becomes
the basis of ontology (the theory of Being); the second, termed
ontological negation, might give rise to meontology (the theory
of Non-Being), provided this second hypothesis is actually
amenable to theoretical development.
The fundamental hypothesis of affirmative ontology posits
Being in the full sense of the word, involving existence actualized
in a meaningful or rational reality. This correlation of Being and
rationality does not, however, imply full intelligibility to us. In
stead it demands a duality of principles of gradation as follows.
In the first place there are degrees of rationality in the sense in
which a living organism reveals a greater wealth of rationality
or meaningful structure than some congeries of inanimate matter,
or in which a drama by Shakespeare is more meaningful a whole
than a dictionary, the history of mankind than a row in a wayside
inn. Every attempt to describe reality as a whole, as, for example,
in terms of evolution or emergent evolution, is based on gradation
of objective rationality. The familiar formula of degrees of
"integration plus diversification" is but an attenuated expression
of the same basic idea.

In the second place, there are degrees of intelligibility to us,

and by no means does this second gradation coincide with the
first one. Our knowledge of the human mind is more limited at
present, and will probably remain so in the future, than our
knowledge, of, say, atomic structures, but it does not follow that
mental operations exhibit less rationality than atomic processes.
Here as in many other cases the order of objective rationality
is inversely related to the order of intelligibity to us. Bearing
this distinction of two types of gradation in mind (and it is
either stated or implied wherever the scheme of affirmative on
tology is grasped) we may try to conceive of a Supreme Being
which is consummate rationality and yet almost entirely unin
telligible to us. The first gradation, so we may express the
situation, derives from rationality by itself, the second from
reason as a human faculty. The first describes an ideal of knowl
edge which we can only approximate, the second a procedure
imposed upon us by our status as men.
The alternative hypothesis of negative ontology (or meont

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 Existentialism and Metaphysics 41

ology) posits non-Being or Nought. To say that nothing is may

seem to involve a contradiction or else to be a meaningless
statement. This difficulty, however, can be avoided or, at any
rate, decreased by understanding the idea of Nought as heavily
weighted in the direction of vacuity (of meaning) rather than
of void (of existence). Furthermore, positing non-Being (or
Nought) can not possibly mean the exclusion of Being: just as
an ontology based on the thesis of Being is inconceivable without
inclusion of non-Being. The two contrasting theses must be
thought of as mutually exclusive and opposed to each other insofar
only as affirmative ontology maintains the primacy of Being
over Nothing, whereas negative ontology reverses this order.
With these qualifications, a measure of meaning accrues to the
meontological hypothesis, odd and useless though it might still
appear.
It will be wise, however, to reserve judgment. The mere fact
that a rival hypothesis, however unattractive, can be opposed
to ontological affirmation; the fact that making this affirmation
involves a choice or option?-this alone is of greatest interest and
reveals something about the nature of metaphysics.The espousal
of affirmative ontology in terms of a choice between alternatives
can be expressed as a choice between principles of causal explana
tion as in Plato's Philebus: "Shall we say that in general and over
this so-called whole there rule the power of the irrational and
random and chance, or on the contrary, that, as our ancestors held,
everything is ordered and governed by reason and some mar
velous wisdom?" (28d). The question recurs in the Sophist,
and here too it is expressed as preliminary to the treatment of
more specific questions: Shall we say that all beings, living and
inanimate, owe their existence to nature, working "through some
mechanical cause devoid of reason, or that they are brought forth
by God with reason and Divine Knowledge?" (265c).
The choice proposed here is between affirmative ontology?
the thesis of Being?and its negative antithesis. The emphasis in
the Platonic questions is on the "principle of rationalism," the
identification of Being and rationality. Accordingly, the anti
thesis to Being, non-Being or Nothing as a metaphysical prin
ciple, is couched in negative terms such as "irrational" ( ?'?oyov
or "without reason" ( o?veu ftiavoia?). Far from being a logical

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 42 Helmut Kuhn

artifice this is a real question, or rather it is THE question of

metaphysics. Acceptance of the thesis of affirmative ontology
involves, as Plato puts it, a risk ( xiv?i'vo? , Philebus 29a), but
one worth taking.
Shifting from a strictly Platonic to a more modern terminology
we view ontological affirmation as an act of rational faith, in
volving two elements: the anticipatory comprehension of, and the
assent to, an unverified hypothesis. For the authentication of this
faith two requirements must be fulfilled. In the first place, the
affirmation must be constructive, initiating a process of verifi
cation rather than allowing us to rest content with the unverified.
Secondly, the assent must have the specific character of total
commitment.
Metaphysics as a cooperative pursuit is progressive and, at
the same time, reiterative. While carrying forward a cumulative
process of verification and interpretation its very principle is
continually under attack and must continually be reaffirmed in
the face of creative challenges. The question at issue must be
treated as one of greatest moment and vital concern for every
one, or else its meaning is missed. The challenge offered to
ontological affirmation by the existentialist's ontological negation
differs from former challenges in that it moves on the very level
at which the metaphysical problem arises. The challenge of
Positivism, for instances, is both more insidious and less meta
physically fruitful because it denies the relevance of the meta
physical question rather than the validity of specific metaphysical
answers. Not so existentialist meontology. By offering a genuine
alternative to affirmative ontology and, thereby, to the ontological
pattern of traditional metaphysics, it forces the mind into a
renewal of the fundamental question. It helps us recapture the
meaning of the enterprise called metaphysics.
At the same time, the peculiar difficulty under which the
idea of the primacy of Nothing over Being labors becomes evi
dent. The common sense view that negation follows affirmation
is borne out by analysis. In order to speak meaningfully about
Nothing reference must be made to its affirmative counterpart?
to the something which is denied by the negative term. This is
why the development of ontological negation into a theory tends
to result in a "parasitical" doctrine, i.e., in statements which derive

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 Existentialism and Metaphysics 43

their meaning from the very conceptions whose validity they

deny. Instances of this "fallacy of unavowed reference" we shall
meet presently.
The difficulty which results from giving priority to Nought
over Being (to negation over affirmation) may be illustrated by
Heidegger's conception of "being-at-home" (Zuhausesein) in
the world, the attitude by which a familiar reality is confidently
and quietly accepted. From the point of view of existential
ontology, Heidegger affirms, the negative counterpart to this
attitude, the experience of alienation, is the primary or more
fundamental phenomenon (Sein und Zeit, p. 189). Why so, we
wonder. As we reflect upon the emotional facts of the polar
situation no decision regarding this question of order or priority
can be reached. Love, the fondness we feel for a world in which
we move with trust and delight as though it were made for us,
the affect, so to speak, through which we affirm the essential
goodness in things, is a solid emotional fact, and so is anxiety
(Angst), the experience of a strange and uncanny multitude of
things, persevering unintelligibly in brute existence, a mere
screen placed between ourselves and nothingness.
Interpretation, it is true, is latent in feelings, and it is on
interpretation with reference to an ultimate principle that Heideg
ger rests his case. The priority of Nothing over Being requires
the priority of estrangement (Unheimlichkeit) in the world
over familiarity. But the facts impartially inspected do not support
this view. Admitted that the two experiences are strictly corre
lative in the sense that the "being-at-home" is always seen
against the foil of alienation, and vice versa. Yet there is a differ
ence, and this difference is all in favor of the positive experience.
Not only is it possible to think without contradiction a condition
of perfect shelteredness and peace unruffled by any thought of
possible privation, but experience itself, however remotely, ap
proximates to this consummation. The richer and the more intense
the experienced fulfilment, the narrower the margin of felt
negation. The opposite is true of the experience of estrangement.
Its intensity increases with the broadening of the contrasting
margin until it reaches the point of self-destruction. The first
experience rests in itself, revolving securely upon the pole of
affirmation whereas the second experience consists in an unhappy

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44 Helmut Kuhn

oscillation btween negation and affirmation which threatens to

break up the unity of the experiencing self.
As we describe the normal aspect of reality in human ex
perience we are more faithful to the actual data in stating a
mixture of opposing features. There are features of obvious
intelligibility and familiarity, and there is also the opposite, and
the two contrasting aspects shade off into each other through
a wide scale of intermediaries. Owing to the prevalence of this
middle-ground science as an investigation of specific traits of
this reality is possible. Owing to this same ambivalence there is
also room for metaphysics, i.e., for an investigation of reality
as a whole which brings us face to face with the choice between
two alternative hypotheses, ontological affirmation and its op
posite, ontological negation. No easy decision one way or the
other is possible. But surely if we seek indications in the field
of what I may be permitted to call ontological attitudes or emo
tive aspects of reality, the greater plausibility lies with the view
which the Scholastics expressed in describing man's status in the
world as in via (on the way) as contrasted with in patria. The
mixture of familiarity and foreignness is admitted. At the same
time, the idea of a total accord (of man with that in which or
with which he has his existence) is regarded as an emotional
a priori with reference to which man can understand both the
plight and the prospects of his situation. It is, to say the least,
doubtful whether this much can be said of Heidegger's negative
thesis.

The same question of a basic attitude can also be raised in

respect to the way in which man views his fellowman. Here too
we may try to discover a fundamental mode of experience (or
aspect of the experienced reality). And this mode may then be
characterized not as mere psychological fact but as an ontological
determinant?as an essential feature of man's sociableness
(Mitsein). This time it is Sartre who, departing from Heidegger's
admirable analysis of Mitsein (Sein und Zeit, pp. 117-125),
advances the thesis which naturally results from the negative
metaphysical premiss. Conflict, he writes, "is the original mean
ing of the being-one-for-another" (U?tre et le n?ant, p. 431).
In this case too, by a parallel argument, it can be shown that
hostility presupposes friendship ("love" understood as cpi?ia

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 Existentialism and Metaphysics 45

in a sense in which friendship does not presuppose hostility, and

that a theory of communal life can be based only on the idea of
the priority or naturalness of friendship. But a development of
the social and political implications of the existentialist's meta
physical premiss lies beyond the scope of our essay.

II.
Negation generally can pave the way for affirmation only
because it is directed from the outset by an affirmative intent.
So also ontological negation: denying as it does the metaphysical
competence of reason along with the traditional object of meta
physics, a rationally ordered world, it is prompted by a demand
made upon reason and not fulfilled by it. Reason, presuming to
interpret reality as a meaningful whole, should include within
its rational scheme the concrete existing individual. But this it
is unable to achieve. The individual, the existentialist critique of
reason asserts, is unassimilable to any pattern of rational explana
tion. This idea of the concrete individual expresses the affirmative
intent which animates and directs the existentialist's negations.
He is recognized by his peculiar pathos. His declared purpose
is to restore to integrity the concept of the individual, stunted,
so he believes, by the imposition upon it of necessarily inadequate
patterns of rational explanation.
Besides being an individual, man is "man in general," i.e., a
specimen of the human race, and he is furthermore a Caucasian
or African by racial extraction, an American or Frenchman by
nationality, a journalist or an artisan by profession, and so forth.
But all these classifications by means of which we define the
individual as "such an one" do not touch his individuality?
that which he, properly speaking, is. As an individual he is unique
and irreplaceable, beyond the reach of any classificatory system.
Evidence of this uniqueness of the individual is his peculiar
relationship to time. His life is not a repeatable occurrence but
an event in the full sense of the word, occupying a singular
place in the moving texture of historical reality. And this "his
toricity" of the individual is not merely an accidental tinge, as it
were, modifying the common hue of humanity. Man is a son of
his time in the radical sense that his thoughts and beliefs, his

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46 Helmut Kuhn

response to the world and his action upon it, are fruits of the
historical moment.
It may be said that man shares the character of uniqueness
with all concrete temporal things, animate or inanimate. But
with him it wTins a peculiar significance, being not a datum but a
f actum. He does not find himself as the unique being that he is
but he continually makes himself into what he is. Not as a
static but as a dynamic entity we must conceive him, reversing,
as far as he is concerned, the principle according to which
operari sequitur esse. Futurity is the eminent form of his tem
poral status. Man is becoming, or more precisely he is continually
poised upon the brink of decision. And this decision has the
character of a radical Either/Or. Man who in deciding makes
himself can also become his own unmaking. The question for
him is whether to be or not to be.

Precariously balanced as he is on the sharp edge of decision

man is infinitely concerned about his own being. He cares for
many things with varying degrees of intensity. But underlying
these particular cares there is the care of all cares, the anxious
concern for his own existence. If, following Kierkegaard, we
give to an absolute desire, i.e., to one which by its nature takes
precedence over all other desires, the name of passion we may
define man in modification of the traditional formula as an
animal passionale.
The triad of features?historicity, decision, and passion?
determines the conception of man which the existentialist uses as
his affirmative criterion. Tested by this touch-stone reason, he
holds, is found wanting. He rejects the thesis of affirmative ontol
ogy because of the actual or alleged inability of reason to com
prise within its scheme of reference this unabridged idea of the
existing individual.
The work of reason in its metaphysical use, which consists
in comprehending a meaningful totality, may be thought of either
as reached by approximation only or as actually completed. In
neither case can it include the concrete individual, according
to the existentialist's argument. It is true that the individual lives
into the future, and to this extent futurity is the dominant
trait of man's temporal status. But this futurity is (sit venia verbo)
a present futurity, an emphasis determining the experienced Now.

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 Existentialism and Metaphysics 47

The fatal decision must be made at this present moment, and what
is done can never be undone. Therefore the agent must rely with
unconditional trust upon his decision. But rational knowledge,
proceeding by approximation, is unable to furnish principles of
final validity, for all its positions are provisional and hypothetical.
Hence knowledge, conceived as approximative, is irrelevant to
the individual's business of living his life.
The same negative result is obtained if we look upon reason's
work as completed. In this case reality is before the reasoner
as a comprehensive whole, i.e., a closed system of determinations.
But it is characteristic of the concrete individual to live into an
open field of possibilities which he determines by acts of free
decision. Hence the individual resists inclusion in a closed system.
Whenever he tries to think of himself as so included, he argues
himself out of the concrete situation within which he is to act
instead of elucidating it, and thus his knowledge becomes an
evasion. He will, for example, say: "History (a name for the
comprehensive whole) at present tends towards the eclipse of
liberal-capitalist institutions, and so demands of me . . ." But this
is a confusion of categories. History, conceived of as a whole of
determinations, does not demand anything. By definition it ex
cludes the one on whom alone demands can be made, the concrete
individual.
Leaving aside the disjunction of approximation and com
pleteness the matter may be put as follows. Knowledge reveals
to us reality as a realm of essences or essential structures. To know
a thing is to determine it as a "such." A physicist, e.g., studies the
atom not as this particular atom but as manifesting in its own
particular case the general structure of the atom as such. The
individual, however, is not expressible in terms of essential struc
ture. With him existence precedes essence. He is not such an one
but in existing he determines himself into such an one. Far from
being a definable entity among other entities, his mode of existence
is freedom for possibilities. For to be free means precisely to be
non-determined, not under the sway of the sphere of essences.
It means to be confronted with infinite possibilities, and the
sphere of the merely possible, it should be noted, is a negative
concept. Possible is that whose being (or coming-into-being) is
not necessitated within a realm of essential structures. Hence the

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48 Helmut Kuhn

attempt to include the individual in a system interpreting reality

as a whole inevitably destroys the concept of the individual by
assimilating him to what he is not. Man, who is a person, is falsely
viewed as a thing.
Man is human insofar as he is an individual, and individuality
means uniqueness. This admitted we must ask what uniqueness
means. The existentialist tends to emphasize the negative element
of this concept as though it were chiefly a principle of distinction
or diversification. The individual as unique is not part of a
group, is not any other individual nor all the others nor is he like
them. The individual is what he is by distinguishing himself from
the rest of the world. He is non-Being with reference to all other
Beings and thus the principle of negation. This motif is particu
larly marked in Sartre but it is forecast in Kierkegaard.
The existentialist conception of the individual conveys a
truth but a truth out of balance. It bases individuality on the nega
tive idea of total otherness. Actually, however, uniqueness follows
singleness, and singleness in turn is based on identity of essential
relation. The value we place on the right of free speech may
serve as an illustration. In matters which are subject to everyone'^
judgment because they elude specialized knowledge everyone,
we hold, should have his say. We do not cherish this conviction
in the belief that diversity of opinions (each the unique expres
sion of a unique person) is valuable as such. Diversity may mean
confusion as well as abundance. All individuals, we rather be
lieve, are related to truth which is one and the same for all but
incompletely understood even by the wisest. By silencing one
single individual, however humble, we may rob mankind of a
part of truth. So we value uniqueness of expression because we
think of each single individual as equally related to truth. Like
wise we respect the uniqueness of the individual (that whereby
he differs from others) not for its own sake but for its being
the result of what all individuals have in common. By being no
respecters of persons do we honor personality. Once more: in
the order of things uniqueness, the negative term, follows the
affirmative idea of singleness based on identity of essential rela
tion.
Far from being injurious to individuality the individual's
relation to one super-individual truth which reason establishes

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 Existentialism and Metaphysics 49

is the foundation of the individual as individual. To the extent

that it denies this "identity of essential relation" (to the common
goal and purpose of mankind) existentialism defeats its purpose
and destroys personality by trying to rescue it. Yet there is truth
in the existentialist assertion. The individuality of the individual
is endangered wherever an accidental relation is substituted foi
the essential one. If we deal with man under one of his special
relations or aspects as though we were dealing with man himself
then indeed his individuality is denied. It is obvious almost to
everyone that man as a tailor or as a violinist is not man himself,
and that man's animality does not exhaust his personality (although
the former truth is often practically ignored by the institutions
of industrialized society and the latter obfuscated by naturalistic
philosophies). But if it comes to more elevated notions of man
as, e.g., man as the member of a class which is to become man
kind?the case of communism?,or man as the member of a
nation,?the case of nationalism?the mistake is generally over
looked, and a protest on behalf of the individual is in order. The
harm is done, however, not by the general concept as such but
by its inadequacy.
The existentialist critique of false generalities rightly connects
the uniqueness of the individual with his historicity, i.e., with his
unique place in the series of historical events. But again the
false emphasis on uniqueness as otherness is to be rectified.
The individual's essential historicity can not mean his living in
a Now defined as that moment which is not like any other
moment and in that sense unique. Strictly taken this would
mean that man-as-living-now is unexpressible at any other moment
and, therefore, unknowable, a homo absconditus. More loosely
used the same idea tempts people into substituting for non-his
torical generalities historical ones as though the latter were less
dangerous to individuality (actually, they are more so). Deluded
by the historicist fallacy they feel they have advanced beyond
the naive idea of man-in-general by speaking about primitive
man, Renaissance man, Western man, and with special confi
dence, about contemporary man The truth of the matter is, once
more, that uniqueness follows singularity. Every single man lives
out on his own account the universal theme of humanity, and
all his unique traits, his sex, his bodily constitution, his racial

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 50 Helmut Kuhn

and cultural inheritance, his social environment, and the like,

owe their unique relevance to the universality of human nature
actualized not by a group nor even by mankind in its entirety
but by each man singly.
A similar criticism applies to the second feature of the existen
tialist's triune portrait of the individual: man as the chooser.
That to decide means to determine the undetermined, and that
man as a free agent acts into a field of possibilities?these are
descriptive statements which no interpretation in terms of a non
human reality should be allowed to tamper with. But once again
we find the meaning of this existentialist reminder obscured by a
bias in favor of negative definition which has its roots in ontologi
cal negation. The field of possibilities that renders decision pos
sible (and, at the same time, necessary) is defined as Nothingness
?that is to say, as non-Being with reference to the determinate
ness of Being, and decision appears as a creatio ex nihilo. Since
nothing is determined previous to decision, everything for man
depends on decision.
In point of fact, however, decision is choice, and choice
is possible onlv within a concrete, and that means limited, field
of possibilities. We choose among a determined set of determined
possibilities and in relation to a fixed standard of preference.
This is another way of saying that all decision is rational choice
of the better in preference to the worse with a view to attaining
the good. Instead of being incompatible with a philosophy of
essences choice involves an essence of a peculiar character? one
without whose presence the idea of a structure of essences would
be a mere speculative dream. This peculiar essence?the essence
of man?defines a being which is to become of itself what it
(potentially) is, and rational choice is the mode of the spon
taneous self-actualization (the mode of the "of itself") of this
unique entity.
By equating determined possibilities with "means," and the
standard of choice with "end" we arrive at a vindication of the
well-known Aristotelian principle according to which choice is
between means only. But in order to be true to the facts (and
to an insight gained or regained by Existenz philosophy) this
classic principle requires a modification. The standard of choice,
the good, though fixed and therefore not a determinable pos

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 Existentialism and Metaphysics 51

sibility in the sense in which actions are determinable by choice,

is grasped by an act of comprehension which in turn involves
a quasi-choice. This quasi-choice, the"option of the soul" which
underlies all choices between means, is the same act of rational
faith, or withholding of faith, from which the alternative hypothe
ses of ontological affirmation and ontological negation spring.
This arbitrium originale (the "fair risk," as it is called in Plato's
Phaedo, 114d) is not rational in the sense in which the choice
between means towards a fixed end is rational. Unlike the
latter it is not analyzable into a practical syllogism. Even less is it
irrational in the sense of an unaccountable plunge into the void of
negative possibilities. Transrational would be a more fitting
predicate for the act in question, for it furnishes the foundation
of rationality. Far from being a blind belief subsisting outside the
field of rational enquiry, it animates the quest of metaphysics
and is, at the same time, continually put to test by it.
With these clarifications before us a just appraisal of the third
and final trait of the existentialist portrayal of man is not diffi
cult. Once more we recognize in the idea of man as a passionate
being the discovery or rediscovery of an important truth. It is
perfectly correct to say, with the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevski's
Brothers Karamasov, that man prefers not to live to living with
out something to live for. Man, living his own life and knowing,
however dimly, that salvation or perdition is at stake, is infinitely
concerned about himself, and he is relieved of this anxiety only
by complete abandon or, to use a more adequate expression,
by absolute commitment. Man shows his folly but also his
grandeur by preferring an insane Fuehrer to a raise in wages.
Man is in truth an animal passionate; but the existentialist errs in
placing a negative interpretation on his correct observation.
Passion, defined as an absolute desire, is a desire satisfied with
nothing but an absolute fulfilment. It is, therefore, the denial of
all those conditional gratifications and purposes which are gen
erally at hand within the ambit of our terrestrial life. Following
this line of thought, Jean-Paul Sartre recognizes in destruction a
basic attitude (conduite) of man towards Being (op. cit., pp.
42-44). Here we must demur and point out that this is only one
side of the story. A purely negative definition of the object of
total commitment equals in practice a formal definition. Instead

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 52 Helmut Kuhn

of giving guidance to action, it can be filled by acting man with

an indefinite variety of contents. Total devotion may be granted
to a beloved person as in nihilistic romantic love, to sensuous
beauty as in nihilistic aestheticism, or to the nation as in contem
porary nihilistic nationalism. And the lure behind all these forms
of passionate attachment may in fact be the yearning, voluptuous
or austere, for death and destruction. However, every desire, as
desire of something, is defined by its proper object. So it will not
do to define passion by a negation of objects which is tantamount
to defining it by its intensity.
The object of desire may be called a good. Now it is true
that the proper object of an absolute desire, the sovereign good,
is a negation insofar as it is not all the other goods. But this
negative role of the summum bonum becomes meaningful only
against the background of its affirmative or constructive char
acter. All the other goods are ambivalent; they are good if
striven for in the right order (in the right way, in the right
measure, at the right time), evil if willed out of order. And the
principle which defines this order (and thereby determines the
goodness of relative goods) is the absolute or supreme good.
We may be permitted to call the supreme good, conceived of as
existing, God. The existentialist idea of man as a passionate being
may then be re-formulated by asserting that man is a God-loving
being. But he does not love God in the way in which a plant
turns to the sun, but of his own free will. So, instead of loving
God, he may choose to love other things as though they were
God.
With these rectifications the existenialist idea of the con
crete, existing individual as a being of unique worth, determining
himself and actuated by passionate concern, no longer supports
the verdict passed upon reason on the ground of its alleged meta
physical impotence. Instead it becomes clear that reason, the
faculty which provides us with a measure of insight into the
world and ourselves, is at the same time a constituent of man
as an existing individual. To understand his own uniqueness,
to make his decision intelligent, and to help love discover its
true object, the individual must see himself as part of a rational,
i.e., meaningful, reality. In fact any pattern of meaning which
metaphysics may hope to discover in reality as a whole must be

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 Existentialism and Metaphysics 53

predelineated in the triple structure of the existing individual,

or else it will not be meaningful to us as human beings.
The two-pronged argument taken from the idea of a rational
system as either approximated or completely established loses
its destructive power if brought in contact with the suggested
emendations of existentialist anthropology. The assertion that the
approximative character of knowledge prevents it from becoming
relevant to the urgency of the present moment of decision is to
be countered by the concept of rational faith which outruns and,
at the same time, guides reason. And a reply is also available
to the alternative assertion according to which knowledge, if
completely established as a closed system, precludes freedom. This
reply will have recourse to our distinction between the gradation
of rationality as embodied in reality on the one hand, and grada
tion of intelligibility to us on the other. To the rational system
in the former sense the argument need not apply; and any system
in the sense of a human construct (reflecting intelligibility to usj
is by its nature an "open system." To express the matter in theo
logical terms: there is no contradiction between believing in provi
dence and maintaining man's inability to acquire any knowledge
of it which goes beyond the barest outline and allows for appli
cation to individual fate. Nor is there a contradiction between
the idea of a knowledge of reality as a meaningful whole, and the
idea of a gradual approach from afar to this knowledge by the
existing individual, provided this approach is conceived as bound
up with an actual transformation and assimilation of the indi
vidual to the meaning aimed at and espied in varying degrees of
clarity. The scheme of affirmative ontology makes sense only
if its "existential" significance is understood. In order to be
meaningful an all-comprehensive whole must define man's place
in it?so our earlier assertion. The "place of man," we now
amplify, must be such that it can be either missed or hit by
living man, with a scale of intermediate possibilities, and that the
knowledge in question can be an aid in filling this place properly.
Metaphysics as based upon what we call "ontological affirmation"
involves the idea of philosophy as a way of life.
The anti-metaphysical argument of the existentialist is tinged
by a significant ambiguity. From stating a logical discrepancy
it shifts to warning against a moral danger. No metaphysical

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 54 Helmut Kuhn

scheme of thought is capable of including the concrete indi

vidual?this is the basic negative contention. It is followed up
by the suggestion that in the attempt to make the impossible
possible (and here the shift occurs) the individual uses thought
as a subterfuge. He runs away from his selfhood as he is generally
inclined to do, and the existentialist critique of reason is designed
to bring him up short and to force him, as it were, into his own
presence. Existential analysis thus becomes a means by which the
individual is recalled from the superficiality of a sham existence
(Uneigentlichkeit) to authentic selfhood (Eigentlichkeit). But
how is that possible, we must ask, unless reason (the faculty which
enables us to criticize reason) has that vital importance for the
concrete individual of which it is divested by the existentialist
negations? Here we have another evidence of the "parasitical"
element in Existenz philosophy. The idea of philosophy as a way
of life, denied in principle, actually survives.

III.

It is impossible to let the individual stay suspended in a

metaphysical void. With his idea of the concrete individual the
existentialist maneuvers himself into a position which reminds
one of the plight of Kirillov in Dostoevski's The Possessed:
"We need God and so he must exist?but I know He doesn't
and can't." The conclusion arrived at is an intolerable impasse.
On the one hand, the existing individual is pictured as relentlessly
exacting in his demand upon meaning. Nothing short of a total
fulfillment will do for him, and to go back on this demand (a
common thing though this renunciation is) involves loss of per
sonality in sham existence. On the other hand, reason's claim
to discover meaning is void. How is it possible to abide by so
glaring a contradiction?
We are free to recoil from this contradiction only on pain
of self-loss, the existentialist replies. Not only should we in
faithfulness to ourselves abide by the bankruptcy of logic but
we should dwell upon it and recognize in it the d?b?cle of our
existence. The breakdown of reason is to induce in us a crucial
experience called crisis. In crisis the negative move of existen
tialist thought pierces die core of individual existence. Through

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 Existentialism and Metaphysics 55

anxiety (Angst) the individual actually experiences Nothingness,

and at the same time discovers his freedom?the total indeter
minacy of sheer possibility with which he is confronted. And
by virtue of discovering himself as free he can "choose himself.'
These three concepts?anxiety, freedom, self-choice?form
a pattern of despair sharpened to the point of crisis. Existentialist
analysis as a practical enterprise is designed both to induce this
crisis and bring it to a happy issue. The experienced denial which
is despair prepares the mind for an affirmation?the dialectical
rebound for the sake of which the negations are advanced, the
emergence into plenitude of meaning of that initial affirmation
which is enveloped in 'the idea of the existing individual. Existenz
philosophy might be described as a philosophical commentary
on the saying that one must lose his life to save it. (St. Luke, 9:24).
The nothing which it posits is to become productive of some
thing.
The question as to how anxiety becomes productive (the
question of the resolution of the theoretical deadlock which is
involved in crisis) brings existentialists to a parting of roads.
Kierkegaard and those who follow him think of this resolution
as a rationally unaccountable and sudden act, entirely discon
tinuous in relation to the preceding critical process of reasoning,
a miraculous leap. Rightly or wrongly, they identify the existen
tialist crisis with the crisis of sin, repentance, and conversion,
the resolution of the deadlock with the action of God's grace,
and so the leap lands them in Christian faith. Philosophy becomes
a preamble to a theology divorced from metaphysics, and reason's
chief business consists in clearing itself out of the way. Karl
Jaspers, while secularizing Kierkegaard's thought, remains close
to the inspiration of the Danish master. The transcendent intui
tion which flashes upon the mind in the situation of crisis
(Grenzsituation) is, according to Jaspers, not amenable to ra
tional verification.

Martin Heidegger strikes out in a different direction, and

so does Jean-Paul Sartre. Only with reference to these two
thinkers can we speak of a metaphysical theory of Nothing or
meontology. Instead of disrupting the continuity of analysis by a
"leap" they try to develop anxiety (which is to Nothing as
love is to the identity of Being and Goodness) into an or can

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56 Helmut Kuhn

of ontological interpretation. With this end in view Edmund

Husserl's phenomenology is put in the service of existentialist
interpretation.
Mind or consciousness (thinking, perceiving, willing, desir
ing, feeling) is invariably consciousness of something. We can
not think without thinking something, and the same is true of
all other conscious operations. This is what Husserl, following
suggestions of Franz Brentano's, identifies as the "intentional"
structure of the mind. It is characteristic of the mind to intend
something other than itself, to be with objects which are not the
mind, to transcend itself towards what it is not. In this sense we
may also speak of the mind's "transcendence," reducing that term
to its literal meaning. To say that the mind externalizes itself
is another way of putting the matter, and in adopting this lan
guage it is well to remember that the expressions "external" and
"internal" have their primary meaning in relation to the unique
structure of mental operations and that their more restricted
spatial meaning derives from this origin.
Heidegger and Sartre are to be credited with having restored
to its authentic significance the great principle of intentionality
which, in Husserl's own later writings (especially in the M?dita
tions Cart?siennes), had become obscured. Used aright this
principle serves to confirm the truth of metaphysical realism.
The mind is not prior to reality in the sense that it orders or
moulds impressions into a world. In no sense is it a creative or
formative principle. All mental activity presupposes the existence
of real objects subsisting "outside" the mind and to be "intended"
by it, and these objects are real in basically the same sense in
which the thinking and perceiving mind perceives itself as real.
So there is no one-way relationship of the conditioning to the
conditioned but reciprocity or circularity, and metaphysical
thought is bound to be circular in the sense that it follows and
reveals a circularity in the structure of Being. Real things do not
just happen to be reflected by our thinking them but it is their
inmost nature to be thinkable. Likewise, thinking does not just
happen to be associated with something real, a psychological
event which in turn is bound up with an organized human body,
but by its inmost nature it is an actual occurrence and the aware
ness of this occurrence, the two in the most intimate and insep

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 Existentialism and Metaphysics 01

arable unity. Everything we call real belongs in this circle of

thinkable existents and existents which, in thinking other existents,
are aware of themselves as existing. Furthermore, what we call
unreal, e.g., dream images or mathematical constructs, are only
relatively so, i.e., in relation to reality as circumscribed by onto
logical circularity. This circularity is not a dialectical construction
but a concrete datum, in fact, the condition of all concreteness,
the situation in which all our discoveries are made and to which
even the most highly technical and specialized theorems, say, of
nuclear physics, refer?the primary datum of man-with-other
men-in-the-world.
The fundamental situation of man-with-men-in-the-world is
the ultimate horizon of meaning within which all more specialized
and restricted meanings receive their proper scope and relevance.
To discover the truth of something, i.e., to reveal what a thing
really is means to place it properly within that context. This
applies also to supernatural or transcendent truths as, for example,
the concept of eternal beatitude. It is meaningful only if con
ceived as a reality to which the fundamental situation "man-in
the-world" points as to its fulfilment. The truth expressed by these
assertions is in no need of discovery in the way in which the
second law of thermo-dynamics needs to be discovered. Before
we discover this law we are utterly ignorant of it. Not so in
matters of metaphysics. What we call the fundamental situation
is continually within the field of mental vision of every intelligent
being, living in the world. Generally it is perceived in that mar
ginal and inarticulate fashion which is sufficient for the business
of living. At the same time it is readily distorted and concealed
by intellectual attention to one or the other aspect of reality.
Discovery in metaphysics is, therefore, both articulation of
familiar truths and recovery of lost ones.
Measured by this standard of metaphysical truth Cartesian
and post-Cartesian idealism errs in two ways. In the first place,
instead of interpreting Being within the context of concrete ex
perience, i.e., in the horizon of the fundamental datum "man-in
the-world," it assimilates it to one particular type of inner
worldly existence?to the status of those inaminate objects which
we can inspect, handle, and use at will (res, das Vorhandene, in
Heidegger's language). In the second place, mind is interpreted

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 58 Helmut Kuhn

with a one-sided emphasis on its r?le as a spectator placed out

side and over against a world of objects, as the locus of ideae
reflecting res, whereas its nature as an existent in the world is
neglected. This physicalist-idealist distortion is responsible for
the vexatious puzzle as to how mind can affect bodies and
vice versa.
With his conceptions of concrete experience and world
(which imply the principle of metaphysical realism) and with
his critique of Cartesian physicalism Heidegger takes a long step
towards the recovery of fundamental metaphysical truth, and
in that respect his work, in spite of the enormous difference of
approach, bears comparison with that of Whitehead. But in order
to become metaphysically fruitful the idea of man-in-the-world
as the basic datum requires interpretation in the light of the
hypothesis described as "ontological affirmation." The human
perspective as determined by that concrete being which man is
must be seen as analogously related to an absolute (divine) per
spective for which the meaningful structure of reality is revealed
as it is by itself, in other words, for which the human distinction
between intrinsic rationality and intelligibility to us does not
apply. Furthermore the human perspective is to be interpreted
as being on the move towards assimilation, though at an infinite
distance, to the absolute perspective, this move being "existential"
in character, i.e. involving man as a concrete whole. This is
another way of saying that the existential idea of love-inspired
theoria (philosophy as a way of life) is required to hold the
metaphysical scheme together. But at this juncture, Heidegger,
committed as he is to ontological negation, breaks away from the
straight path of metaphysical enquiry, and Sartre in his own
way follows in the same direction.
"Knowledge is an existential mode of (man's) being-in-the
world," Heidegger formulates (op. cit. p. 61). But this admirable
statement leads him to a disparagement of theoria as a gazing
at, or even "gaping at," things which we remove from the
sphere of practical relevance for the sake of an aimless inspec
tion, i.e., out of curiosity (pp. 170-173). For theoria he substitutes
an awareness animated by anxiety as the affective response to
Nothingness. For he holds that through Nothing we gain an
understanding of Being. "It is the permanent possibility of non

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 Existentialism and Metaphysics 59

Being, outside us and in us, that conditions our questions con

cerning Being," Sartre asserts (op. cit. p. 40).
The ontological interpretation based by Heidegger on on
tological negation as a premise has so far remained a fragment.
In addition it is of great complexity, and it is couched in a lan
guage obscured by an excessive confidence in the wisdom of
the writer's native tongue. As we move in this sphere of forceful
and untranslatable neologisms the suspicion, repeatedly voiced
before, of the presence of parasitical elements in existential
thought grows upon us with renewed strength. There is, for
instance, the idea of man's essential guiltiness on which his con
science informs him. But guilt, in this case, has nothing to do
with transgression nor is conscience a voice that warns us of our
own wrongdoing. Guiltiness, in the language of meontology, is
another expression for the nothingness (Nichtigkeit) which per
meates human existence. Man's being is exclusion of all that he
is not, a guilt which is to be redeemed not by repentance but by
annihilation. His existence is essentially an existing towards
death.
More interesting philosophically than the rather violent fusion
of Kierkegaard's psychology of crisis with Nietzsche's affirma
tion of the finality of terrestrial life is the simple but ingenious
device which underlies Heidegger's construction. It consists in
interpreting the phenomenological concept of intentionality in
the light of the Kierkegaardian idea of anxiety. Consciousness as
"intentional" or "transcendent" is consciousness of something.
Dasein (the mode of being which characterizes man), so Heideg
ger interprets this transcendence, is essentially a movement away
from itself and beyond itself, a staying outside itself with the
world; it is its own possibilities, an outrunning of itself and a
projection of itself into what it is not, a continual flight from
itself. The Being of Dasein is care (Sorge), a word that admirably
serves the analyst's purpose because of its duality of meaning,
On the one hand it expresses the active concern for and attach
ment to the object for which one cares. On the other hand, it
conveys a reflexive meaning, the idea of a disquieted backwards
glance upon one's own self, and with reference to the latter sense
we speak of "careworn" or of a "consuming care." The world
then appears as a unified and structured manifold of screens behind

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 60 Helmut Kuhn

which the self in anxiety seeks shelter against itself. In this man
ner ontological analysis becomes an unmasking of the self. By
tracing the rise of Being out of Nothing the individual is forced
into confrontation with Nothingness and thus brought in a posi
tion to actualize authentic selfhood by choosing himself. He sees
through the surface aspects of the world and recognizes it for
what it is: the deceptive projection of the anguished self onto
Nothingness.
By using the idea of anguished projection (Entwurf) as onto
logical key-concept Heidegger seems to relapse into idealism.
The parallel device used by Sartre consists in dialectically letting
the "by-itself" (le pour-so?) of the ego as the locus of non-Being
be pitted against the "in-itself" (P?tre-en-soi) of the object.
But by so following Hegel rather than Heidegger he lays him
self open to the same objection. He also endangers the principle
of realism which is at the basis of his construction.
Philosophy, in understanding the world, must try to under
stand itself as part of the world process. Existenz philosophy
rightly insists on looking upon the philosophical process as an
undertaking which concerns the whole personality of the one
who engages in it. It is also right in calling our attention to an
element of discontinuity in this process. It is not wholly con
tinuous in its theoretical aspect, and this is why the ideas of a
primum abitrium and of rational faith must be invoked. It is
even less so under its practical aspect?the field where crisis
in the full sense of the word?the crisis of sin and repentance?
has its proper place.
HELMUT KUHN.
Emory University, Ga.

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