W. Marx – författare

Philosophy finds itself "between tradition and another beginning." 1 For this reason it seems necessary to reconsider the foundations of traditional philosophy in the hope that out of these considerations new questions may arise which may lead to a new philosophical foundation. To this end neither the large manual nor the monograph is well suited. What is required, instead, is to take a few steps which lead our thoughts directly into the problems of a given, traditional, philosophical foun­ dation. In this sense the present work wishes to provide an "introduction" into that philosophical foundation which, until Hegel, had a decisive influence upon traditional philosophy_ Consequently, it does not see its task in providing a survey of this whole complex of problems. Nor does it offer solutions to questions about difficult passages which have been the subject of two thousand years of Aristotelian scholarship_ Instead, it follows a definite path which might bring this Aristotelian science, the theory which seeks to determine being as being, on hei on, closer to the student of philosophy.

At a time when the traditional principles of many fields have lost their power and validity, the task of philosophy may well be to look back at these traditional principles and at their inherent determinations and basic problems, while heeding every indi­ cation of a transition to something new, in order to be critically open for all attempts at "another beginning. " A philosophizing which thus sees its proper place "between" tradition and another beginning has grasped its own basic dilemma: It remains in search of the true even though it has no valid concept of truth. A concept truth grounded solely in transcendental subjectivity convinces of it no longer, and the essence of truth as it "occurs" for experiential understanding has not yet been sufficiently determined. A phi­ losophizing which has understood itself in this way will not want to commit itself one-sidedly to one position or the other. Instead it will consider its task to lie in keeping thought in flux. The present collection of essays may be understood as an ex­ ample of such a conception of present-day philosophizing. Thus the first essay isolates the guiding thoughts of the traditional philosophy of reason and spirit as they fulfilled themselves in German idealism, in order to make the traditional concept of truth visible and to bring to light those basic determinations formed in certain contemporary philosophical tendencies which are either related to it or altogether new.