THE AGE OF THE WORLD PICTURE
(9) I low does it happen at all that that which is sets itself forth, in an emphatic way, as subiectum, with the result that the subjective achieves dominance? For up to Descartes, and still within his metaphysics, the being, insofar as it is a being, is a sub-iectum (ὑπο-κείμενον); something which lies before us from out of itself and which, as such, lies at the foundation of both its own permanent characteristics and its changing circumstances. The preference given to a sub-iectum (that which lies at the basis as ground) which is preeminent in that it is, in an essential respect, unconditioned, stems from man's demand for a fundamentum absolutum inconcussum veritatis; for an unshakable ground of truth, in the sense of certainty, which rests in itself. Why and how does this demand come to have decisive validity? The demand springs from the liberation of humanity from the bonds of the truth of Christian revelation and the doctrines of the Church, a liberation which frees itself for a self-legislation that is grounded in itself. Through this liberation the essence of freedom — being bound to something that binds — is posited anew. Because, however, in accordance with this freedom, self-liberating man himself posits what is obligatory, this can henceforth be defined in different ways. The obligatory may be human reason and its law; it may be beings, set up and ordered as objects by such a reason; or it may be that chaos — not yet ordered and only to be mastered through objectification — which, in a certain age, comes to demand mastery.
This liberation, however, without knowing it, is still freeing itself from the bonds of the truth of revelation in which the salvation of man's soul is made certain and guaranteed. Hence this liberation from the certainty of salvation disclosed by revelation has to be, in itself, a liberation to a certainty in which man secures for himself the true as that which is known through his own knowing. That was only possible in that self-liberating man himself guaranteed the certainty of the knowable. This, however, could only happen through man's deciding, from and for himself, what was knowable for him, and what the knowing and securing of the known, i.e., certainty, should mean. Descartes' metaphysical task became the following: to create the metaphysical ground for the freeing of man to freedom considered as self-determination that is certain of itself. This ground, however, not only had to be one that was certain. Since every measure taken from other domains was forbidden, it had, at the same time, also to be of such a nature that, through it, the essence of the freedom demanded was posited as a self-certainty. Everything that is certain from itself must, at the same time, however, certify as certain that being from which such knowledge is certain and through which everything knowable is made secure. The fundamentum,
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