OFF THE BEATEN TRACK
the objectual together with the representing man within the sphere of representedness which he preserves. Everything that presences receives from out of this representedness the meaning and mode of its presence [Anwesenheit]; the meaning and mode, that is, of presence [Praesenz] in repraesentatio. The con-scientia of the ego as the subiectum of the coagitatio, the subjectivity of the subiectum marked out in the above way, determines the being of beings.
The Meditationes de prima philosophia provide the pattern for the ontology of the subiectum constructed from the perspective of a subjectivity defined as conscientia. Man has become the subiectum. He can, therefore, determine and realize the essence of subjectivity — always according to how he conceives and wills himself. Man as the rational being of the Enlightenment is no less subject than man who grasps himself as nation, wills himself as people [Volk], nurtures himself as race and, finally, empowers himself as lord of the earth. Now in all these fundamental positions of subjectivism, too, different kinds of I-ness and egoism are possible; for man is always defined as I and thou, we and you. Subjective egoism for which — usually without knowing it — the I is pre-determined as subject can be beaten down through the insertion of the I into the we. Through this, subjectivity only gains in power. In the planetary imperialism of technically organized man the subjectivism of man reaches its highest point from which it will descend to the flatness of organized unifom1ity and there establish itself. This uniformity becomes the surest instrument of the total, i.e., technological, dominion over the earth. The modern freedom of subjectivity is completely absorbed into the corresponding objectivity. By himself, man cannot abandon this destining of his modern essence; he cannot abolish it by fiat. But he can, in thoughtful anticipation, ponder this: that mankind's being a subject is not the only possibility of the primal essence of historical humanity there has ever been or ever will be. The shadow of a passing cloud over a hidden land — that is the darkening which truth as the certainty of subjectivity (a truth prepared for by the certainty of salvation of Christianity) lays over an Event [Ereignis] that it remains denied to subjectivity to experience.
(10) Anthropology is that interpretation of humanity which already knows, fundamentally, who man is and can, therefore, never ask who he might be. For with this question it would have to confess itself shaken and overcome. But how is this to be expected of anthropology when the task is specifically to achieve nothing but the securing that follows from the self-security of the subiectum?
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