of “democratic” “cultures” complain about the growing unrefinement and the deterioration of “culture.” Such complaints are merely the helpless cries of those who are even less equal to beings as such than are the ones who try to keep pace with the still opaque “planetary” process of the unconditional consummation of modernity.
The talk of “dictatorship” is idle talk arising out of the horizon of a “freedom” which | has forgotten—or rather never knew—that whither its freedom liberates, namely, to the self-assurance of the human being as subjectum. Yet this assurance can “take hold” only where it in its essence sees uncertainty draw near. The taking hold then consists in holding down every uncertainty and threat, i.e., in the unconditional warding off of that which, by essence, must remain unassailable for all assurance—namely, the essence of being which, although completely concealed and dispelled, nevertheless qua machination prevails in all beings. Any warding off of the assurance of modern humanity is radically defenseless against the essence of beyng and its essential occurrence—because the enemy remains by essence invisible in this “case”—since the most intrinsic presupposition of the consummation of modernity consists in the planetary meditationlessness, i.e., in the universally homogenous and altogether unnoticed forgottenness of being, being which has long been pulverized into “nothingness” through the unquestioning attitude of metaphysics. The alleged “dictatorships” therefore do not amount to a dictans [“the saying”] but intrinsically already to a dictatum [“the said”] of that essence of being from which modern humans cannot withdraw, because in order to become themselves they must affirm that essence, even in all | its essential consequences (cf. above, p. 79).
Therefore, what appears in this age is a concurrence of “states of affairs” and “situations,” to whose evaluation no standpoint of refinement is adequate and a fortiori no comportment of “Christian” faith: the unacknowledged but now everywhere firmly established bewilderment of the youth—the absence of every creative venture. The mere execution and imitation of something planned and calculated; the impotence for convulsing previous opinions and expressions—the indifference to history—the compelled interest for presently required historiology; the lack of every arousing sphere for the upsurge of meditation.
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That the various specialties can be ranged under a unitary concept of “science,” indeed that this concept must exist, is precisely the presupposition for the “dissolution” of the universities into trade schools. The commonality of such a concept does in no way impede this dissolution,