WELTANSCHAUUNG AND WORLD CONTEMPLATION  

 

2. Something can be rejected competently only by the one who is at the same time able to defend it perfectly. And something can be advocated competently only by the one who is able to reject it perfectly.

3. Weltanschauung, be it adequate or inadequate, is the product of decline.

4. Concerning every evil, it should be supposed that it might be good, and concerning every good it should be supposed that it might be evil.  

5. How can it be imagined about the one who is unable to surmount his own education and the effects of his family, schooling and mass communication that he can surmount that which will arise as ontic bondage on his spiritual way?

6. To eliminate his defective judgements of value man should attend to a process of radical autocorrection in the course of which every earlier view should be rejected, and then that which stands the test of the new view should be reaccepted.

7. As the notice that stealing apples is not fitting contains the notice that stealing pears is also not fitting, a judicious man’s attention should be drawn but to a few points concerning the correction of certain substantial elements of his views so that concerning other points he could make corrections by himself.

8. Changing the view of being and the view of the world is not enough; this is only the precondition for a much more important thing: for the transmutation of the contemplation of being and the world.

9. Not only a view but a way of looking; not only a view of the world but a way of looking at the world; not only a Weltanschauung but world contemplation; not only structure and frame but a living process…  

10. It is important, but only of secondary importance which Weltanschauung man attributes to himself. Important because it is evident that a man with spiritual bias would not define himself as a materialist; but on the other hand, when regarding his essential nature the one who would not define himself as a materialist but as spiritual may still be deeply materialistic. Views are very important, but looking, seeing and contemplation are even more important - and when these are materialistic, i. e. if cogitation itself, both functionally and substantially, retains the main characteristics of a materialistic view, then whatever he calls himself, man is a materialist.

11. The existence of a Weltanschauung guarantees the presence of principles; the existence of contemplation corrects the Weltanschauung.

12. The reason for the validity of a really valid view does not lie in the fact that it gives a better description of reality but in that it directs attention to the fact that judgements have such consequences which do not remain on the level of mere descriptions.

13. The description of being by metaphysical traditions only seems to be a description of being, and the aim of the aforesaid description only seems to be descriptive. The aim is consequential and normative: consequential, because the description has consequences in respect of realisation; and normative because it has relation to the normatives of realisation. For if I say that logical laws do not concern God, I declare that my aim is to transcend logical laws.

14. Correct views if half-accepted are always worse than the totally accepted worst ones.

15. Nothing can be more dangerous than that which is almost perfect.

16. Almost perfect views are much more dangerous than those which are entirely unacceptable.

17. The prevailing world-view of the present time is the lack of world-views, and on this platform the various particular world-views are superimposed with the aim of intensifying this condition, i. e. the lack of world-views.

18. The less man has views and the more he has personal interests, the more he is inclined to regard his interests as views.

19. The »ideal« of dark tendencies is the person without world-views.

20. Man lives a lie because he cannot bear intellectually what he quite easily tolerates existentially: that he is so unworthy that he does not even have views. But the time is coming when he will be able to coexist even intellectually with his own unworthiness.

21. False rhetoric: »The truth of solipsism is the highest truth - but there is one thing even beyond that: the Lamb of God.«

22. Even false rhetors cannot believe in their false rhetoric although they would willingly sacrifice their lives for it - and even then they would still not believe in it.

23. (A false rhetor) He is aware of its falseness but he would like it to be true. But even he does not know why.

24. If gradualness between primary, secondary and third-rate things becomes obscure, our whole world concept becomes obscure; and the one whose world concept, Weltanschauung and world contemplation becomes obscure does not possess the possibility to attain his utmost essentiality.

25. It is well said that a modern view is dangerous but the modern function is even more dangerous.

26. »Incoherence, incompetence, inconsequence« (Károly Kerényi): this is the basic spiritual attitude of the second half of 20th century.

27. A terminological fault is never a mere terminological fault.

28. The function of each modern Weltanschauung is to attack the human animal-spiritual organism at a certain specific point.

29. In the background of the modern world’s conceptions, elaborated by a vast rational apparatus, there work manias which are generated by demonic forces.

30. If hypercosmic centrality is lacking in the cosmic view, the cosmic view becomes a view that is oriented towards chaos. Without hypercosmia the cosmos is sentenced to destruction - for the cosmic character of the cosmos, that is to say the orderliness of the cosmos derives from a hypercosmic centre.

31. Only with the greatest reservation should those views be treated, in which God has presence in a non-integral way, in which God does not penetrate the whole structure, but to which spirituality is only attached from the outside. A really spiritual view should be spiritual in its every particle.  

[Typical examples of this kind of false view are the theologies of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Karl Barth.]

32. Spiritual and theistic Weltanschauungs should be markedly different from materialistic and atheistic ones in each aspect of life: in eating, sleeping, walking but first of all in their views.

33. The fact that a Weltanschauung is universal does not mean that it is universally homogeneous, but it means that it is universal and differentiated both aspectually and according to levels.

34. Within the plurality of schools metaphysical traditionality is the only one which pays maximum attention to both that which is extra- and supra-temporal and that which is the consequence of momentary temporality. While the aim is atemporarily eternal, the condition of man, from which he can start on towards this aim, continuously changes.

35. Every statement in relation to metaphysics is evidence of the declarer’s state of self-experience.

36. Metaphysical traditionality is the only Weltanschauung which almost cries for realisation.