The Art of the Liberation of Life and Philosophy as Educator: F. Nietzsche, E. Husserl, Z. Maurina

Abstract

The problem of the unified and the manifold, the whole and the part, the infinite and the finite, the eternal and the ephemeral has always been at the centre of philosophical reflection as a means of balancing the cosmological, individual, political and ethical aspects of human existence. The search for a unified mode of human existence, with its multifarious character, has been taking place within the precincts of knowledge, that is, in the theoretical sphere. The idea that being is not just any existence, but one based on knowledge and founded in theory, was first formulated by Parmenides. His notion of the One issued forth in the maxim that being exists and non-being does not exist. This notion was paradigmatic for the whole further course of Western philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead has noted in this connection that Western philosophy is just a series of footnotes to Plato and, by extension, Plato can be considered a commentary on Parmenides. Yet, this principle — that being is a theoretical unity — has with time, as it were, ousted the idea of multiplicity, not only through “oblivion of being” but also by way of substituting the initial ancient maxim “One is all” for the principle “All is one”. This change, which started with modernity, has been characterized by A. Toynbee in the following way: “Ever since Renaissance and Dante the Western scientists have accumulated knowledge by way of knowing ever more about less and less”.¹

I have never had any interest in psychology; I was always interested with something that is concerned with life.

(Marcel Proust)