人間の現在 --哲学的省察-- (三)

Abstract

This is the third part of our philosophical meditation on the meaning of human being in the present situation of the world. In the preceding chapters we examined the essential problems of man in the present age. The arrival of the age of nihilism had been already prophesied by Friedrich Nietzsche, especially in the thought of "the last man" in his book "Zarathustra". Led by his fundamental thought we here try to grasp the nihilism which has become real in the modern world through the turn of all beings to quantity. All beings, the living as well as the non-living, appear to us today as quantity, that is, the matter which will be measured and calculated. Likewise the man himself presents himself today as homo, nothing but one species of animals which should be determined, researched and controled biologically, psychologically and sociologically. The standpoint of human sciences itself involves a moment of dehumanization. The way of understanding of man as being determined biologically (by blood and soil), psychologically (by id) and sociologically (by social institution) is just actual form of nihilism in the modern world.