The objective spirit is only a symbol of spirit. The spirit is real. Culture and social life are symbolic. I do not believe in the possibility of a return to a pre-critical, dogmatic metaphysic. In the cultural and ideal tendencies of our epoch, dehumanization moves in two directions, toward naturalism and toward technicism.
Man is subject either to cosmic forces or to technical civilization.
But in either case he loses his own image and is dissolved into his component elements. To the fractional and partial elements of man there is offered not only the right to autonomy, but to supremacy in life. From the collision of atoms reason and meaning can never be developed. The indispensable conditions of life are not the cause which give birth to the wholeness of life's fullness. It is impossible to construct a theory of knowledge which would not itself be knowledge.