This also explains the powerful influence of contemporary personalistic and existentialistic philosophical trends upon European literature and upon the youth. Here it is no longer an abstract idealistic image of man as a rational and moral being, which is at issue. Rather, the new philosophical view of man is concerned with man in his concrete situation in the world, with his state of decay as tire contemporary mass-man, and with his possibilities of rediscovering himself as a responsible personality. This philosophy no longer considers the intellect as the real center of human nature. It ha tried to penetrate rather to what is conceived to be the deepest root of human self-hood and the deepest cause of man's spiritual distress.
Man is thrown into the world involuntarily.
To sustain his life he is obliged to turn to the things that are at hand in his world. The struggle for existence characterizes man's life. But, in this situation of concern, man is in danger of losing himself as a free personality so that he delivers himself to the world. For the human selfhood surpasses all existing things. The human ego is free, it is not at hand as a concrete object.