“ The misery in war-torn Afghanistan is reminiscent of images from the Thirty Years' War. ”
The scientistic faith in a science that will one day not only fulfill, but eliminate, personal self-conception through objectifying self-description is not science, but bad philosophy.
~ Jürgen Habermas
Freedom may never be conceived merely negatively, as the absence of compulsion. Freedom conceived intersubjectively distinguishes itself from the arbitrary freedom of the isolated individual. No one is free until we are all free.
From the structure of language comes the explanation of why the human spirit is condemned to an odyssey - why it first finds its way to itself only on a detour via a complete externalization in other things and in other humans. Only at the greatest distance from itself does it become conscious of itself in its irreplaceable singularity as an individuated being.
Only by externalization, by entering into social relationships, can we develop the interiority of our own person.
