A Note on Existenzphilosophie and Existentialism

180
classed as more or less his followers.341 A few years ago I saw in an American newspa-
per a cartoon: In the center was a large picture of Sartre, smiling, content; surround-
ing him, as smaller satellites, were Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Pascal, and the writer of
these lines.342 What a reversal of values! The great men, to be named only with rever-
ence, were here ranged beside our own small likenesses. Thus in the game of the world,
transforming everything into puppet form, a picture is made. In a French Newspaper
there appeared a wittily conceived celestial letter from Pascal, which ended with »I am
no existentialist.«343
In spite of all this, one may perhaps hope that even amid the noise of all this confu-
sion, some truth is stirring, an independent philosophy which stripped of illusions
yet is establishing itself in the tradition of millenniums. Perhaps some unifying ele-
ment is at work here which unites us in all our heterogeneity, because in a certain sense
it impels toward the earnest realities of existence.344
To define, limit and classify, definitively and systematically, as from a superior
standpoint, all philosophies and philosophers, I consider as unjust as it is impossible,
and lacking in understanding.