Patrick Holland

In the concise formulation of the relation-self-to-self a fundamental point is immediately discerned, already identified in the problem of the "existential thinker", namely that for the existent everything is reduced to its very existence, and it now becomes clear that this existence must be taken not in the sense of an external state, but in the strict sense of the concept of existential existence. However, any relationship to self, which will need to be discussed in more detail, inevitably always implies a relationship to the other. Such a relation to the self and to the Other would first of all still be a universal definition that could take place in relation to any living subject and, consequently, could be put forward directly in the plane of life by the philosophy of life. What is new in comparison with this in existential philosophy is the final unconditionality of this attitude, and therefore the other to which existence refers also consists in something unconditional to which man aspires outside himself and which is designated by Kierkegaard as God, by Jaspers in a more general way as transcendence. Just as in the plane of natural life the world is always assumed at the same time as the self, so now in the existential plane within the same indivisible experience transcendence is assumed at the same time as existence. "Existential existence comprehends itself only in its freedom, while by the same act it perceives the other in relation to itself."