Preface to the Second Edition

Summary

In this new edition, the reader (if he is motivated to look for such things) will find several parts reworked and developed into more precise determinations. I was concerned in this edition with moderating and lessening the formal character of the presentation by, among other things, using more expansive, exoteric remarks to bring the abstract concepts closer to ordinary understanding and a more concrete representation of them. Yet the condensed brevity made necessary by an outline, in matters that are abstruse anyway, leaves this second edition in the same role as the first, to serve as a text for the lectures [Vorlesebuch] in need of the requisite elucidation by the oral presentation. To be sure, the title of an encyclopedia ought to leave room for a less rigorous scientific method and for assembling items based upon external considerations. However, the nature of the matter entails that the logical connection had to remain the foundation.

There are, it would seem, more than enough promptings and incentives on hand that seem to make it compulsory for me to explain the position of my philosophizing towards what lies beyond it, namely, the bustling concerns of contemporary culture, some of which are full of spirit, some devoid of it. This is the sort of thing that can only happen in an exoteric manner, as in a preface. For, although these concerns link themselves to philosophy, they do not engage with it scientifically and thus bar themselves from philosophy altogether, conducting their palaver outside of philosophy and remaining external to it. It is unpleasant and even awkward to enter ground so alien to science, for this sort of explaining and discussing does not advance the very understanding that can alone be the concern of genuine knowledge. Yet it may be useful, even necessary, to discuss some of these phenomena.

In general, in my philosophical endeavours, what I have worked towards and continue to work towards is the scientific knowledge of the truth. It is the most difficult path but the only path that can be of interest and value for the spirit, once the latter has entered upon the path of thought and, once it is on that path, has not fallen prey to vanity but instead has preserved the will and the courage for the truth.