Wniknąć w nicość. Bernharda Weltego wykład o nadziei i rozpaczy

Abstract

Penetrate into nothingness. Bernhard Welte's exposition of hope and despair: The thought of Bernhard Welte, a philosopher of religion from Fribourg, many times touched upon the subject of nothingness. This article aims at presenting the function he ascribed to the idea of nothingness in the context of constitutive experience determining fundamental characteristics of human existence. This constitutive experience involves going through ones finiteness and infinity. The former is expressed as being conscious of one’s mortality and guilt, the latter in the activity of human spirit, especially the feeling of duty. A human being placed in between these opposing powers, seeks the sense of its existence. Simultaneously, it creates different relations which can occur between them. Their order can either lead to affirmation or negation of one’s own existence. If we add the experience of nothingness (with its specificity) to these relations, together they make the act of choosing between affirmation and negation more like the final choice between hope and despair.