Abstract

In this collection of essays Broekman gathers together a number of articles which were written by H. Wein between 1956 and 1962. Nearly half of them have been published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and most of the remainder have appeared in professional journals., These eleven essays concentrate on three areas: philosophical anthropology, metalinguistics, and general philosophy of language. In the introduction Broekman informs the reader how the three different topics relate to one another in Wein's philosophy. He offers a post-Hegelian theory of the objective spirit, which takes suggestions especially from American cultural anthropology and the thinking of Nicolai Hartmann. The concept "culture," which for Wein embodies the actualization of the objective spirit, thereby gains central importance. Man, by recognizing himself as the creator and creation of culture, realizes that he can only find out something about his own essence by analyzing his relation to culture, since culture is a human empirical entity which makes it possible for man to meet himself. Thereby an anthropological investigation is the self-encounter and self-discovery within which man experiences his being-man.--H. H.