Man Is A Thinking Being. The Way

For Millenia, Man Remained What He Was For Aristotle: A Living Animal With The Additional Capacity For A Political Existence; Modern Man Is An Animal Whose Politics Places His Exitence As A Living Being In Question.

Thought Is Not What Inhabits A Certain Conduct And Gives It Its Meaning; Rather, It Is What Allows One To Step Back From This Way Of Acting Or Reacting, To Present It To Oneself As An Object Of Thought And To Question It As To Its Meaning, Its Conditions, And Its Goals. Thought Is Freedom In Relation To What One Does, The Motion By Which One Detaches From It, Establishes It As An Object, And Reflects On It As A Problem.

One Thing In Any Case Is Certain: Man Is Neither The Oldest Nor The Most Constant Problem That Has Been Posed For Human Knowledge.

Take The Notion Of Tradition: It Is Intended To Give A Special Temporal Status To A Group Of Phenomena That Are Both Successive And Identical (or At Least Similar); It Makes It Possible To Rethink The Dispersion Of History In The Form Of The Same; It Allows A Reduction Of The Difference Proper To Every Beginning, In Order To Pursue Without Discontinuity The Endless Search For Origin.

Do Not Ask Who I Am And Do Not Ask Me To Remain The Same: Leave It To Our Bureaucrats And Our Police To See That Our Papers Are In Order. At Least Spare Us Their Morality When We Write.