Sunday, July 02, 2006

Existential Mistrust


“The existential mistrust is indeed no longer, like the old kind, a mistrust of my fellow-man. It is rather the destruction of confidence in existence in general. That we can no longer carry on a genuine dialogue from one camp to the other is the severest symptom of sickness of present-day man. Existential mistrust is this sickness itself. But the destruction of trust in human existence is the inner poisoning of the total human organism from which this sickness stems.” Buber, “Hope for this Hour", Pointing the Way, p. 224