Man, the Metaphysical Being 39

of existence to worldly things. Evidently, such an a priori view at

once gives an atheistic character to a philosophy.
For, what sense could it still make to say that man is orientation
to God when one has first decreed that being-man is exhausted by
being-in-the-world and that the horizon of existence is exclusively
worldly? The affirmation of God could not be anything else than the
affirmation of a deified, absolutized worldly form or of a "world-
bound," degraded Transcendence. Such an affirmation of God can
never be what it is supposed to be-namely, the affirmation of the
Transcendent. It is intentionally that we express ourselves here with
all due precaution. For in this question also it is true that the philoso-
pher has the right and the duty to investigate critically what is tenable
in no matter what conviction. He has the duty critically to see what
has to be retained in such a generally admitted affirmation as that
there is a God. He does not have the right, prior to all critique, to
decide the issue of his investigation by means of a dogmatic a priori
View.
Summary. For us the primitive fact of existential phenomenology
is existence or intentionality, conceived as openness of the subject to
all that is not the subject itself. At least the material things, the
world, belong to that which is not the subject itself. The unity of
reciprocal implication of subject and world is an essential moment of
existence. However, there is nothing which gives us the right to
limit the openness of the subject to the world. Such terms as en-
counter, dialogue, participation, and presence may be retained, for
they are adaptable enough to be used in a broadened sense if sub-
sequent philosophical thinking should make it necessary.

d. Existence as Be;ng-"at"-the-World,. Labor

Meaning of "At." In giving expression to human existence we
have emphasized being-in-the-world to such an extent that the im-
pression may have been created that existence is wholly static an?
devoid of any dynamism. It is time to correct this erroneous impres-
sio']. To exist does not mean only to be in-the-world but also to be
"at" -the-world. 124 The particle "at" is used here in an unusual way
to express a kind of dynamism whose character, despite its unmis-
takeable presence, cannot be readily indicated. 125 The meaning of
124Cf. Merleau-Ponty, ibid., pp. 496-520.
125The proper nature of the dynamism pertaining to human existence will
be considered in Chapter IV.
40 Existential Phenomenology

this preposition approaches that of ordinary language in the expres-

sion "He is at it again."126
This sentence is used to convey the idea that the person in ques-
tion is doing something. Accordingly, by saying that man's existence
is being-"at" -the-world we want to indicate that he is not wholly
immobilized in his world.
Self-Project. When man reflects upon his existence, it is undoubt-
edly true that he finds himself "already" involved in a definite body
and in a definite world. He is never sheer indetermination. He finds
himself as an American, a Hebrew, as intelligent, a cripple, a laborer,
rich, fat, etc. All this constitutes what he "already" is, or to say it
differently, his past. Sometimes the term "determination" is used to
describe this condition, for there is question here of that which is
meant by all kinds of "determinations." The most current terms, how-
ever, are situation and facticity.
I t should be clear that the facticity of existence means a kind of
immobilization, as is clearly manifested by such determinatic(:) as
cripple and fat. Facticity implies that certain potentialities are elimi-
nated. For instance, a person with an LQ. of 80 cannot become Sec-
retary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. On
the other hand, it is undeniable also that there is no facti city without
potentialities. If one is a lawyer, stupid, or ill, and these determina-
tions do not include any possibilities, then he is not really a lawyer,
really stupid, really ill. One who is ill has always at least the pos-
sibility of accepting or cursing his illness, of taking it as a penance,
or of tyrannizing his surroundings. Thus every determination that is
"already" present in a human existence implies also something that
is "not yet" there; every past implies a future. Existence is opposi-
tional unity, unity in opposition of what de facto is and what can be.
As such, man's existence is called project or plan. 127
I t is very important to realize that both facticity and possibility
are related to the subject which man is. My facti city is min·e and my
possibilities are mine. Man is not de facto fat in the same way as a
dead elephant is fat. The potentialities of a fat man are not those of
a dead elephant to which "something can happen."128 This idea may
be expressed succinctly by saying that the project which man is is a
self-project.
126Cf. Dondeyne, "Beschouwingen bij het atheistisch existentialisme,"
Tijdschrift voor Philosophie, vol. 13 (1951), p. 17, note 14.
127Cf. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 145.
128Heidegger, ibid., p. 143.
 Man, the Metaphysical Being 41

Self-Realization. Man is also the execution of the self-project

which he is. This execution is not something accidentaI,129 for every
being "does" something. A thing that does not work and a man, on
the proper level of his being-man, who does not "act" are not really
a thing and a man. To be a being is to be active. As far as man is
concerned, this being active means that the subject transcending his
facticity, i.e., what his existence is "already," stretches out toward
the fulfilment of one of the modes in which he can be, one of the
modes pertaining to what he is "not yet," and himself brings this
mode to realization. What exactly is meant here by himself is a ques-
tion which will continue to occupy our attention for a long time. At
present we limit ourselves to the observation that man himself acts
because and insofar as his action is not the "effect" of a determining
influence of his facticity. Man's action, in the fullest sense of the
term, is the creation of a new meaning. It implies, moreover, that he
knows what he is doing. The "light" which is his subjectivity is at
the same time an original vision of his situation. For a man to act
himself is to act rationally. The idea of responsibility is immediately
connected with it. For man's action is not a process, but a "reply"
to being addressed by his situation, and he has a "word" to fix the
objective meaning of this situation. Things do not have "words," they
do not give a "reply," and they are not "responsible" (Buytendijk).
Care should be taken not to lose sight of the fact that at present
we are exclusively concerned with man on the proper level of his
being-man, with man as acting himself or personally. We do not
wish to imply that man always or of necessity finds himself on this
level. The contrary is true. Very often it is almost not man himself
or man personally who acts. The subject of human actions is not
always the self, the I in person, but rather the impersonal ((they."130
The I can let itself drift, it can think what "they" think and do what
"they" do. The impersonal "they" can deprive man of being-
himself.l3l It hates originality and is addicted to "as everybody knows
or does" and to "being one of the crowd."133 Such a man makes us
think of an automaton. His potentialities are less and less his own,
and their execution becomes more and more a process. The imper-
129"Das 'Wesen' des Daseins Iiegt in seiner Existenz." Heidegger, ibid.,
p.42.
130"Zunachst ist das Dasein Man und someist bleibt es so." Heidegger,
ibid., p. 129.
131Cf. Heidegger, ibid., p. 126.
132/bid., p. 170.
133/bid., p. 127.
42 Existential Phenomenology

sonal "they" can account for everything, for there really is not anyone
who has to render an account. 134
We do not want to follow Heidegger in disparaging the positive
value of the impersonal "they," of the almost impersonal, almost auto-
matic, and almost process-like way of acting. It would be simply
impossible for man to live if in a way he could not rely on this way
of acting, if he had exclusively to exist personally in the almost over-
wrought sense which Heidegger seems to consider its only acceptable
meaning. However, the impersonal "they" can mean the doom of
the I with all its disastrous consequences. It is imperative that this
distinction of "they" and HI" be clearly perceived, for in subsequent
pages we will have to make use of it.
Labor as a Mode of Being-Uat" -the-vVorld. Man's action means
his self-realization and the humanization of his world. These two go
hand in hand, for man is essentially the unity of reciprocal implication
of subject and world. Labor is a mode of being-Hat" -the world. Not
all actions are labor in the proper sense. 135 Walking, courting,
mountain climbing, holding a party, enjoying beauty, loving, praying,
etc. are human actions but not labor. Moreover, we meaningfully
distinguish between time of labor and free time. Free time is pre-
cisely the time in which we do not labor.136
What is labor? \Ve cannot be satisfied with the inadequate de-
scription stating that labor is the mode of being "at" the world in
which man transforms nature as it is given in order to take from it
what he needs to provide for his physical being. Man does not
merely labor to live, to remain alive by eating and drinking. Strictly
speaking, not even of eating and drinking may we say that we do
these actions exclusively in order to live. What man wants is to
live, and eating and drinking themselves are modes of living. 137 Man
does not eat and drink in the same way as an engine is given a new

134"Es kann am leichtensten alles verantworten, wei! keiner ist, der fUr
etwas einzustehen braucht." Heidegger, ibid., p. 127.
135Jean Lacroix does not admit this. "Le travail ... est liberte en action,
c'est-it-dire effort pour actualiser des valeurs dans et par des mouvements,
information nerveuse selon une norme, emission d' esprit, pour reprendre la
belle figure de Proudhon, dans la nature et par la mediation de l'organisme."
Personne et amour, Paris, 1955, p. 91.
136ef. F. Tellegen, Zelfwording en zel/verlies in de arbeid, Delft, 1958, p. 6.
137"Nous respirons pour respirer, mangeons et buvons pour manger et pour
boire, nous nous abritons pour nous abriter, nous etudions pour satisfaire it
notre curiosite, nous nous promenons pour nous promener. Tout cela n'est
pas pour vivre. Tout cela est vivre." E. Levinas, De l'existence a l'existant
Paris, n. d., p. 67. '
 Man, the Metaphysical Being 43

supply of gasoline. There is a big difference between meals and taking

pills. By identifying drinking and eating with filling the gas tank
one disregards what is specifically human in these actions.13s
Something similar applies to labor. Man wants to live and for
this reason he also wants to labor. To work is for man a way of
realizing himself, of becoming man. 139 We do not mean that man
does not labor to provide for his physical needs, for evidentl man
does work also for this purpose. Perhaps it is even for this reason
that a certain mode of being "at" the world is called labor and not
something else. l4O On the other hand, it is undeniable that the self-
realization, the becoming-man, which is attained in labor does not
mean very much if man does not intend anything else than providing
for his physical needs. In and through this work man realizes him-
self, but only as laborer, much in the same way as through eating
and drinking he realizes himself but only as eater and drinker. True,
his work always implies a certain liberation from the bond and
physical pressure of nature. Nature loses something of its inhospitality
and menace through labor. The almost instinctive character of the
primitive search for food is somewhat interrupted by the rationality
with which man turns to the earth in this labor. l41
However, with respect to what we would like to call "being inte-
grally man," this mode of becoming man has very little meaning. Labor
becomes human in the sense of becoming meaningful for being in-
tegrally human, only from the moment that man strives to wrest a
surplus from nature. "Labor is essentially productive. The process
of labor consumes the vital forces of one's own body to transform
nature in order to restore these vital forces and to build up a system
of forces available for higher purposes. The essential point is that
man by virtue of his spirit wrests a surplus from nature."l42 In this
way culture and civilization in the full sense become real human
possibilities. It is undeniably true that the culture and civilization
of the western world have been made possible by the fact that western
man went to work.
The demand, however, that work be really productive begins to
be fulfiller!. to some extent, only when man begins to divide labor.
Each assumes a special task in order to be capable of executing it more
13SC£. Levinas, ibid., p. 68.
139Cf. Tellcgen, ap. cit., p. 9.
14oCf. Tellegen, ap. cit., p. 3.
14IC£. Lacroix, ap. cit., p. 87.
142P. de Bruin, "De structuur van het economisch arbeidsbegrip," Tijd-
schrift vaar Philasaphie, vol. 4 (1942), p. 128.
44 Existential Phenomenology

fruitfully. He fulfils this task for himself and for others; he lets
others profit from his labor and, in his turn, profits from the work
of the others. Thus labor assumes the character of a service. In the
perspective of a national economy labor and services are spoken of as
economic factors.143 Labor becomes more productive because there
is a greater surplus; and precisely for this reason labor becomes more
human, more meaningful for being integrally man, for culture and
civilization.
As soon as labor in the more restricted sense makes it possible
to attain a more integral mode of being human through higher cultural
activities, the meaning of the terms "labor" or "work" is extended and
applied to these higher cultural activities themselves-namely, when
they are performed in the service of others and compensated by goods
or money in order to supply the laborer in question with the necessary
means for his own physical needs and with a certain surplus for
activities which lie outside the realm of his assigned labor. Thus,
contrary to what used to be the case in former times, those who
devote themselves to science and art may now be said to perform
labor.144
Nevertheless, there remains a difference between work or labor
and occupation. "Labor in the proper sense is only that occupation
which produces goods or services and thus contributes to maintaining
the life of society, while any action in which man puts his spiritual
or bodily forces to work is an occupation. The labor of one may, of
course, be directly or indirectly the occupation of the other. In this
matter the boundaries are very uncertain, for there are many activities
which are at the same time labor and occupation and, on the other
hand, there are activities which have many characteristics of labor
but few of occupation, and vice versa. Often an activity passes from
one category to the other depending on who does it. The gardener
who raises vegetables for the market certainly performs labor; the
factory worker who farms his half-acre in his spare time works and
plays at the same time, certainly nowadays when he does not strictly
need his homegrown vegetables; the retired gentleman-farmer whose
enthusiastic hobby is king-sized watermelons can hardly be said to
labor."145

143Cf. de Bruin, ibid., pp. 130-131.

144Cf. Remy C. Kwant, Ret Arbeidsbestel, Utrecht, 1957, pp. 29-47;
Philosophy of Labor, Pittsburgh, 1960, pp. 29-58.
140De Bruin, op. cit., p. 131.
 Man, the Metaphysical Being 4S

As we have seen previously, one of the aspects of man's action,

by virtue of which this action can be called human, consists in its
rationality. It was Descartes whose vision foresaw what man would be
capable of if he allowed his labor to be guided by the rationality which
manifests itself in the physical sciences. Descartes foresaw that man
could become master and possessor of nature if for the prescientific
light of reason with which labor had hitherto been performed he would
substitute the rationality of the sciences of nature. l46 His dream has
become reality in modern technology-labor has become technical
work.
Labor and Being-Integrally-Man. It is from the beginning of
technocracy that dates the exaltation of labor as the mode of man's
self-realization and humanization, as the condition for the rise of
human relations and true peace. A labor civilization arosel4 7 as well
as a philosophy whose primitive fact may be said to be labor. The
French socialists Saint-Simon and Proudhon laid the foundation for
the philosophy of labor of Marx.l4S To be genuinely human, man
was supposed to be a laborer.
This development should not cause any surprise. As we have seen,
labor can be called human, in the sense of meaningful for being-
integrally-man, only from the moment when man through his work
wrests a surplus from labor which makes cultural activities in the full
sense possible. Evidently, it was only through the introduction of
technology that this condition was fully satisfied. Moreover, through
labor man enters not only into relation with nature but also with
his fellow men. Wherever man really begins to labor he has constantly
more and more to do with fellow human beings.149 It was the merit
of Saint-Simon and Proudhon to have realized this meaning of labor
when, despising politicians, lawyers, contemplatives, and philosophers,
they described labor as formative of society. ISO Since the introduction
of technology this character of labor has become visible to all. Labor
means the humanization of man in the intersubjective sense.
A philosophy does not fail because of what unfolds of reality,
but because of what it eliminates from reality, because of its "detotali-
146C( Remy C. Kwant, "Arbeid en Leven," Arbeid, V crslag van de 22ste
alg. verg. 'u. d. Ver. v. Thomistische Wijsbcgcerte, Utrecht, 1958, pp. 39-44.
147C£. Lacroix, op. cit., pp. 111-112.
148C£. Lacroix, op. cit., pp. 98-104.
HO"Le travail n'est pas seulement rapport de I'homme a 1a nature, mais
relation de I'homme a I'humanite . . . unc societe ne s'edifie qu'autour d'une
oeuvre ree1le et a que1que degre commune." Lacroix, op. cit., p. 83.
I50"La paix pour et par la production, c'est-a-dire pour et par Ie travail,
telle est done l'idee centrale du saint-simonis me." Lacroix, op. cit., p. 105.
46 Existential Phenomenology

zation of reality" (Le Senne). It is here also that we must seek the
failure of Marxism which unqualifiedly defines man as a laborer. It
is not the emphasis on the humanization of man .through labor nor
the accent on the formative value of labor for society which constitute
the mistake of Marxism, but the elimination of being-human from this
"humanization" and from this form of society. Labor is human because
of its value for being integrally man. If the integral man is defined
as a laborer, how could labor still be called inhuman? The definition
which Marxism gives of man eliminates precisely that which makes
man's labor human. The thesis that labor means unqualifiedly becom-
ing human is valid only in the supposition that to be man is identical
with to be a laborer. This supposition, however, is false, for labor
itself can be inhuman. Labor is inhuman when in humanizing nature
man is reduced to mere nature. 151 This happens when labor has no
longer any meaning for being-integrally-human. As soon, however, as
it is realized that labor is human because of its meaning for being-
integrally-man, man can no longer be defined as laborer, and labor
can no longer be proclaimed to be unqualifiedly the humanization of
man.
The same must be said with respect to the formative value of labor
for society. Of course, it is true that labor brings very many human
beings into contact with very many other human beings, that man
becomes man in an intersubjective sense--but is such a network of
relations necessarily human? Is its definition necessarily the definition
of brotherhood and peace ?152 To be truly man certainly is to be a
brother to fellow men, but since to be a laborer is not the same as
to be truly man, the intersubjectivity of being a laborer may not be
defined as brotherhood and peace.
All this remains rather abstract. We have to look at society around
us to see the concrete meaning of the dictatorship of technology, as
it reigns in Marxism and Americanism. 153 The realization of its
meaning drove Gabriel Marcel to pronounce a sharp condemnation
of technocracy.

151"Le travail est bon en tant qu'il est une humanisation de la nature,
mais il comporte aussi un risque perpetuel de naturalisation de l'homme."
Lacroix, op. cit., p. 100.
152"Dans notre monde de plus en plus collectivise, Ie mot avec perd son
sens et une communaute reelle apparait de moins en moins concevable." R. Trois-
fontaines, De l'existence Ii tetre, la philosophie' de Galn'iel Marcel, vol. I,
Louvain-Paris 1953, p. 66.
153Cf. Marcel, Les hommes contre I'hu1I1uin, Paris, 1951, p. 198.