Der Atem Des Geistes

Der Atem des Geistes (The Breath of the Spirit, 1951) is the first book Rosenstock-Huessy published in Germany after World War II: a collection of essays presenting his method of inquiry for the social sciences, what he calls “a new science” in the first section of the book. In the chapter “Das Versiegen der Sprache” (“Speech Peters Out”) he writes:

[Mankind has] been ignored for 40 years, because the sciences in office–all of them–take aim in their gnostic-platonic way at objects in nature and have no faith in names; in doing so, living man consciously distances himself from his own nature. However, a new ‘Organon’ for all the sciences of society, state and church [to replace Aristotle’s canon] , a grammar of human associations is in the making here. (35)

Other chapters address Augustine and the Christian virtues; the faith of scientists like Faraday; the legacy of his friend, the theologian and church historian, Joseph Wittig; and the place of the Jesuits in the battle for the importance of social groups and against the hegemony of the mind in human life.

Hardbound, 296 pages.