Alright. After this has been said, I think I can say: in dealing with our present-day society, I also deal with that being which has created the present day society by freedom and destiny together, that being which must have characteristics which make such a society possible, so that our consideration is always dual—and here a real difficulty arises, namely how much belongs to the structure of man as man, and how much belongs to the structure of the Middle Westerner in the year 1956? To distinguish these two elements, the one most universal and the one most concrete, is a continuous work of intellectual analysis. But this need [?] doesn't take away the one or the other side.

When we gave the analysis of visual arts, I spoke about the concept of style, and I called “style” an overall form in which a period expresses its ultimate concern. The term style was applied also to thinking, to politics, to science, philosophy, etc. But there is a difference between the arts and all the other functions of man’s spiritual life: they all are directed to their subject matter while art has, by its very nature, the function of expression. Of course a scientific method also expresses something about man and about a special period of man, but this is not its purpose. If a picture or a poem expresses something, then this is their purpose. Therefore art is always more revealing than all the other functions of the human mind for a special style, and the style is revealing for the ultimate concern of a special period. The question there is: which is the overall style which comes out in the art of our period, and which, in this, as such a style, expresses the actual situation of our period, and at the same time potentialities of human nature generally?