The last lecture discussed the problem of the idea and the ideal of personality, in their relation to each other. I came to the conclusion that the ideal of personality and the separation of the personal center from the unconscious elements of our personality, and from the community with other beings, has consequences of a devastating  character for Western civilization, that it is one of the causes for the further disintegration of the personality just because it has lost its foundation in the unconscious and communal elements. I don't want to go further into this; we still have three hours—today, Thursday, and a week from today—and I want to discuss the social, economic and political problems of the relationship of religion and culture.

The first is a sociological remark with which I want to start because it has much to do with the discussion of the idea and the ideal of personality. We can say that more genuine than the development of personality is something which one could call genuine collectivism, or original we-consciousness. We-consciousness precedes, historically and ontologically, the I-consciousness. Beings don't feel separated, in the beginning of cultural development, from each other as centered beings. Of course this was always given potentially, but in order to transform this potentiality into actuality, very fundamental events had to happen, and I gave you two of them. The one is the experience of personal guilt, which takes the guilt away from the “we” and therefore the expiation of the guilt away from the chances, from the contingent search for a victim who carries the expiation, although he himself is subjectively not guilty. You find this still in the Old Testament.