ABSTRACT
The all-important question of what is the main task of philosophy may be answered in two ways. Out-and-out relativists will hold it to be the analysis of the contemporary situation; all others, however, will consider the knowledge of truth independent of time its principal aim. Thus, philosophy has a weightier obligation than merely to write the case-history of the modern soul. If existentialist thinkers speak of a philosophy of finiteness as a special feature of their time this term is meant to characterize a general position, which in itself is independent of particular materialistic, idealistic, religious and other views. But the philosophy which is related to this admits of no view of the world that is to be shaped by the intellect and filled with values which could be the foundation of personal development—on the contrary, it leaves them standing helplessly in the nameless and undefinable void.
