“Man does not know himself truly except as he knows himself confronted by God. Only in that confrontation does he become aware of his full stature and freedom and of the evil in him.”

— Reinhold Niebuhr

vol. 1, p. 131
The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (1941)

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Reinhold Niebuhr 65

American protestant theologian 1892–1971

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“We know that with the very first awakening of knowledge, man is confronted with two obvious facts:
The existence of the world in which he lives; and the existence of psychic life in himself.
Neither of these can he prove or disprove, but they are facts: they constitute reality for him.”

P. D. Ouspensky book Tertium Organum

Source: Tertium Organum (1912; 1922), Ch. I
Context: We know that with the very first awakening of knowledge, man is confronted with two obvious facts:
The existence of the world in which he lives; and the existence of psychic life in himself.
Neither of these can he prove or disprove, but they are facts: they constitute reality for him.
It is possible to meditate upon the mutual correlation of these two facts. It is possible to try to reduce them to one; that is, to regard the psychic or inner world as a part, reflection, or function of the world, or the world as a part, reflection, or function of that inner world. But such a procedure constitutes a departure from facts, and all such considerations of the world and of the self, to the ordinary non-philosophical mind, will not have the character of obviousness. On the contrary the sole obvious fact remains the antithesis of I and Not-I — our inner psychic life and the outer world.

“What he himself is, whether he is or is not, he does not know so much as this.”
Ipse qui sit, utrum sit an non sit, id quoque nescit.

Gaio Valerio Catullo list of poems by Catullus

XVII, line 22
Carmina

“Man does not know himself truly except as he knows himself confronted by God. Only in that confrontation does he become aware of his full stature and freedom and of the evil in him.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr 65

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