PATHMARKS
cosmos as a species of living being, becomes especially clear from the turns of phrase that Kant has recourse to in clarifying this existentiell concept of world: "knowing the world" and "having class (world]." Although they both refer to the existence of human beings, the two expressions each mean something different, "for the first (the human being who knows the world) merely understands the game as a spectator, whereas the second has played along with it."51 Here world is the term for the "game" of everyday Dasein, for the latter itself.
Commensurate with this, Kant distinguishes "worldly erudition" from "private erudition." "The first refers to the skillfulness of one human being in exercising influence upon others, in order to use them for his own ends."52 Furthermore: "A history is composed in a pragmatic manner whenever it makes one erudite, i.e., instructs the world as to how it may procure its advantage better or at least just as well as the previous world."53
From this "worldly knowledge" in the sense of "life-experience" and understanding of existence Kant distinguishes "Scholastic knowledge."54 Along the guideline of this distinction he then develops the concept of philosophy in accordance with its "Scholastic concept" and its "worldly concept."55 Philosophy in the Scholastic sense remains an affair of the mere "artificer of reason." Philosophy in accordance with its worldly concept is the concern of the "teacher in the ideal," i.e., of the one [51 {GA 9: 154}] who aims for the "divine human being in us."56 "The concept of world here means that concept which concerns what is necessarily of interest to everyone."57
In this whole context world is the designation for human Dasein in the core of its essence. This concept of world corresponds entirely to the existentiell concept of Augustine, except that the specifically Christian evaluation of "worldly" existence, of the amatores mundi, is omitted and world has the positive significance of the "participators" in the game of life.
This existentiell meaning of the concept of world cited from Kant prefigures the more recent appearance of the expression "Weltanschauung."58 Yet expressions like "man of the world" and "the aristocratic world" show a similar meaning of the concept of world. Here again "world" is not a mere regional title used to designate the human community as distinct from the totality of natural things; rather, world refers precisely to human beings in their relations to beings as a whole; town houses and mews, for example, also belong to the "aristocratic world."
It is therefore equally erroneous to appeal to the expression world either as a designation for the totality of natural things (the natural concept of world), or as a term for the community of human beings (the personal
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