Abstract

Search for Gods is an exploration of man’s experiences in his natural and cultural world with the intent of rediscovering and describing the transcendent foundation of human existence which is said to be the ground of man’s freedom and his achievement of the fullness of his being-in-the-world. Writing from a Heideggerian perspective, Vycinas argues that the mythical world view, in which man is open to and takes part in transcendental reality, understood as the play of nature’s forces, was replaced in Western thought and culture by an anthropocentric view in which man establishes his own world, and the transcendental is removed to the perimeter of the unreal. In the anthropocentric world, man understands the absence of the transcendental foundation to be a mark of his supremacy. But Vycinas holds that this is merely a phase in the cultural development of man and argues that when man meditates on his ways he will discover the insecurity of his ways and begin to search for foundations other than anthropocentric ones.