Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

Peter Wust

3 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Peter Wust

Peter Wust — philosopher of the “naivety of the mind” and thinker of reverence for actuality — supplies the book with a fundamental epistemological insight: truth is not made but received. The knower must conform to the things, not the other way around.

Key Contribution

Wust formulates the principle: cognition is a “taking measure of the knowing mind from the measure-giving things” (Maßnehmen des erkennenden Geistes an den maßgebenden Dingen). This means: it is not the human being who applies the measure to reality; rather, reality gives cognition its measure. Cognition is true when it conforms to the matter at hand — and false when it tries to bend the matter to itself. For the question of the person this means: it is not our theory that decides what a person is, but the reality of the person itself (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 39 ff.).

Central Ideas in the Book

Truth as Taking Measure

Wust’s concept of cognition stands in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition: truth is the conformity of the mind with the thing (adaequatio intellectus et rei). The mind is receptive — it receives the truth; it does not invent it. This attitude of openness and reverence before the real is the methodological foundation of the book: the question “What is the person?” demands an answer that proves itself against the reality of the person.

Against Constructivism

Wust turns against every form of constructivism that makes truth a product of the knowing subject. If truth were only a human construction, then the dignity of the person would likewise be a mere positing — and could be revoked at any time. Wust’s realism insists: the person is something — and what it is can be known in insight, but not arbitrarily determined.

Naivety and Depth

Wust speaks of the “naivety of the mind” — not in the sense of simple-mindedness, but in the sense of an original openness to things as they are. This naivety is the precondition of genuine cognition: only those prepared to let themselves be surprised can grasp reality in its depth. For the ontology of the person this means: the person shows itself to those who are willing to look — not to those who already know in advance what they want to find.

Place in the Book

Wust is drawn upon above all in the chapter How Can This Question Be Answered? (German), where the epistemological foundations of the ontology of the person are unfolded. His thought complements the phenomenological method (Husserl, Reinach) and the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics (Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas).

Sources: Bexten 2017, pp. 39 ff. (Wust’s fundamental epistemological insight: the knowing mind taking its measure from the measure-giving things).

Further sources:

  • Ungewissheit und Wagnis (Uncertainty and Venture; no published English translation) (1937). Salzburg/Leipzig: Anton Pustet (the naivety of the mind and taking measure from the measure-giving things as the epistemological foundation)

See also

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