Thus, Europe’s “crisis” comes from the apparent failure of rationalism.
And he concludes his lecture, delivered in 1935, in a pointed, visionary way, without even naming totalitarianism, fascism or nazism: “Europe’s existential crisis can end in only one of two ways: in its demise, alienated from its own rational sense of life, and lapsing into a hatred of the spirit and into barbarism; or in its rebirth from the spirit of philosophy, through a heroism of reason (…)”.