Abstract

This is the first volume of a magnum opus in four volumes dedicated to the “evolutionary theory of knowledge.” Just a glance for comparison with some standard books on this subject, is sufficient, however, to point out the peculiarity of the approach chosen by Schüling. This is not a book on biology and physics, nor on models and hierarchies, nor does it deal with retentions, selections, or reductions. It is first of all a book on the anthropological settings conditioning the process of human cognition. The title’s mention of a “system of human knowing,” does not, and this is important, imply a system of human cognition. Schüling maintains the distinction between knowing as an actus exercitus and cognition as an actus signatus, or as Heidegger says, between the “process of thought” and the “content of thought”. Within a judgment, Heidegger acknowledges, one has to distinguish between “the judgment as a real psychical procedure and what is judged as an ideal content”.