It would not be surprising if our deliberate suggestion, indeed, our intentional insistence that there is a connection between the words philosophy and politics were to evoke suspicion and dissent. Philosophy and politics — this combination gives the impression that the hard-won and carefully nurtured separation of the academic and political platforms is threatened with extinction. This suspicion is based on the supposedly indisputable fact that, by origin and nature, philosophy is concerned with knowing, politics with acting. As Goethe said, the active man is always unscrupulous and recognizes no law other than that of success, whereas the philosopher admits of no law other than that of truth and consequently will not let himself be concerned with any practical results. The disregard of the vital laws of these two forms of human existence would lead to an ominous mixture out of which would be born the absurdity of a political philosophy or the nonsense of philosophical politics, and thus the beginning of the end of autonomous philosophy and purposeful politics.