With the appearance of Greek philosophy, however, and with its first definite formulation in a consistent idealizing of the new sense of infinity, there occurs, from this point of view, a progressive transformation that ultimately draws into its orbit all ideas proper to finitude and with them the entire spiritual culture of mankind. For us Europeans there are, consequently, even outside the philosophico-scientific sphere, any number of infinite ideas (if we may use the expression), but the analogous character of infinity that they have (infinite tasks, goals, verifications, truths, ‘true values’, ‘genuine goods’, ‘absolutely’ valid norms) is due primarily to the transformation of man through philosophy and its idealities. Scientific culture in accord with ideas of infinity means, then, a revolutionizing of all culture, a revolution that affects man’s whole manner of being as a creator of culture. It means also a revolutionizing of historicity, which is now the history of finite humanity’s disappearance, to the extent that it grows into a humanity with infinite tasks.
EDMUND HUSSERL: Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man
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