On the Active and Passive Nature of Man - the most important current essays by Martin Seel, the elegant stylist among German philosophers. All human behavior exists in a fundamental polarity of being determined and being determining. If we could not be determined, we could not determine anything - neither ourselves nor the world in which we find ourselves. This new book by Martin Seel deals with this simultaneously active and passive nature of man. Seemingly quite classical, the texts gathered here pursue their fundamental motif regarding the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, in order to explore the tension-filled relationships of knowledge and ignorance, recognition and attention, expressiveness and imagination. To philosophize means, after all, to embark on a cruise between regions of our self-understanding that can never be fully explored.