A professor of philosophy requested to write an article for a journal published by a polytechnic institute feels an irresistible temptation to write about technique.¹ Especially if he thinks that philosophy does not have or ought not to have for its object — as is commonly believed, not without reason, given what has traditionally been taught about philosophy — the strange or esoteric, the most abstruse, what is most remote from concrete realities or is farthest removed from life, but that philosophy has or ought to have for its object what is the most concrete for the philosopher himself, including even that radical object the philosopher himself. Philosophy should be a conscious examination of its own roots, from which could then spring all the stalks or trunks, branches, flowers, and fruits desired.