Direction

If we now assume that human actors are only capable of acting and making decisions if they at least implicitly have an answer to the question of the good life, which indicates to them the search and avoidance direction (*Such- und Vermeidungsrichtung*) in their conduct of life, and that they tend on a basal psychological level to strive for happiness in the sense of psychophysical well-being, then it becomes apparent that this (implicit) sense of the good in modernity is decisively determined by two cultural and two institutional moments.

First, the question of what we should do and how we should live cannot be answered a priori and once and for all in the light of modern self-understanding, or read off from our nature. Secondly, the goals as well as the strategies of living must be decided "each for himself: Which God we want to serve, in Max Weber's words, which weight we want to give to which Sphere of life – art, politics, economy, family, religion, sport, etc.? – and to what we should orient ourselves substantially in each of these spheres (whether we want to be, for example, impressionist, conservative, entrepreneur, conventional family man and Protestant, or expressionist, socialist, knowledge worker, rainbow family founder and Buddhist) [...].

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