Schürmann (1987:51) – mathesis

As we have seen, an epoch is dominated by what is ‘first caught’ in it, by its primum captum, its principle. When the modern epoch is described by the triumph of subjectivity, this means that at least since Descartes  , but more profoundly since Plato, philosophy has systematically inquired about man ‘in the first place’, and of everything else in relation to him. Man is the theoretical origin from which objects receive their status of objectivity. Nothing is more revealing in this respect than the project of a universal mathesis: for the moderns knowledge is protected from the onslaught of doubt only when it rests on a first that renders mathesis ‘universal’, that is, ‘turned toward the one’, turned toward man. The modern cognitive project consists in establishing the subject as the unshakable, indubitable foundation of knowledge. Not so for thought projects. If, with the closure, thinking achieves its emancipation from knowing, it is also freed from domination by the One. To thinking, as opposed to knowing, the origin does not offer itself as a principium. Within thinking, the word ‘origin’ recovers its etymological meaning: oriri, coming forth. For thinking, and incipient with the closure, origination means multiple presencing. [SCHÜRMANN, HBAPA, p. 51]