Initially Țuțea rejected the categories of Western idealism, replacing the Kantian conceptual framework with a spectrum of empirical-phenomenological nuances. His later philosophy, as he declares, is an effort of "theologal" (not theological) thinking. He argues that Truth is unique, but human reason cannot find it by itself, although it can be a receptacle of truth. Thus, in order to really know the truth, man needs inspiration and revelation. Man is never autonomous, and all intellectual efforts like science or philosophy are only means of producing fictions, at the level of material and cultural comfort. Țuțea believed that science and philosophy by themselves don't even have a consoling function, being essentially irrelevant with respect to the most dramatic issues, like death. Thus, only religion (specifically, Christianity) possesses the truth and bears relevance to the destiny of humankind. Without it, he says, man is just "a rational animal that comes from nowhere and doesn't go anywhere". Anthropologically, Țuțea analyzed what he calls "Christian man"; the anthropological model to be pursued is that of the saint.
