Changing
the Priorities [1]
:
Letter on Humanism
Martin Heidegger
Letter is the extensive answer to the motivating
question of Jean Beaufreu, the good friend of Heidegger, How
can we restore meaning to the word humanism? (49)[2] .
Humanism, the nature of humanity, and the nature of man are the
leading themes of this article. And Heidegger defines man from
the point of view of his distinct thinking, which was initially
presented in his major work Being and Time some twenty years
before this Letter was written.
It should be mentioned that Heidegger is often accused in
speaking Heideggerian rather than ordinary German. That is
true to some extent. He often takes ordinary everyday words and
ascribes an unusual, yet far from arbitrary, meaning to it. As a
result, reading Heidegger is challenging even to Germans, not to
mention reading in translation.
The cornerstone of Heideggers thinking is the distinction
between Being (Sein) and being (Seiende). These are two
different, yet related words in German. While the first word,
Sein, is adequately translated into English as Being, it is
very hard to find an approximately corresponding concept to the
second term in English language, partially because both words are
somewhat similar in meaning in everyday German. In fact,
Seiende is the derivative verb from the noun Sein.
And since the grammatical structure of English is very different
from that of German, it has no straightforward translation. Some
translators try being creative and coin an artificial word
essents, derived from the Latin word essens, as a
translation for Seiende.[3] They make the distinction then
between Being and essents. But I dont see how changing
of one foreign word to another word no less foreign to the ears
can help to understand the meaning of it. In our text[4] both
words are translated as being, and the difference preserved
by capitalization of one of them (it is hard to preserve this
difference in speech though).
The being with small b designates all the things, or
entities that exist. Another possible designator which sometimes
is used is existents, or, more generally things that
are. This includes not only material things, events, or
relations, but also all things that can become direct objects of
thought[5] , including God. God is the highest being among other
beings.
On the contrary, Being with the capital B is something that
makes the appearance of beings possible. It is the Being of these
entities. The fact that beings have their existence. Thus while
the question about beings is concerned with what there is, the
question in the direction of Being states that there are
[beings]. What exactly is Being, and whether this question thus
stated is even legitimate, well have to discuss later. But for
now, lets consider some short definitions from
Letter itself:
? Being is transendents pure and simple (61)
? Being is not God and not cosmic ground (57)
? Being is farther than all beings and is yet nearer to man than
every being, be it rock or God. Being is what is the nearest.
(58)
Often Heidegger speaks of Being in negative terms; he much easier
can say what Being is not. Basically for now we should understand
that Being is not simply the totality of all beings, or the most
abstract concept. In fact it is not a meaningful concept or a
substance at all, and thus it can never become a direct object of
thinking. Thinking other than conceptual is needed to grasp
Being[6] . And this is the main difficulty for Heidegger.
The heraldic symbol of Heideggers philosophy, the term
Dasein is typically left in its German form. It consists of
the two words, Da, which means there or now,
and Sein, which simply means being. It can be very
roughly equated to the idea of a man, or to the way of existence,
which is unique to man, but it does not exhaust its meaning and
significance. We shall try to make it evident further on.[7] .
Letter starts with the question of action. The
essence of action is accomplishment. To accomplish means to
unfold something into the fullness of its essence (47). In
other words, action is evaluated not according to its practical
results or utility, but according to the degree of fullness and
completeness that it gives to something, whatever it might be.
Acting does not mean bringing something new into being, not
creating from nothing, but always accomplishing something, which
already is. But that is above all is Being. Thinking
accomplishes the relation of Being to the essence of man.
(47). We understand now that Heidegger speaks primarily of the
action, or the deed of thinking. And since the action is valued
from the perspective of its accomplishment, as unfolding
something into the fullness of its essence, Being is the highest
and the most prized goal of thinking, for it is Being that gives
essence and meaning in the first place to any other object of
possible action. Being is the only worthy goal for the action of
thinking. Thinking acts insofar as it thinks. Such action is
presumably the simplest and at the same time the highest, because
it concerns the relation of Being to man. (48).
What thinking does in its highest manifestation, he says, it
accomplishes the relation of Being to man. It reveals this
relation in its fullness. Right here, in the first sentences of
Letter the main idea is already exposed. The principal
deed of thinking is to unfold, to uncover the relation of Being
to man. We can already see that the man, and thus the concept of
humanism, is somehow connected to Being and cannot be considered
apart from it. This idea will be elaborated further in the text.
Heidegger continues further: Thinking brings this relation to
Being solely as something handed over to it from Being. Such
offering consists in the fact that in thinking Being comes to
language. (48) We see here, firstly, that thinking in its
accomplishment is dependent; it is not self-sufficient or
autonomous. It works with what was already handed over to it from
Being. What was given to thinking originally? It was Being
itself. Thinking simply gives it back to Being, it gives Being
its due. Thinking is engagement by Being for Being (48)
This recurrence in thinking of Being is essential for the most of
Heideggers writings: The relation of Being to man initially
comes to thinking from Being, and then, is given back to Being in
a certain way, namely in the form of language. We should better
say, it is spoken back to Being. By offering itself to man
Being in the ultimate sense fulfils itself[8]
Secondly, Heidegger emphasizes the role of language as the
element where the action of thinking occurs. Thinking speaks
Being into language. That is the reason why Heidegger calls
language the House of Being. Yet, as we have seen, thinking
cannot claim the accomplishment all to itself. All action is
originally rooted in Being, and thinking may simply let itself be
claimed by Being: Thinking lets itself be claimed by Being so
that it can say the truth of Being. Thinking accomplishes this
letting.(48).
Obviously, thinking does not exist by itself; it is the attribute
and the privilege of man. In this very paragraph in the couple of
sentences Heidegger says something of the principal importance:
Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those
who think and those who create with words are the guardians of
this home. Their guardianship accomplishes the manifestation of
Being insofar as they bring the manifestation to language and
maintain it through their speech. (47). Note that both Being
and man dwell in the same house. They appear to be neighbors.
Being is always very close to man. The house they both
dwell in is language.
To dwell here means also to express through. Language
is not Being, but the element where Being expresses itself, or,
using Heideggers term, where the lighting of Being
occurs. It is thus the element where man expresses himself).
Being brings itself to the light through language. Language is
something that is not to be taken lightly. Thinkers and poets
[those who create with words], according to Heidegger, are
the guardians of language. To guard language means to manifest
Being through it.
So far the question of how to restore meaning to the word
humanism did not get a clear answer. Before proceeding any
further Heidegger gives a short historical review of the
question: We encounter the first humanism in Rome. The
so-called Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
in Italy is a revival of Roman humanism. (52). In addition
there are forms of humanism, which are not rooted in antiquity.
This is the humanism of Marx, Sartre and even Christianity.
The humanism of Marx does not need to return to antiquity any
more than the humanism which Sartre conceives existentialism to
be. In this broad sense Christianity too is a humanism, in that
according to its teaching everything depends on mans
salvation. However
different these forms of humanism may be in purpose and in
principle, in the mode and means of their respective
realizations, and in the form of their teaching, they nonetheless
all agree in this, that the humanitas of homo humanus is
determined with regard to an already established interpretation
of nature, history, world, and the ground of the world, that is,
of beings as a whole. (52).
In other words, these forms of humanism do presuppose a certain
teleological judgment; they judge what the telos, the end of man
or of the world is. It is already established what is valuable in
the world or in the man. Humanism in general is a concern that
man become free for his humanity, that is for his nature, or
essence. But it turns out, that the essence of man is already
established from a certain ideological standpoint, which is
historically dependent; the standpoint changes with history. It
may be the Roman virtue in ancient humanism, reason and
rationality of the Enlightenment, social man of Marx,
freedom of Sartre, or the salvation of the soul of Christianity.
Such an approach to the nature of man Heidegger calls
metaphysical: Every determination of the essence of man that
already presupposes an interpretation of being without asking
about the truth of Being, is metaphysical. Accordingly, every
humanism remains metaphysical (52).
What is the metaphysical approach to man and why is it
insufficient? All forms of humanism presuppose, according to
Heidegger, the most universal essence of man as the rational
animal. But does the addition of reason bring an animal
decisively out of the realm of beasts? Above and beyond
everything else, however, it finally remains to ask whether the
essence of man primordially and most decisively lies in the
dimension of animalitas at all (53). To define man as the
rational animal does not mean to define it narrowly
materialistically. Anima [soul] of the animal can be called mind
or spirit or whatever. It does not change the fact, however, that
man is not thought much higher than the beasts. Man will remain
in the dimension of animals as long as his nature is sought from
within. As long as the man and any of his attributes is the
central idea of humanism, he does not receive the proper
treatment.
But how can humanism abandon man in its thinking, when it
presumably strives to free man for himself, that is for his
nature? How can humanism cease to be man-centered? Heidegger
claims that by defining man from himself or from some qualities
and attributes that belong to man, we actually degrade him. Such
humanism, he says, does not realize the proper dignity of man.
Humanism is opposed because it does not set the humanitas
[humanity] of man high enough. (57).
The nature or essence of man is not limited to himself, be it his
reason or the immortal soul. It is to be sought more
fundamentally elsewhere outside the man. Man is more than just a
man, just another being among other beings. He alone of all
creatures can ask about his Being, and thus he has something
unique about him that makes him and other beings an abyss apart.
He stands in a unique relation to Being [we have seen an allusion
to this already in the first lines of the article]. Standing
in the light of Being I call the ek-sistence of man. This way of
Being is proper only to man (53).
In fact, Heidegger says: It seems that the essence of
divinity, however distant is nonetheless more familiar to our
ek-sistent essence than is our appalling and scarcely conceivable
bodily kinship with the beasts. Therefore it is still premature
to designate man as animal rationale. (55). Man conceived in
his essence is closer to God than to nature. Man is more than
animal rationale precisely to the extent that he is less bound up
with man conceived from subjectivity (64). The less man is
construed in terms of what he is, or what he possesses (his
subjectivity), the closer he is to his ek-sisting essence. Its
important to know that Heidegger by no means advocates the
subjectivity as the source for the determination of meaning, on
the contrary, he criticizes metaphysics for being
anthropocentric, placing man and subjectivity[9] in the center of
thinking.
Lets stop for a moment and consider the essential difference
between ek-sistence and existence, or, speaking personally,
between Heidegger and Sartre. While formally this Letter
is the answer to the question of a friend about humanism, it is
also a reaction to the article of Sartre Existentialism is
Humanism, which was published a year before, in 1946. Heidegger
more than once mentions Sartre and directly argues with him.
Heidegger tried here, among other goals, to persuade the readers
that he was far from being an existentialist, but obviously, he
wasnt persuasive enough, for till this very day he usually
goes under this label in all encyclopedias.
Existence of Sartre is actuality. A bare actuality upon which we
later project essence, or meaning. But Heidegger clearly
distances himself from existentialism. Ek-sistence of man is not
his actuality, but his relation to Being. When we say that man
ek-sists we say nothing about his reality, but rather we indicate
that he stands in the lighting of Being. Man is not a closed
system. He stands out into the truth of Being, which makes
him exceptional among beings [with an exception of God, perhaps].
Heidegger calls it ecstatic ek-sistence.
Ek-sistence, thought in terms of ecstasis does not coincide with
existentia in either form or content. In terms of content
ek-sistence means standing out into the truth of Being.
Ek-sistence identifies the determination of what man is in the
destiny of truth. Existentia [on the other hand] is the name for
the realization of something that is as it appears in its Idea.
(55)
Heidegger is concerned that his main work Being and Time is often
misconstrued in terms of the existentialistic framework. True,
there are propositions that look very like Sartres. Heidegger
quotes one of them: The essence of Dasein lies in its
existence. We dont have to get deep into the way Heidegger
explains this phrase, but one thing is very clear: Sartres
key proposition about the priority of existentia over essentia
does however, justify using name existentialism as
appropriate title for a philosophy of this sort. But the basic
tenet of existentialism has nothing at all in common with
the statement from Being and Time. (56).
As we have seen from above before defining man Heidegger seeks to
inquire into the essence of thinking. We have also mentioned that
he found it in ek-sistence, which is in his unique relation to
Being. Thinking is engagement by and for Being(48). Yet
thinking the truth of Being requires a sacrifice from man.
In order to learn how to experience the aforementioned essence of
thinking purely we must free ourselves from the technical
interpretation of thinking. The beginnings of that interpretation
reach back to Plato and Aristotle. They take thinking itself to
be a techne [] Since then philosophy has been in the
constant predicament by having to justify its existence before
sciences. It believes it can do that most effectively by
cleaving itself to the rank of a science. But such an effort is
an abandonment of the essence of thinking [] Being, as the
element of thinking, is abandoned by the technical interpretation
of thinking. Logic, beginning with the Sophists and Plato
sanctions this explanation. Thinking is judged by a standard that
does not measure up to it. (48)
According to Heidegger, philosophy did not make much progress
since the time of Parmenides and Heraclitus. On the contrary, it
fell prey to the oblivion of Being, the only goal of thinking.
When thinking fails to abide in its element, it looses ground,
and naturally enough, starts looking for another plausible
justification of its existence. Technical thinking supported by
logic was the substitute for the primordial thinking of
Being. Thats why Heidegger calls Plato and Aristotle the
great philosophers, but never the great thinkers.
Thus thinking can never be judged by a standard of logic,
since logic is something secondary. Thinking can judge
logic but not vice versa. Logic is by no means some
unalterable and authoritative law of all thinking; it is a law
for technical thinking only. Thinking transcends logic,
because thinking is rooted in Being, its native element.
Heidegger offers an insightful analogy:
Thinking is judged by a standard that does not measure up to it.
Such judgment may be compared to the procedure of trying to
evaluate the nature and the powers of fish by seeing how long it
can live on dry land. For a long time now, all too long, thinking
has been stranded on dry land. Can then the effort to return
thinking to its element be called irrationalism? (48)
In other words, thinking since the time of Sophists and Plato has
been taken out of its element, namely Being, and placed on the
dry land of techne, technical interpretations of thinking. To
return thinking to where it belongs, even if this requires
transcending logic, is not irrational, but rather the most
rational act of all.
The question naturally arises, how do we achieve this recurrence?
How do we return thinking to its original element? We read the
key condition for this: In order to learn how to experience
the essence of thinking purely we must free ourselves[10] from
the technical interpretation of thinking. Thinking comes to
an end when it slips out of its element. [Then] one no longer
thinks; one occupies himself with philosophy (50) To
free ourselves from metaphysics of any form is the first
step on the way to the essence of thinking, and thus to the
essence of man.
To free means to abandon something, something that we are
accustomed to, and something that we traditionally hold dear. In
this sense it is a sacrifice. We should give up our alleged
authority over beings. Man is not the lord of beings. Man is
the shepherd of Being. Man loses nothing in this less;
rather he gains the essential poverty[11] of the shepherd, whose
dignity consists in being called by Being itself into the
preservation of Beings truth (64).
Once again it is necessary to stress the difference between
Sartres understanding of man, and the understanding of man as
it is presented in Letter In light of Sartres
constant claims that Heidegger belongs to the camp of
existentialists, the temptation is to consider these two thinkers
the proponents of the essentially the same doctrine, with the
minor differences in terminology only. Yet nothing reveals the
major division between the two philosophers better than their
respective views on the human nature.
In Existentialism Sartre gives the concise summary of his notion
of man. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Such
is the first principle of existentialism. It is also what is
called subjectivity [] But what do we mean by this if not that
man has a greater dignity than a stone or table?[12] To be
able to make himself, that is to be free to choose his essence is
the universal nature of man, or rather, the universal condition
of man that distinguishes him from animals or other objects,
according to Sartre. Thus he can say, this theory [theory of
existentialism] is the only one which gives man dignity, the only
one which does not reduce him to an object.[13]
As we have seen earlier, Heidegger is concerned with just the
same problem, how to bestow the proper dignity on mankind. But
Heideggers approach is quite different. He denies that
existentialism is ever able to transcend the realm of
metaphysics. Consequently, any determination of man will remain a
metaphysical determination. Heidegger clearly juxtaposes his
position to existentialism:
By way of contrast, Sartre expresses the basic tenet of
existentialism in this way; existence precedes essence. In this
statement he is taking existentia and essentia according to their
metaphysical meaning, which form Platos time on has said that
essentia precedes existentia. Sartre reverses this statement. But
the reversal of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical
statement. With it he stays with metaphysics in oblivion of the
truth of Being. 56
By defining man as a being that chooses itself, Sartre acts upon
an already established interpretation of the world and upon an
already made teleological judgment. But every determination of
the essence of man that already presupposes an interpretation of
being without asking about the truth of Being, is metaphysical.
Accordingly, every humanism remains metaphysical. (52). In
fact, choosing freedom as the universal and distinct condition of
man does not differ in principle from ones choosing reason or
the immortal soul, as the case might be, to be the essential
attribute of man. Sartre and the humanism of existentialism is
opposed because it fails to recognize that man is more than any
of his attributes or his condition: Humanism is opposed
because it does not set the humanitas of man high enough.
(57).
In spite of Sartres claims, Heidegger has reasons to believe
that existentialism does not realize the proper dignity of man,
and in fact, it does reduce man to a being only. Heideggers
distinction between the Lord of beings and the Shepherd
of Being (64) captures the crucial difference between the two
approaches to humanity. The dignity of an existential man
consists in his assuming the responsibilities of God and holding
sway over beings, while the dignity of the shepherd consists
in being called by Being itself into the preservation of
Beings truth. (64). The dignity of the shepherd is rooted
in Being itself.
In a highly metaphorical language Heidegger says important
truths. Firstly, a shepherd, unlike keeper or guard,
does not only preserves, but also nurtures the flock, and takes
care of it. Man, in a like manner, actively takes care of Being
by taking care of language. Secondly, a shepherd traditionally
belongs to the lowest class. He is the poorest by his social
status. Precisely this poverty is needed for thinking the truth
of Being; moreover, it is absolutely indispensable for it. One
should disrobe all the splendors of the philosophical
thinking in order to think more primordially. Heidegger could
probably say with good conscience, Blessed are the poor in
philosophy.
Yet to become poor in philosophy does not mean to become more
primitive; but rather to become closer to the source of all
thinking. Heidegger thus does not aim to surpass any former
philosophy, but looks into the very beginning of thought. Primary
thinking is not primitive, but archaic. Heidegger can be said
doing a phenomenological reduction with the history of
metaphysics itself. He gets rid of all the presuppositions of the
previous philosophy, and goes back to the roots, to the
beginning, to something which is left over after all opinions of
philosophy are bracketed. For Husserl the certainty was in
the genuinely immanent representation devoid of all
transcendental attributes. By analogy we may say that the very
beginning of philosophy has the same value for Heidegger as the
pure immanence for Husserl. The very essence of thinking lies in
the sayings of the pre-Socratics. And to discover that, something
like the reduction of all metaphysics is needed.
For Heidegger, to free oneself from the heritage of metaphysics
means to become closer to Being, and through that to the essence
of man. It does not mean, however, to become closer in the
conceptual understanding of Being. Being can never become the
other, and thus can never be thought directly as an object. It
means rather genuine realization that man always dwells in the
nearness of Being.
Ek-sistence is the ecstatic dwelling in the nearness of
Being. It is the care for Being [as the opposite of care for
beings]. Because there is something simple to be thought in
this thinking, it seems quite difficult to the representational
thought. But the difficulty is not of indulging in a special sort
profundity and of building complicated concepts; rather it is
concealed in the step back that lets thinking enter into a
questioning that experiences. (64)
Paradoxically, the main difficulty in thinking of Being is its
simplicity. We are too loaded with the opining of
philosophy, we are too sophisticated for the simplicity
of Being. We have long gone much further than Parmenides; we
consider the question of Being dismissed. But the questioning of
Being is not on the level of intellectual interest, it is the
personal questioning that experiences[14] . We do not [and
cannot] understand Being in a traditional sense of conceptual
understanding; we experience Being. Now we shall read this phrase
again with deeper understanding of its meaning: Being is
farther than all beings and is yet nearer to man than every
being, be it rock or God. Being is what is the nearest. Yet the
nearness remains farthest from man. (58).
Why does the nearness itself remain farthest from us? Being
is the closest thing to us, because we dwell in its truth,
consciously or not. However, our eyes are always directed
outside, be it objective observation or subjective retrospective
reflection. Precisely because Being is too near and is too
intimately connected with Dasein it is the hardest to notice. A
simple analogy may be helpful. We never notice our sight as such
while it is something that makes the appearance of all other
objects possible for us. Yet sight is nearer to us than any
object. But can never experience it directly; moreover, well
never be able even to think of it unless we abandon our
preoccupation with outward objects. Another analogy may be that
of light. We never see light as such, but always the objects it
illuminates. Light makes the appearance of all objects possible
while escaping the direct perception. These analogies have
serious shortcomings, because they dont allow room for
depicting man as actively caring for Being while being sent on
this mission by Being itself. Being should not be confused with
physical possibility in any sense, nor with the Platonic idea,
that determines the worldly appearances.
Heidegger insists that he does not create a new philosophy, which
proclaims all previous teachings false. Metaphysics, he says, is
not false or partially false, because it still stems from the
truth of Being, even if it does not realize it. Absolute
metaphysics belongs to the history of the truth of Being.
Whatever stems from it cannot be countered or even cast aside by
refutations. It can only be taken up in such a way that its truth
is more primordially sheltered in Being itself and removed from
the domain of mere human opinion. (60).
But why do philosophers through the ages think beings in such a
different manner if they all stem from the same source? To
explain this Heidegger accepts a very Hegelian conception of
history. History for Heidegger is the revealing of the truth of
Being [Consider Hegels notion of history as the development
(unfolding) of the Spirit]. Being constantly reveals itself as
temporal. It appears differently each time in beings. Beings come
into the ever-changing light of Being. History itself as a
sequence of happenings stems from changing of the lighting of
Being. The happening of history occurs essentially as the
destiny of the truth of Being and from it (60).
Being has already been dispatched to thinking. Being is as the
destiny of thinking. But destiny is in itself historical. Its
history has already come to language in the saying of
thinkers. (76). Philosophers reflect the historical nature of
Being (the changing nature of the lighting, or destiny) in their
philosophies, and thus they still stand in the truth of Being.
However, according to Heidegger, they think primarily in the
direction of beings. They notice the change in the lighting of
Being by noticing the change in the appearance of beings, but
they never think the change as such (only the change in beings).
The beings may appear as the manifestations of the Idea, Monad,
Spirit, Will to power or whatever. Heidegger explains, that to
think the changing in the lighting of Being, rather than the
resulted changes in the way beings appear, is non-metaphysical
thinking.
A quick example of what non-metaphysical thinking of Being is
might be helpful[15] . Heidegger claims in this Letter
and elsewhere that the history of philosophy is characterized by
the oblivion of Being, and that philosophy is occupied primarily
with beings. At first, however, this statement seems to be
frankly false. Since Socrates and Plato (since that when
philosophy began according to Heidegger) philosophy sought
to transcend the realm of the changing beings and reach the
higher world of the intelligible ideas, that make the meaningful
presence of things possible. In Meno the goal is to go beyond
virtue to virtue-ness; in Euthyphro beyond the pious
act to piety; in Aristotles De Anima beyond man to
man-hood. There was always the quest to go beyond beings to
their beingness (die Seiendheit), or the essence, as the
possibilizing condition for knowing the particular beings. Yet
the discovery of beingness was sought for the sake of
knowing and classifying the individual objects. It was
sought to learn the meaning of beings. But the meaning and the
possibility of beingness itself was never questioned,
according to Heidegger. In fact, such a question is not possible
for the traditional thinking, since to thing something means to
bring it under a higher concept, yet no concept can be higher
than Being itself. But precisely the question of Being (die
Seinsfrage) motivated Heidegger for the new discoveries.
The Question of God. Since Heidegger speaks of Being as the
source of all meaning and the ultimate possibility for all
beings, and since he clearly conditions that Being is not God
(57), the tendency is to pronounce Heideggers thinking
atheistic[16] . However, we should keep in mind through this
discussion that it is only the metaphysical God that is in
question here, that is the God the conceptual knowledge of whom
is possible.
Because we say that Being of man consists in
being-in-the-world people find that man is downgraded to a
merely terrestrial being, whereupon philosophy sinks into
positivism. For what is more logical than that whoever
asserts the worldliness of human being holds only this life as
valid, denies the beyond, and renounces all Transcendence?
Because we refer to the word of Nietzsche on the death of
God people regard such a gesture as atheism. For what is more
logical than that whoever has experienced the death of God
is godless? (67)
Heidegger resists the metaphysical interpretation of his words,
since his thought operates in a completely different dimension.
What may be a valid logical inference for metaphysical thinking
is less than true for Heidegger. Not because Heideggers
thinking surpasses logic, and frees itself from its laws,
but rather because he seeks to think in the manner of the
thinkers of the pre-logical period, that is before logic as a
developed discipline ever appeared with Plato. Thus he does not
negate the logos of logic, but he thinks more primordially.
Thinking of the truth of Being alone reaches the primordial
essence of logos, which was already obfuscated and lost in Plato
and Aristotle, the founder of logic. To think against
logic does not mean to break a lance for the illogical but
simply to trace in thought the logos and its essence which
appeared in the dawn of thinking. (68)
The phrase In the dawn of thinking does not mean in a
child-like primitive state of the early philosophy,
but rather in the period when thinking was nearer to its source,
namely the truth of Being. Heidegger, apparently, has the period
of pre-Socratics in mind.
With the existential determination of the essence of man
nothing is decided about the existence of God or his
non-being. It is an error to maintain that the
interpretation of the essence of man from the relation of his
essence to the truth of Being is atheism. (69) Yet several
lines down Heidegger continues: The thinking that points
toward the truth of Being as what is to be thought has in no way
decided in favor of theism [either]. (70). At the same time,
he insists that he is not indifferent to God or religion.
Heidegger does not deny God; he denies the way metaphysics treats
this question. Metaphysics treats the question of God as
something basic, as the starting point. It either accepts God, or
denies him, or proclaims him to be beyond understanding. Sartre
builds his philosophy on the previously accepted premise that God
does not exist, and the whole system of atheistic existentialism
holds only in case the premise is indeed true[17] . Heidegger,
however, does not think that he is yet ready to ask the question
about the existence of God.
Through the ontological interpretation of Dasein as
being-in-the-world no decision, whether positive or negative, is
made concerning a possible being toward God. It is, however, the
case that through an illumination of transcendence we first
achieve an adequate concept of Dasein, with respect to which it
can now be asked how the relationship of Dasein to God is
ontologically ordered. (69)
. Heidegger emphasizes that achieving an adequate concept of
Dasein is necessary before even asking about the relation of
Dasein to God. To understand Dasein adequately is to understand
him [it] from his [its] relation to Being, that is to understand
Dasein as the Da (here) of Sein (Being).
Only from the truth of Being can the essence of the holy be
thought. Only from the essence of the holy is the essence of
divinity to be thought. Only from the essence of divinity can it
be thought or said that the word God is to signify.
(69). That is the ontological order for thinking God. And
Heidegger admits that he is not ready to outline the question of
God at this stage of thinking.
How can man at the present stage of world history ask at all
seriously and rigorously whether the god nears or withdraws, when
he has above all neglected to think into the dimension in which
alone that question can be asked? But this is the dimension of
the holy, which indeed remained closed as a dimension if the open
region of Being is not lighted and in it lighting is near man.
(70).
The question of Ethics. Toward the end of Letter
Heidegger comes to the question of the practical application of
his thinking. He asks: How man, experienced from ek-sistence
toward Being, ought to live in a fitting manner? (70). Before
trying to answer the question, Heidegger explores what
ethics as such is. He finds that ethics, along with
logic and physics, is another innovation of the
Platonic school. Along with logic and physics,
ethics appeared for the first time in the school of Plato.
These disciplines arose at the time when thinking was becoming
philosophy [] Thinkers prior to this period knew neither
a logic nor an ethics nor physics. Yet their
thinking was neither illogical nor immoral. (71).
The obvious question then arises whether ethics as the
separate discipline is even necessary for a man to live in a
fitting manner. The pre-Socratics did not know such a
discipline, yet their thinking did not lack the moral values.
Where did they derive their ought from if they could not
read, say, Aristotles lectures on ethics? Obviously Heidegger
is loath to place the source of the moral values in sheer
subjectivity, be it rational man and his practical reason. That
is precisely what he criticizes metaphysics for. But, according
to Heidegger, to think the moral law as coming from God is not to
think it essentially enough. For Heidegger God is not the
original source of morality. If you recall, the essence of the
holy was to be thought from the truth of Being prior to the
thinking of the essence of divinity and God. Heidegger maintains
that the early thinkers did not need ethics as a separate
discipline, because they dwelled in the nearness to the source of
all morality.
Only so far as man, ek-sisting into the truth of Being, belongs
to Being can there come from Being itself the assignment of those
directions that must become law and rules for man [] Otherwise
all law remains merely something fabricated by human reason. More
essential than instituting rules is that man find the way to his
abode in the truth of Being [] The truth of Being offers a
hold for all conduct. (75)
The morality of the early thinkers naturally followed from their
relation to Being. Once the philosophical thinking made the
morality an object of its investigation, that is once it
separated the life as it was from the life as it ought had been,
it clearly demonstrated that it had lost the connection with
Being; it had forgotten the truth of Being.
Paul Ricoeur restates this thought of Heidegger in his article
Religion, Atheism, and Faith: The very concepts of value
and fact, between which we divide the realm of reality,
imply the loss of primordial unity, in which there are not yet
values and facts, neither ethics nor physics. We must not be
surprised then if we are unable to consolidate the fragments left
by the loss of the principle of unity.[18] However, for
Heidegger no return to the primordial unity is possible as long
as man is in the center of consideration, that is as long as man
is the origin of values, and as long as the world is treated
merely as an object, as a fact. Ricoeur repeats here again an
essentially Heideggerian thought: We have to reason back to a
state earlier than this subject-object dichotomy if we want to
overcome the antinomies which proceed from it, the antinomy
between value and fact, between teleology and causality, between
man and world. But this digression does not lead us back into the
indeterminate darkness of a philosophy of identity; it leads us
into the disclosure of Being as the Logos which gathers together
all things.[19]
But now in what relation does the thinking of Being stand to
theoretical and practical behavior? Thinking attends to the
lighting of Being in that it puts its saying of Being into
language as the home of eksistence. Thus thinking is a deed. But
a deed that also surpasses all praxis. Thinking towers above
action and production, not through the grandeur of its
achievement and not as a consequence of its effect, but through
the humbleness of its inconsequential accomplishment. For
thinking in its saying merely brings the unspoken word of Being
to language. (75)
With these words at the very end of Letter we are
referred back to the first paragraph. Heidegger once again speaks
of the deed of thinking as accomplishment. But now the context is
somewhat different. Heidegger asks about the relation of the
thinking of Being to practical behavior. But thinking itself is a
deed, which is neither theoretical nor practical. Thinking does
not bring results [it does not achieve]; it accomplishes its
mission by speaking the truth of Being. Thinking thus opens the
light in which alone the moral judgment is possible. This deed of
thinking does have the highest moral value for Heidegger,
precisely because it brings neither theoretical nor practical
results[20] .
The last words of Letter evade the strict philosophical
understanding. The prophetic hymn to thinking that is to come
powerfully consummates the fundamental thinking that is already
there. The words of the Thinker then become the words of the
farseeing augur, who first senses the imperceptible changes in
the lighting of Being. The allusion to Holderlin in the
penultimate paragraph[21] , and the highly poetic language of the
ending set the discussion above in a new light. Thinking that is
to come defers techne of the philosophy, but descends into the
essential scarcity, into the mystical realm of those who
create with words. The richness of the human nature is
unconcealed through the poverty of primordial thinking. Through
language alone is this thinking revealed. Through thinking itself
is the language transformed.
Thinking gathers language into simple saying. In this way
language is the language of Being, as the clouds are the clouds
of the sky. With its saying, thinking lays inconspicuous furrows
in language. They are still more inconspicuous than the furrows
that the farmer, slow of step, draws through the field. (77)
Andrei Zavaliy,
Nyack College.
[...]
[1] The early version of this paper was presented on the Philosophy Seminar dedicated to the 20th century Continental Philosophy at Nyack College, in January 2000. I am especially grateful to Dr. J. Danaher for his assistance and encouragement along the way.
[2]All quotations from Heideggers text are given from the Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy, ed. by Todd May, (Prentice Hall: 1997.) Hereafter only the page number will be given next to the quote.
[3]Ralph Manheim for example uses this term in his widely recognized translation of An Introduction to Metaphysics.
[4]Translated by Frank A. Capuzzi.
[5]In truth, however, thinking always thinks of beings as such; precisely not, and never, Being as such. The question of Being always remains the question about beings. (58)
[6][Traditional ontology] is subject to criticism, not because it thinks the Being of beings and thereby reduces the Being to a concept, but because it does not think the truth of Being and so fails to recognize that there is thinking more rigorous than conceptual (73). What exactly is the non-conceptual thinking will not be envisaged here; it will be sufficient for the present purposes to mention this passage only.
[7]James S. Churchill, the translator of Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics claims that Dasein is roughly equivalent to Kants pure reason. [Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, tr. by James S. Churchill; (London: Indiana University Press: 1962), p. xviii]
[8]Heidegger often speaks of Being in the anthropomorphic terms. Being offers itself, favors, dwells, nears etc. The language alone however should not invoke speculations about the religious origin of the concept of Being. Heidegger is bound to use the metaphysical language, for no other language is yet possible.
[9]It is important to note, however, that subjectivity Heidegger criticizes here is not just thinking from the human point of view as the opposite of objective or scientific thinking, but rather thinking for the sake of man. Heidegger himself seeks to think Being through analyzing Dasein, but Dasein is never the ultimate goal of thinking.`
[10]My emphasis
[11]My emphasis.
[12]Quoted from the Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy,op. cit., p. 103.
[13]Ibid., p. 111.
[14]My emphasis
[15]The next paragraph owes a lot to the Vincent Vycinass Earth and Gods, (The Hague, M. Nijhof, 1961), p.13.
[16]Sartre does not hesitate to include Heidegger among atheistic existentialists: There are two kinds of existentialists. First, those who are Christians, among whom I would include jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both Catholic; and on the other hand the atheistic existentialists, among whom I class Heidegger, and then French existentialists, and myself. [ J.-P. Sartre, Existentialism; quoted from Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy, op. cit., p. 102.] However, it could be argued with an apparent success that Heidegger was neither an atheist, nor an existentialist.
[17]Atheistic existentialism, which I represent, is more coherent. It states that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and that this being is man. (J.-P. Sartre, Existentialism; quoted from Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy, op. cit., p. 103.)
[18]Alasdair Macintyre and Paul Ricoeur, The Religious Significance of Atheism; (New York and London: Colombia University Press, 1969), p. 91.
[19]Ibid., p. 93.
[20]To put it in Kantian terms, the genuine ethics is only possible by transcending the difference between pure and practical reason.
[21]What is needed in the present
world crisis is less philosophy, but more attentiveness in
thinking; less literature, but more cultivation of the letter.
(77) this is the hidden quote from Holderlins hymn Patmos:
For the Father, who holds sway over many, likes the most, that
the firm letter be observed. It is a common practice for
Heidegger to end his work with a quotation (either explicit or
implicit) from Holderlin.