Letter on "Humanism"

The Letter About Humanism is a 1947 publication by Martin Heidegger , the revised version of a letter from 1946 to the French philosopher Jean Beaufret . The text is often referred to briefly as a letter of humanism .

In the text, Heidegger criticizes the historical manifestations of humanism . As metaphysical determinations, according to Heidegger, they respect the essence of man too little and always reduce him to something existent. He opposes this view with a determination of the human being as an ecstatic being, whose peculiarity lies in relation to being.

Despite its brevity, the letter of humanism is an important text by Heidegger, as it is the first time that he expresses himself in writing about his rethinking, which he called the turn . In addition, essential ideas of the late work can already be found in the text, such as the late conception of being and truth, the difference between poetry and thinking, the thoughts on language and the criticism of technology.

Emergence

The text is Heidegger's first release since 1945. During the drafting of the letter to Beaufret Heidegger was because of his Nazi involvement during his Rector time and his membership in the Nazi party before a cleanup committee of the University of Freiburg to political purging of the teaching staff (épuration) , which with its Compulsory retirement and a teaching ban ended. Because of his involvement in the Nazi regime, his public image had suffered greatly after the war. Heidegger returned to the philosophical stage with the letter that appeared in print two years later and met with a wide response.

Beaufret had contacted Heidegger beforehand and asked him three questions: firstly, how the word “humanism” could be given a meaning again, secondly, what about the relationship between ontology and ethics, and finally, what the element of “adventure” in of philosophy. The letter - as it was addressed to a French person - had a decisive influence on the French Heidegger reception .

content

Philosophical background: Heidegger's thinking about his history

The letter is determined by a central thought by Heidegger about the essence of truth . Heidegger's concept of truth has changed significantly after his rethinking, which he himself described as a turn , compared to his early philosophy in being and time . Heidegger thinks truth as unconcealment (Aletheia) extending from the being itself forth occurred . Truth is no longer something that humans could produce by using categories or by following a certain methodology. Being itself conceals and conceals itself at the same time in unconcealment, namely in such a way that the being of beings is revealed and that which is shows itself from a certain perspective and at the same time the process of concealment is hidden, i.e. H. does not become a problem for people, since they only dwell on revealing. Heidegger calls this process of revealing and concealing being in the event the "truth of being."

Heidegger now thinks of man in historical relation to this process: Being reveals and hides itself in different historical epochs and thus opens up a world as a meaningful totality, as one would say colloquially from “the world of the ancient Greeks” or “the world of Farmer's wife ”speaks. In terms of the history of philosophy, this process is reflected in metaphysics. For example, the world opened up by being can be one as created by God or, as in Kant , one that is 'composed' by the transcendental subject . As Heidegger himself rejects the concept of a subject, but bring the philosophers, the great metaphysical designs do not produce , but correspond only to the being Ereignetem ago. It thus bases the “truth of being” - the process of revealing in the event - the metaphysical determinations of the being of beings. But because metaphysics only determines the being of beings, it cannot bring this foundational context into view; it forgets that for every determination of being, it must first have arrived in unconcealment. For Heidegger, therefore, metaphysics is forgotten . However, this is not a result of man's failure, but because being, when it shows itself, shows itself in such a way that the process of revealing itself remains hidden. In other words, man always keeps itself right from the beings on without him, therefore, becomes a problem why this ever is .

For Heidegger, this forgetting of being is essential for all of Western thought in the form of metaphysics. The history of metaphysics, which is determined by the ground of the truth of being that has never become explicit, is what Heidegger calls the history of being . It is shaped by different epochs in which metaphysics asked about the being of beings and determined being as the supreme and divine being. Heidegger, on the other hand, tries to think of being in terms of event. Being is now no longer to be reified in front of it, but originally to be experienced as itself before every interpretation.

Criticism of "humanism"

Heidegger already puts "humanism" into speech in the title. This is intended to signal that his criticism does not refer to a general humanism that is incipient for humans, but to the concrete historical manifestations of humanism, for which Heidegger cites Christian, Sartrian and Marxian humanism. Heidegger criticizes these forms of "humanism" from two points of view: On the one hand, all their determinations of man are preceded by various metaphysical basic assumptions about nature, history or the ground of the world, from which they then subsequently interpret humanitas . For example, the determination of humans as rational animals, i.e. as reasonable living beings, already presupposes an understanding of “life” and “nature”. On the other hand, according to Heidegger, the essence of man cannot be determined by combining animal and ratio . To the extent that every "humanism" is preceded by such a metaphysical basic assumption that traces the essence of man back to something existent, for Heidegger "humanism" denotes the concept of man in metaphysics. Because of the tracing back to something existing, for Heidegger such an image of man pays too little attention to man's essence.

Another point of criticism from Heidegger, which is only echoed in the letter on Humanism, concerns the anthropocentricity inherent in "humanism" in his opinion , as he goes into in "Plato's Theory of Truth" : "According to this," humanism "means the beginning with the Development and, with the end of metaphysics, a process that, depending on different perspectives, moves people knowingly into the center of beings. ”This is especially evident for modern subjectivism since Descartes . Heidegger sees the reason for this in the fact that metaphysics does not consider the "truth of being", that is, does not see the place of truth as the clearing of being itself and instead places people in this place.

Ek-sistence

Heidegger opposes the metaphysical determination of man in "humanism" with his interpretation of the essence of man as e-existence . Heidegger begins with a comment on the character of thinking. He states that not only theoretical and beneficial thinking and effecting can work for people, but also that thinking which he describes as "thinking of being".

The genitive in “thinking of being” contains a double meaning intended by Heidegger: In the first meaning the phrase means that thinking is dedicated to the “truth of being”. The second meaning of the genitive refers to the fact that thinking “belongs” to being because it occurs precisely from being. Man cannot simply “start thinking” and thus promote truth to the day, but rather he has to keep himself thinking open to what has happened from being in accordance with this double relationship. For example, Heidegger himself has to rely on metaphysics in the course of its history to produce various determinations of the world for the knowledge that being occurs. So if Heidegger sees his late philosophy on the historical threshold of the end of metaphysics, then this is only possible through the previous spiritual tradition. The overcoming of metaphysics is therefore not something that Heidegger takes credit for, but for him it comes about from being itself.

For Heidegger, therefore, what essentially determines man is man's relation to being. Man lives in an events taking place in different periods of history of being world . The world is not the sum of all beings, but a whole of meaning, in the light of which only individual things appear in the world. According to Heidegger, what determines people is not this or that specific world, but that they live in one world. Heidegger emphasizes that biological, social or other human determinations are not wrong. For him, however, they do not affect the essence of human beings, since they only pick out a certain aspect of the world to which they link human destiny. So if Heidegger considers the biological determination of man as a living being to be correct , but sees the essence of man determined by the truth of being, then this also shows that for Heidegger right does not have to be true.

Heidegger grasps the character of man's relation to what is, to being, to the world as standing in the clearing of being. For Heidegger this standing is a standing out, an ek- sistence (Greek: ek-stasis standing out). It is a standing out that must not be misunderstood as an out of something within. The outside / inside opposition can be traced back to Heidegger's rejection of subject thinking. The protrusion is always given, however , the person does not have to come from an inside into the outside world. In this standing out into the clearing, the human being is always already approached by being. For Heidegger, this is what makes the essential difference to the animal: the animal also orientates itself in its immediate surroundings, but it has no world and therefore does not reach beyond its surroundings. It can not be approached by being because of this world poverty . Man, on the other hand, is even dependent on being , so that he can find his way into his being: “So when determining the humanity of man [...] it is important that what is essential is not man, but being.” One could say , the human being is like an empty vessel which being has to fill up first and which has always filled it.

For Heidegger, the human being is therefore not a “task” that would have to be mastered by “processing” by means of a traditional and yet to come cultural and educational canon : “What is necessary in the current world emergency: less philosophy [ie metaphysics], but more mindfulness of the Thinking; less literature, but more care for the letter. ”The peculiarity of the human being, namely the relation to being, has always determined him, nevertheless it is necessary to think about it. The human must first “find his way into his being”. Because Holderlin had referred to the human determination that preceded every educational canon, the latter represented an essentially different humanism than Goethe or Schiller .

The ecstatic standing out of the human being is primarily not determined by the rational-conceptual apprehension of individual beings. Instead, Heidegger sees what we fundamentally loading in dealing with the world 's true , in the mood. The mood precedes everything relating to individual things in the world. Nor is it aroused by a single inner-worldly thing, but is always ahead of and with us when we refer to something. The basic mood, however, is not an inner attitude of the subject, but is itself essentially determined in relation to the world, since the human being, being ecstatic, is always 'outside'. It is a total sensation that also precedes individual sensory data. Heidegger therefore also refuses to equate the human body with the animal in a purely biological view: "The human body is something essentially different from an animal organism." Because the human being, as an ecstatic being, is "tuned" through its relation to the world , sensory data are always immersed in this mood: Humans do not receive any “raw data”, such as primitive animal organisms. Just as it depends on the situation, whether we perceive pain as excruciating or pleasurable, the basic mood precedes any individual experience. According to its origin, however, it protrudes into our cultural and historical background and is therefore broader and deeper than the mood in a situation.

Ethics and ontology

In the letter, Heidegger replied in detail to Beaufret's question about the relationship between ontology - which Beaufret believes is Heidegger's main philosophical concern - and ethics . Heidegger initially rejects this question insofar as he does not practice an ontology and therefore cannot go into the relationship between ontology and ethics. So he no longer wants to understand the thinking of being as an ontology, since the latter only considers the being of beings, but does not consider that the human being is approached differently by being in every epoch in the history of being.

This also shows why he cannot comment on ethics as long as it sets up a binding system of rules about how people should act. Such overarching rules would not be compatible with the diversity of the historical epochs. Heidegger is also critical of the idea of ​​"values" from which such rules would result. This is because “by designating something as“ value ”that which is so valued is robbed of its dignity. That means: through the assessment of something as value, the valued is only admitted as an object for the valuation of the human being. ”Thus, the act of valuation alone is a positing of the subjectivity to which the value is ultimately attributed. For example, if God were to be the highest value, this would be the highest blasphemy for Heidegger . Thinking in values ​​is always an act of subjectivation and corresponds to an arrogant arrangement of the world according to human standards.

homelessness

Heidegger's criticism of ethics and values ​​amounts to a rejection of all ethics 'made' by man and thus runs counter to almost every philosophical conception since antiquity. Since Heidegger also traces ethics as a discipline back to Plato and ascribes it to the oblivion of being, he defines all projects of Western ethics as being shaped by this oblivion of being. However, by going back to Heraclitus' pre-Platonic thinking, he opposes it with a definition as ethos (ἦθος). This ethos sees Heidegger as a residence and place of living .

In his stay in the world, man is approached by being. The truth of being is the prerequisite for the possibility of laws and rules appearing at all: “Only insofar as the human being, ek-sisting in the truth of being, belongs to it, can the assignment of those instructions come from being itself Law and rule for man must become. ”From the point of view of being itself, a world opens up as a whole of meaning, in which the concrete rules and laws are only then established by man. However , man cannot find true support in his own laws, but rather depends on being itself "taking him under its wing."

However, Heidegger sees the current world age as being shaped by the abandonment of being. Its characteristic is modern subjectivism, which only interprets everything in terms of itself, places man in the center of all beings and empowers him to rule over beings. For Heidegger, this state of affairs is essentially conditioned by the history of being and can ultimately be read from Nietzsche, who, despite his search for a way out, was only able to reverse the metaphysical propositions - but without overcoming them. For Heidegger, an actual overcoming of this homelessness can only happen in terms of being itself. It will have to consist in considering the truth of being, that is, in looking at the historical relationship between man and being. Through the relation of man to being, he would succeed in entering his essence, which would allow him to live . This would offer a hold that would lie beyond the contingency of man-made laws.

language

If man cannot establish stability, since everything man-made himself is subject to the suspicion of arbitrariness, then he has to rely on being - by living in the house of language - granting him living too.

Heidegger would like to express that although in all epochs of the history of being a completely different world opens up as a totality of meaning, it is part of the essence of man that he lives in such a world. The meaningful references of the respective world are expressed in the language, being 'lives' in the house of language ("Rather, language is the house of being"). It is primarily the linguistic reference to the world that characterizes people as people. For it is not through the sensory perception of merely existing things through which man relates to the world; for what characterizes the world as a world are the meaningful references in it, the meanings in it and the significance for oneself. But people refer to meaning and significance linguistically. They are what make human living. Since they only express themselves in language, man is dependent on language for his stay in the world.

Heidegger asserts such a conception of language above all against the view that language is a mere means of transmitting information. For Heidegger, understanding language merely as the conveyance of information went back directly to modern subjectivism, which sees the usability of beings for the subject as the only remaining meaning in the world. Through this domination of metaphysical subjectivity, "language comes into the service of mediating the traffic routes on which objectification spreads as the uniform accessibility of everything for everyone, disregarding every limit."

Such a world is - because it only sees the subject as the final point of reference - poor in meaning and references. For Heidegger, this is expressed in the decline of language. At the same time, people are denied living in this barren world. Heidegger sees his intellectual efforts as a possible beginning to overcome this situation. Understood in this way, he understands his anti-»humanism« as an actual commitment to people. This task is primarily to be taken over by the poets and thinkers, as Heidegger developed it in his dialogue with Holderlin. For Heidegger in poetry, a “pre-thoughtful” reference to homelessness comes up, which the thinker answers by saying B. tries to think in terms of the history of being.

Self-interpretation after the turn

In the letter, Heidegger cites some of the terms used in “Being and Time” and interprets them from the perspective of his thinking about the turn . For example, Heidegger no longer interpreted thrownness as the factual cultural background into which a person was “thrown” without making a decision and from which contingent moods attack him. Thrownness is supposed to mean in “Being and Time” that man was thrown into the clearing of being and therefore his essence is determined by the relation of being. The mood now also comes from the litter of being itself.

Heidegger now also says of the design that it can only be understood as keeping open for being. In addition, the design is no longer an achievement of the person, but rather it occurs from being itself. Man no longer discovers the being of beings in the draft, but the draft is the place where being by itself clears up for man. In “Being and Time” , on the other hand, the design was the achievement of a person who no longer blindly relies on public offers of meaning, but appropriates their past and, with regard to its finitude, seizes those possibilities that appear meaningful to them in the context of their life context .

In summary, one could say somewhat cautiously that in Heidegger's late work man's ability to act and be active is severely restricted and that man is more determined by being , thrownness and e-existence , towards which he can only behave passively as the shepherd of being . The problem with such a description lies in the fact that it remains in a pattern of thought that understands every occurrence as the activity of a subject towards a passive object. It only swaps the active and passive part between being and being, so to speak. However, Heidegger would like to overcome such a basic relationship between activity and passivity through his thinking. He therefore tries to ascribe the ability to think neither to man nor to being, but to liking . He defends himself against the metaphysical determination, which distinguishes between the possible and the real (as the potentia and the actus or essentia and the existentia): “When I speak of the“ silent power of the possible ”, I do not mean the only possible one presented possibilitas […] “Being, human and truth are therefore to be thought of as common, simultaneous occurrences. Heidegger's thinking knows no singular source of activity.

However, the interpretations made are not explanatory interpretations, but rather reinterpretations . This sparked a broad research debate in the Heidegger reception about the correct understanding of this self-interpretation and about Heidegger's motives. Heidegger himself does not claim that the terms were already meant in the sense of this reinterpretation when "Being and Time" was written. Rather, he refers to the third part of “Being and Time” , which was not published. In this, according to Heidegger, the turn from fundamental ontology (in which being was the transcendens (the 'horizon of understanding') that precedes and goes with all beings) to thinking of the truth of being would have taken place: “Whether however, the determination of being as the simple transcending already names the simple essence of the truth of being, that and that alone is first and foremost the question for a thinking that tries to think the truth of being. "

If one looks at the original plan of “Being and Time” , however, it seems questionable whether in the third part there would actually have been a turn from transcendent being to being as something that is concealed and concealed in the event. Because according to the plan, the third part was dedicated to the “Explication of time as the horizon of the understanding of being from temporality”. But with this being remains bound to the understanding of being of existence and its temporality. It therefore seems implausible that Heidegger actually turned around in the third part. However, Heidegger's self-interpretation should not be seen too hastily as a violent reinterpretation, but rather as carried by the need to understand one's own thinking in its inner necessity. Heidegger therefore does not write in the letter of Humanism that the terms were already conceived according to the reinterpretation that has now taken place, but that “Being and Time” was written out of the experience of being forgotten. The self-interpretation thus also represents the attempt to understand his earlier approach beyond the systematic and programmatic conception of the time and to expose its underlying thrust.

criticism

Above all, Heidegger's diagnosis of modernity as a whole is criticized in the sense that everything that constituted this age would be the oblivion of being. In this context, his ways out of the oblivion of being often seem to lead more like a decline behind modernity in an anti-technical, anti-civilizational and anti-rational direction.

Heidegger's attempt to establish an “original ethic” as an ethos was criticized primarily by Jürgen Habermas . If the nomos , the laws, are sent (happening) from being itself, there is hardly any room for autonomy, that is, individual legality of human action: “[So] he [Heidegger] at all resolves his actions and statements from himself as empirical person and ascribes them to a fate that is irresponsible. ”However, Heidegger defended himself in his letter of humanism against drawing such“ conclusions ”from his thinking:“ Because in all of the above, everything is spoken against what humanity considers high and holy, this philosophy teaches an irresponsible and destructive "nihilism". […] What's going on here? What [...] speaks against the above is immediately taken as its negation and this as the "negative" in the sense of the destructive. "

Effect and reception

Heidegger's text was received only hesitantly in Germany. However, he met with broad interest from French philosophers and made Heidegger rise to one of the most important thinkers there in a short time. Two phases of Heidegger's reception can be identified:

The first phase is characterized by Sartre's interpretation of “ Being and Time ” . In “ Existentialism is a Humanism ” from 1946, he interpreted Heidegger's philosophy to the effect that “existence precedes the being.” This would result in complete freedom for man. However, this interpretation proves to be inaccurate for “Being and Time”, as Heidegger tries to use the existentials to identify the basic structures of human existence that determine it so fundamentally that he cannot freely dispose of them. For Sartre, on the other hand, freedom is a characteristic of existence itself, man is "condemned to freedom".

The letter of Humanism, translated in parts in 1947 and completely translated in 1953, then initiated the second phase of Heidegger's reception in France. As a result of the reinterpretation of the existentials made by Heidegger in the letter, the perspective on “being and time” is now also different and even becomes the determining interpretation. Since Heidegger now restricts human autonomy to a minimum, he also stands in even sharper contrast to Sartre's form of existentialism. Lacan , Foucault , Lyotard and Derrida tie in with Heidegger's post-humanistic and post-metaphysical thinking. In doing so, they focus less on the ethical dimension than on the critique of subject and reason.

Peter Sloterdijk took up Heidegger's letter again in a speech given in 1999 with the title “ Rules for the human park ” . For Sloterdijk, humanism has been primarily a literary phenomenon since Plato, that is, communicated through writings and books. Humanism should shape people in a certain direction, "breed" and "tame" them. While for Heidegger humanism merely served to embellish world domination under the heading of Americanism, Bolshevism or fascism (Rules for the People's Park, Suhrkamp 1999, page 31), Sloterdijk sees the danger of the end of literary humanism as a utopia, an attempt at human formation (Rules ..., p. 58). He asked in one sentence (rules ..., p. 46) whether genetic engineering could be applicable to humans, which resulted in a long-lasting public debate in which on the actual topic of the speech, literary humanism and the Confrontation with Heidegger's letter from 1946 was hardly received. For Sloterdijk, this symbolizes the downfall of literary humanism, as he describes it: tabloid journalism has taken its place, denunciation instead of understanding, production of excitement instead of information (rules ..., pp. 57–59)

See also

• What is metaphysics?

literature

Primary literature

The text of the letter of humanism can be found in volume 9 (waymarks) of the Heidegger complete edition . Other editions:

• Martin Heidegger: About humanism . Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 978-3465030690
• Martin Heidegger: Waymarks . Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 978-3465033707
• Martin Heidegger: Plato's doctrine of truth . Francke, Bern 1947 (Ed. Ernst Grassi)

Secondary literature

• Henri Cousineau: Humanism and Ethics. An Introduction to Heidegger's Letter on Humanism with a critical Bibliography. Louvain / Paris 1972.
• Byung-Chul Han: Heidegger's heart. Martin Heidegger's concept of mood. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 1996, ISBN 978-3770531066 .
• Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hermann: The self-interpretation of Martin Heidegger . Meisenheim am Glan 1964.
• Josef Kreiml: Two conceptions of the ethical in Heidegger. A comparison of “Being and Time” with the “Letter on Humanism” . Regensburg 1987.
• Dirk Mende: »Letter on› Humanism ‹« On the metaphors of the late philosophy of being. In Dieter Thomä (Ed.): Heidegger Handbook . Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart 2003, p. 247ff.
• Bruno Pinchard (Ed.): Heidegger et la question de l'humanisme: faits, concepts, débats. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-13-054784-2 .
• Tom Rockmore: Heidegger and French Philosophy. Humanism, Antihumanism, and Being. London / New York 1995; German translation: Heidegger and French philosophy. Lueneburg 2000.
• Peter Sloterdijk : Rules for the human park. A reply to Heidegger's letter on humanism . Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 978-3518065822 .
• Günther Witzany : “Transcendental pragmatics and e-sistence.” The Blue Owl, Essen, 1991, ISBN 3-89206-317-6 .
• Bastian Zimmermann: The revelation of the unavailable and the dignity of asking. Ethical dimensions of Martin Heidegger's philosophy. London 2010, ISBN 978-1-84790-037-1 .

Web links

• Sloterdijk's rules for the human park in full text
• Documentation of the Sloterdijk debate

Individual evidence

1. ↑ About humanism : first published together with Plato's Doctrine of Truth by Francke AG Bern in 1947. As an independent work in 1949 by Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main.
2. ↑ Cf. Dirk Mende: "Letter on› Humanism ‹" On the metaphors of the late philosophy of being. In Dieter Thomä (Ed.): Heidegger Handbook . Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart 2003, p. 254.
3. ↑ Martin Heidegger: Thinking experiences . Frankfurt a. M. 1983, p. 152.
4. ↑ GA 9, p. 236.
5. ↑ GA 9, pp. 333f.
6. ↑ GA 9, p. 364.
7. ↑ GA 9, p. 324.
8. ↑ “Humans who live in it exist by listening to the truth of being, guarding it.”, M. Heidegger “About humanism” p. 24, Klostermann Frankfurt am Main, 1949.
9. ↑ GA 9, p. 317.
10. ↑ See e.g. B. "Explanations of Hölderlin's poetry" , GA 4.
11. ↑ GA 9, p. 317.
12. ↑ Cf. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hermann: The self-interpretation of Martin Heidegger . Meisenheim am Glan 1964, p. 264 ff.
13. ↑ GA 9, p. 337.
14. ↑ Cf. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hermann: The self-interpretation of Martin Heidegger . Meisenheim am Glan 1964, p. 264ff.
15. ↑ See GA 9, p. 328.
16. ↑ Cf. Dirk Mende: "Letter on› Humanism ‹" On the metaphors of the late philosophy of being. In Dieter Thomä (Ed.): Heidegger Handbook . Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart 2003, p. 255.
17. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Twelve lectures. Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 185.
18. ↑ GA 9, p. 347.
19. ↑ Cf. Dirk Mende: »Letter on› Humanism ‹«. On the metaphors of the late philosophy of being. In Dieter Thomä (Ed.): Heidegger Handbook . Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart 2003, pp. 257f.