Metaphysics In Martin Heidegger's Letter On Humanism, Pathmarks

Metaphysics closes itself to the simple essential fact that the human being essentially occurs in his essence only where he is claimed by being. Only from that claim ‘has’ he found that wherein his essence dwells. Only from this dwelling does he ‘have’ language as the home that preserves the ecstatic for his essence. Such standing in the clearing of being I call the ek-sistence of human beings. This way of being is proper only to the human being. Ek-sistence so understood is not only the ground of the possibility of reason, ratio, but is also that in which the essence of the human being preserves the source that determines him.”- Letter on Humanism, Pathmarks. (247)
Martin Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism, is the most provocative but at the same …show more content…
Heidegger disagrees with this attempt in a profoundly fundamental way.
The paragraph quoted above critiques the widespread metaphysical interpretation of the human essence, which takes its form in the insatiable supply of ‘isms’ (Marxism, existentialism, Christianity, etc.) Thus far, the notion that it is reason, ratio, that separates man from animal, has prevailed as the predominant conception of human essence. Heidegger, disagrees with this, in that he sees that the designation of reason as the essence of the human being, retains the human being in the dimension of ‘animalitas.’ Furthermore, he disagrees with any project that seeks to find the essence of the human being through a metaphysical projection of ‘value,’ in other words through a humanism. Heidegger’s disagreement with metaphysics it explicated more thoroughly in his essay ‘What is Metaphysics?’ where he argues that metaphysics fails to recognize being, and deals exclusively with beings. For Heidegger, any essential thinking, must