PHI 408 Existentialism

Third Written Assignment
Due: Thursday November X, 2017

“The Question of Humanism”

In this third assignment you are to address Jean-Paul Sartre’s and Martin Heidegger’s respective treatments of “humanism”.  In the first content section address the status of humanism in Sartre’s essay “Existentialism is a Humanism.” In the second content section address the status of humanism in Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism”.  In the course of these two content sections prepare the groundwork for a third section in which you dramatize a stark contrast between Sartre’s and Heidegger’s accounts. Recall that Heidegger wrote the “Letter on Humanism” in response to Sartre’s misinterpretation of his philosophy.

Consider the fact that Sartre, for example, emphasizes individual subjective agency engaged in choice and action in a situation [“…he or she exists only to the extent that he or she fulfills him or herself; he or she is nothing else than the ensemble of his or her actions, nothing else than his or her life.” (32)], while Heidegger reflects on the human as an attunement to Being [“…that thinking which thinks the truth of Being as the primordial element of  [man] human beings is itself the original ethics.” (258)]

However, in your conclusion – a fourth section --, see if you can fashion a rapprochement between Sartre’s and Heidegger’s accounts of humanism.  Perhaps there is a common ground (one that is paradoxically ungrounded) in the ecstatic experience of being human. For Sartre, “…there is another meaning of humanism. … a human is constantly outside of him or herself; in projecting him or herself, in losing him or her self outside of him or herself, he or she makes for the human being’s existing…” (50, my emphasis) For Heidegger “…the point is that in the determination of the humanity of [man] human beings as ek-sistence what is essential is not [man] human beings but Being – as the dimension of the ecstasies of ek-sistence.” (237, translation modified), and “Human beings [man] stands ek-sistingly in the destiny of Being. The ek-sistence of human beings [man] is historical as such.” (239, translation modified) Does the ecstatic being of the human being thematize a desubstantification of the human being that is analogous for both thinkers?

Your paper should be five to six pages in length, typed and double-spaced with adequate margins. Make cogent reference to Sartre’s and Heidegger’s essays.