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“-ISMS” (EG, SOCIALISM) MUST BE CRITICALLY REJECTED
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- INDIVIDUALISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY FLAWED AND SHOULD BE REJECTED
“-ISMS” (EG, SOCIALISM) MUST BE CRITICALLY REJECTED1. “-ISMS” ARE METAPHYSICAL CONSTRUCTS WHICH SIGNIFY THE END OF THINKING Martin Heidegger, German philosopher. “Letter on Humanism,” in BASIC WRITINGS, 1977, p. 197. By and by philosophy becomes a technique for explaining from highest causes. One no longer thinks; one occupies himself with “philosophy.” In competition with one another, such occupations publicly offer themselves as “-isms” and try to offer more than the others. The dominance of such terms is not accidental. It rests above all in the modern age on the peculiar dictatorship of the public realm. 2. ALL “-ISMS” MAKE APRIORI ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT HUMAN NATURE AND HISTORY Martin Heidegger, German philosopher. “Letter on Humanism,” in BASIC WRITINGS, 1977, pp. 201-2. But if one understands humanism in general as a concern that man become free for his humanity and find his worth in it, then humanism differs according to one’s conception of “freedom” and “nature” of man. So too are there various paths toward the realization of such conceptions. 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 man’s salvation the history of man appears in the context of the history of redemption. 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 humanitas is determined with regard to an already established interpretation of history, world, and the ground of the world, that is, of beings as a whole. 3. “-ISMS” ARE CONSTRUCTS WHICH OBSCURE QUESTIONS OF EXISTENCE Martin Heidegger, German philosopher. “Letter on Humanism,” in BASIC WRITINGS, 1977, p. 202. Every humanism is either grounded in a metaphysics or is itself made to be the ground of one. Every determination of the essence of man that already presupposes an interpretation of being without asking about the truth of Being, whether knowingly or not, is metaphysical. The result is that what is peculiar to all metaphysics, specifically with respect to the way the essence of man is determined, is that it is “humanistic.” Accordingly, every humanism remains metaphysical. In defining the humanity of man humanism not only does not ask about the relation of Being to the essence of man; because of its metaphysical origin humanism even impedes the question by neither recognizing nor understanding it. 4. METAPHYSICS CANNOT EVER GAIN AN UNDERSTANDING OF TRUE EXISTENCE Martin Heidegger, German philosopher. “Letter on Humanism,” in BASIC WRITINGS, 1977, p. 221. No metaphysics, whether idealistic, materialistic, or Christian, can in accord with its essence, and surely not in its own attempts to explicate itself, ‘get a hold on’ this destiny yet, and that means thoughtfully to reach and gather together what in the fullest sense of Being now is. INDIVIDUALISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY FLAWED AND SHOULD BE REJECTED1. UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD REQUIRES AN UNDERSTANDING OF OTHER PEOPLE Martin Heidegger, German Philosopher. BEING AND TIME, 1962, p. 153. If we are correct in saying that by the foregoing explication of the world, the remaining structural items of Being-in-the-world have become visible, then this must also have prepared us, in a way, for answering the question of the “who.” In our “description’ of that environment which is closest to us--the work-world of the craftsman, for example, --the outcome was that along with the equipment to be found when one is at work, those Others for whom the “work” is destined are “encountered too.” 2. OTHER PEOPLE ARE IMPUCIT IN OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THINGS Martin Heidegger, German Philosopher. BEING AND TIME, 1962, pp. 153-4. Similarly, when material is put to use, we encounter its producer or “supplier” as one who “serves” well or badly. When, for example, we walk along the edge of a field but “outside it,” the field shows itself as belonging to such-and-such a person, and decently kept up by him; the book we have used was bought at So-and-so’s shop and given by such-and-such a person, and so forth. The boat anchored at the shore is assigned in its Being-in-itself to an acquaintance who undertakes voyages with it; but even if it is a “boat which is strange to us,” it is still indicative of Others. The Others who are thus “encountered” in a ready-to-hand, environmental context of equipment, are not somehow added on in thought to some Thing which is proximally just present-at-hand; such “Things” are encountered from out of the world in which they are ready-to-hand for Others--a world which is always mine too in advance.
Martin Heidegger, German Philosopher. BEING AND TIME, 1962, p. 154. Thus in characterizing the encountering of Others, one is again still oriented by that Dasein which is in each case one’s own. But even in this characterization does one not start by marking out and isolating the “I” so that one must then seek some way of getting over to the Others from this isolated subject? To avoid this misunderstanding we must notice in what sense we are talking about “the Others.” By “Others” we do not mean everyone else but me--those over against whom the “I” stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself--those among whom one is too.
Martin Heidegger, German Philosopher. BEING AND TIME, 1962, p. 155. Theoretically concocted “explanations” of the Being-present-at-hand of Others urge themselves upon us all too easily; but over against such explanations we must hold fast to the phenomenal facts of the case which we have pointed out, namely, that Others are encountered environmentally. This elemental worldly kind of encountering, which belongs to Dasein and is closest to it, goes so far that even one’s own Dasein becomes something that can itself proximally “come across” only when it looks away from “Experiences” and the “center of its actions,” or does not as yet “see” them at all. Dasein finds ‘itself” proximally in what it does, uses, expects, avoids--in those things environmentally ready-to-hand with which it is proximally concerned. 5. CONCERN FOR OTHERS IS PART OF OUR AUTHENTIC BEING Martin Heidegger, German Philosopher. BEING AND TIME, 1962, p. 159. Solicitude proves to be a state of Dasein’s Being--one which, in accordance with its different possibilities, is bound up with its Being towards the world of concern, and likewise with its authentic Being towards itself. Being with one another is based proximally and often exclusively upon what is a matter of common concern in such Being.
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