Heidegger and Sartre

Jose David Ortiz – P3132

In a Europe consumed by the second world war, after years of barbarity and treachery, the well-
known thinkers Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger, two of the greatest ‘philosophers of
existence’ of the XX century, tried to give life again to the humanism with a renovated or revitalized
overview in the devastated society.

The first in line was Sartre, in response to criticism of existentialism, gives a legendary lecture in
France, October 1945, called 'existentialism is a humanism'. In the first instance, it is postulated that
his existentialist philosophy starts with the phrase ‘existence precedes essence', with which he
intended to rescue human subjectivity and emphasize that man is totally free. This is based on the
fact that man is able to build himself, it is a 'project to be carried out' thrown into the world that
with every experience he lives and every decision he makes is forming its essence; he, over time, is
conceptualizing himself and his past defines his being.

A critique of existentialism was that it promotes quietism; for Sartre, existentialism is quite the
opposite, man is condemned to freedom, to act no-matter how, and therefore can never be
considered passive, the fact of taking the reins of life determines man with constant actions, this
makes him exist.

Quietism is also related to the fact of not relating to anyone else, isolating oneself. But this is not
possible in Sartre's philosophy, as it will always be necessary the other people build an essence,
human relationships are necessary to perform actions. In other words, it would be useful for a man
to dictate his own rules, to create his own morals if there is no one to judge him and say who he is
or how he is. He needs another to conceptualize himself, to be recognized and judged, in other
words, to describe what his essence is.

For Catholics and Christian philosophers, existentialism was the ‘noose around the neck’ for
morality, as it would eliminate it altogether by giving freedom to each person to decide for himself
and taking away God's role in society. But Sartre explains that existentialism is not against morality,
but that its morality is individualistic, giving full responsibility for the actions of the same man,
eliminating the option of universal morality. This fact puts aside the commandments of God and
takes away all of his charges in terms of morality as they say, but for Sartre, to distance God is
favorable, because it makes each one approach its consequences, creates men extremely more
conscious. It is not easy to freely dictate your own laws, knowing that the essence was based on
these, it is much more problematic to decide for yourself than to follow the commandments of God
as instructions.
“The man without any support or help, is condemned at every moment to
inventing man. [...] man is the future of man”1

The sense in which existentialism is humanistic is that it understands that man is continually out of
himself. Projecting, acting, there is man, so he is in a constant exceeding of himself, transcending,
but this transcendence is in the same human universe because there is no other. This constant
presence in the human universe is what we call existentialist humanism.2

The existentialism of Sartre is based on making of man, the source and goal of all that is, giving
total freedom and responsibility for their actions; however, it is not a coincidence that the work has
resonated, ‘precisely’ in devastated Europe, especially Germany, the French thinker had given a

1 Jean Paul Sartre, El existencialismo es un humanismo, Peña Hermanos, México, 1998, p.19
2 Same book, p.41
rhetoric easy-to-digest, hopeful and awe-inspiring; in my opinion, (more than defend
existentialism), was directed to the feelings of those men who needed to reconnect with themselves
after this disaster. A message of hope was preached: “existence is the essence", and it echoed all
over Europe giving it a 'moral restart for everyone who had saved his existence'.

The next was Heidegger, in a letter (later called letter on humanism) sent to Jean Beaufret (Paris) in
1946, expressed his criticism to the “humanism”, answering his disciple's questions and the thought
set out by Sartre a few months ago at the conference. The central argument of The Thinker was to
prove that man is not the beginning, center, and end of all that is and exists. He establishes an
impossibility of understanding man from himself.

At first, it is significant to differentiate between being and Ente (ontological difference), being as he
defines it “is not the gender of any being, and yet it is related to every Ente. Its "universality" must
be sought higher. The being is above any Ente and above any possible determination of an Ente that
is itself an Ente”3, defining them as “everything that is” and the Ente as the human essence.
Therefore, he speaks of humanism starting from the differentiation between effecting and
consummating in the acts, in which, effecting is going to the Ente (the material), and consummating
is bringing the acts to the highest, that is, performing something that leads to the fullness of being,
is recognizing the truth of being.

Key concepts for Heidegger are language, which defines it as the House of being. It materializes
thoughts and allows man to externalize them, knowing that this thought dwells in the being. And
man, who defines himself as the guardian of being.

In Heidegger's view, man throughout history has not given the place to be being that it deserves,
that is, he has only focused on the Ente, and his work is represented by the effectual (described
before). I very agree on this point because it has been shown that philosophy has been persecuted by
that terror of losing credibility alongside science, causing the man to stop thinking about himself to
think only about Ente.
He speaks of a very important concept to manifest this approach of man to the Ente, which he called
the decadence of language, that defined:
“But the current decline of language, of which, a little late, so much is spoken lately, is not the
foundation, but the consequence of the process by which language, under the domain of modern
metaphysics of subjectivity, is falling almost irrepressibly out of its element. The language also
steals from us its essence: to be the House of the truth of being. Language is abandoned to our mere
Will and to do as an instrument of domination over the Ente”.4

This definition takes us to the realm of metaphysics, where Heidegger comes in with the strong
reflection by saying that every humanism is metaphysical 5, because it seeks to determine the
essence of man, but here is where the problem lies, in the approach of metaphysics, it has never
asked for the "truth of being”6. According to Heidegger, metaphysics has focused on man only as an
animal, has forgotten man as such, as what defines him, a rational animal, a reflective animal, and
therefore possesses a way of being. This is the root of the problem of why language is in decline
and man has become impersonal, of why Man forgets his Being.

Metaphysics has placed man in the same set of Ente, this is correct in one part, because Man is
really a being in the world, what he defined as "being-there"(Dasein). But it should not be reduced
to a simple being as metaphysics did, man is able to think of himself, reflect on his finitude and deal

3 Heidegger, El Ser y el Tiempo, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Madrid, p.48-49

4 Heidegger,Carta sobre el humanismo, Peña Hermanos, México, 1998, p. 71
5 Same last book, p.75
6 Same last book, p.76
with it every moment. He is a being who knows about his death, someone who feels anguish, but
for Heidegger, this anguish separated man from an Ente, because it makes him think about the truth
of the Being, and brings him closer to it. Not thinking about anguish is to stop reflecting on the
essence, it is like throwing yourself into the Ente and forgetting the being.

In my opinion, although Sartre's discourse was not the 'best' representation of his thought, it was a
necessary work for the time that humanity was living, Europe was consumed with barbarism,
destroyed and hopeless, a current that would push the man to stand up for himself, relate to his
environment and never stand isolated. To give hope to that person that his existence already made
him the center of everything and he could avail himself by his means and actions would make us a
more responsible society, a more human society among us. But it is a thought that I do not share, the
human may not be the center of it all. I agree with the thought that we are “projects of being” 7 that
were thrown into a world of possibilities, where we are always inclined to look forward and to find
ourselves, but the problem lies in that we don't realize it. We have been so focused on explaining
everything around us, that we lose our course, we forget about our existence and being, becoming
mere Ente!

Speaking about existentialism, in my opinion Heidegger masterfully contradicts Sartre's postulate

”existentialism is a humanism", because this current is still part of that metaphysics that he
criticizes. Existentialism sees man as a "being-there", but nothing more, a being that is in the world,
and is able to act, Act, relate, create his morals, etc. But this remains on the metaphysical plane,
never questions the truth of being, about that being that is already and that must be consummated, a
mindset that goes totally against the being. In the words of Heidegger: "Sartre turns this phrase. But
the reverse of a metaphysical phrase remains a metaphysical phrase" 8, (we know that Sartre's
famous phrase is the reverse of “essen-tia precedes existence,” Platon. A fundamental metaphysical
postulate of existentialism). Sartre's philosophy remains a metaphysics that has forgotten the
important thing, BEING.

Under my concept, the humanism should be based on ourselves, thinking about our being, to let that
angst that makes us beings with the ability to reflect and express that in the language; humanism
should be a doctrine that never forgets the essence of man, of that capacity to be aware of who is in
the world, and which inevitably will be in it. No Ente has that capacity, and therefore man's being
cannot be reduced to an Ente.

Bibliografía
• HEIDEGGER Martin,”Carta sobre el humanismo”, Peña Hermanos, México, 1998
• SARTRE Jean Paul,”El existencialismo es un humanismo”, Peña Hermanos, México, 1998.
• HEIDEGGER Martin,”El ser y el Tiempo”, Fondo de Cultura Económica, México, 2002.
• The Dangerous Maybe,”The Problem Concerning the Essence of Dasein: Heidegger vs.
Sartre”, March 2019. Taken from https://medium.com/@mdowns1611/the-problem-
concerning-the-essence-of-dasein-heidegger-vs-sartre-3076d323cd5a
• Crowell, Steven, "Existentialism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Taken from
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/existentialism.
• Feinmann Jose Pablo, “Filosofía Aquí y Ahora - Cap 5, 6, 7 y 8 - Temp 2”, Argentina, 2012.
Taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opnPM-D8aW4&feature=emb_title

7 Feinmann Jose Pablo, Filosofía Aquí y Ahora, “Getting into Heidegger and the nazismo”, Argentina, Cap5 - Temp2
8 Heidegger,Carta sobre el humanismo, Peña Hermanos, México, 1998, p. 82