amiss with the vociferous claims of philosophical anthropology in answering the question of what the human is.
SCHOLAR: For with regard to this question philosophical anthropology not only has nothing to answer, but also no longer anything to ask. The heretofore authoritative interpretation of the human being [Menschenwesen] as the animal rationale is, though, based on an experiencing that immediately looks at the human himself as a living being [Lebewesen] among other living beings.
GUIDE: Nonetheless, this interpretation of the human being is not a biological interpretation, as one may think; it is not even a biologically based interpretation. [103]
SCIENTIST: But it is after all based on the initial positing of the human as animal [Latin for “animate being”], as ζῷον, as living being—not to say with Nietzsche, as animal!
GUIDE: We still know but little about the origin of the determination of our own essence. How little we know about this should have been clear to us in the beginning of our conversation, when we considered whether the determination of the human essence is the answer to a question, or the answer [Antwort] to the word [Wort]. It could be the case, not only that the determination of the human essence does not originate in a question about the human, but that it does not originate from a question at all, precisely for the reason that this determination cannot be obtained from the human.
SCIENTIST: The origin of the definition of essence that prevails in the Occident is thus veiled in darkness.
SCHOLAR: And this origin may be difficult to ever illuminate, since we lack the sources to establish who first pronounced the definition.
GUIDE: Understood in that manner, however, the question about the origin of the definition of the human essence is unimportant. I understand something else by the origin of the determination of the human essence.
SCHOLAR: Do you mean perhaps the horizon and the initial positing of the horizon, within which the essence of the human interpreted as animal rationale is caught sight of?
GUIDE: What I mean lies in this direction. In meditating on the origin of the interpretation of essence, what is at issue is knowing whether in general a horizon, and if so in what sense and in what manner the horizon is what is determinative, that is to say, is what provides the measure, in the experience of the essence of the human as ζῷον. [104] Yet I also mean this: as long as we think with regard to the horizon without knowing its essential origin, we don’t yet think the question of origin itself originarily.
SCIENTIST: I don’t understand why you are so set on the question of origin.