LETTER ON "HUMANISM"
question of the truth of being, to the primordial belonging of the word to being. This relation remains concealed amid the dominance of subjectivity that presents itself as the public realm. But if the truth of being has become thought-provoking for thinking, then reflection on the essence of language must also attain a different rank. It can no longer be a mere philosophy of language. [150] That is the only reason Being and Time (section 34) contains a reference to the essential dimension of language and touches upon the simple question as to what mode of being language as language in any given case has. The widely and rapidly spreading devastation of language not only undermines aesthetic and moral responsibility in every use of language; it arises from a threat to the essence of humanity. A merely cultivated use of language is still no proof that we have as yet escaped this danger to our essence. These days, in fact, such usage might sooner testify that we have not yet seen and cannot see the danger because we have never yet placed ourselves in view of it. Much bemoaned of late, and much too lately, the decline of language is, however, not the grounds for, but already a consequence of, the state of affairs in which language under the dominance of the modern metaphysics of subjectivity almost irremediably falls out of its element. Language still denies us its essence: that it is the house of the truth of being. Instead, language surrenders itself to our mere willing and trafficking as an instrument of domination over beings. Beings themselves appear as actualities in the interaction of cause and effect. We encounter beings as actualities in a calculative businesslike way, but also scientifically and by way of philosophy, with explanations and proofs. Even the assurance that something is inexplicable belongs to these explanations and proofs. With such statements we believe that we [{GA 9 319}] confront the mystery. As if it were already decided that the truth of being lets itself at all be established in causes and explanatory grounds or, what comes to the same, in their incomprehensibility.
But if the human being is to find his way once again into the nearness of being he must first learn to exist in the nameless. In the same way he must recognize the seductions of the public realm as well as the impotence of the private. Before he speaks the human being must first let himself be claimed again by being, taking the risk that under this claim he will seldom have much to say. Only thus will [151] the pricelessness of its essence be once more bestowed upon the word, and upon humans a home for dwelling in the truth of being.
But in the claim upon human beings, in the attempt to make humans ready for this claim, is there not implied a concern about human beings? Where else does "care" tend but in the direction of bringing the human being back to his essence? What else does that in turn betoken but that
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