LETTER ON "HUMANISM"


presupposed "positive" together with its position and opposition in which it is thought to be secure. By continually appealing to the logical one conjures up the illusion that one is entering straightforwardly into thinking when in fact one has disavowed it.

It ought to be somewhat clearer now that opposition to "humanism" in no way implies a defense of the inhuman but rather opens other vistas.

"Logic" understands thinking to be the representation of beings in their being, which representation proposes to itself in the generality of the concept. [179 {GA 9 348}] But how is it with meditation on being itself, that is, with the thinking that thinks the truth of being? This thinking alone reaches the primordial essence λόγος, which was already obfuscated and lost in Plato and in Aristotle, the founder of "logic." To think against "logic" does not mean to break a lance for the illogical but simply to trace in thought the λόγος and its essence, which appeared in the dawn of thinking, that is, to exert ourselves for the first time in preparing for such reflection. Of what value are even far-reaching systems of logic to us if, without really knowing what they are doing, they recoil before the task of simply inquiring into the essence of λόγος? If we wished to bandy about objections, which is of course fruitless, we could say with more right: irrationalism, as a denial of ratio, rules unnoticed and uncontested in the defense of "logic," which believes it can eschew meditation on λόγος and on the essence of ratio, which has its ground in λόγος.

To think against "values" is not to maintain that everything interpreted as "a value" — "culture " "art," "science," "human dignity," "world," and "God" — is valueless. Rather, it is important finally to realize that precisely through the characterization of something as "a value" what is so valued is robbed of its worth] That is to say, by the assessment of something as a value what is valued is admitted only as an object for human estimation. But what a thing is in its being is not exhausted by its being an object, particularly when objectivity takes the form of value. Every valuing, even where it values positively, is a subjectivizing. It does not let beings: be. Rather, valuing lets beings: be valid — solely as the objects of its doing. The bizarre effort to prove the objectivity of values does not know what it is doing. When one proclaims "God" the altogether "highest value," this is a degradation of God's essence. Here as elsewhere thinking in values is [180 {GA 9 349}] the greatest blasphemy imaginable against being. To think against values therefore does not mean to beat the drum for the valuelessness and nullity of beings. It means rather to bring the clearing of the truth of being before thinking, as against subjectivizing beings into mere objects.


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Martin Heidegger (GA 9) Pathmarks