Standing Problems 241world, and the ground of the world, that is, of beings as a whole’. Thus, he continues,
significantly, ‘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 beings without asking about the truth of Being’
(Heidegger 1993: 225–6). The deep metaphysical questions about human nature are
institutionalized in humanism and avoid the real issues about Being.
There are three sub-issues here. First, for Heidegger, ‘every humanism remains
metaphysical’. In remaining metaphysical, it 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’ (Heidegger 1993: 226).^8
Thus, humanism embodied in metaphysics impedes the grasp of Being. Humanism
isnotabout genuine thinking. Second, the institutionalization of metaphysical ques-
tions about humanity stops genuine thinking. Thinking if inflexible can disrupt ‘the
flow of life’ and Being. Thus, it is an implicit threat to humanity—humanity whose
essence is thinking. Third, the lurking distinction behind this is the human and inhu-
man. Given Heidegger’s Nazi reputation in the 1930s in Freiburg, the ‘inhuman’ is
a difficult concept to deal with. Basically, what Heidegger (like Nietzsche, Foucault,
and others who employ the same idea) meant is that if humanism impedes and dis-
torts thinking then the ‘inhuman’ denotes new vistas or some form of emancipation,
minimally, for Heidegger, the possibility of thinking about Being. The inhuman is not
the barbaric (Heidegger 1993: 249). For Heidegger, the highest essence of humanism
does not reach man’s highest dignity. Man, as he puts it, is the ‘shepherd of Being’.
Thus, if metaphysics equates with humanism then, as Heidegger declares, his major
bookBeing and Timeis against all forms of humanism (Heidegger 1993: 233–4).
This leads to the third distinction between ‘Being’ and ‘representations of being’.
The major point that Heidegger wants to make here is that metaphysics is the prime
candidate for offering us ‘representations of Being’. Representations of Being, how-
ever, close our minds to Being. Thus, the history of metaphysics is the forgetting of
Being. Humanity is therefore more than metaphysics tells us. Being is already lost in
Plato and Aristotle.^9 As Heidegger puts it: ‘Metaphysics does not ask about the truth
of Being itself. Nor does it therefore ask in what way the essence of man belongs to
the truth of Being. Metaphysics has not only failed up to now to ask this question,
the question is inaccessible to metaphysics as such’ (Heidegger 1993: 226–7). For
Heidegger, it is only when one radically posits the question—‘what is metaphysics?’—
that the possibility of the awareness of Being arises. For Heidegger, metaphysics always
‘closes itself to the simple essential fact that man essentially occurs only in his essence,
where he is claimed by Being. Only from that claim “has” he found that wherein his
essence dwells’ (Heidegger 1993: 227–8). Thus, the question—what is man?—cannot
be answered by referring to an unchanging essence (qua a Christian soul), or existence
preceding essence (qua Sartre). All this is metaphysics. Metaphysical systems offer us
mere representations. Bothessentiaandexistentiadenote ‘forgetfulness of being’.
Man is always homeless outside Being. Heidegger rather suggests that man ‘ek-sists’.
Ek-sistence means ‘standing out into the truth of Being’ (Heidegger 1993: 232 and
230).^10 To ek-sist is not to exist. Ek-sisting means dwelling and caring in Being.