Person, Death, and World

Abstract

Notwithstanding their unmistakable difference, major contemporary German thinkers seem to share a common philosophical interest which can be seen in their attempt to develop a notion of man without objectivizing him. That man’s true being is inaccessible to the objectifying mode of thought, seems to be the philosophical conviction that they share. Much of what has been presented to the American philosophical community as Existentialism and existential thinking, rightly understood, is not so much an existentialist version of man, as it is a genuine philosophical attempt to achieve a notion of man without falling into the pitfalls of objectivizing thinking. This is, for instance, Heidegger’s goal in his earlier works when he focuses on the “coming-to-pass of Dasein” in man. This also constitutes Jasper’s objective when he sees the actual being of man to lie in his encounter with the divine transcendence. This is also Husserl’s aim when he sees in the “transcendental subjectivity” the locus where man’s primordial being lies hidden. None of these attempts should be seen as representing an existentialist version of man since none of these philosophical approaches to man is guided by the “priority of existence over the essence”.