kakkori and huttunen 2010 the sartre-heidegger controversy on humanism and the concept of man in...

The Sartre-Heidegger Controversy onHumanism and the Concept of Manin EducationLeena Kakkori & Rauno HuttunenFaculty of Social Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Abstract

Jean-Paul Sartre claims in his 1945 lecture ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’ that there are twokinds of existentialism: that of Christians like Karl Jaspers, and atheistic like Martin Heidegger.Sartre’s ‘spiritual master’ Heidegger had no problem with Sartre defining him as an atheist, buthe had serious problems with Sartre’s concept of humanism and existentialism. Heidegger claimsthat the essence of humanism lies in the essence of the human being.After the Enlightenment, theWestern concept of man has been presented in education in the form of Kantian humanisticessentialism.At least in the Finnish educational system, Kantian humanism is almost an officialideological background of all national curriculums. Is such a kind of essentialism and meta-physics plausible in our modern or postmodern times? We examine the Sartre-Heideggercontroversy on humanism and the concept of man in education using Freire’s humanism andGelassenheit education as exemplars.

Keywords: humanism, anti-humanism, education, Heidegger, Sartre, cultur-alism, essentialism, naturalism, existentialism, Gelassenheit-education

Introduction

The question ‘what is human being?’, is the basic question of philosophy. It is also thebasic question of the science of education. If we do not know what a human being is howcan we educate her?We all have an idea of what human being is, but it is necessary to takethis question into consideration. The question of human being is formulated as whatmakes us humans. Humanitas and paideia correspond to this question in Ancient Greek.How to become a human being rather than a barbarian? In this way education has alwaysbeen at the heart of philosophy. After Immanuel Kant, the human being is seen as arational and autonomous being and this has also been the picture of human being ineducation. It is now the time to ask, in a new way, the question of the nature of humanbeing, and also ask questions about humanism.We must consider arguments against thedesirability of humanism and also questions about the possibility of humanism (Biesta,2006, pp. 6–7). Education is difficult; every parent, teacher, and educator knows that.The way to ease this difficulty is to understand education as an instrument to achievealready determinate goals (Biesta, 2006, pp. 73–74). This kind of technological attitude

Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2010doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2010.00680.x

© 2010 The AuthorsEducational Philosophy and Theory © 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of AustralasiaPublished by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

means the abandonment of education and belongs accordingly to calculative thinking,to use Heidegger’s terminology. To take education seriously means also taking seriouslythe question of humanism. In this article we look at the question of humanism in theSartre-Heidegger controversy and consider some educational ramifications of thiscontroversy. The starting point is Sartrean humanistic existentialism.

Existentialism came to prominence with the publication of Jean-Paul Sartre’s lecture‘Existentialism is a Humanism’ [L’existentialisme est un humanisme; published in 1946and subsequently translated as Existentialism and Humanism] given in in 1945. In itSartre claims there are two kinds of existentialism (Sartre, 1996, pp. 27–30): ‘There are,on the one hand, the Christians, amongst whom I shall name Jaspers and GabrielMarcel, both professed Catholics; and on the other the existential atheists, amongstwhom we must place Heidegger as well as the French existentialists and myself. Whatthey have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes beforeessence ... What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean thatman first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himselfafterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him as not definable, it is because to beginwith he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makesof himself.Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conceptionof it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is whathe wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing—as he wills to be after thatleap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That isthe first principle of existentialism ... If, however, it is true that existence is prior toessence, man is responsible for what he is.’ In this passage we find the basics of Sartre’sexistentialism: priority of existence, no predestined purpose for being human, a human’sexistentialist ability to define himself, responsibility, and existentialist freedom of willwhich reaches beyond Kant’s concept of will.

Sartre’s spiritual master Martin Heidegger had no problem with Sartre defininghim an atheist (see Rockmore, 1995, p. 98), but he had serious problems with Sartre’sconcept of humanism and existentialism. In November 1946, Heidegger wrote his‘Letter on Humanism’, in which he opposed Sartre’s humanism (Thomä, 2003, p. 552).Heidegger claims that the essence of humanism lies in the essence of the human being.Humanism is first encountered in the age of ancient Rome. Homo humanus was opposedto homo barbarus. According to Heidegger, homo humanus ‘means the Romans, whoexalted and honored Roman virtus through the “embodiment” of paideia taken over fromthe Greeks’ (Heidegger, 1999b, p. 248). Heidegger stresses that, as part of metaphysics,the history of humanism takes for granted the idea that the animal rationale is body plussomething else, namely soul, reason or mind. Sartre’s existentialism belongs in thehistory of humanism because its reversal of the metaphysical statement—essentia andexistentia—remains a metaphysical statement. Every humanism is either founded onmetaphysics or is itself made to be the foundation for one. For Heidegger, to beanti-humanistic does not mean to be against human being but to be against metaphysics.Heidegger begins to think of the human in the following way (Heidegger, 1999b, p. 239):‘Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell.’

After the Enlightenment, theWestern concept of man in education has been presentedin the form of Kantian humanistic essentialism. At least in the Finnish educational

2 Leena Kakkori & Rauno Huttunen

© 2010 The AuthorsEducational Philosophy and Theory © 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

system, Kantian humanism is almost an official ideological background of all nationalcurriculums. Is such a kind of essentialism and metaphysics plausible in our modern orpostmodern times? Sartre modifies it with anti-essentialism and thus makes it moreplausible in the era of postmetaphysical philosophy. In this article we use Paolo Freire’sapplication of Sartrean humanism as an exemplar for the humanistic concept of man ineducation. As an exemplar for anti-humanism in education we use Leena Kakkori’snotion of Gelassenheit education.

Sartre’s Humanism

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) is the most famous figure of so-called existentialism. Heformulated the foundation of his existentialism in the texts The Transcendence of the Ego(Sartre, 1957), Nausea (Sartre, 2000), Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (Sartre, 2002)Being and Nothingness (Sartre, 1966) and Existentialism and Humanism (Sartre, 1996). InTheTranscendence of the Ego, Sartre claims that ‘the ego is not the owner of consciousness’(Sartre, 1957, p. 97; Saarinen, 1983, p. 68). Sartre diverges from Husserl by stating that‘the me’ should not be sought in the states of unreflective consciousness nor behindthem. The me appears only with reflective consciousness and reflective intention. TheI and the me are two aspects of the ego, and they constitute the unity of the infinite seriesof our reflected consciousnesses. Furthermore, Sartre states that the ego is a transcen-dent unity of states, actions, and qualities (Sartre, 1957, p. 60).Thus for Sartre—unlikeHeidegger—there exists both a consciousness and a transcendental ego, although notquite in the Kantian or the Husserlian sense. Nevertheless, the two basic elements ofphilosophical (theoretical) humanism are present in his early work: Sartrean philosophyis 1) man-centred and 2) consciousness-centred.

Sartre was influenced by Husserl’s phenomenology as he wrote The Transcendence ofthe Ego. At the time, Heidegger’s influence on Sartre was minimal, but the situation waslater reversed. Later on, Heidegger’s thinking had a greater influence on Sartre’s exis-tentialism than Husserl’s phenomenology.1 Sartre’s understanding of Heidegger wasconditioned by Alexander Kojève’s and Henry Corbin’s Hegelian and anthropologicalinterpretation of Heidegger. Following Kojève, Corbin revised the translation of Heideg-ger’s Dasein as réalité-humaine2 (human reality) (Rockmore, 1995, p. 73). In Kojève’sfamous study on Hegel, this réalité-humaine is identified with the Hegelian concept ofself-consciousness (Kojève, 1980, p. 8). Sartre adopts the concept of human reality inhis book Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (Sartre, 2002, p. 10). Here, Sartre focuses hisphilosophy on the study of man and his situation in a Heideggerian manner: ‘... a trulypositive study of man in situation would have first to have elucidated the notions of man,of the world, of being-in-the-world, and of situation’ (Sartre, 2002, p. 13).

We can understand Sartre’s novels and plays from 1930s and 1940s as an existentialistillustration of a human reality (Sartre, 1948, 1989 and 2000). Because of the Corbin-Kojève reception of Heidegger, Sartre did not have any problems with connecting theconcepts of human reality, presence to itself, and being for-itself (Dasein) to the Hegelianphilosophy of consciousness (Sartre, 2002, p. 10; Sartre, 1966, p. 124). Thus Sartremisses right in the beginning Heidegger’s fundamental motive to overcome the Germantradition of philosophy of consciousness.

The Sartre-Heidegger Controversy on Humanism and Education 3


Before 1945, Sartre did not use the term humanism in a positive sense, even thoughhis philosophy dealt centrally with the human and its consciousness. In Sartre’s novelNausea, the main character defines many different forms of humanism in a cynical way(Sartre, 2000, pp. 168–169):

The radical humanist is a special friend of the civil servant.The so called ‘Leftwing’ humanist’s chief concern is to preserve human values: he belongs to noparty because he doesn’t want to betray humanity as a whole ... He also lovescats, dogs, all higher animals.The Communist writer has been loving men eversince the second Five-Year Plan, he punishes because he loves ...The Catholichumanist, the late-comer, the Benjamin, speaks of men with a wonderstruckair. What a beautiful fairy tale, he says, is the humblest life, that of a Londondocker, of a girl in a shoe factory! He has chosen the humanism of theangels ...Those are principal types. But there are others, a swarm of others: thehumanist philosopher who bends over his brothers like an elder brother whois conscious of his responsibilities; the humanist who loves men as they are, theone who loves them as they ought to be, the one who wants to save them withtheir consent, and the one who wants to save them in spite of themselves, theone who wants to create myths, and the one who is satisfied with old myths, theone who loves man for his death, the one who loves man for his life, the happyhumanist who always knows what to say to make people laugh, the gloomyhumanist whom you usually meet at wakes. They all hate one another: asindividuals, of course, not as men.

The novel Nausea, the collection of short stories The Wall (Sartre, 1948), and the playNo Exit (Sartre, 1989) created an impression that Sartrean existentialism is pessimistic,absurd, and anti-humanistic. Sartre’s notions on anguish, fear, bad faith, masochism,hate, and sadism in Being and Nothingness compound this view (Sartre, 1966, pp. 65–116;pp. 474–534). Sartre’s philosophy can be described as somewhat pessimistic before thelecture ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’ given in Paris on October 28th, 1945. In thelecture, Sartre denies that existentialism recommends people ‘to dwell in quietism ofdespair’ and to refrain from any earthly action and only settle for philosophical contem-plation (Sartre, 1996, p. 23). On the contrary, Sartre considers existentialism optimisticand active. Existentialism is humanism both in the practical and the philosophical senseof the term. If we accept the existential conditions that God does not exist, that humanexistence comes before its essence, that humanity is abandoned, that a human is con-demned to be free, that the destiny of man lies within himself, that man has no otherhope than his own action, and that there is no pre-established morality, the result is thata human simply is and human life is possible. Sartre states that a human is undefinedbecause to begin with a human is nothing (Sartre, 1996, pp. 26–29; 51; Sartre, 1966, pp.559–567). A human is nothing until he becomes what he makes of himself. A humanis a kind of self-filling nothingness (Fell, 1979, p. 155). A human has existential freedomand that is for Sartre the first principle of existentialism. Following Heidegger’sterminology—but possibly not Heidegger’s intentions—Sartre calls a being whose exist-ence comes before its essence a ‘human reality’ [Dasein] (Sartre, 1996, pp. 29–30; Sartre,1966, p. 60).



Sartre defended existentialism against its critics—among others, Communists andCatholics. Communists criticized existentialism for condemning man into isolation andbasing its doctrine upon pure Cartesian subjectivity. Communists claim that the subjec-tivist Cartesian ego cannot regain solidarity with other human beings, who exist outsideof the ego. Catholics criticized existentialism for ignoring the commandments of Godand denying God’s eternal values. Catholics claimed that this led to a kind of sub-jectivism that allowed everyone to do what one likes, and in such a situation one couldnot morally evaluate the view or action of anyone else (Sartre, 1996, pp. 23–24).

Sartre’s answer to Catholics and Communists is that the subjectivism of existen-tialism does not lead to a state of immorality and ‘unsolidarity’. Because existenceprecedes essence, one is morally responsible for what one is and what one does forothers. One is not responsible for only oneself but instead for all humans. Our respon-sibility concerns mankind as a whole. No God or society can take away this existentialresponsibility. Every time one makes a choice in a social context (decides to marry, tojoin a party, to buy cigarettes etc.), one is responsible for oneself and for all the peoplebecause one is creating a certain image that describes man as one wishes him to be.When one fashions oneself, one fashions man at the same time. When one commitsoneself to something, one acts at the same time as a kind of legislator who decides forthe whole mankind. This human reality causes such existential feelings as anguish,abandonment and despair. If one tries to deny this freedom and responsibility, one isguilty of self-deception which causes bad faith:3 one dissembles his existential anguish(Sartre, 1996, pp. 29–35).

For Sartre, there is no escape from existential freedom. A human is abandoned tothe world, and there is no determinism which would limit human freedom. A human isdetermined by the concrete situation, but he still has existential freedom: ‘Totallydetermined and totally free’ (Sartre, 1993, p. 433). A human cannot find anything todepend on, neither within nor outside of himself. The only thing a human can find outis that he is without any excuses. ‘Man is free, man is freedom’ (Sartre, 1996, p. 38). Ahuman is condemned to be free. Sartre declares that a human is free to define himselfand that he is defined only insofar as he acts. No other than he himself is responsiblefor his own actions. What is morality like then? How do I know which actions are rightand which are wrong? Sartre’s answer is: ‘You are free, therefore choose—that is to say,invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: no signs arevouchsafed in this world’ (Sartre, 1996, p. 43). Values do not exist a priori to humanaction.Values do not exist before humans create them (Saarinen, 1983, p. 193).There isno foundation for values apart from human freedom and action. According to Arthur C.Danto’s interpretation, we do not find values already waiting in the world but values aregenerated as a condition of our entry into it4 (Danto, 1991, p. 124). Sartre promotes theethics of action and self-commitment. Although there is no separate kingdom of values,existentialism does recognize the dignity of man. A human is not an object or a thing.Instead, he or she is a subjectivity who can, by the Cartesian act of ‘I think’, attain thecertainty of oneself in the presence of others. The ego cannot exist or think withoutthe presence of others. The ego cannot be anything unless others recognize him assomething.5 Thus the subjectivism of existentialism does not fit inside the Cartesian egocogitans (Sartre, 1996, pp. 51–52).



Sartre denies the claim that existential humanism considers man as an end-in-itselfand as the supreme value (Sartre, 1996, p. 66.): ‘An Existentialist will never take man asthe end, since man is still to be determined. And we have no right to believe thathumanity is something to which we could set up a cult, after the manner of AugusteComte.’ Existential humanism considers man as being always outside of himself, becauseman is all the time projecting and losing himself beyond himself. Man is always pursuingtranscendent aims (aims that transcend his present being) and he is always in the stateof self-surpassing. Sartre thinks that this relation of transcendence is constitutive forsubjectivity. Existentialism is humanism because it reminds people that there is no otherlegislator apart from humans and that in situations of abandonment humans must lookfor themselves beyond their present selves.

Sartre’s moral theory—before his Marxist period—and concept of man are a creativemixture of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. A human is abandoned in the world,and he has to make choices in concrete situations with others being-there in flesh andblood (see Sartre, 1966, p. 448). A human is his own master, but he is responsible forothers, and no one can free him from this existential freedom and responsibility.

A Short History of an Unlikely Dialogue between Sartre and Heidegger

In 1945, Heidgger received visitors from France. One of them was Frederic de Towar-nicki, who lent Heidegger a French copy of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Heideggerwas at once impressed by Sartre’s skill of presentation. Especially he liked passages inwhich Sartre philosophized about skiing. Heidegger really appreciated Sartre’s philoso-phy. Heidegger mentions Sartre in his Kant book: ‘Effect on Sartre crucial; only fromthere Being and Time understood’ (Heidegger, 1998, p. 251; translation by Safranski,2002, p. 350).

Heidegger wanted to meet Sartre, and Towarnicki tried to arrange a meeting. Atfirst Sartre resisted the idea, but Towarnicki succeeded in changing his mind, and Sartreand Heidegger agreed to meet in Baden-Baden. On 28th of October 1945, Heideggerwrote an invitation letter to Sartre in which he embraces Sartre in the following way(Hurt, 1996):

Here I meet for the first time an independent thinker who has experienced thesame domain of knowledge on the grounds of which I think. Your work isdominated by such kind of immediate understanding of my philosophy that Ihave not found anywhere else. I very much hope that we could have a fruitfuldiscussion and thus clarify essential questions ... It is—concerning the mostserious understanding of the contemporary world [Weltaugenblick] and turningit to words without any doctrinal disputes, bandwagons, schools of thought—that finally the resolute experience awakes the fact that essentially groundlessNothingness conceals the richness of Being.6

The meeting never took place for several reasons which are reminiscent of Sartrean‘bad excuses’. Sartre and Heidegger did not meet each other until 1952 in Freiburg(Safranski, 2002, pp. 349–350). Before the meeting, Heidegger had published his Letteron Humanism, and probably that is the reason they did not share a common ground



anymore. The meeting was short and it did not lead to any further dialogue betweenHeidegger and Sartre. Had the meeting in Baden-Baden succeeded, things might havegone differently. Maybe ‘essential questions’ would have been cleared and ‘the richnessof Being’ revealed—or maybe not.

Heidegger’s Anti-Humanism

Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism is based on an open letter to his friend Jean Beaufretwritten on 23rd of November 1946 (Thomä, 2003, p. 532).The first edition of the letterwas published in 1949. Beaufret had asked Heidegger: ‘How can we restore meaning tothe word “humanism”?’(Heidegger, 1999a, p. 241). Heidegger answered the question inhis own way, but the letter is better known as Heidegger’s critique of Sartre’s existen-tialism and of the French interpretation of his philosophy.

Letter on Humanism is a complicated text, and at least three different themes can befound in it. Heidegger wanted to show the difference between his thinking and Sartre’sexistentialism, he wanted to clarify his own non-metaphysical notion of humanism(which can be called anti-humanism), and, thirdly, the text indicates a new focus inHeidegger’s thinking. Heidegger starts the letter by connecting thinking, being, andlanguage. He states (Heidegger, 1999a, p. 239): ‘Language is the house of being. In itshome human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words areguardians of this home.’Thinking, language, and being belong only to human beings andare the starting points of the Heideggerian concept of human. Heidegger wonderswhether it is necessary to retain the word humanism. All kinds of ‘-isms’ had becomesuspect. Can one ‘-ism’ be better than others? Heidegger thought that the demand fornew ‘-isms’—like existentialism—is a part of the end of thinking and, in other words, theend of metaphysics. Philosophy as metaphysics had forgotten its primary task, thinkingof being.Thinking and language had become servants of communication, which under-mined aesthetic and moral responsibility. All this threatened the very essence of human-ity (Heidegger, 1999a, pp. 224–243).

The concept of care in Being and Time serves the effort of bringing the human closerto its being, to its ‘essence’. Care is the Dasein’s [‘human’s’] way of being, and it is themost human thing to do. Care represents the same thing as dwelling or being-near inLetter on Humanism (Heidegger, 1999a, pp. 243). Heidegger defines humanism in thefirst pages of the letter in the following way: ‘For this is humanism: meditating andcaring, that human beings be human and not inhumane, “inhuman”, that is, outside theiressence’ (Heidegger, 1999a, pp. 244). Heidegger moves from the question of humanismto the question of the human being. Only the question of the human being can definehumanism.We must know ‘what is the human being’ before we can give an answer to thequestion of humanism. Heidegger states that there are two major views on humannature: Christian (spiritual) and Marxist (material). Marx finds human nature in society.The natural human needs are satisfied by society. A Christian sees the humanity of manin contrast to Deitas.The human being is a child of God. He is only passing through themundane world to a better world beyond (Heidegger, 1999a, pp. 245).

Heidegger presents the following history of humanism. The first humanism wasdeveloped in the age of Ancient Rome. Homo humanus was opposed to homo barbarus.



Homo humanus meant a Roman citizen, who had Roman virtues. These virtues wereinherited from the Greeks, and they included, among other things, education in fine artsand philosophy.The Greeks called the education of the virtues of body and soul paideia,which Romans translated with the term humanitas. The Italian renaissance of the 14thand 15th centuries was also concerned with the humanitas and therefore with the Greekpaideia. The opponent, that is the barbarian, was now the Gothic Scholasticism ofthe Middle Ages. Also well-known is the German humanism of the 18th century, whichwas upheld by Wincelman, Goethe, Schiller, and Hölderlin. Despite this, Heideggerclaims that Hölderlin was not a proponent of humanism on the grounds that he hadthought about the history of the human being in a more original way (Heidegger, 1999a,p. 244).

If humanism is understood as a conviction that the human must be empowered forhis humanity, then the meaning of humanism varies according to one’s concepts offreedom and nature. Marxist humanism, Sartre’s existentialistic humanism, and Chris-tian humanism diverge on their concepts of freedom and nature, but they all agree on onething: ‘That the humanitas of homo humanitas is determinate with regard to an alreadyestablished interpretation of nature, history, world, and ground of the world that is beingsas a whole’ (Heidegger, 1999a, p. 245). Heidegger saw that every humanism remainsmetaphysical, and this is the reason why he opposed them. Every humanism sinceRoman humanism has presupposed a universal essence for the human being.The humanbeing is considered to be an animal rationale (Heidegger, 1999b, p. 181).

Heidegger (1999a, pp. 245–248) stresses that the definition of human being as ananimal rationale is not false, but it is conditioned by metaphysics. Metaphysics representsbeings in their being—and thus it also thinks the being of beings—but it does not thinkof being as such. It forgets the ontological difference between being and beings. Heideggerdoubts that we can find human essence in the dimension of animalitas. Neither can wefind it by setting the human off as one living creature among others, like plants, animals,beasts, or gods. The humanitas of a human being is not animalitas plus something,whether it is reason, soul, person, or spirit (Heidegger, 1999a, p. 247): ‘What humanbeing is—or, as it is called in the traditional language of metaphysics, the “essence” of thehuman being—lies in his ek-sistence.’ The essence of the human being is ek-sistence.Ek-sistence is the way of being that only a human can have. Neither an animal nor a Godcan have ek-sistence. Ek-sistence is not identical with the traditional concept of existentia,which means actuality. Ek-sistence means standing out into the truth of being. HereHeidegger uses a different kind of language compared to Being andTime, in which insteadof the truth of being he wrote of the meaning of being.

For Heidegger, the metaphysical notion of the essence of the human being as an animalrationale, as a ‘person’, as a spiritual being with soul and body, is not false. Rather, thenotion does not properly express the dignity of the human being. The human being isconsidered a being among other beings, like stone among other stones or a plant amongother plants, with some individual attributes.This way, Being andTime can be interpretedas taking a stand against humanism, but this anti-humanism does not mean inhumanethinking. ‘Humanism is opposed because it does not set the humanitas of the humanbeing high enough’ (Heidegger, 1999a, p. 251). The human being is the shepherd ofbeing.This does not mean that a human being creates beings or makes beings like God.



Heidegger writes that man is world-forming and the animal is poor in the world(Heidegger, 1995). This is possible because a human being has language, which isthe house of being. What this actually means is not clarified in Letter on Humanism.Heidegger continues his idea of human being and dwelling in his text ‘Building DwellingThinking’, where he writes: ‘To be a human being means to be on the earth as a mortal.It means to dwell’ (Heidegger, 1977, p. 325). About language he says, that man acts asthough he is master of the language, while in fact language remains the master of man.This is, of course, opposed to the usual idea of the human being as an animal withlanguage.

Heidegger stresses the difference between his own thinking and Sartre’s existentialism.The sentence ‘The human being ek-sists’ is the answer to the question of the essence ofthe human being, but it does not answer the question of whether the human actually isor not. Heidegger writes in Being and Time: ‘The essence of Dasein lies in its existence’(Heidegger, 1992, p. 67) and Dasein has the characteristic of ‘priority of existentia overessentia’ (Heidegger, 1992, p. 68). On these phrases, Sartre formulates his slogan forexistentialism: existence precedes essence. Heidegger admits that this proposition doesjustify using the name existentialism as a title for philosophy of this kind. Nevertheless,Heidegger denies that his thinking in Being and Time is existentialism. Furthermore,Heidegger claims that Being and Time only begins considering the relationship betweenexistentia and essentia (Heidegger, 1999a, p. 251): ‘... in Being and Time no statementabout the relation of essentia and existentia can yet be expressed, since there it is still aquestion of preparing something precursory.’ According to Heidegger, Sartre takes thetraditional metaphysical meaning of terms essentia and existentia for granted. Westernmetaphysics considers essentia above existentia, and Sartre just reverses this relation butremains inside the tradition of metaphysics in which the truth of being stays in oblivion.Thus, Sartre’s existentialism carries the sign of forgetfulness of being (Heidegger, 1999a,p. 250). Heidegger does not want to be an existentialist in the Sartrean sense due thefact that Sartre makes use of the language of metaphysics.

Heidegger declares that the human being is thrown into the world by being, and thathe is the shepherd of being. The human is by no means the lord of beings. To be theshepherd of being makes it possible for beings to appear in the light of being as the beingsthey are.This does not mean that human beings decide whether and how beings appear,become present, and depart.This is the first principal difference between Heidegger andSartre. Heidegger writes in Zollikon Seminars: ‘Sartre’s primary error consists in the factthat he sees being as something posited [Gesetztes] by the human being’s subjectiveprojection’ (Heidegger, 2001, p. 221).The second important difference between Heideg-ger’s and Sartre’s definitions of the human being follows from the first one. Heidegger’scharacterization of the human being as ek-sisting and as thrown in to the world doesoppose understanding the human being as a subjectivity or as an Ego-consciousness. ForHeidegger, the human being is always being in-the-world and in-the-time, but there isno subjectivity or consciousness. Subjectivity represents a Cartesian understanding ofthe human being and belongs among the metaphysical definitions of the human being asanimal plus something else (Heidegger, 1999b, pp. 181–182).

Heidegger asks:What is being? What is the being which the shepherd human being is?Being ‘is’ itself. This does not tell us very much, and usually Heidegger’s definitions of



being are negative. Nevertheless, it is clear that being is not God or some other cosmicground. Being is nearest to the human being, and at the same time it remains farthestfrom the human being (Heidegger, 1999a, p. 252). For Heidegger being is very clearlythe main question. This is the most significant difference between Heidegger andSartre—for Sartre, the main question is man (Janicaud, 2003, p. 413).

Heidegger illustrates his idea of humanism with an anecdote about Heraclitusreported by Aristotle in De partibus animalium (Aristotle according to Heidegger, 1999a,pp. 269–270):

The story is told of something that Heraclitus said to some strangers whowanted to come visit him. Having arrived, they saw him warming himself ata stove. Surprised, they stood there in consternation—above all because heencouraged them, the astounded ones, and called them to come in, with thewords, ‘For here too the gods are present’.

Heidegger assumes that the story speaks for itself, although he does give an inter-pretation of his own. Heidegger revises the translation of Heraclitus’ phrase ‘Here toothe gods are present’ to ‘Here too the gods come to presence’.The gods come to presencein the most common and familiar of places, in the kitchen, the abode of an old man.Thisabode comes into presence by one phrase. It is no more only some place, but a placewhere the gods are present. This is the place where ethics—with its basic meaning ofethos—can be thought. It is the original ethics, and the question of being belongs to itsdomain. The original ethics cannot be understood before the question of the truth ofbeing is thoroughly thought (Heidegger, 1999a, pp. 271–272).This is also what Heideg-ger answered his young friend who asked: ‘When are you going to write an ethics?’(Heidegger, 1999a, p. 268).

Some Sartrean and Heideggerian Concepts of Man in Education

Heikki Kannisto (1994) has divided the main philosophical concepts of man intofour classes: essentialism, existentialism, culturalism, and naturalism. According to Sartre, allexistentialism opposes essentialism because it does not recognize the priority of the essenceof human to human existence. Heidegger denies that his thinking could represent suchkind of existentialism. Heidegger does not want to take sides—at least in Letter onHumanism—in the relation between essentia and existentia, because the whole division isa result of the history of metaphysics. Sartre considers Heidegger to be an existentialistbecause of Heidegger’s cryptic formulation of the terms essentia and existentia in Beingand Time.

As a concept of man, culturalism maintains against naturalism that the human, as heis now, is not a product of the evolution of nature, but rather that, on the contrary, heis a product of culture or a society. Concerning this dimension Heidegger and Sartre areon the same side. Sartre claims that a human is a product of society and determined bysociety but still possesses existential freedom. Heidegger claims that Dasein is alreadyin-the-world, in language and culture. In the quartet of philosophical concepts of man,Heidegger and Sartre can be assigned in the following way:



Figure 1 does not take into account the axis of humanism and anti-humanism. Sartredeclared himself a humanist in his lecture ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’.7 Sartre alsothought that Heidegger’s thinking belongs in the same category. Nevertheless, Heideggerhas great trouble in accepting the philosophical foundation of theoretical humanism,because it belongs to the tradition of metaphysics. Heidegger wanted to disengage fromhumanism, and Sartre wanted to stay within the tradition of humanism by radicalizingit (Aufhebung).

What kinds of implications would Sartrean existential humanism and Heideggeriannon-existential/essential anti-humanism have on the concept of man in education(philosophy of education)? To this extensive question we can answer only partially. Wecan mention Paolo Freire’s philosophy of education as a good representative of theSartrean humanistic concept of man. Good examples of anti-humanistic concept of manare Leena Kakkori’s idea of Gelassenheit-education (Kakkori, 2002; 2006; 2008; 2009)and Ilan Gur-Ze’ev’s (2002) similar Heideggerian critique of normalizing education.

Paolo Freire presents his application of Sartrean humanism to education (Freire,1972, chapter II):

It follows logically from the banking notion of consciousness that the educa-tor’s role is to regulate the way the world ‘enters into’ the students. Theteacher’s task is to organize a process which already occurs spontaneously to‘fill’ the students by making deposits of information which he or she considersto constitute true knowledge [Freire’s Note:This concept corresponds to whatSartre calls the ‘digestive’ or ‘nutritive’ concept of education, in which knowl-edge is ‘fed’ by the teacher to the students to ‘fill them out’] ... Problem-posingeducation, as a humanist and liberating praxis, posits as fundamental that thepeople subjected to domination must fight for their emancipation.To that end,it enables teachers and students to become Subjects of the educational process

Figure 1: Heidegger’s and Sartre’s position in the four-ideal-type concept of man. Heidegger in bracketsillustrates how Sartre understood Heidegger’s position. Heidegger without brackets illustrates Heidegger’sself-understanding in Letter on Humanism (figure modified from Kannisto, 1994)



by overcoming authoritarianism and an alienating intellectualism; it alsoenables people to overcome their false perception of reality. The world—nolonger something to be described with deceptive words—becomes the objectof that transforming action by men and women which results in theirhumanization.

Freire’s critical pedagogy is more affected by the later, Marxist Sartre, but Freire hasread Existentialism is a Humanism very carefully. Freire’s pedagogy aims at the formationof the teacher and the student into subjects who can overcome authoritarianism and arecapable of transforming social action. It is empowerment into freedom and socialresponsibility in a very Sartrean sense. As such, Freire’s pedagogy is very vulnerable forthe pedagogical paradoxes, like every form of pedagogy which relies on some sort ofKantian humanism.

Kakkori presents her Gelassenheit-education in the following way (Kakkori, 2008):

Gelassenheit–education or letting-be-education must not be confused with A.S. Neill’s free-education. It is based on the Heideggerian concept of humanbeing. This concept is not Dasein, the famous slogan from Sein und Zeit, butis based instead on Heidegger’s Zollikoner Seminare ... I have reconstructedfive counter statements as principle of the Gelassenheit–education:

1. Instead of pedagogical horror, there is a wondering, natural curiosity andability to ask questions.There is no dichotomy between nature and culture.

2. The language is the world. There is not one proper language that super-sedes all others.

3. Education is itself the occurrence and it belongs to everyone. There is nodistinction between the educator and the educated.

4. Freedom is those possibilities, which we encounter in our own being in theworld with others.

5. Truth is an occurrence and an historical event. No one can claim that shehas exclusive access to the truth.

... real teaching is to let learn, and the teacher must learn to let her studentslearn, das Lernen-lassen. We might go so far as to say that this means that theteacher is less sure of her materials than those who learn are of theirs. Thereis no room for the authority of the ‘know-it-all’ in the genuine relationshipbetween teacher and learners, educator and those who are educated.

Gelassenheit-education also aims at freedom, but it does not require a Kantian or Sartreannotion of subjectivity and consciousness. Gelassenheit-education is a somewhat cautiousof attempts at empowering students in a straightforward manner into transforming socialaction. Gur-Ze’ev shares this suspicion. His counter-education tries to ‘avoid self-contained, easy-going, “emancipatory” educational projects. Often these projects intro-duce pedagogies for the oppressed ... Both “conservative” and “emancipatory” trendsrepresent normalizing education, which counter-education should resist’ (Gur-Ze’ev,2002, p. 69).



Gelassenheit-education starts with respect for the human being without any restrictionsconcerning the existence of her soul, reason, or spirit. Gelassenheit-education presumesthat we have no difficulties with recognizing other human beings in the world. We arewith other humans, not separate egos. This standpoint opposes objectifying attitudes,which is also a basic idea of Gelassenheit-education.This being-with is essentially a caringattitude towards other humans, whether they are small children, teenagers or adults.From this caring attitude rises the whole idea of education as caring, teaching andbeing-with. Gelassenheit-education is a practical humanism in a framework of theoreticalanti-humanism.

Existentialistic education has its origin in the finitude of the human being, freedom,and his responsibility. Existentialistic education, in its Freirean radical mode, laysmuch emphasis on empowerment. It both requires and aims at a free and res-ponsible consciousness (subjectivity) which is neither slave-consciousness norlord-consciousness. Existentialistic education requires students’ or pupils’ activeparticipation in the educational process. This corresponds to the situation whichGert Biesta calls ‘the practical intersubjectivity in teaching’ (Biesta, 1994, p. 312).Existentialistic education is humanistic education of an enlightened (communicativelycompetent) subject who is capable of critique of ideology, critical self-reflection, andtransforming social action.

Notes

1. In the winter of 1933–1934, Sartre studied both Husserl and Heidegger in Berlin. He hadearlier read Kojève’s lecture notes on Heidegger. In the lecture, Kojève presents a very Hegelianinterpretation of Heidegger (Janicaud 2003, 422). When Sartre was a prisoner of war, hereceived Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit from Abbot Etchegoyen, who had received the book from aGerman priest. In freezing winter weather (-40 Celsius), in the company of lice, fleas andbedbugs, Sartre read Heidegger’s opus magnum very carefully (Cohen-Solal, 1987, chapter II).Etchegoyen’s intention had been to convert Sartre to Christianity, but apparently he had givenhim the wrong book for the purpose.

2. According to Roland Aronson and Adrian van den Hoven, Sartre usually uses terminologythat Henry Corbin created in his translation of Heidegger called Qu’est-ce que la métaphysique(see endnote 45 in Sartre, 1992). Qu’est-ce que la métaphysique is one of the first translations ofHeidegger into French which were published in the journal Bifur in 1931. Sartre’s short textLegende de la verites was also published in the same issue. Shortly after that, the translation ofHeidegger’s VomWesen derWharheit followed. In 1938 a selection of translations appeared: twochapters from Sein und Zeit, a chapter from the Heidegger’s Kant book, and the essay ‘Hölderlinand the Nature of Poetry’.

3. Sartre also uses the concept of good faith, but bad faith is primary because it arises from theinnermost structure of consciousness itself (see Mészáros, 1979, p. 205).

4. Danto claims that this corresponds to Wittgenstein’s opinion on values. Wittgenstein says inparagraph 6:41 of the Tractatus (Wittgenstein, 2004): ‘In it [in the world] there is no value—andif there were, it would be of no value.’

5. Here we can find the influence of Hegelian dialectics of recognition. See Huttunen &Heikkinen, 2004; Huttunen 2007, 2009. According to Michel Theunissen, Sartre tries toovercome the Hegelian struggle for recognition between master and slave with his transcen-dental theory of intersubjectivity and Mitsein-analysis (Theunissen, 1977, p. 197).

6. Hugo Ott has published the whole letter in Frankfurter Allgemeine on 19th of January 1994.7. On Sartre’s possible anti-humanism see Lévy, 2003, pp. 165–201.



References

Biesta, G. J. (1994) Education as Practical Intersubjectivity: Towards a critical-pragmatic under-standing of education, Educational Theory, 44:2, pp. 299–317.

Biesta, G. J. (2006) Beyond Learning: Democratic education for a human future (London, Paradigm).Cohen-Solal, A. (1987) Jean-Paul Sartre—A Life (New York, Random House Inc.).Danto, A. (1991) Sartre (London, Fontana Press).Fell, J. (1979) Heidegger and Sartre—An Essay on Being and Place (NewYork, Columbia University

Press).Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books).Gur-Ze’ev, I. (2002) Martin Heidegger,Transcendence, and the Possibility of Counter-Education,

in: M. Peters (ed.), Heidegger, Education and Modernity (New York, Rowman & Littlefield).Heidegger, M. (1949) Brief über den ‘Humanismus’, in Gesamtaufgabe band 9 (Frankfurt am

Main, Vittorio Klosterman).Heidegger, M. (1977) Building Dwelling Thinking, in BasicWritings (San Francisco, CA, Harper

Collins).Heidegger, M. (1992) Being and Time (Oxford, Blackwell).Heidegger, M. (1995) The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (Bloomington, IN, Indiana

University Press).Heidegger, M. (1999a) Letter on ‘Humanism’, in Pathmarks (Cambridge, Cambridge University

Press).Heidegger M. (1999b) Platos’s Doctrine of Truth, in Pathmarks (Cambridge, Cambridge Univer-

sity Press).Heidegger, M. (1998) Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Frankfurt am Main, Vittorio

Klostermann).Heidegger, M. (2001) Zollikon Seminars: Protocols—Conversations—Letters (Evanston, IL, North-

western University Press).Hurt, J. (1996) Der deutsche-französische Dialog der Intellektullen, in: T. Kühn & U. Schaefer

(eds), Dialogische Strukturen /Dialogic Structures: Festschrift fürWilli Erzgräber zum 70. Geburt-stag (Tübingen, Gunter Narr Verlag).

Huttunen, R. (2007) Critical Adult Education and Political-Philosophical Debate between NancyFraser and Axel Honneth, Educational Theory, 57:4, pp. 423–433.

Huttunen, R. (2009) Habermas, Honneth and Education (Köln, Lambert Academic Publishing).Huttunen, R. & Heikkinen, H. L. T. (2004) Teaching and the Dialectic of Recognition, Pedagogy,

Culture & Society, 12:2, pp. 163–174.Janicaud, D. (2003) Heidegger und Sartre—Anerkennung und Abweisung, in: D. Thomä (ed.),

Heidegger Handbuch—Leben-Werk-Wirkung (Stuttgart, J.B. Metzler).Kakkori, L. (2002.) What are Little Children? A philosophical study of the essence of the

little child, EDUCATION-LINE. Available at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00002300.htm

Kakkori, L. (2006) Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s Letters of Early Education and Late ModernGelassenheit-education. Presentation at ECER2006 conference, Geneva.

Kakkori, L. (2008) How to Educate with a Hammer?—Nietzschean education and Gelassenheit-education, in: M. Peters, P. Ghiraldelli Jr., P. Standish & B. Zarnic (eds) Encyclopaedia ofPhilosophy of Education. Available at: http://www.vusst.hr/ENCYCLOPAEDIA/main.htm

Kakkori, L. (2009) Martin Heidegger and Peter Høeg: Borderliners as uncovering and happen-ing of truth, Review of Contemporary Philosophy, vol. 8 (New York, Addleton AcademicPublishers).

Kannisto, H. (1994) Filosofisia ihmiskäsityksiä [Philosophical Concepts of Man], in: V. Niskanen(ed.), Tieteellisten menetelmien perusteita ihmistieteissä (Helsinki, University of Helsinki).

Kojève, A. (1980) Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the phenomenology of spirit (Ithaca,NY, Cornell University Press).

Lévy, B-H. (2003) Sartre—The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Polity).



Mészáros, I. (1979) TheWork of Sartre, vol. 1, Search for Freedom (Brighton, The Harvester Press).Rockmore, T. (1995) Heidegger and French Philosophy: Humanism, anti-humanism and being

(London, Routledge).Saarinen, E. (1983) Sartre—Pelon, inhon ja valinnan filosofia [Sartre—Philosophy of Fear, Nausea

and Choice] (Tampere, Soundi-kirja).Safranski, R. (2002) Martin Heidegger: Between good and evil (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University

Press).Sartre, J-P. (1948) TheWall, and Other Stories (New York, New Directions).Sartre, J-P. (1957) TheTranscendence of the Ego—An ExistentialistTheory of Consciousness (NewYork,

Farrar, Straus and Giroux).Sartre, J-P. (1966) Being and Nothingness—A Phenomenologial Essay on Ontology (NewYork, WSP).Sartre, J-P. (1989). No Exit and Three Other Plays (New York, Vintage Books).Sartre, J-P. (1992) Truth and Existence (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press).Sartre, J-P. (1993) Notebooks for an Ethics (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press).Sartre, J-P. (1996) Existentialism and Humanism (London, Methuen).Sartre, J-P. (2000) Nausea (Harmondsworth, Penguin).Sartre, J-P. (2002) Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (London, Routledge).Theunissen, M. (1977) Der Andere—Studien zur Sozialontologie der Gegenwart (Berlin, Walter de

Gruyter).Thomä, D. (2003) Leben und Werk Martin Heidegger im Kontext, in: D. Thomä (ed.), Heidegger

Handbuch—Leben-Werk-Wirkung (Stuttgart, J.B. Metzler).Wittgenstein, L. (2004) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Available at:The Project Gutenberg EBook

of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/tloph10.txt



kakkori and huttunen 2010 the sartre-heidegger controversy on humanism and the concept of man in...

Documents