Subject, Being, Being-there: Heidegger or the Human Being between Jewish Thinking and Greek Philosophy

Abstract

In the sixties and seventies, theoretical discussions in European social sciences focused on the nature of the human being. Proponents of the rational subject, characterizing. Enlightenment-prone Western classical philosophy, went against the advocates of the much older and less-known anti-subjective tradition. Our study aims at giving an archaeological insight into this second paradigm, going back first to Heidegger, the master thinker of contemporary European social sciences, then to the religious – mainly Jewish – roots of his thought. It views human being not as an achieved and autonomous entity, but as an emanation of the Being. Men have to follow the path it sets and its voice, free themselves from material assets which are mere impediments, and eventually enter into a superior dimension of thinking. Beyond our limited case-study, the whole question of the persistence of another main - albeit forgotten - way of thinking in the very heart of modernity is being raised anew.