| While it is tempting to charge Heidegger with obscurantism, we must acknowledge that, if there is truth in his thought, the obscurity is part of that truth: these truths are necessarily not readily understood nor directly expressed. In what follows I sketch Heidegger's conception of the human essence as he presents it in Identity and Difference, the Letter on Humanism, and What is Called Thinking?, before returning to Heidegger's description of the basic structures of Dasein in Being and Time. In so doing, I attempt to contain Heidegger I in Heidegger II. My final argument will be that Heidegger I and Heidegger II are continuous at least inasmuch as the conception of the human essence is unchanged. If anything changes, it is the perspective and richness of the inquiry. |
