Existentialism become world famous due the publication of Jean-Paul Sartre’s speech ”Existentialism Is a Humanism” in 1946. There Sartre claims that there is two kind of existentialism: “There are, on the one hand, the Christians, amongst whom I shall name Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both professed Catholics; and on the other the existential atheists, amongst whom we must place Heidegger as well as the French existentialists and myself. What they have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essence… What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism… If, however, it is true that existence is prior to essence, man is responsible for what he is.” In this citation we can find the most basic claims of Sartre’s existentialism: existence, no predestined purpose of human, human’s existentialist ability to define himself, responsibility and existentialist freedom of will which goes beyond Kant’s concept of will. Sartre’s “spiritual master” Martin Heidegger had no problem with Sartre’s definition of existentialistic atheism (despite the fact, that Heidegger started his career as catholic philosopher), but he had serious problems with Sartre’s concept of humanism and man. In 1949 Heidegger published “Letter on Humanism”, where he opposed Sartre’s humanism. Heidegger claims that the essence of humanism lies in the essence of human being. The first humanism is encountered in the age of Romans Republic. Homo humanus was opposed to homo barbarus. According to Heidegger homo humanus “means the Romans, who exalted and honored Roman virtus through the paideia taken over from the Greeks.” Heidegger stresses that the history of humanism as part of metaphysics takes as granted the idea of animal rationale that is body + something else, namely soul, reason or mind. Sartre´s existentialism belongs to the history of humanism, because the reversal of the metaphysical statement - essentia and existentia – remains a metaphysical statement. Every humanism is either grounded in metaphysics or is itself made to be the ground of one. To be anti-humanistic, does not mean for Heidegger to be against human being but to be against metaphysics. Heidegger starts the thinking of human of the ideas: “Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell.” After Enlightenment western concept of man in education has present some form of Kantian humanistic essentialism. At least in Finnish educational system Kantian humanism is almost official ideological background of all national curriculums. But is such kind of essentialism and metaphysics plausible in our modern or postmodern times? If some form of existentialism is to be promoted in the philosophy of education, should it be Sartrean humanistic existentialism or Heideggerian anti-humanistic existentialism?

Philosophical "gelassenheit"- thinking

Exintentialistic conclusions