Nick DeHoust: Heidegger’s Redefined Humanism in Till We Have Faces

At the beginning of the last chapter in Till We Have Faces, Orual finally realizes why the gods seem to neglect her. “When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years, which you have, all the time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words,” she narrates. “I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?” she ponders. Orual realizes that before, she had failed to search herself and apprehend her true nature. She had not seen her own face. She was faceless. The gods withdrew from her because she had not learned how to approach them as herself. This is a really interesting passage to me in light of Martin Heidegger’s answer to the question “how can we restore meaning to the word ‘humanism’?” (219). In his “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger at length describes the uniquely ek-static essence of man’s nature. “Ek-sistence can be said only of the essence of man, that is, only of the human way ‘to be’” (228). According to Heidegger, this allows man to question and discover the truth of Being. “[E]k-sistence means standing out into the truth of Being” (230). He says that man in this way is “the neighbor of Being” (245).  Thus, he argues, though it does not resemble the humanism of his day, this thinking toward man is “a humanism that thinks the humanity of man from nearness to Being” (245). In other words, it is true humanism. However, he says, we have yet to realize this about ourselves. He argues that the history of philosophy (metaphysics) and our infatuation with complicated concepts and scientific terminology obscure this realization. Thus, Heidegger thinks it is possible to restore this meaning to humanism, but he also thinks we have to first realize the ek-static nature of our existence thoughtfully. This kind of thinking, he says, is what allows us unique access to the truth of Being. Furthermore, he argues, “[o]nly from the truth of Being can the essence of the holy be thought. Only from the essence of the holy is the essence of divinity to be thought. Only in the light of the essence of divinity can it be thought or said what the word ‘God’ is to signify” (253). He then asks “[h]ow can man at the present stage of world history ask at all seriously and rigorously whether the god nears of withdraws, when he had above all neglected to think into the dimension in which alone that question can be asked?” (253). Clearly, Heidegger’s question here resonates loudly with Orual’s. Both realize that, in order for man to draw near to the gods — Being, for Heidegger — he must first listen to the truth of Being in its nearness and learn of himself. Until then, he has not a face, and he babbles in his attempts at speaking the truth.