Human formation in post-humanism: reflections about Heidegger's Letter on Humanism

This paper focuses on the discussion of the human formation issue in a post-humanist context, with Martin Heidegger's work as its scope. Firstly, the reconstruction of the Heideggerian critique to the humanism main points is sought, focusing in its link with a metaphysical understanding of the human essence. Secondly, the formative possibilities opened by Heidegger's own critique of metaphysics and humanism are explored. The thought of being, proposed by the philosopher, is taken as the central indicative for a conception of the human being based on the effective involvement of the latter with the historical reality that encompasses it. The aim is to mark a new perspective for human formation unrelated to any fixed ideals, which, thus, can better favor the indeterminate wealth of possibilities of the human happening in the world. Situated beyond the metaphysical pretensions of affirming an intrinsic nature or a teleology extrinsic to human events, this new formative perspective proves to be more appropriate and more respectful of the constitutive differences of the plural democratic societies in the contemporary Western world.