Abstract

Heidegger's contentious "irresolution" to the "question of humanism" serves as our entrance into this investigation since his existential phenomenological inquiry throws into greater relief the interrogative logic of our humanitas, as . This self-critical foray deepens our apprehension of the self-reflexive, variegated pathways of our homo humanus as it is present in the essential historicity of our world. However, by becoming sensitive to possibility of 'releasing' the question of humanism, we help to safeguard our homo humanus against the danger confronting it in the increasing empowerment of beings and in the encroaching subjectivity of our metaphysical epoch. ;We inquire into this "question" by attending to the tangible presencing of our humanitas set into Samuel Beckett's dramatic works: Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days, and Krapp's Last Tape. This hermeneutic adopts a phenomenology of art which appreciates that artworks broaden our critical perception of the world otherwise obscured by the technologism and rationalism that structure and organize our world. The promising, performative dimensions of these dramatic works is that they disclose in unsuspecting ways the existential phenomenological dimensions of our humanism encumbered by the rigorous logic of our Western philosophical tradition. This chiasmic hermeneutic works to foster the dialogical interplay between the performative space of the drama and the philosophical leads of our inquiry. Our inquiry develops most acutely and actively when we attend to the four dramas from the autocritical perspective of the drama. From this vantage in the audience we are better placed to experience where the phenomena established in drama clarify facets of our question excluded by our metaphysical modes of thinking. In this way Beckett's dramas help deepen our apprehension of the phenomenological currents transecting our inquiry of Heidegger's critique of humanism. Rather than working to encompass the multi-dimensionality of our inquiry, as we are often encouraged to accomplish within our Western philosophic tradition, we are interested in preserving the hidden recesses of our humanitas by recognizing the question of humanism as a question. Our essence requires that we acknowledge this interrogative not as a peripheral issue but as an imminent concern