The decline of the Greek myth of man and being

Abstract

Modern philosophy is forced to return to the question of “what is philosophy?” Does it need to be understood as the science of being or a science about man? M. Heidegger believes that philosophy is the science of being and refers to Parmenides. R. M. Rilke, as a poet, is closest to the point of view of I. Kant, according to which philosophy is anthropology. The article analyzes the attitude of Heidegger to Parmenides’ poem “Оn Nature” and concludes that Heidegger did not express his attitude to the fork of two ways of man in Parmenides’ philosophy: the way of understanding being and the way of understanding the ghostly, that is, the existence of man. Parmenides chose the path of being, and Heidegger supported him. However, on this path it is impossible to talk about the fundamental difference between man and animal. It is also impossible to raise the question of what is a man. The path of ontology leads to the coincidence of the human and non-human. In this regard, the article analyzes the attitude of Heidegger to the poetry of Rilke. Heidegger understands man as being. Rilke sees the essence of a man not in the fact that he owns a word, but in the fact that he is addressed to his inner self. The article shows that Heidegger distorted the position of Rilke, identifying his poetry with the philosophy of the subject in modern times. The author comes to the conclusion that Rilke is outside the limits of western thinking, according to which man is included in the structure of existence, and the human and non-human do not differ. Rilke’s poetry, in the author’s opinion, is the source of new thinking that proceeds from the fact that the human and non-human do not fundamentally coincide. Man dreams, the animal evolves.

Keywords:

being, man, philosophy, anthropology, imaginary, ghost, animal, truth, Parmenides, R. M. Rilke