Ethopoiesis : the care of the written self

Abstract

A hypothesis. Consider 'Was ist der Mensch?' as a question concerning a being which has been overcome, the last man having been pronounced and announced by Nietzsche over a century ago. By consequence, a historical question, an attempt at recuperating the experience of a being which is no more, a being which cannot claim any more the attribute of existence. But also, and by equal consequence, a being whose extinction ls the condition for our own existence. Man's extinction as the constitution of a void appropriated by our own existence. Alternatively: man's extinction as the death, the non-being, the nothingness upon which our being is grounded, founded. A death equivalent to our hypostasis. Even more: man's death as our immediate arche. But in what way can der Mensch be our ground, our foundation. our arche? Do these forms of determination retain a determining and determinative value across the divide established by this death? 'Was ist der Mensch?' would then be a questioning directed at a time (a form? a being?) of our (wholly other) existence when the very determination of our being was completely other. A time (form? being?) when 'we' were still Mensch, a time (form? being?) determined on the solid foundation of a ground. Does the death of man, therefore, signify the end of the determination of our being as man, and therefore re-establishes our being - now, here - as beyond the determination of the being of man? Is our contemporaneity beyond determination? Or, on the contrary, is our contemporary being over-determined by the death of that determined being, by which our contemporary being would be suffering the super-saturation of a death through which its being has been made other, even in that determination which establishes it as other? If we do not own anything which has its origin in man, then do we owe anything to that being which we are not? Can we at least answer Kant's question by stating that der Mensch is that being which we are no longer? Who are we, then, if not that being of the future: der Ubermensch?