Humanism in the Extreme Sense

Mazeppism is Heideggerian humanism with its debts to the Romantics fully disclosed. In other words, "it is a humanism that thinks the humanity of man from nearness to Being [i.e., from an attentiveness to how things hang together in the found world]. But at the same time it is a humanism in which not man but man's historical essence is at stake in its provenance from the truth of Being [i.e., the "truth of Being" is inescapably historical; consequently, the "essence" of the human is not constituted metaphysically but with constant reference to the changes which occur over time]." See Martin Heidegger, Letter on Humanism.

The horizon of the present (or, "how things hang together in the found world") delimits anthropological understanding. Anthropological understanding acquires the dimension of depth when attentiveness to the present is informed by an appreciation for the debts which the present configuration of things owes to the past.