L’esistenzialismo non è un umanismo. Un confronto tra Sartre e Heidegger attraverso la lettura di Franco Fergnani

The figure of Sartre has long been considered an uncomfortable presence in the phenomenological tradition, accusing him of misinterpretations and eventually dismissing his analyses as unreliable; a dismissal to which one of the authors who most inspired him, Martin Heidegger, contributed, who in his well-known Letter on Humanism distanced himself from Sartrean existentialism, labelling it as incompatible with his own thought. The purpose of this paper is to critically consider such a debate, drawing on the contribution of one of Sartre’s greatest Italian interpreters, Franco Fergnani, so as to show how the French philosopher had assimilated the ideas of Being and Time in a much deeper way than critics have often acknowledged. To this end, after a biographical introduction to the figure of Fergnani and his interpretation of Sartre’s thought, we will directly examine Heidegger’s statements in the Letter on Humanism and attempt to denounce the unfairness of his criticism. In this sense, taking up Fergnani’s claim that Sartre is not only influenced by Heidegger, but also one of the most accomplished and mature heirs of the turning point inaugurated with Being and Time, we will insist on how the notion at the centre of Sartre’s philosophy is that of “existence” and not that of “humanity”, thus relativising the anthropological issue on behalf of the ontological one. The discussion on the question of humanism will therefore be the opportunity for a broader examination of the philosophical stakes in Sartre’s thinking, differentiating existentialism as a cultural movement with a definite duration from the aspects of a philosophy of existence capable of surviving the historical moment in which it arose and worthy of being recovered still today.