Is Heidegger’s Fundamental Ontology A Philosophical Anthropology?

In the well-known Davos debate, Cassirer charges against Heidegger in saying that Heidegger’s " Kant’s Interpretation” and his " fundamental ontology” belong still to philosophical anthropology and relativism. The present essay attempts to explain and to argue, through a detailed textual reading and analysis of a key paragraph in the " records of the debate,” that Heidegger’s existential analysis of Dasein should be seen as a re-opening of the metaphysical problematic in our contemporary age. It does not essentially belong to any kind of philosophical anthropology. Rather, it opens, by the way of asking the problem or the question of Being itself, a real possibility of going beyond and overcoming all the traditional philosophical anthropologies. In contrast, Cassirer’s criticism against Heidegger’s ontological Kant’s interpretation and his following the Neo-Kantian epistemological way of interpretation of Kant, make himself still staying on an ontic level of philosophical thinking and thus finally falling back into a trap of philosophical anthropology. Because of this, Heidegger concludes that Cassirer cannot catch and understand the real significance of Kant’s questioning of the metaphysical problem and of his laying the very ground for the real metaphysics of Being.