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How to do without being, or the mechanics of the Lathon
This article explores the fundamental structure of “man who manages to do without Being” and whose constitution lacks the relation to Being and God. Within synergic anthropology, this phenomenon is regarded as “the Ontic Man,” whose extreme experience does not actualize the ontological difference (the difference between the existent¹1. In the author’s text the German das Seiende is translated as “the existent,” but in the referenced English translations of Heidegger’s it is usually translated as “beings.”View all notes and Being). To establish his genesis, we analyze the borderland between the Ontological and Ontic Topics, in which the Ontological Man who actualizes the ontological difference does so only in a rudimentary and deficient manner. This analysis is based on the discourse of concealment found in Heidegger’s later works and studies closely the figure introduced by Heidegger en passant, a man who is prone to concealment—the Lathon (Greek for “concealing himself,” “shutting himself off [from Being]”), who does not tell Being from the existent. However, according to Heidegger, the Lathon cannot stop being the Ontological Man, because this is the only anthropological formation. Synergic anthropology, alternatively, propounds a different view: man’s relationship to Being as something distinct from the existent can be eliminated entirely. This happens as concealment increases until it reaches a limit—an event best described by Plato’s notion to exaiphnes, “suddenly.” In this event man acquires a different constitution: the Lathon becomes the Ontic Man. We introduce the basic concepts of this anthropological formation and establish its principal characteristics.