The question of what being human is concerns the traditional history of philosophy insofar as philosophy has been traditionally the search for being. Therefore, to uncover the meaning of human being with respect to the concept of Being and time in the history of being, we refer to Heidegger’s understanding of being since we think that Heidegger is the main point for the destruction of the history of ontology and the center of our contemporary understanding of the meaning of being human.
In the traditional sense, human being is understood as a rational animal and cogito. In this presentation, I will discuss the idea of cogito because it occupies a dominant place in the understanding of modern philosophy. Descartes’ understanding of human being is based on his theory of substance and its epistemological foundation. Descartes accepts that there are two kinds of substances - infinite and finite. The infinite substance is God. The finite substance can be divided further into two substances: res cogito (mind or spirit) and res corporea (body or matter). Generally, there are three substances in Descartes’ philosophy: God, mind, and body. In this sense, what is man? The human body is simply an extended thing, spatially moving quantity, a machine, and the object of mechanics. Cogito is the thinking side of man. How do these two distinct substances occur in the unity of man? This is Descartes’ real problem because they are two distinct substances. His answer is that man consists of two substances, which are in principle and essence separate and independent of each other. Man as the unity of cogito and body forces Descartes to admit that cogito and the body exercise a certain influence on each other. Descartes tries to resolve the participation of cogito and the body in man by the location of the cogito (soul) in the pineal gland.