Letter on Humanism

Introduction

The text answers questions the French philosopher Jean Beaufret had sent Heidegger after the war, among them how to restore meaning to the word humanism. Heidegger wrote it in autumn 1946, when he was barred from teaching, and published it in 1947 together with an essay on Plato’s doctrine of truth. He rejects Sartre’s reading of Being and Time: “existence precedes essence” merely reverses a metaphysical formula. All humanism, he argues, remains metaphysics because it defines the human being without asking about being. The human being is rather the “shepherd of being”, and thinking happens in attending to language. The letter is a key document of Heidegger’s later thought and of his post-war reception in France.

Connections

Criticizes

• Existentialism Is a Humanism1946 · Jean-Paul Sartre

Answered in

• Rules for the Human Zoo1999 · Peter Sloterdijk

More works by Martin Heidegger

• 1927Being and Time
• 1929What Is Metaphysics?
• 1935The Origin of the Work of Art
• 1953The Question Concerning Technology