Changing the Priorities [1] :
Letter on Humanism
Martin Heidegger


“Letter…” is the extensive answer to the motivating question of Jean Beaufreu, the good friend of Heidegger, “How can we restore meaning to the word humanism?” (49)[2] . Humanism, the nature of humanity, and the nature of man are the leading themes of this article. And Heidegger defines man from the point of view of his distinct thinking, which was initially presented in his major work Being and Time some twenty years before this “Letter…” was written.
It should be mentioned that Heidegger is often accused in speaking “Heideggerian” rather than ordinary German. That is true to some extent. He often takes ordinary everyday words and ascribes an unusual, yet far from arbitrary, meaning to it. As a result, reading Heidegger is challenging even to Germans, not to mention reading in translation.
The cornerstone of Heidegger’s thinking is the distinction between Being (Sein) and being (Seiende). These are two different, yet related words in German. While the first word, ‘Sein,’ is adequately translated into English as Being, it is very hard to find an approximately corresponding concept to the second term in English language, partially because both words are somewhat similar in meaning in everyday German. In fact, ‘Seiende’ is the derivative verb from the noun ‘Sein’. And since the grammatical structure of English is very different from that of German, it has no straightforward translation. Some translators try being creative and coin an artificial word ‘essents’, derived from the Latin word ‘essens’, as a translation for ‘Seiende’.[3] They make the distinction then between Being and ‘essents’. But I don’t see how changing of one foreign word to another word no less foreign to the ears can help to understand the meaning of it. In our text[4] both words are translated as ‘being,’ and the difference preserved by capitalization of one of them (it is hard to preserve this difference in speech though).
The ‘being’ with small ‘b’ designates all the things, or entities that exist. Another possible designator which sometimes is used is ‘existents’, or, more generally ‘things that are.’ This includes not only material things, events, or relations, but also all things that can become direct objects of thought[5] , including God. God is the highest being among other beings.
On the contrary, Being with the capital ‘B’ is something that makes the appearance of beings possible. It is the Being of these entities. The fact that beings have their existence. Thus while the question about beings is concerned with what there is, the question in the direction of Being states that there are [beings]. What exactly is Being, and whether this question thus stated is even legitimate, we’ll have to discuss later. But for now, let’s consider some short ‘definitions’ from “Letter…” itself:
? ‘Being’ is transendents pure and simple (61)
? ‘Being’ is not God and not cosmic ground (57)
? Being is farther than all beings and is yet nearer to man than every being, be it rock or God. Being is what is the nearest. (58)
Often Heidegger speaks of Being in negative terms; he much easier can say what Being is not. Basically for now we should understand that Being is not simply the totality of all beings, or the most abstract concept. In fact it is not a meaningful concept or a substance at all, and thus it can never become a direct object of thinking. Thinking other than conceptual is needed to grasp Being[6] . And this is the main difficulty for Heidegger.
The heraldic symbol of Heidegger’s philosophy, the term ‘Dasein’ is typically left in its German form. It consists of the two words, “Da”, which means ‘there’ or ‘now’, and “Sein”, which simply means ‘being’. It can be very roughly equated to the idea of a man, or to the way of existence, which is unique to man, but it does not exhaust its meaning and significance. We shall try to make it evident further on.[7] .
“Letter…” starts with the question of action. “The essence of action is accomplishment. To accomplish means to unfold something into the fullness of its essence” (47). In other words, action is evaluated not according to its practical results or utility, but according to the degree of fullness and completeness that it gives to something, whatever it might be.
Acting does not mean bringing something new into being, not creating from nothing, but always accomplishing something, which already is. “But that ‘is’ above all is Being. Thinking accomplishes the relation of Being to the essence of man.” (47). We understand now that Heidegger speaks primarily of the action, or the deed of thinking. And since the action is valued from the perspective of its accomplishment, as unfolding something into the fullness of its essence, Being is the highest and the most prized goal of thinking, for it is Being that gives essence and meaning in the first place to any other object of possible action. Being is the only worthy goal for the action of thinking. “Thinking acts insofar as it thinks. Such action is presumably the simplest and at the same time the highest, because it concerns the relation of Being to man.” (48).
What thinking does in its highest manifestation, he says, it accomplishes the relation of Being to man. It reveals this relation in its fullness. Right here, in the first sentences of “Letter…’ the main idea is already exposed. The principal deed of thinking is to unfold, to uncover the relation of Being to man. We can already see that the man, and thus the concept of humanism, is somehow connected to Being and cannot be considered apart from it. This idea will be elaborated further in the text.
Heidegger continues further: “Thinking brings this relation to Being solely as something handed over to it from Being. Such offering consists in the fact that in thinking Being comes to language.” (48) We see here, firstly, that thinking in its accomplishment is dependent; it is not self-sufficient or autonomous. It works with what was already handed over to it from Being. What was given to thinking originally? It was Being itself. Thinking simply gives it back to Being, it gives Being its due. “Thinking is engagement by Being for Being” (48)
This recurrence in thinking of Being is essential for the most of Heidegger’s writings: The relation of Being to man initially comes to thinking from Being, and then, is given back to Being in a certain way, namely in the form of language. We should better say, it is spoken back to Being. By offering ‘itself’ to man Being in the ultimate sense fulfils ‘itself’[8]
Secondly, Heidegger emphasizes the role of language as the element where the action of thinking occurs. Thinking speaks Being into language. That is the reason why Heidegger calls language the “House of Being.” Yet, as we have seen, thinking cannot claim the accomplishment all to itself. All action is originally rooted in Being, and thinking may simply let itself be claimed by Being: “Thinking lets itself be claimed by Being so that it can say the truth of Being. Thinking accomplishes this letting.”(48).
Obviously, thinking does not exist by itself; it is the attribute and the privilege of man. In this very paragraph in the couple of sentences Heidegger says something of the principal importance: “Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home. Their guardianship accomplishes the manifestation of Being insofar as they bring the manifestation to language and maintain it through their speech.” (47). Note that both Being and man dwell in the same house. They appear to be neighbors. Being is always very close to man. The house they both “dwell” in is language.
To ‘dwell’ here means also to ‘express through.’ Language is not Being, but the element where Being expresses itself, or, using Heidegger’s term, where the “lighting of Being” occurs. It is thus the element where man expresses himself). Being brings itself to the light through language. Language is something that is not to be taken lightly. Thinkers and poets [“those who create with words”], according to Heidegger, are the guardians of language. To guard language means to manifest Being through it.
So far the question of how to restore meaning to the word humanism did not get a clear answer. Before proceeding any further Heidegger gives a short historical review of the question: “We encounter the first humanism in Rome. The so-called Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Italy is a revival of Roman humanism.” (52). In addition there are forms of humanism, which are not rooted in antiquity. This is the humanism of Marx, Sartre and even Christianity.
The humanism of Marx does not need to return to antiquity any more than the humanism which Sartre conceives existentialism to be. In this broad sense Christianity too is a humanism, in that according to its teaching everything depends on man’s salvation. However

different these forms of humanism may be in purpose and in principle, in the mode and means of their respective realizations, and in the form of their teaching, they nonetheless all agree in this, that the humanitas of homo humanus is determined with regard to an already established interpretation of nature, history, world, and the ground of the world, that is, of beings as a whole. (52).
In other words, these forms of humanism do presuppose a certain teleological judgment; they judge what the telos, the end of man or of the world is. It is already established what is valuable in the world or in the man. Humanism in general is “a concern that man become free for his humanity,” that is for his nature, or essence. But it turns out, that the essence of man is already established from a certain ideological standpoint, which is historically dependent; the standpoint changes with history. It may be the Roman virtue in ancient humanism, reason and rationality of the Enlightenment, ‘social man’ of Marx, freedom of Sartre, or the salvation of the soul of Christianity.
Such an approach to the nature of man Heidegger calls metaphysical: “Every determination of the essence of man that already presupposes an interpretation of being without asking about the truth of Being, is metaphysical. Accordingly, every humanism remains metaphysical” (52).
What is the metaphysical approach to man and why is it insufficient? All forms of humanism presuppose, according to Heidegger, the most universal essence of man as the ‘rational animal.’ But does the addition of reason bring an animal decisively out of the realm of beasts? “Above and beyond everything else, however, it finally remains to ask whether the essence of man primordially and most decisively lies in the dimension of animalitas at all” (53). To define man as the rational animal does not mean to define it narrowly materialistically. Anima [soul] of the animal can be called mind or spirit or whatever. It does not change the fact, however, that man is not thought much higher than the beasts. Man will remain in the dimension of animals as long as his nature is sought from within. As long as the man and any of his attributes is the central idea of humanism, he does not receive the proper treatment.
But how can humanism abandon man in its thinking, when it presumably strives to free man for himself, that is for his nature? How can humanism cease to be man-centered? Heidegger claims that by defining man from himself or from some qualities and attributes that belong to man, we actually degrade him. Such humanism, he says, “does not realize the proper dignity of man. Humanism is opposed because it does not set the humanitas [humanity] of man high enough.” (57).
The nature or essence of man is not limited to himself, be it his reason or the immortal soul. It is to be sought more fundamentally elsewhere outside the man. Man is more than just a man, just another being among other beings. He alone of all creatures can ask about his Being, and thus he has something unique about him that makes him and other beings an abyss apart. He stands in a unique relation to Being [we have seen an allusion to this already in the first lines of the article]. “Standing in the light of Being I call the ek-sistence of man. This way of Being is proper only to man” (53).
In fact, Heidegger says: “It seems that the essence of divinity, however distant is nonetheless more familiar to our ek-sistent essence than is our appalling and scarcely conceivable bodily kinship with the beasts. Therefore it is still premature to designate man as animal rationale.” (55). Man conceived in his essence is closer to God than to nature. “Man is more than animal rationale precisely to the extent that he is less bound up with man conceived from subjectivity” (64). The less man is construed in terms of what he is, or what he possesses (his subjectivity), the closer he is to his ek-sisting essence. It’s important to know that Heidegger by no means advocates the subjectivity as the source for the determination of meaning, on the contrary, he criticizes metaphysics for being anthropocentric, placing man and subjectivity[9] in the center of thinking.
Let’s stop for a moment and consider the essential difference between ek-sistence and existence, or, speaking personally, between Heidegger and Sartre. While formally this “Letter…” is the answer to the question of a friend about humanism, it is also a reaction to the article of Sartre Existentialism is Humanism, which was published a year before, in 1946. Heidegger more than once mentions Sartre and directly argues with him. Heidegger tried here, among other goals, to persuade the readers that he was far from being an existentialist, but obviously, he wasn’t persuasive enough, for till this very day he usually goes under this label in all encyclopedias.
Existence of Sartre is actuality. A bare actuality upon which we later project essence, or meaning. But Heidegger clearly distances himself from existentialism. Ek-sistence of man is not his actuality, but his relation to Being. When we say that man ek-sists we say nothing about his reality, but rather we indicate that he stands in the lighting of Being. Man is not a closed system. He ‘stands out’ into the truth of Being, which makes him exceptional among beings [with an exception of God, perhaps]. Heidegger calls it ecstatic ek-sistence.
Ek-sistence, thought in terms of ecstasis does not coincide with existentia in either form or content. In terms of content ek-sistence means standing out into the truth of Being. Ek-sistence identifies the determination of what man is in the destiny of truth. Existentia [on the other hand] is the name for the realization of something that is as it appears in its Idea. (55)
Heidegger is concerned that his main work Being and Time is often misconstrued in terms of the existentialistic framework. True, there are propositions that look very like Sartre’s. Heidegger quotes one of them: “The ‘essence’ of Dasein lies in its existence.” We don’t have to get deep into the way Heidegger explains this phrase, but one thing is very clear: “Sartre’s key proposition about the priority of existentia over essentia does however, justify using name ‘existentialism’ as appropriate title for a philosophy of this sort. But the basic tenet of ‘existentialism’ has nothing at all in common with the statement from Being and Time.” (56).
As we have seen from above before defining man Heidegger seeks to inquire into the essence of thinking. We have also mentioned that he found it in ek-sistence, which is in his unique relation to Being. “Thinking is engagement by and for Being”(48). Yet thinking the truth of Being requires a sacrifice from man.
In order to learn how to experience the aforementioned essence of thinking purely we must free ourselves from the technical interpretation of thinking. The beginnings of that interpretation reach back to Plato and Aristotle. They take thinking itself to be a techne […] Since then ‘philosophy’ has been in the constant predicament by having to justify its existence before ‘sciences’. It believes it can do that most effectively by cleaving itself to the rank of a science. But such an effort is an abandonment of the essence of thinking […] Being, as the element of thinking, is abandoned by the technical interpretation of thinking. ‘Logic’, beginning with the Sophists and Plato sanctions this explanation. Thinking is judged by a standard that does not measure up to it. (48)
According to Heidegger, philosophy did not make much progress since the time of Parmenides and Heraclitus. On the contrary, it fell prey to the oblivion of Being, the only goal of thinking. When thinking fails to abide in its element, it looses ground, and naturally enough, starts looking for another plausible justification of its existence. Technical thinking supported by ‘logic’ was the substitute for the primordial thinking of Being. That’s why Heidegger calls Plato and Aristotle ‘the great philosophers,’ but never ‘the great thinkers.’
Thus thinking can never be judged by a standard of ‘logic’, since ‘logic’ is something secondary. Thinking can judge ‘logic’ but not vice versa. ‘Logic’ is by no means some unalterable and authoritative law of all thinking; it is a law for technical thinking only. Thinking transcends ‘logic’, because thinking is rooted in Being, its native element. Heidegger offers an insightful analogy:
Thinking is judged by a standard that does not measure up to it. Such judgment may be compared to the procedure of trying to evaluate the nature and the powers of fish by seeing how long it can live on dry land. For a long time now, all too long, thinking has been stranded on dry land. Can then the effort to return thinking to its element be called ‘irrationalism’? (48)
In other words, thinking since the time of Sophists and Plato has been taken out of its element, namely Being, and placed on the dry land of techne, technical interpretations of thinking. To return thinking to where it belongs, even if this requires transcending ‘logic’, is not irrational, but rather the most rational act of all.
The question naturally arises, how do we achieve this recurrence? How do we return thinking to its original element? We read the key condition for this: “In order to learn how to experience the essence of thinking purely we must free ourselves[10] from the technical interpretation of thinking.” “Thinking comes to an end when it slips out of its element. [Then] one no longer thinks; one occupies himself with ‘philosophy’” (50) To free ourselves from ‘metaphysics’ of any form is the first step on the way to the essence of thinking, and thus to the essence of man.
To free means to abandon something, something that we are accustomed to, and something that we traditionally hold dear. In this sense it is a sacrifice. We should give up our alleged authority over beings. “Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being. Man loses nothing in this ‘less’; rather he gains the essential poverty[11] of the shepherd, whose dignity consists in being called by Being itself into the preservation of Being’s truth” (64).
Once again it is necessary to stress the difference between Sartre’s understanding of man, and the understanding of man as it is presented in “Letter…” In light of Sartre’s constant claims that Heidegger belongs