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Heidegger's Letter on Humanism

1947 · Freiburg (Freiburg, Germany)

In 1947 Martin Heidegger publishes his Letter on Humanism, written to the French philosopher Jean Beaufret in reply to Sartre's lecture. Language is the house of Being, he answers; his thought is no humanism and no existentialism. The letter is the German source's refusal of the Paris label, and the movement's founding divorce, conducted in perfect courtesy.

Tagged: Existentialism

The Event

Date
1947 (exact)
Era
The Paris Decade; Standard periodization of existentialist history
Location
Freiburg; today Freiburg, Germany
Traditions
Existentialism
Streams
Existentialism
Key figures
Martin Heidegger, Jean Beaufret
Key texts
Letter on Humanism

How the Tradition Tells It

Heidegger refused the existentialist name; the record stands in this dataset because the refusal is one of the movement's founding documents, and the record says so.

Connections

Illustration for Sartre's lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism History Event Sartre's lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism 1945 written in direct reply to Sartre's lecture Illustration for Heidegger's Being and Time History Event Heidegger's Being and Time 1927 the author of Being and Time (whose record stands in the Nihilism timeline) refuses the label the lecture claims

Primary Sources

  • Heidegger, Martin. Brief über den Humanismus. Bern, 1947.

Secondary Sources

  • Gordon, Lewis R. Fanon and the Crisis of European Man. New York: Routledge, 1995.
  • Kaufmann, Walter, ed. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. New York: Meridian, 1956.
  • Solomon, Robert C. Existentialism. New York: Oxford University Press, second edition, 2005.

Provenance: HIST-1431; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.

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