Quotation
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“The human being is not the lord of beings. The human being is the shepherd of Being.”
Martin Heidegger · Phenomenology · Modern · 1947
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the two sentences as a refusal of mastery. The human being is not the lord of beings, the things that are, and is instead the shepherd of Being, the one whose task is to watch over the way beings come to presence rather than to dispose of them. A competing reading hears a pious job title, or a claim that people should be humble in ordinary politics. He is answering a question about humanism, and he thinks the tradition's human being, defined as the rational animal who represents and controls beings, has missed the relation he wants named. Shepherd is not a metaphor for kindness to animals. It is his name for a guarding that lets Being be said. The sentences are the Letter on Humanism, in Capuzzi's English. They are not the earlier sentence of the same letter, that language is the house of being, though the letter sets them in one argument. The wording is a translation.
Did Martin Heidegger really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Frank A. Capuzzi's English of the 1947 letter, as revised for Pathmarks: Der Mensch ist nicht der Herr des Seienden. Der Mensch ist der Hirt des Seins. Older English prints Man for Der Mensch. This wording is a translation. It is not the sentence, already in this library, that language is the house of being, which stands earlier in the same letter.
Where it comes from
Letter on Humanism (1947), translated by Frank A. Capuzzi, in Pathmarks
Approximate date: 1947.
How to use it
A planning meeting in a city office that treats every river, street, and resident as material the plan may arrange has taken the lord's part, which is the part the sentence refuses. The refusal does not draw the map. It says the map is not the whole of what is being decided, and that the decider is not the owner of what shows up in it. A person who quotes the shepherd in order to sound gentle, and then decides as a lord, has kept the word and dropped the letter.
A mindset reading
Lord and shepherd are a pair. Dropping the first sentence makes the second a comfort. Dropping the second makes the first a scolding with nowhere to stand. He thinks the human essence, if the word is kept at all, lies in that ek-sistence toward Being, not in a rank above other beings. The politics of the man are not cancelled by the metaphor. They are a reason to read the letter with the history attached, not a reason to invent a softer line.
Understand the philosophy
The Letter on Humanism, written in 1947 and published as a reply to Jean Beaufret, is where these two sentences stand. The key contrast is lord of beings and shepherd of Being, Seiendes and Sein. Capuzzi's English in Pathmarks is the translation followed here. The house-of-being sentence, already in this library, is earlier in the same letter. Being and Time section 9, also already here, is the 1927 claim about Dasein's existence. This card is the third line, and it is a translation.
- meaning
- self
- knowledge
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the two sentences as a refusal of mastery. The human being is not the lord of beings, the things that are, and is instead the shepherd of Being, the one whose task is to watch over the way beings come to presence rather than to dispose of them. A competing reading hears a pious job title, or a claim that people should be humble in ordinary politics. He is answering a question about humanism, and he thinks the tradition's human being, defined as the rational animal who represents and controls beings, has missed the relation he wants named. Shepherd is not a metaphor for kindness to animals. It is his name for a guarding that lets Being be said. The sentences are the Letter on Humanism, in Capuzzi's English. They are not the earlier sentence of the same letter, that language is the house of being, though the letter sets them in one argument. The wording is a translation.
Did Martin Heidegger really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Frank A. Capuzzi's English of the 1947 letter, as revised for Pathmarks: Der Mensch ist nicht der Herr des Seienden. Der Mensch ist der Hirt des Seins. Older English prints Man for Der Mensch. This wording is a translation. It is not the sentence, already in this library, that language is the house of being, which stands earlier in the same letter.
Which work is it in?
Letter on Humanism (1947), translated by Frank A. Capuzzi, in Pathmarks Approximate date: 1947.