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"Letter on humanism" seems to be humanistic since it centres on the nature of man and Heidegger
describes it as humanistic, but only as "primordially" so, prior to all conceptual and theoretical
accounts of mankind. The Letter is not humanistic in an anthropological, biological, social or ethical
sense because these are theories constructed by man in his language and do not contain truth about
being, since being stretches into the future, and man himself, and the theories he constructs about
himself do not give shape to the future.
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Heidegger does claim that thinking about the truth of being is ethics, but not in the sense that
philosophy gives to ethics. Philosophy centres ethics on the subject in his relations with others and
particular actions, becoming a social or psychological science, or a theory about God, all of which is
humanistic in the reductive anthropological sense of humanism. But being spans the spiritual and real
and, for Heidegger, ethics lies in this wider realm. This realm cannot be reduced to theory, or it would
not be the realm of being which is best glimpsed at, as happens in poetry and literature. So the Letter
is an attempt to establish a different form of humanism, a different stance on man. However, it is not
only anti-humanistic in being anti-anthropological and anti-biological, but it loses sight of the
individuality of man as a subject in favour of man as having being in a general, non-individualistic,
form. This is an anti-humanistic outcome that Heidegger might not have intended.
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