Humanism In The Most Extreme Sense

The human being is not the master of beings. The human being is the shepherd of being. In this...the human being loses nothing but gains because he attains the truth of being. He gains the essential poverty of the shepherd whose dignity rests on being called by being itself to preserve its truth...Is that not humanism in the most extreme sense? Certainly, it is the humanism that thinks the humanity of the human out of the nearness of being.

--Martin Heidegger, "Letter On Humanism," cited in Dahlstrom, THD, 104.

[See also posts of June, 2014].