ABSTRACT
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In 1946 Jean Beaufret wrote Heidegger a fretful letter about Jean Paul Sartre’s lecture, Existen-
tialism is a Humanism (1946). Sartre, famously arguing that existence precedes essence and that the
human therefore becomes what she or he does, made Beaufret worry that this was an inadequate
account of action, ethics, and humanism. Heidegger in his justly celebrated “Letter on Humanism”
(1947) responded decisively. We have not yet begun to think action [Handlung]. Typically, we
construe action as Vollbringen, as bringing something forth into its fullness, as production, as
accomplishment, as actualization. As such, actions are causes that bring forth effects, which, in
their turn, are judged according to their utility. Does this action accomplish what it is that we set out
to accomplish? What should we do?
