Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being.

Meaning of the quote

This quote means that humans are not the rulers or masters of everything that exists. Instead, humans are caretakers or guides who help take care of the world and everything in it. We should see ourselves as protectors and supporters of the world, not as its owners or controllers.

About Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was a renowned German philosopher who made significant contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He was elected as rector at the University of Freiburg in 1933 and faced controversy for his support of the Nazi Party. Heidegger’s seminal work, ‘Being and Time,’ introduced the concept of ‘Dasein’ as the type of being that humans possess.

More about the author

More quotes from Martin Heidegger

Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

The possible ranks higher than the actual.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

Time is not a thing, thus nothing which is, and yet it remains constant in its passing away without being something temporal like the beings in time.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

Language is the house of the truth of Being.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

Time-space as commonly understood, in the sense of the distance measured between two time-points, is the result of time calculation.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

As the ego cogito, subjectivity is the consciousness that represents something, relates this representation back to itself, and so gathers with itself.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

To think Being itself explicitly requires disregarding Being to the extent that it is only grounded and interpreted in terms of beings and for beings as their ground, as in all metaphysics.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

To dwell is to garden.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

We name time when we say: every thing has its time. This means: everything which actually is, every being comes and goes at the right time and remains for a time during the time allotted to it. Every thing has its time.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

True time is four-dimensional.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

We still by no means think decisively enough about the essence of action.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

The German language speaks Being, while all the others merely speak of Being.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

Only a god can save us.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

We do not say: Being is, time is, but rather: there is Being and there is time.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

When modern physics exerts itself to establish the world’s formula, what occurs thereby is this: the being of entities has resolved itself into the method of the totally calculable.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

Whatever can be noted historically can be found within history.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

Transcendence constitutes selfhood.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

The human being is not the lord of beings, but the shepherd of Being.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

The human body is essentially something other than an animal organism.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

Being and time determine each other reciprocally, but in such a manner that neither can the former – Being – be addressed as something temporal nor can the latter – time – be addressed as a being.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

But every historical statement and legitimization itself moves within a certain relation to history.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

The Fuhrer alone is the present and future German reality and its law. Learn to know ever more deeply: from now on every single thing demands decision, and every action responsibility.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)

Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought.

Martin Heidegger

German philosopher (1889-1976)