Heidegger on Language and Death: The Intrinsic Connection in Human Existence 9781472546715, 9780826498663, 9781441107701

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Contents

Abbreviations

viii Part One: Death and Language

1 Introduction: Death’s Impact on Existence is Language 2 Religious-Philosophical Implications of Heidegger’s Concept of Death: Traces of Paul and Bultmann in Heidegger

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Part Two: Origin, Evolution and Motivation of Language 3 Heidegger on the Origin of Language in Being and Time 4 The Legacy of Herder in Heidegger’s Language Origin Theory: How Heidegger Ontologized Herder 5 The Birth of Language as Language of Death: Death as the Birthplace of Language

51 63 83

Part Three: Hegel, Benjamin and the Case for Heidegger’s Linguistic Ontology 6 The (Linguistic) Awakening of Spirit in the Presence of Death: A Heideggerian Reading of Hegel’s Conception of Language 7 Walter Benjamin: An Unacknowledged Predecessor of Martin Heidegger 8 Heidegger’s Parmenides: The Journey to Truth as the Emergence of Language into Immortality Notes Bibliography Index

103 123 138 165 214 223

Chapter 1

Introduction Death’s Impact on Existence is Language

Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out then? Walt Whitman, ‘Song of Myself’ 25 The sound of the belched words of my voice . . . words loosed to the eddies of the wind Walt Whitman, ‘Song of Myself’ 1

The Bounds of Being The thesis I advance in this study is simple: humans extend their existence linguistic-ontologically – in language as both Dasein’s individual and communal foundation. I contend that Heidegger’s thinking asserts language as the ontic-ontological extension of existence. In defence of this thesis I explore Heidegger’s tacit premise of the death–language connection constitutive to human existence. The contention hinges on Heidegger’s reliance on the truth of Parmenides: being and thinking are one and the same; their unity consists in the ontological silence and ontic expression of language. Heidegger is fully aware of the philosophic value of this unity. ‘One can translate thinking no more satisfactorily than one can translate poetry. At best one can circumscribe it. As soon as one makes a literal translation everything is changed,’ he says in the 1966 Spiegel interview. The emphasis lies on the little word ‘literal’ (wörtliche). An all too ‘literal translation’ forsakes the poetical spirit of thought.1 The silence of thinking pours itself into ontic language where its being resides expressively. Consequently, Heidegger believes that the German ‘language speaks’ to him in instances of ontological revelations. Hence, when Heidegger philosophizes, he etymologizes.2 His philosophy is in this ontic-ontological sense ‘philo-logy’,

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‘cet amour du mot pour lui-même’, as Arion L. Kelkel puts it, the love for words for the sake of their wisdom. Kelkel qualifies Being and Time for this reason as ‘re-volutionary’. A so-called ‘rupture’ (Kehre) occurs already here, where Heidegger’s dependence on the language of the metaphysical tradition is still visible as he is breaking away from it through redefinitions and reliance on colloquial speech. In (his) language the ‘reversal’ (renversement) of the presumed relation between ‘man’ as the ‘speaking’ subject (l’homme se posant comme parlant) and speech as the spoken object is set into motion so that it can appear itself as the subject that speaks (le dire de la langue) and thus remains no longer just reduced to a piece of equipment ‘in the hands of man’ (le language n’est pas cet instrument aux mains de l’homme).3 As language itself bears the secret of its beginning and continued development, it is language that has to be questioned about the force of its evolution. For Heidegger this force, source and origin is being itself. Being immersed in the medium of language is a ‘dwelling and journeying, a flowing forth and a fading away, a leaving and a returning.’4 One is moving both away from and toward the source of being. Language is this ontological river of permanent homecoming. Speaking it allows one to come to terms with the meaning of being by coming home to the fountain of existence. Heidegger is fully aware of the mysterious nature of language. In the third part of a three lecture series on ‘The Nature of Language’ given at the University of Freiburg on 4 and 18 December, 1957 and on 7 February 1958, he concludes that ‘mortals are those who are able to experience death as death. Animals are unable to do this. ‘Neither can animals speak.’ This observation leads him then to ascertain that ‘[although] the essential relation (Wesensverhältnis) between death and language flashes up before us, . . . [the essence of this relation] is still unthought.’ Heidegger suspects that these flashes which expose the relation in question ‘can . . . give us a hint towards the way in which the nature of language draws us into its concern (uns zu sich be-langt) and so keeps and holds us near it (bei sich verhält), in case death belongs together with what reaches out to us and touches us (was uns be-langt).’5 Heidegger takes his suspicion that language and death belong intrinsically together seriously. The nature of this intrinsic connection is not fully explored. So much, however, is clear: their unity constitutes the essence of being human. To unravel this connection both as an essential feature of human existence and as a tenet silently at work in Heidegger’s thinking is the task of this project.

Word and Deed Heidegger is of course not the first to evoke the connection. Epitaphs, eulogies, hymns of praise and other forms of commemoration rely on it. The attempt to reach out at immortality is an age-old human act with linguistic impact.

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The simplest examples illustrate the point. Carved on a tombstone more than 100 years old, the following words read in the original German: Was unsre Mutter uns gewesen sagt nicht dieser Leichenstein. Doch Mit-und Nachwelt sollen lessen daß wir ewig Dank ihr weihn.6 Not only death, but particular events of remarkable excellence also find lasting imprints in language. In a demonstrative fashion, this is expressed in the following Greek saying: Ου τοι λειψανα των αγαθων ανδρων αφειρειται χρονος α δ’αρετα και θανουσι λαµπει.7 The outstanding deeds of the good men time cannot and does not erase. Their lasting virtues continue to shine forth even when they die. Time does not undo accomplishments. Death is not the end, but the inception of history. Tradition counteracts forgetfulness. It keeps the presence of the past in the mind of language. Human history is grounded in the existential foundation of language. The following Greek proverb makes exactly this point: ‘Καλλιστον εφοδιον τοι γηραι η παιδεια.’8 (The best way into high age is disciplined instruction, strict formation through education.) The formation of the human nature through education promises old age, not just individually, but, more importantly, historically. Humans inherit from their ancestors a lifepromising legacy both for their personal future and for future generations. In the knowledge of the tradition, the lived experience of generations survives. Individual experience is a treasure cultivated by means of linguistic preservation. The recognition of personal limitations looks for possibilities of continued existence. It finds them in the culture of a tradition. Community transcends the bounds of individuality. The medium of this transcendence is language. In and as language, self-knowledge asserts its time- and death-transcending power: ipsa scientia potestas est.9 Self-knowledge is might – the might of wisdom. Wisdom acts linguistically to remain accessible. This insight is captured in the Greek proverb ‘Η σοφιας πηγη δια βιβλιων ρεει.’ (The fountain of wisdom flows through letters.) It needs to be read in the context of its complement ‘Το γραµµα αποκτεινει το δε πνευµα ζωοποιει.’ (The letter dies, but spirit revives it.)10 Tradition (δια βιβλιων) is alive in the stream of wisdom (σοφιας πηγη . . . ρεει), which consists in the linguistic activity of the spirit (πνευµα). When the calls of wisdom remain unheeded, when its written testimony

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(το γραµµα−τα βιβλια) is not acted upon, its appeals are silenced to the muteness of dead letters (αποκτεινει). Then we speak and repeat only words without ethical and intellectual substance. However, as soon as the appeals, couched in the sounds of these letters, are met with the curious eye and the attentive ear of the questioning mind (πνευµα), they revive the spirit of their origin (πηγη) and speak with the resurrective power of the original source (ζωοποιει). Such overcoming is possible because of the mysterious relation at work between language and death. It is a relation of dependence and redemption. How so, we can learn from an old Germanic tale. The Beowulf-poem11 originates in this relation. It is in fact motivated by it. Not only is it aware of the poetic condition of linguistic creation but it also plays with this notion poetically.12 In his discussions of the Beowulf-poem, Robert Creed points out that the poetic devices used in the poem consist of various forms of sound patterning, alliteration, assonance, rhyme,13 and rhythm.14 Both the oral technology of ‘memorable speech’, which relies on those poetic devices, as Creed continues to emphasize, and the alphabetic or ‘chirographic’15 technology of ‘translating [such] speech into visible signs’ aim at preserving the cultural and historical heritage of a community. In the recollection of this, its heritage, a society continues to flourish simply because such a society ‘considers [its legacy] worth preserving’. The preservation through recollection occurs in both cases, the oral and alphabetical technology, by ‘transmitting it [information (namely, indigenous knowledge and practice)] from the individual to the community, and this – in the case of the Beowulf-poem as well as in the earlier case of the Homeric epic poems – at first through the transmission of memorable information ‘in spoken language directly to at least one other member of the community’. Such preservation naturally results in the heritage of a tradition which is, as ‘the ability to speak’, as language itself, consequently deeply ‘communitycentered’.16 Tradition draws its legacy from the heritage of individual and communal achievements, which further and solidify the cultural and religious state of a society. This is one of the major themes the Beowulf-poem celebrates with the collocation of two monosyllabic words, dom (fame) and death, which either appear as simplex nouns or occur as stressed monosyllables in compounds and as stems of words within the proximity of the same line. Creed points at the five most significant lines, in which the association occurs by force of alliteration.17 The two words alliterate on what the singer and the listeners perceive as the same sound, on ‘D’. This is the formal nature of the relationship between dom and death. More important, however is the semantic nature. ‘[D]om and death resonate with each other’,18 says Creed, namely philosophically, on an ‘idea that links dom with death.’19 To note with the composer(s) of the poem that ‘dom and death have much to do with each other’20 is to refer to this idea as the recognition of a relationship that is intrinsically at work between language and death. The Beowulf-poem does not only give explicit, terminological and syntactical,

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testimony to the recognition of this idea but it is also at the same time its ultimate execution. This execution occurs with the help of what Creed calls ‘ideal structures’, the most notable of which he identifies as that composed of dom and death.21 The ideal structure of dom and death does not only encapsulate, portray and propagate an ideal that is vivid in Beowulf’s Germanic society, as Creed states.22 Its ideal is universal to the human species. It permeates any human society. Since ‘death is better than any deed without dom (l. 2890),’ it is imperative ‘to work dom, or else death will annihilate one (l. 1491),’ which is why dom must come before death for a social being’ that wants to be remembered by its community (l. 1388). Creed points out that the syntax of the last verse stated ‘“mimes” its meaning’.23 The implications of this syntactic-semantic mimesis are of existential-ontological importance. The mimesis emphasizes the universal importance of its message. It reveals with its emphasis the urge of an existential imperative that is couched in the inextricable and idealistic bond between dom and death.24 More fundamentally, however, the existential imperative is existentially rooted in the ontological relation between language and death. Dom supersedes death. The supersession occurs with the transition of a doing, an action, in dom. The transition takes place ‘in spoken language, particularly in the language spoken by poets’ who manage to fix deeds done in words.25 Such a poetic creation is an act of linguistic preservation. It opens the door to a communalized, personal, and ontological survival through the commemorating force of speech. ‘Memorable speech’ immortalizes. It calls into existence what was formerly doomed to be forgotten. This is the meaning of dom.26 Dom is a linguistic action that recalls particular events. The recollection is of existential-ontological dimension. It throws into existence what would normally disappear in forgetful nothingness. The idea that language overcomes death and that this overcoming constitutes the existential-ontological link between language and death is the unspoken theme that permeates Heidegger’s existential philosophy. Hence he too, like Beowulf, operates with the notion of the hero. The hero is and lays the foundation for future recollection. ‘Recollection’ is to be understood as a constructive ‘retrieve’ of the possibilities of past events, as Stambbaugh translates Heidegger’s ‘Wiederholung’, and not as a simple ‘repetition’, as Macquarrie and Robinson render the term (SZ, pp. 385f.), which runs the risk of suggesting what Heidegger rejects, namely a mere, anachronistic copying of the past that would prevent the possibilities it bears for the future from being actualized under the new conditions of a specific present. ‘Authentic retrieve’ as recollection discloses past possibilities as new possibilities. Rigid, atavistic repetition does the opposite. It forgoes such possibilities. Heidegger calls this kind of inauthentic retrieve a ‘bringing-back of “what is past”’ (Wiederbringen) and as the ‘recurrence’ (wiederkehren) of ‘what was once real’. Both are impossible attempts that affect language itself and condition the possibility of

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both its revealing and concealing power. For lack of better words, Heidegger occasionally hyphenates the words (wieder-holen, Wieder-holung) in his later writings when he refers to recollection as authentic retrieve, whereas he paraphrases the notion of repetition as inauthentic retrieve.

Linguistic Ontology When Heidegger wonders about the ontological status of language (SZ, p. 166),27 he does not favour one answer at the cost of another. He purposefully leaves the question open with explicit reference to the solutions that have surfaced in his examination. The possibilities range from the mode of being of Dasein (daseinsmäßig, Existenzsein) to the mode of being of entities not of the character of Dasein. Like Dasein, language is of a ‘specific worldly (weltlich) mode of being’. As such, it asserts in verbal epiphanies the existence of the things themselves by force of asserting their presence in Dasein’s encounter with them. Furthermore, language assumes world like modes of being that are not of the existential quality of Dasein’s worldliness, but of a worldly character, which stands in accordance with the world (weltmäßig). In the latter case language can either function as inner worldly equipment ready-to-hand (innerweltliches zuhandenes Zeug, Zuhandenheit, Zuhandensein) like signs and collocated words that speak with the locutionary force of their immediate association with one another (Worte) in order to reveal and convey information or it can be examined objectively, in abstract considerations, as an object of scientific investigation, that is, an isolated thing present-at-hand. This particular regard to words de-collocates them (Wörter)28 in a deliberate separation from one another (bloß vorhandene Wörterdinge, Vorhandenheit, Vorhandensein), not as things themselves, but with the intention of retrieving universal and specific scientific knowledge about their synchronic and diachronic history and intrinsic a-historic properties (SZ, pp. 161, 188). The latter two conceptions of language as equipment and as an object depict it as an information and communication system that operates on (a) the accessibility to a set of words (lexicon), (b) the structure of their relations to one another (grammar, syntax) and (c) the structure of their relations to the things in the world which they denote (semantics). This is a widespread conception of language, one that places less emphasis on the co-construction of meaning in interaction, and the dynamic characteristic of the ever-changing structure and function of language. Nothing is wrong with this picture provided it does not forgo the existential nature of language. Heidegger sees in the existentiality of Dasein the essence of language. Consequently, he posits language on an ontological par with human existence (Existenzsein). In an effort to explore the existential essence of language, Heidegger draws a bridge between the emergence of language and the beginning of human history. ‘In the departure of humans into being language was the word-formation

Introduction

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of being.’ Heidegger calls this verbal embodiment of being ‘poetry’. In its inception language is ‘primordial poetry’. In and as such ‘Urdichtung’ a community engages in the verbal composition of (its own) being and destiny.29 This poetical engagement is not accomplished once and for all. Language, as all of human existence, stands under the force of decay (fallenness). Hence, accomplished poetical praxis remains the task of human destiny. ‘Humankind (der Mensch)’, Heidegger says in one of his poems, ‘is Being’s poem just begun.’ As such language continues to be what it has been since its inception, as a truth event ‘poetry that thinks (denkende Dichten)’ to reveal things in the light of their being. Entities come to word in poetical thoughts. In the poetry of thinking (dichtende Denken), language comes to be to reveal itself as ‘the topology of Being (Seyn).’30 The truth event consists in the poetry of thought and the thinking of poetry. Truth ‘is at work’ in language’s verbal disclosures of being. In his essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, Heidegger calls this ‘apocalyptic’ event of being in language a ‘world-worlding’. The worlding (welten) of a world happens in an ‘ever-nonobjective’ (immer ungegenständliche) world as the work of art. ‘[T]o . . . [this world of a work] . . . [humans] are subject (unterstehen) as long as the paths of birth and death . . . keep . . . [them] transported (entrückt) into being [as such].’ In their confrontation with the artwork humans are exposed to being. ‘Work-being’ (Werksein), unlike mere object-being (Gegenstandsein), is Dasein’s ‘ecstatic transport’ of being to being.31 Heidegger’s thinking is intrinsically linguistic in its ontological quest for the truth of being. In his verbal disclosures of truth in the event (Ereignis) of being, Heidegger advances a philosophy of linguistic ontology. Words, when actually spoken, assert their ontological reality ontically via the existential force of human existence. The existential essence of language is the ontological condition of its epistemological possibilities. This is the ground for Heidegger’s linguistic-ontological claim that ‘things come to be and are only in language.’ Language is the epiphany of being(s) and only as such is it the ground for further, epistemological truths.32 Arion L. Kelkel points at this linguistic-ontological essence of Heidegger’s philosophy, when he hyphenates the term ‘onto-logy’ to underscore that for Heidegger it is language itself (λογος) which comprises Dasein’s true being (ων, οντος). ‘Le langage est la véritable “onto-logie” du Dasein.’ As the ‘manifestation of being itself’, Dasein’s ‘onto-logy’ gives rise to language. In each of its words being itself comes to the fore of human existence. ‘Celle-ci [l’onto-logie du Dasein comme langage] n’est que la manifestation de l’Être lui-même qu’elle désignera comme l’unique lieu d’origine du logos.’ Words are the self-manifestations of the things themselves, their verbal epiphanies. They constitute Dasein’s ontological faculty to make explicit the reality of entities with the force of their being and reveal ‘la constitution ontologique existentiale du phénomène langage ou plutôt de l’être-là comme cet étant qui se définit par son pouvoir “onto-logique”, son pouvoir de dire

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l’étant en son être.’ Dasein’s faculty of onto-logical discourse manifests itself as speech. In speech its dispositional grasp of world understanding reaches expressive articulation. ‘Le discours en tant qu’il est en lui-même “onto-logique” est une parole «originairement révélatrice» et articulant la saisie de l’étant dans le comprendre et le sentiment de la situation.’ Such revelation gives its verbal voice to the things themselves and via these things to being itself. ‘La langue est l’être lui-même – l’onto-logie est une manière de donner la parole à l’Être et de recueillir son dict.’ Such speaking is necessarily poetical; it goes directly to the heart of the matter of which all words have first been moulded. According to this conception of language, words are not just ‘verbal substitutes’ of the real world itself (un ‘substitut verbal’ du monde que nous vivons) to transform it into a thing merely said, and to represent it in and as a verbal reproduction that appears to be of a less real, since less original, even immaterial status of being. The opposite is the case. Only by virtue of going to the things themselves can words come to be; in their emergence a world appears.33 Existence consists in this poetic event of world appearance through word emergence. The world comes to be in words, and vice versa, words come to be with and in a world. How this mystery happens is unclear. The movement away from the linguist’s dictates of grammar and semantics can liberate the word to its original freedom of expression through ‘paratactic’ speech where words speak with the full force of their original source of being.34 This move to poetry speaks words that are no longer subject to the equipmental abuse of things ready-to-hand. The natural decay of words from Worte into Wörter is reversed. Decomposition is replaced by composition. ‘The word only now becomes and remains truly a word.’35 The vernacular, the provincial dialect native to a particular region and its people who are born and raised in it as (in) their homeland (Sprache als Heimat) reveals the word-creative faculty of language most originally (Ursprache).36 Ursprache comes closest to the primal leap (Ursprung) into being. Heidegger conceives of it as the speech of mortals. ‘Mortal speech . . . bids thing and world to come’ by ‘pointing back to the initial source of age-old origins and belongings’ in order to preserve them as a heritage for continuous recollection.37 Such retrospection is fore-conception (Vorgriff). It aligns the linguisticontological departure into human history with the beginning of its destiny. It is in fact this beginning verbalized in vocalized enactments of an existential directedness (Be-Stimmung)38 Heidegger calls the comportment (Verhaltung) of a beingtoward (Sein zu) the things themselves (zu den Sachen selbst). Such comportments are word-formative and language-creative. They are fundamentally intentional acts in a broader sense than Husserl’s Sinngebung. Their intentions aim at preservation through recollective communication. This retrospection into the foundations of human existence is motivated by the desire to overcome the finitude of existence. The urge for immortality initiates comportmental acts of communication (Mitteilung) to condition the possibility of communal Dasein (Miteinandersein).

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The Existential-Empirical Nature of Linguistic Concepts and Conceptions Conceptions of being do not inhabit abstract utopian realms of intelligible nonentical entities, of ‘things that have no being’, which reveal in their ontological lack ‘the being of nothingness’, as Giorgio Agamben puts it with the words of Leonardo. Realms of such conceptions are neither remote nor utopian. They are ‘within us’, belong ‘to time and language’ and reside ‘in the past and the future’. These words are reminiscent of the words Heidegger spoke in his 1957 lecture on ‘The Nature of Language’: ‘the word, the saying, has no being’ (das Wort, das Sagen, hat kein Sein). However, unlike Agamben (with Leonardo), Heidegger does not exclude those entities from the present or from nature. Agamben’s opposition of ‘logico-temporal’ and ‘natural entities’ does not fully parallel Heidegger’s contrast between ‘words’ and ‘things’. For Heidegger ‘things are’, namely, ‘beings’ (Seiendes) that are either ready-to-hand (equipment) or present-at-hand (objects), or simply themselves. The fact that words in their origins do not share ‘the being’ (Sein) of the ‘thinghood’ of things (Dingwesen) does not warrant that words be ‘cast into the void of mere nothingness’. Neither are words just beings among other beings. ‘Words themselves give being’ (das Wort selber gibt . . . das Sein).39 More specifically, they give the being of the things themselves. If word-concepts are not non-entical forms of nothingness, they have a worldly reality to them, since they emerge from the existential reality of the human being in this world. Both in their spoken and unspoken forms as words and thoughts, they are expressive manifestations of human existence. In these linguistic expressions, in which the human being achieves its highest degree of self-actualization, ‘language is’, as Hegel says, ‘the real existence of the pure self,’ since ‘it alone expresses the I itself.’ As an ‘independent separate individuality’ ‘this pure I’ ‘comes . . . into existence’ only as and ‘in speech’, and thus does not just exist for and in itself, but also ‘for others’.40 Personalities arise from speech within a speech community where their linguistic actions have the interpersonal space to take place. Paradoxically, it is the universality of language, which preserves personal uniqueness in a Hegelian process of supersession (Aufhebung). Linguistic individualization thus responds directly to the mortality of existence. In the final conclusion of his exegetical study of Heidegger’s linguistic ontology from 1980, La Légende de l’Être, Arion L. Kelkel makes a related point when he states that each of us speaks the same language in a particular way that is peculiar only to him and her.41 This exclusive peculiarity betrays the individualizing effect language has on the human being. Individuation depends on the way the human being (ζωον λογον εχον) executes (ζωον) its unique possession (εχον) of language (λογον). That the execution of this possession constitutes an

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intrinsically linguistic act, Heidegger captures in his concept of comportment (Verhaltung). In his 1925 lecture course ‘Prolegomena to the History of the Concept of Time’ he contends, ‘our comportments [are] lived experiences . . . [which] are through and through expressed (ausgedrückte) . . . in a definite articulation . . .’ In BT the notion of this articulation develops into the concept of the fore-structure (Vor-Struktur) of world interpretation. Dasein’s fore-structure bears the verbal conceptualization of the things themselves (Begrifflichkeit) in pre-verbal fore-conceptions (Vorgriff) prone to become actual spoken words. Comportments are pregnant with words of possible propositions. This is exactly what Heidegger has in mind when he continues to emphasize his contention ‘that our comportments are in actual fact pervaded through and through by assertions (Aussagen), that they are always performed (vollzogen) in some form of expressness (Ausdrücklichkeit).’ Hence, he concludes, ‘Assertions are acts of meaning’ (Aussagen sind Bedeutungsakte).42 Since acts are always meaningful, Heidegger rejects separations of words from meaning, which presuppose their correlation as arbitrary convention. Heidegger instead recognizes the empirical (phonetic-acoustic and graphicvisual) nature of language, a view rejected by Duns Scotus, the subject of Heidegger’s tenure publication (Habilitationsschrift) from 1915. The empirical side of language conditions the possibility of word-formation. Consequently, for Heidegger, no sound is without meaning. All perception is meaningful action. The intentionality of acts renders them meaningful.43 Kelkel seems to conflate Heidegger’s position with Duns Scotus’s conception of language. When Heidegger recounts Duns Scotus’s theory of language, he neither embraces, nor explicitly rejects the theory. The closing statements of his tenure publication, however, at last make it clear to the reader that the propagation of a ‘philosophy of the living spirit, of active love’ must include substantial considerations of the empirical essence and material origination and foundations of human conceptualizations.44 Words themselves illustrate the point. A word like the French ‘maintenant’, now, speaks the truth of its literal meaning of ‘taking and holding something in one’s hand’, namely, that which is slipping by, the smallest temporal unit, the moment in the flux of time. In contrast, Greek refers to the moment with ‘νυν’, Latin with ‘num’ and ‘nunc’, English with ‘now’ and German with ‘nun’ or ‘jetzt’. The brevity of each word reflects its meaning iconically. Whether phonologically (in the case of Greek) or morphologically (in the case of the French), both capture what is literally, because physically, impossible. This insight into the truth of being in time is reminiscent of the (in)famous cry by one of North America’s singer-songwriters in the chorus of one of his early songs: ‘The dogs on Main Street howl / cause they understand, / if I could take one moment into my hands!’45 Since the flow of time cannot be stopped, their howls vanish with the moment. However, as the howling assumes the status of language in words, physical impossibilities enter the ontological realm of linguistic possibilities.

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The finitude of mortal existence is met with the prospect of linguistic-ontological immortality. Lived speech lives on in a living language as it continues to speak. Once we recognize the empirical foundation of the existential nature of language we see that in their inception words are never ‘only words’ to speak with one of Catherine MacKinnon’s book titles. A conceptual entity is meaningful in its empirical relation to lived experiences. The empirical heritage of concepts accounts for the existential substance of their meaning. Their referential relation to things is of a second order. Word-concepts are abstractions, however, not away from the concrete world, but based on it as their first order. That is how they speak. The referential relation speaks with the empirical force of the concrete world. Humans can never be unaffected by them. Catherine MacKinnon, for example, has implicitly based her critique of the legal justification of pornography on the existential ground of language. When she rejects the general presumption ‘that words have only a referential relation to reality’, an assumption, which provides the ground for the defensive claim that pornography does not actually affect anyone involved in it or exposed to it, she is invoking an existential conception of language. MacKinnon argues that the defence of pornography ‘as only words’, legally protected by the right to free speech, not only ignores the coercion behind the pornographic material but also the violence of the pornographic speech act itself against its participants and consumers. Pornographic violence is intrinsic to these expressive acts and at work as such speech acts.46 This is not the only ambivalence intrinsic to language. In his later years Heidegger points out that the fundamental-ontological thought of being itself must remain ambivalent. Since the ‘matter of Being and Time’ is ‘intrinsically manifold (in sich mehrfältigen Sachverhalt von Sein und Zeit),’ all attempts to speak of it, ‘all words which bring it to the fore and into the realm opened by speech (alle ihn sagenden Worte) remain [positively] ambiguous (mehrdeutig).’ Language must adjust to this ambiguity in order to retain ‘a proper relationship to (gemäß) the intrinsically manifold matter of Being and Time.’47 This matter is being itself. It is ‘as that which is to-be-thought’ (als jenes zu Denkende) also always and exactly that ‘which is in [constant] want of a thought corresponding to it’ (was ein ihm entsprechendes Denken braucht).48 A thinking of being requires a constantly renewed relationship to the conventional and traditional language. Such a renewal consists in a linguistic engagement that can reveal the fundamentalontological nature of language as such and operates on the very essence of the specific language of one’s own cultural and historical heritage.49 Consequently, Heidegger rejects popular notions of a so-called ‘rupture’ in his thinking as a ‘groundless and endless prattle’ that falsely claims to have detected a ‘con-version’ (Bekehrung) and ‘in-version’ (Umkehr) in his thinking. Claims like these result from a metaphysical disregard of the dynamic, ambivalent essence of being (Seyn as An-wesen which Heidegger adopts from the ancient

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Greek and Pauline notion of παρειµι and παρουσια). Heidegger holds this nature of being responsible for the change (Wendung), which has indeed taken place ‘in’ his thinking. The change, however, is not a change of his thinking. It is not a change of mind away from the question of being. On the contrary, the change occurs without ‘abandoning the fundamental issue of Being and Time’. Instead, it reinforces the focus on the fundamental-ontological question. Heidegger calls the movement of this reinforcement a ‘reversal’ (Kehre). In doing so, he recognizes a fundamental-ontological feature in being itself. His recognition is the ‘response to’ a movement which originates as the occurring presence of the reversal in being itself. To this fundamental-ontological event thinking must continue to ‘cor-respond’ (entsprechen) if it wants to pursue the basic question of being, which only in such a pursuit can and will continue to move our human being.50 The change in Heidegger’s language from a more metaphysical to a more poetic and simplistic language reflects the fundamental-ontological movement he sees at work in being itself. To characterize this change as a ‘rupture’ is to misunderstand the ‘presencing essence’ (an-wesen) of being. Heidegger tries to capture its simple complexity and complex simplicity with ‘poetical thinking’ (Dichten und Denken). William Richardson’s distinction between two Heideggers, Heidegger I and Heidegger II, must be understood as complementary distinctions.51 Understanding one conditions the understanding of the other. When inspected separately from one another, none is fully comprehensible. Heidegger’s thinking is a persistent movement to the whole of being. Its manifold aspects complement each other. This is why Heidegger speaks of ‘Er-gänzung’, of fulfilment, that is, of a fulfilment to the complete whole of being. However, ‘[e]rgänzen kann nur,’ Heidegger says, ‘wer das Ganze erblickt.’ ‘Only those can fulfil who have a vision of the complete whole of [the] fullness [of being].’ With the vision of the whole, one perceives the essence of human existence in the context of the truth of being as such and vice versa.52

The Being of Non-being and the Non-being of Being Heidegger does not examine the nature of the relation between language and death. He simply posits the relation with his formal notion of equiprimordiality and consistently alludes to the connection. The existential link accounts for the human being as an existing entity that speaks. The linguistic rise of existence proceeds from the unfathomed mystery of non-being on the fathomless ground of being itself (EM, p. 131). Existence is the stage of the connection between language and death. Their relation generates language evolution. Since its emergence, existence continues to come to terms with the reality of itself. It comes to terms with the nothingness of death it sees itself faced with simply by virtue of its own being and the possibility of (its) non-being.

Introduction

15

Language bears a relation to nothingness as its origin. Human mortals speak to embody being(s) in the word as ‘placeholder[s] of nothingness’ (WM, p. 38, EM, p. 131). Heidegger’s pleonastic tautologies, famous sayings such as ‘language speaks’ (die Sprache spricht), ‘the thinging of things’ (das Dingen der Dinge), ‘the world that worlds’ (das Welten der Welt), ‘the stillness that stills’ (die Stille stillt), ‘time times’ (die Zeit zeitigt), ‘space spaces’ (der Raum räumt), ‘the occurring presence of the essence’ (das wesende Wesen) etc., attempt to think the unthinkable and say the unsayable. Unthinkable nothingness illustrates its paradoxical presence in the significance of the seeming emptiness of tautologies. Heidegger’s tautologies embrace nothingness. They manifest the nothingness of being and the being of nothingness as a paradoxical mode of existence by bringing this, its53 unthinkability to the fore of speakability. In its embrace of death’s nothingness thinking comes to terms with that which is via that which is not. Existence is this embrace of nothingness. Dasein’s being toward death (ek-sistence) consists in its being toward (Sein zu) things themselves (falling). In this comportmental embrace of the things themselves, Dasein’s Sein zu affirms what it is trying to negate. It is (a) being prone to non-being. It is important to recognize that Dasein’s comportmental embrace of being(s) and (its) nothingness does not just have ontological but also empirical ramifications. When Agamben severs the natural ties between humans and animals in the sixth chapter (‘The Sixth Day’) of his book Language and Death, he categorically states ‘that human language has no root in a voice, in a Stimme’ (understood as an animal voice, p. 55). Agamben’s judgement is based on his reading of Heidegger’s ‘Letter on Humanism’ (BW, p. 230; Wegmarken, pp. 325f; ÜH, pp. 17f). He concludes, ‘language is not the voice of the living man’ (p. 55), since the voice of a ‘living man’ is as that of a ‘living being’ (Lebe-Wesen) not different from the voice of an ‘animal’ (Tier). His metaphysical equation of animal and human voice is based on Aristotle’s conception of matter (υλη), form (ειδος), genus (γενος) and differentiae (διαφοραι),54 which cannot help but blur the origin of language in being itself. For Heidegger ‘language is . . . the advent (Ankunft) of being itself.’ The silent voice of being becomes audible and visible in the physical realm of human being. Here, in physical reality, things, which are explicit (ausdrücklich and thus aussprechbar) in discourse (Rede), become expressed (ausgesprochen), when (their) being finds a voice in the human body, in its kinetic (movement) and acoustic (voice) comportments. Agamben’s ‘radical separation of language from voice’ (p. 55) ignores the existential implications of the ‘etymological connection [of Stimmung] with Stimme’. In the ‘Letter on Humanism’ Heidegger does not simply speak of an absolute abyss (Abgrund) between humans and animals. There is, he contends, an ‘almost inconceivable and abysmal corporeal link we share with the animal’ (kaum auszudenkende abgründige leibliche Verwandtschaft mit dem Tier; Agamben, p. 54; BW, p. 230; Wegmarken, p. 326; ÜH, p. 17). The details of the bodily kinship humans manifest with animals are so unthinkable that the resulting,

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inevitable ignorance of the nature of this very relation leaves behind the unfathomable depths of an abysmal mystery. It is in this abyss where one has to locate the answer to the question of language origin as the beginning of human history (EM, p. 131). The ‘abgründige leibliche Verwandtschaft’ between animals and humans is a paradox. The abyss marks both the separation and the relation between the two. Somewhere in this abyss one finds the answer to the question, why, although animals live finite lives and are aware of the finitude of their lives (Rom. 8:18-23: πασα η κτισις συστεναζει και συνωδινει), they neither ‘die’ nor ‘have language’ (λογον εχον). For Heidegger, one conditions the other. Given this ‘abysmal corporeal kinship’ between humans and animals, Heidegger can say both, (1) animals don’t have language because they do not ‘exist’ and therefore don’t ‘die’, and (2) animals do have language and speak but only as humans as which they can and ‘happen’ (Ereignis) to live and die. The evolutionary leap (Ursprung) and event (Ereignis) of this unfathomable relation between language and death is the subject of this investigation. The intrinsic (existential-ontological) connection between language and death has never been fully explored. In his book The Gift of Death Derrida explores the depths of death from many angles, but only a few times the connection between death and attempts of overcoming it through the force of language flares up, and it remains unclear whether this is accidental, coincidental or intentional, although the French pun l’être ou lettre (being or letter) could have instigated an eye-opening discussion.55 Agamben’s study Language and Death-The Place of Negativity explores the interconnectedness of language and death, but although it does justice to Hegel, it lacks necessary exegetical care to demonstrate Hegel’s compatibility with Heidegger. Carol White’s clear and thorough reading of Heidegger in her book Time and Death-Heidegger’s Analysis of Finitude recognizes the intrinsic connection between language and death. This recognition, however, comes at the end of her book, and remains unexplored. Hence, her study ends where this book begins.56 The existence of language is an existent existentiale that not only attests to being as such but also confirms the reality of non-being, which has entered Heidegger’s existential analytic in the concept of the nothingness of death.

Chapter 2

Religious-Philosophical Implications of Heidegger’s Concept of Death Traces of Paul and Bultmann in Heidegger

She would of been a good woman . . . if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life. Flannery O’Connor

Introduction: Common Features of Death The quote chosen to preface this chapter is taken from Flannery O’Connor’s novel, A Good Man is Hard to Find 1 The words are among the last spoken in the story. They follow a very short but intensely serious and unusually honest conversation between two people left alone with each other for a brief moment just before one of them dies at the hand of the other. The so-called ‘Misfit’ utters these words about a grandmother moments after he kills her. In its crudeness, the comment gives an insightful evaluation of the woman. When the point is made, the reader realizes that the words have the force of a universal truth. They illuminate an essential aspect of human nature. During her conversation with the Misfit, the grandmother had to witness how the rest of her family – her son, his wife and their two children – were being taken away, one after the other, to be shot in the woods nearby. By the time she was by herself with the Misfit, the grandmother knew her own death had come as close as it could, as close as it had always been, as close as death always is, throughout life, throughout everyone’s life. Now that the world around her had collapsed, she saw this truth of life clearly. Left with nothing but herself, she had lost everything. Her bare life was less than enough, and more than one can bear. Just before she dies, the conversation reaches its brief peak of honesty. The two are caught by surprise at their openness to each other. They meet and touch one another in a rare moment of vision. It is a vision of relief and liberation. Both understand death is only one heartbeat away, for anyone, at any time.

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No one is privileged. Death is never farther away than the space between two heartbeats. There (da), in this in-between, when and where life comes to a halt, death is waiting, always present, as if just around the corner of life. Each heartbeat is a knock at the gate of death. Each heartbeat is an echo of life knocking at that gate. The surprise of this insight is frightening. It calls the Misfit back into the constraints of his habits. As if to dispel the unbearable vision, he ends the encounter abruptly with three shots through the chest of the old woman. The words he then speaks are casually directed at one of his two companions to reply to a remark about the grandmother’s talkativeness. They reveal the insight the Misfit has gained in the encounter with his victim. The story ends at this point without further deliberation. The reader is left to ponder the paradox. What was perceived from the outside as simple chatter, ‘idle talk’ (Gerede) as Heidegger would say, were indeed rare words of authentic speech. The Misfit testifies to this with his own words. What was motivated to undo the truth could not help but confirm it. Each shot echoed the cardiac knock at the gate of death. The beating heart as the emblem of life is in its life-sustaining activity always also the echo of death. Once the echo dies away, death has fully arrived. Until then, the relentless call of death reminds the living of its looming presence. Not only does this metaphor borrowed from biology see life and death next to each other but the image of the beating heart also reveals a paradox: life is death and vice versa. Flannery O’Connor’s words illuminate common features of death. The constant reminder of death’s ultimate closeness and immediate proximity makes one acutely aware of life’s finitude to the point where the total presence of death becomes so unbearable that habitual evasion provides relief through customary forgetfulness destined to be broken by surprise attacks to restore the painful awareness that life is death and death a lifelong human condition. In his contemplations about death Heidegger comes to similar conclusions. ‘Life is death, and death is also a life,’ the later Heidegger says with the words of Hölderlin in reminiscence of his early contemplations.2 In SZ, Heidegger has taken issue with the paradox where he examines the ways in which death is essential to human being. We witness the everydayness of death first, as an occurrence in others. Almost by definition death occurs to us only in others. Es kommt vor (it happens), the German language says in its typical impersonal way, that someone is dying. The saying can be personalized without losing its impersonal force in a third-person construction. Er (der Tod) kommt vor, it (death) happens, namely, in others. The occurrence, das Vorkommen, can be known only indirectly, as ein Miterleben, an indirect experience via others who suffer death as the biological event of pathological dying and who, in this event, may see themselves more clearly confronted with the omnipresence of death as a lifelong human condition. The witness of such death knows of death only as a reality once removed, an impersonal thought-idea, which is void of any personal truth. Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, to which Heidegger refers

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specifically in his death analysis (SZ, p. 254), may be read as an attempt to overcome the intersubjective divide between what Kierkegaard terms the subjective truth of one’s own ethical reality and the objective pseudo-truth of someone else’s conceived reality. The naked reality of death’s factical presence can be experienced neither directly nor objectively. One is confronted with such death abruptly. Such confrontation is so overwhelming that it bears life-shaping power. The experience of death as a factual event happens indirectly in the Miterleben of death’s factual Vorkommen in others. Once this impersonal objectivity of the death of others switches into the acute experience of a direct death attack, death, in this, its authenticity is no longer an occurrence that is witnessed and experienced as other events. Death is recognized as a human condition, as the condition of a lifelong event. The influence of Pauline anthropology makes itself visible here. In his missionary work the apostle Paul relies almost exclusively on an extreme intimacy with death. Death was his personal reality. Paul’s anthropology is unique for this reason. It motivated Heidegger first as a theologian and then as a philosopher.3 In order to lay bare Heidegger’s dependence on Paul, a closer look at the protestant theologian Rudolf Bultmann is indispensable. Bultmann and Heidegger knew and influenced each other since the early 1920s. Only briefly will I then touch upon the political implications of Heidegger’s concept of death in so far as these implications complete the picture of Dasein’s subjectivity. The conscious and unconscious awareness of death and the manifold reactions to it condition the possibility of an existential self-reliance. The possibility of non-being generates the consciousness of a self that faces the prospect of its negation and responds to this negation of its own self with the awareness of itself as something unique. Selfhood is this sentiment of identity manifest in individuality as a response to the existential anonymity of non-being.

Two Ways of Dealing with Death: Factual Uncertainty & Factical Certainty Death is still working like a mole, And digs my grave at each remove. George Herbert, ‘Grace’

‘No man is an island,’ says John Donne in one of his poems. No Dasein is ever alone in its world, is Heidegger’s phenomenological rendition. Even in isolation, as a hermit for example, Dasein remains what it has always been, a beingwith-others (Mitsein). The relation to others is fundamental. It qualifies Dasein as a being-towards-others (Sein zu anderen). Dasein is a being of a priori directedness. Its basic relatedness makes isolation and disinterest possible. They are

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Heidegger on Language and Death

deficient and indifferent modes of the same fundamental structure of human sociability (SZ, pp. 117ff.). Based on their sociability humans first learn of death through the death of others. Other encounters with death we have in sickness, accidents and wars, besides situations of the more unusual type, such as torture designed to simulate death. First-hand experience of the (f)actual death event we do not have. This existential anonymity is death’s mystery. Yet, both social and personal reality of death open the eye to death as a real possibility of existential dimension. In the death of others, in mortal sickness and deadly danger, humans recognize in death a personal possibility of the highest degree. This recognition is twofold. The possibility of self-negation is a most personal one. Humans have two options to relate to it. Since the death one encounters is usually someone else’s death, it may be taken as a consolation. One is somehow relieved that death has struck another and not oneself – unless, perhaps, the person who has passed away was so deeply woven into the fabric of one’s own being that the loss is irreparable and experienced as a partial demolition of oneself. This experience of dying-away-with the departed opens the eye for the other aspect. The fact that the fate of death, by striking the other, has spared me, reveals a fourfold truth. (a) There is no natural desire to die. All living beings cling to life. Suicide is a socio- and psychopathological phenomenon. One is driven to suicide, not free to commit it. Heidegger detects death as something unavoidable. It is an ‘indefinite certainty’.4 (b) The event of death is individual specific; it is always a particular individual who is dying. In Heidegger’s language we can say, death is Dasein’s ‘ownmost’ (eigenste) possibility. It is a ‘non-relational’ (unbezügliche) event. (c) The event of death is irreversible; it can neither be forgone nor undone. Heidegger calls this the ‘unsurpassable’ (unüberholbare) potentiality for Dasein’s being. (d) The event of death is irreplaceable; it cannot be shared. No one can take upon oneself someone else’s death. A person who has died has died his and her own death. I cannot change that by making it mine. The opposite is true as well. No one can die for me, if this means ‘dying instead of me’, not even Jesus Christ. The Pauline saying that ‘Christ died for us’ has been trivialized to a misconception responsible for the popular perversion of Christian faith. The New Testament belief that Christ’s blood has washed away all sins for good, past, present and future is a convenient escape from the responsibility for oneself when misapprehended.5 The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined this recognition into his now classic distinction between ‘cheap’ and ‘costly grace’. God’s grace is cheapened to a religious commodity as soon as my own death as the ultimate act of faith is cancelled out of what then becomes a delusional belief system in which the grace of salvation is said to be had without personal sacrifice, but with the simple lip-confession of an abstract, albeit pious and perhaps even passionate proclamation of faith in Christ.6 However, precisely because death is the most personal issue of life, because death is inseparably woven into the fabric of being, it cannot be can-

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celled out of its equation with life. Everyone has to die his and her own death, himself and herself, alone. It is essential not only to the truth of faith, but also to the facticity of death that with respect to the actual occurrence of death everyone is indeed an island. Faith is an individual act of lifelong commitment. Similarly, death is, in each case, always first one’s own alone. Like faith it cannot be handed over or taken up by someone else. It is the most individual, the most personal and for that matter the most isolating and individuating occurrence in life. Here we touch upon a paradox. On the one hand, death is an inerasable fact of life. In its facticity it is the most universal and inclusive of all life events. All face it; no one gets around it. On the other hand, death’s particular facticity as life’s ultimate possibility is in its particular concreteness not to be shared with anyone. In its factuality, death is the most extreme and exclusive of all life events. The double nature of death as both an inclusive and exclusive event accounts for the two fundamental ways of relating to it. We acknowledge someone’s death as nothing unusual. It can happen to anyone. Nature runs its course. The factual actuality leaves us largely untouched. People die all the time. This is a fact of life. We take note of it as members of a collective, the They (das Man). The fact that one (man) has to die, that there is and will always be someone dying somewhere is a trivial matter. Such death can be ignored as long and as often as it happens in its anonymity, perceived only from the distance of impersonality. As long as it is not oneself who is faced with the possibility of personal non-existence in its acute immanence, either of oneself or someone close to oneself, one’s own death is factually unreal. The free ignorance of death’s looming presence is essential to the They, which pictures death always as someone else’s. This ‘inauthentic being-toward-death’ (uneigentliches Sein zum Tode) avoids death as a personal matter. Paradoxically, it is this determined disinterest that is constitutive to the other way of dealing with death. Whereas the inauthentic mode excludes the specific self from the totality of death’s factical inclusion, authentic beingtoward-death (eigentliches Sein zum Tode) includes everyone into the exclusive nature of the death-event as one’s ownmost (eigenste) and uttermost (äußerste) possibility. The authentic conception of death understands that it is I-myself, who is dying as long as I live, and no one else in my place. The realization is haunting. It haunts the authentic self into the anticipation of death as something real, constantly at work, since it is always already there with and in life as a concrete possibility. Death’s invisible presence is total in its reality, summed up with three of its basic features. (1) In its specific occurrence it is unique to each individual. (2) Its individualizing force makes it inseparable from the particular individual. Intrinsic to individual being, death is a non-transferable property. (3) The factical reality of death’s factual imminence is immanent in Dasein’s being as its ultimate possibility. Whenever death gets recognized in its basic features, it is met with ‘fear and trembling’, or, as Heidegger says less biblically, with ‘anxiety’ (Angst). Anxiety is Dasein’s existential dawning that the

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time will come, and may be now, when I will not be there (nicht da-sein) anymore. Although this realization understands death’s factuality as something still lying in some indefinite future, it is aware of death’s factical omnipresence. Death is real as it is there (da-sein) in its anticipation. It is unreal when unrecognized in its individual-specific uniqueness. Since the two modes of being-toward-death constitute each other, our ways of dealing with death ‘switches’ from one mode to the other. The most personal event ‘turns into’ the most anonymous public incident when seen conceptually from the outside. Likewise, the myopic and sometimes spectacular focus on death’s impersonal anonymity turns into an ethically real imagination as soon as the third person who is dying switches into the known self. Death can affect anyone, but concern no one really, except the one who cannot escape the concreteness of its factuality. This ‘reversion’ within our conception of death, the ‘oscillation’ between one’s unique-personal and existential-universal understanding, comprises the human reality of death. For the most part, humans ‘return’7 back to the comfort of daily occupations, busily forgetting the certainty of death’s facticity. The subconscious reliance on death’s factual uncertainty allows one to assume that death’s eventual occurrence does obviously not take place now. We are willing to admit, quite honestly and very rationally, that, sure, one day, we all have to die, I as well as you. The concession acknowledges death’s factical certainty. However, it does so in its implicit reference to the factual uncertainty of its actual occurrence. The move is honest, but it allows one to avoid the truth in its personal absoluteness. For, while it is true that, although one day each of us will die, it is also true that I, as you, am not dying right now, and we will most likely and most certainly not die right away either. Our conception of death is shaped by this optimistic repression of the personal concreteness of death’s factical reality. A fundamental fear (Furcht) suppresses death’s personal truth as something that must in its concrete factuality necessarily remain unknown to each as an actual event. As death oscillates between its factical certainty and factual uncertainty, it does not overcome the unknown of non-being. Fear lets the unknown disappear in the darkness of death’s factual uncertainty. The repression of death’s factical certainty happens by means of its factual uncertainty. Paradoxically, it is precisely such repression that establishes the reality of death as one that fluctuates between our authentic and inauthentic apprehension of death. In our inauthentic conception we view death as factually lying ahead of us in the unreal of an indefinite future beyond the edge of being. Death’s factual uncertainty consists in this ontic unreality. The inauthentic conception looks at death as a future occurrence. Something that lies ahead is in fact unfactual, that is, factually unreal although it is always factically certain as a future factuality. In contrast, our authentic anticipation of death recognizes in the approach of death’s ontic factuality the ontological reality of death’s factical omnipresence. This certainty of death’s facticity is constitutive of human

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existence. In a sense, we are all of the same age. ‘As soon as we are born,’ Heidegger quotes from Der Ackerman aus Böhmen, ‘we are already old enough to die.’8 Being thrown into the world is equivalent to being thrown into death (SZ, p. 251). Regardless of one’s biological or chronological age, we are all just one heartbeat away from death, which, in the sense of Heidegger’s existential analytic, is the same as to say that we are all within and never beyond the range of death’s omnipresence staked out by the relentless pounding of the heart. It is important to note that in his existential analytic Heidegger operates with different death-concepts at the same time. While we must distinguish them conceptually, they cannot be separated artificially in analytical fashion as if they were not interconnected. Heidegger discerns roughly three death-concepts. The purely physiological death of what is merely alive (Nur-lebenden) he calls ‘perishing’ (Verenden). ‘Demise’ (Ableben) is the bio-chronological death of not purely vegetative, but animalistic life – life, which with respect to the human being is co-determined by Dasein’s primordial way of existential being. Thus, demise is the intermediate phenomenon between perishing and ‘dying’ (Sterben), a term Heidegger reserves for his existential-ontological conception of what he perceives to be exclusively Dasein’s death. Based on this distinction, Heidegger can say that Dasein never simply perishes but suffers demise when struck by the factual death event. It is trivial and needless to say that as long as Dasein is alive, it can demise. Heidegger, however, sharpens the point. Since dying is Dasein’s (factical) way of being toward its (factual) death, Heidegger can say that demise ‘is possible only as long as Dasein dies’ (SZ, pp. 240–241, 247). Based on this distinction we can say that the inauthentic conception of death operates with the factual death event of demise as an end-point of life, thus over-emphasizing the biological aspect and focusing exclusively on what has not yet (f)actually, that is, physiologically, happened. The inauthentic conception thus avoids death as a real life issue by ignoring its constant ontological presence as its own being already stretched out toward the factual occurrence of the actual, that is, bio-historical death event. In contrast, the authentic conception of death detects in Dasein’s whole being the actual death-event. Dying is Dasein’s being as being-toward-death. Poet and priest George Herbert quoted above speaks from this existential recognition in his poem ‘Grace’. Life consists in the mole-like work of death described as a grave-digging agent of human being. The grave taking shape during the course of life symbolizes both physiological activity of aging and ontological fate of the human being that is headed toward its final destination. Life stretched out from the cradle to the grave is being-toward-death, not a being that awaits the arrival of death as if such being were not affected by the presence of death’s lifelong approach. Aging is just the ontic-physiological manifestation of the ontological actuality of death’s facticity. The inauthentic (mis)conception of death driven by fear is trying, although in vain, to leave behind, the authentic conception, which derives its strength of

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understanding from the courage of honesty and the honesty of courage to look straight into the face of death as the existential-ontological reality of human existence. The courage to be endures the fundamental disposition of anxiety (Mut zur Angst, SZ, p. 254) to overcome the fear of death with the honesty of truth: death is not just central to human life; it is life. The recognition of such freedom toward death (Freiheit zum Tode) converts Dasein to authenticity, to the state of resurrection of its ownmost self which lies busily dead as the They-self on the public market of inauthenticity. Death is so fundamental to existence that it conditions all of life’s possibilities. It does so as a possibility, which stands out as the ownmost, non-relational and most certain possibility of all (SZ, pp. 250, 258f.). Were Dasein not to die, it could not be said to ‘be possible’ (Seinkönnen); it would not be Dasein. Absence of possibilities is non-existence. Paradoxically, existence has death as its conditioning possibility. Fundamentally aware of its finitude Dasein assumes the courage to design9 its being toward10 death by taking advantage of the possibilities it always has. Death thus initiates all life-shaping decisions, both those that are designed to avoid facing the reality of death and those death itself designs in order to authenticize the self of Dasein’s being. Heidegger’s concept of death has two sides based on Dasein’s two different ways of dealing with death, its inauthentic and authentic apprehension. Heidegger’s concept oscillates between these two ways of coming (or not coming) to terms with death. Just as Dasein’s Umgang with death is highly ambivalent, so must Heidegger’s concept of death be a source of confusion among those who detect in it contradictions in their ignorance of a twofold distinction: Heidegger’s description of Dasein’s (in)authentic apprehension of death fluctuates between the ontic and ontological sphere of existence. The German Umgang captures the twofold ambivalence nicely. On the one hand, Dasein deals with death by avoiding the issue. Umgang here is an Umgehen of what ought to be approached for a proper understanding. It is an Umgehung, an evasion. On the other hand, Dasein deals directly with death by facing it as its utmost possibility and hence virtual impossibility. Umgang is now just the opposite of the previous attitude, a handling of the issue itself, that is, an Umgehen with death as one’s ownmost possibility. The first, inauthentic Umgang looks at death as an ontic, factual event, whose ‘When?’ is uncertain. This factual uncertainty accounts for the factual unreality of ontic death. The second, authentic Umgang confronts death as its existential-ontological condition whose ‘That!’ is out of the question. This factical reality of ontological death accounts for death’s absolute certainty. Dasein switches back and forth between both conceptions of its inauthentic and authentic appropriation. The existential-ontological switch from the inauthenticity of death’s factual unreality, which is met with the cowardice (Ängstlichkeit) of fear (Furcht), to the authenticity of death’s factical certainty confronted with the courage (Mut) of anxiety (Angst) makes up Dasein’s dispositional structure. Heidegger’s ontological conception of death

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captures both sides of the factual-factical equation which is one of imbalance and necessarily paradoxical. The facticity of death’s existential reality is Dasein’s ultimate possibility both as a factual impossibility, namely, that of death’s ontic-existentiell unreality which accounts for its uncertainty and as the factical reality of death’s absolute certainty which accounts for death as Dasein’s ownmost possibility. The paradox of death cannot be resolved. Death as Dasein’s absolute possibility conditions all of Dasein’s further possibilities. Consequently, total absence of possibilities is virtual non-existence and no longer Dasein, but its negation. Dead Dasein is an oxymoron, the contradiction of a non-entity: it is ontic death, which has actually occurred. The apparent contradiction of Heidegger’s concept of death can now be resolved. We can now see how death is the existential possibility of the existentiell impossibility of Dasein (SZ, pp. 250, 262); we can see how death is the ontologically possible, ontic-factual impossibility of Dasein’s existence (SZ, p. 266).

Relevance and Rootedness of Heidegger’s Concept of Death: The Existential Imperative Death is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein. SZ, p. 250 Death is the possibility of the impossibility of existence as such. SZ, p. 262 In [anxiety] Dasein stands before the nothingness of [death as] the possible impossibility of its existence. SZ, p. 266 Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; . . . So God created man in God’s own image, in the image of God he created them.” Genesis 1: 26-27 Death individualizes human being into authenticity in ‘moments of vision’. It does so as the most personal truth of existence. The ontic appropriation of existential truth recognizes in death’s facticity life’s finitude. The recognition unmasks the inauthentic mass-self of the They to unveil one’s ownmost authentic self. The I-myself (das Ich selbst) is free for its possibilities. As the ‘(existential) possibility for (ontic) being’ (Seinsmöglickeit), Dasein can be what it wants to be, when it wants to be what it already is, a potentiality for being something particular. In the face of its looming impossibility, Dasein is ‘being-possible’ (Möglichsein) pure and simple. Everything possible (Seinkönnen of Seinsmöglich-

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keit) is possible for a particular individual (Möglichsein). Heidegger looks at the openness of Dasein’s freedom from both the ontic and the ontological angle at once. Dasein is ontically possible in all its existentiell variations (Möglichsein) as a being that ex-ists as an out-standing potentiality for its being (Seinkönnen). It is primarily an ‘(existential) potentiality-for-(ontic)-being’ (Seinkönnen) because its being includes the (existential) ‘possibility of Dasein’s (ontic) inability to be there any longer at all’ (Möglichkeit der schlechthinnigen Daseinsunmöglichkeit). Death as this ‘impossibility of Dasein (existence)’ is as an existential possibility ontically impossible.11 Once the ontic-ontological structure of death is understood, seemingly analytical contradictions dissolve themselves into an existential paradox that explains itself quite easily. Heidegger calls death’s (existentiell) impossibility a ‘demanding, fantastical idea’ (phantastische Zumutung), which is and remains (ontically) unreal. The existential reality of death as something that is always ontically possible, but never ontically real, conditions the possibility of the existential reality of authenticity as something ontically real. I am myself as I envision my self to respond to the loss of myself in the crowd and in physical death. I do so only in the enlightened state of anxiety, which proceeds in so-called ‘moments of vision’ (Augenblick).12 Paradoxically, Dasein rarely is in such state. Dasein’s natural fear of its own anxiety accounts for this dispositional asymmetry. Humans naturally avoid the possibility of their own annihilation. One’s own non-existence is a virtual and conceptual impossibility. Existence is exactly this paradox: its self-assertion in its confrontation with death. In anxiety, where Dasein is not at home, the paradox has its dispositional reality.13 Shades of ontic moods embellish it, but do not cover it up for good. The dispositional υποκειµενον (substance) of anxiety conditions the possibility of authenticity and inauthenticity. In its (in)authenticity Dasein does not just ‘have’ random possibilities to choose from. It ‘is’ its own possibility. It can become what it already is. And because it can, Heidegger says in the voice of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Pindar, it must. The ‘Is” entails the ‘Ought’. Heidegger’s existential-ontological description of human being culminates in an ontic-existentiell prescription. The indicative of his existential analytic speaks with the force of an imperative. The so-called ‘call of conscience’ (Ruf des Gewissens) speaks the words of a paradoxical command: ‘become what you are!’14 The call owes its force to the double nature of Dasein. Dasein ‘is always “more” [existentially] than it is (f)actually (tatsächlich),’ but it can ‘[ . . . ] never [be] more [existentially] than it [already] is factically (faktisch).’ Likewise, Dasein can ‘never be less [ontically] than that which it is not yet [ontically], because this it is [already] existentially.’15 Since ontically Dasein falls short of its existential reality, it remains standing under the call of conscience as long as it exists, that is, as long as its existential possibilities remain ontically outstanding in the double sense of the word, as lacking in excellence, which it can and therefore should achieve. Both the descriptive indicative of Dasein’s reality and the prescriptive imperative of its potentialities comprise the literal and philosophi-

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cal meaning of ‘existence’. The ambivalence of Dasein’s ontic-ontological constitution explains the paradox of the existential imperative. There is always a mismatch between Dasein’s existential-ontological reality and its ontic actualization into real life. Heidegger’s concept of freedom is rooted here. Dasein is fundamentally free to actualize ontically its ontological possibilities. In so doing, it retrieves the existential reality of its authenticity onto the ontic stage of concrete living. This freedom to respond to the existential imperative constitutes the metaphysical nature of Dasein’s being. It is ‘the priority’, as Heidegger says in the language of metaphysics, ‘of “existentia” over essentia.’16 The recognition of Dasein’s double nature as both the They-self of the inauthentic mass and the I-myself of the authenticized individual is Heidegger’s philosophical rendition of a religious truth. If authenticity and inauthenticity condition one another, either mode of being is both the ontological foundation and the existentiell modification of the other (SZ, pp. 130, 259). Both are as existentiales constitutive of human being.17 If neither can be without the other, each is based on the other’s possibility as its own modified reality.18 Thus, I do not see the ‘inconsistencies’, which Zimmerman locates in Heidegger’s concept of in/authenticity.19 Rather, noteworthy in Heidegger’s conception of in/authenticity is the asymmetric ambivalence in Dasein’s double nature. Although both states of being are constitutive of each other, inauthenticity is the dominant mode in terms of chronological time. It quantifies life into measurable units. Authenticity, on the other hand, dominates in terms of an intensification of time. It defies calculation, because moments of vision are without linear extension. They transcend the flow of time. They provide Dasein with a sense of eternity both within and beyond time. As they dissolve the vulgar sense of temporality, they dispense the fear of mortality. Dasein knows itself never totally ‘lost’. It does not rely on a false sense of redemption given once and for all. It recognizes life as a struggle to cope with the existential imperative as it remains entangled in an antagonistic relation with itself.20 Kierkegaard calls the struggle with oneself ‘persistent striving’. Muslims know this task of self-purification toward moral-ethical excellence as ‘jihad’. Absolute salvation is not an option, but an endeavour, a religious task according to biblical teaching. Humans are called to comply with God’s commandments because they are created in the image of God and hence related to God. Their divine origin bears the burden of responsibility to live up to the heritage. Godlikeness is less a gift or privilege, but primarily a duty to fulfil God’s promise of salvation. The existential imperative has its roots here in religious anthropology. Godlikeness seeks confirmation in acts of faith. It is never an achievement upon which one may rest. Acts of faith – performed on the ontic stage of an inauthentic world – actualize the authentic image of God to reveal an existential-ontological reality, a human condition that persists since the time of creation. The philosophical command to ‘become [ontically], what we [already] are [existentially]’, is a corollary to the religious imperative of God’s creation: Humans are called to

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become divine in faith because they are so already in creation – as God’s creation. Human godlikeness is a descriptive prescription, an imperative to become in life what we already are essentially as divine design. The apostle Paul is aware of this call. Heeding it becomes his calling. His Christian preaching speaks with the religious force of the existential imperative. Because ‘as children of divine offspring (Acts 17:29: γενος ουν υπαρχοντες του θεου)’, ‘humans stand under God’s command (30: ο θεος . . . απαγγελει τοις ανθρωποις . . . πανταχου)’ as believers in Christ to live up to this inherited ‘image of God (2 Cor. 4:4: [Χριστος] . . . εστιν εικων του θεου)’. Through faith in Christ this resemblance with God becomes visible as the justice of love and the love of justice. Faith is a reflection of God’s justice (Acts 17:31: κρινειν την οικουµενην εν δικαιοσυνην).

The Pauline Heritage καθ’ ηµεραν αποθνησκω. I die every day. 1 Corinthian 15:31 εν παντι συνιστανοντες . . . ως αποθνησκοντες, και ιδου ζωµεν. In everything we assert ourselves . . . as dying, but behold we live. 2 Corinthians 6:4.9 Despite its brevity, Heidegger’s mention of Christian theology specifically with respect to the apostle Paul in a footnote at the end of section 49 (SZ, p. 249) allows one to suspect a deep influence of Pauline anthropology on Heidegger’s concept of death. A comparison between Paul’s theology of the cross and Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein lays open parallels that originate in Heidegger’s appropriation of Paul’s self-conception of the human being. The apostle Paul offers himself as a valuable source because he admittedly personifies both modes of human being. As Saul, Paul personifies the mode of being of the old and ‘natural’ (ψυχικος) man, the mode of being of the descendents of the ‘first Adam’ (ο πρωτος ανθρωπος Αδαµ) who, like Paul did as Saul, either deny or reject the authenticity of a renewed life lived in the faith in the crucified and resurrected God-man Jesus Christ. Once converted from Saul to Paul, the apostle epitomizes the ‘spiritual’ (πνευµατικος) man, a disciple of the new, second or ‘last Adam’ (ο εσχατος Αδαµ), who recognizes in the potentially fatal authenticity of faith the source of a renewed, uncorrupted, everlasting life (1 Cor. 15:42-49). To make his point Paul cites the Greek poet Aratus to convince the unconverted Athenians of the ‘fact’ that ‘του γαρ και γενος εσµεν’, that ‘we are indeed his (Christ’s) offspring’ (Acts 17:28). If this is so, then this new human ‘species’ of the early Christian era must have distinctive features.

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Christians are recognizable by their faith as a new stance to life. Christian life is lived with the experience of untimely death. Exemplified first in the martyrdom of Jesus Christ and then of the early Christians, Christian faith culminates in the prospect of tragic death. It is an expectation that overcomes the fear of death. Paul is unmistakably aware of this prospect. He has no illusions. This life ends with death (1 Cor. 15:50). His encounters with death resonate with death’s presence in his sick and dying body. The example of his personal situation reveals the human condition. Mortality penetrates the living flesh (σαρξ) of the human body (σωµα). Paradoxically, in its mortality the body bears the possibility of overcoming its own demise of biological death once it becomes the basis for the existential experience of death. A life lived in faith does not overcome the physical experience of death. On the contrary, the overcoming of death proceeds in the conscious experience of it. Faith in Christ instrumentalizes mortality as an avenue to new life. The early Christians adopted the Roman torture instrument of the cross as a symbol that could convey the paradox of the Christian experience. Unconditional acceptance of mortality overcomes the lived experience of death in the radical embrace of its facticity (1 Cor. 1:18.23). Christ’s death entails in the promise also the experience of resurrection to a life uncorrupted by death.21 Again, Paul does not entertain illusions. For him the promise of resurrection is real and already in the process of being fulfilled within the new, Christian life. Once and for all Christ has revealed a reality hidden to the natural world. Faith conceived in utter weakness endows the believer with the strength of eternal life.22 In his faith in the crucified Christ, Paul does not just envision (1 Cor. 13:1-13) – he experiences new life. It is a life that springs directly from his suffering, dying and death.23 The embrace of this suffering24 is as the new way of life the way to a new life. No longer is the question of importance ‘when I die’, but the question ‘how I live’. Such deliberate embrace corresponds to Heidegger’s existential ‘courage toward anxiety in the face of death’ (Mut zur Angst vor dem Tode). Paul’s ‘faith’, his ‘belief’ that death is not the end of a life properly lived but the seed (σπειρεται, 1 Cor. 15:42-44) of a new life, and Heidegger’s ‘courage’ of ‘authenticity’ to recognize death as a lifelong event are both the lived knowledge of liberating experience. They result in a life-giving ‘freedom towards death’ (Freiheit zum Tode), which overcomes the fear of death by affirming its factical reality.25 Such freedom is ‘life-giving’ in the double sense of the word. In it one is free to ‘give one’s life’ as a ‘gift’ and ‘sacrifice’. Readiness to do so results in the ‘reward of a new life’ lived in the imitation of Jesus Christ. The gift of death is the gift of life when given into death. The Pauline faith in God sees truth in this paradox. It is not a belief in some imagined, non-existent world, not the product of an abstract construction of wishful thinking held true with blind insistence against all odds, an illusion fed with desires of urgent longings of immortality, but a reality already experienced, the reality of a new life now in the process of being lived. This new life is lived

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with a new sense of freedom. Paul calls it the παρρησια of faith. Embrace of mortality comes with the courage to say and do what the new believer has not dared to think and do before. In its acceptance of death as a fact of life, faith is free to transcend death’s facticity and engage in never-imagined acts of courage toward God’s peace through divine justice on earth. Paul’s insight into life’s mystery coincides with Heidegger’s death conception. There is life in death insofar as death penetrates life. When Paul writes, ‘ο θανατος εν ηµιν ενεργειται, η δε ζωη εν υµιν’ (death is at work in us, but life in you, 2 Cor. 4:12), his words are informed by the paradox of experiencing immortality in the midst of mortality. His missionary work as God’s apostle is Paul’s service to a different life, to Christ’s peace through justice on earth. Such service is a sacrifice. It carries one’s own death with it in order to bring new life to others. Heidegger’s authenticity takes the place of Paul’s experience of immortality. Both Paul and Heidegger ‘overcome’ the human condition of mortality without undoing it in a process reminiscent of Hegel’s supercession (Aufhebung). The driving force for Paul is humility. Christian life consists in ‘always (παντοτε) carrying in one’s body (εν τω σωµατι) the dying of Jesus (νεκρωσιν), so that also (ινα και) the [new] life of Jesus (ζωη) may become manifest in the body’ (2 Cor. 4:10). This is the paradox. The Christian life dies the death of Jesus. ‘One always lives in such a way that one is given into the death of Jesus for the sake of the truth’ Jesus has lived and revealed through his life (αει οι ζωντες εις θανατον παραδιδοµεθα δια Ιησουν), ‘so that (ινα) in the mortal flesh (εν τη θνητη σαρκι) the [new] life of Jesus (ζωη) may become manifest’ (2 Cor. 4:11). Heidegger calls this self-sacrificial releasement to the mystery of life Gelassenheit (abandonment). Once released to moments of vision, one foregoes the selfnegating destruction, which comes with the egocentric rush of time. When faced with total abandonment, like Christ on the cross (‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me!’), Christians in their humility feel empowered to inherit all that which transcends the transience of this reality. The event of such authenticity brings a self to itself to be(come) what it is. Gelassenheit lets the self be what it is, what it is destined to be, and therefore ought to be, namely, itself. A conquest of death takes place26 into a new life.27 Eternity has this taste of liberation. One is free to stand both in and against this world. The mortality of the dying body reflects this double stance as it transforms itself into the eternity of a spiritual body (2 Cor. 5:1-10; 1 Cor. 15:51-58). The transformation (αλλαγησοµεθα) is the promise of experienced faith.28 It happens here and now (2 Cor. 4:7-12), but is never complete as long as one lives (1 Cor. 13:12). Salvation is a process, not a one-time event. It proceeds with the force of mortality. Inauthenticity of sin is a set-back met by the struggle of faith to bring the believer back on the track of salvation. For Heidegger the transformation is one of authentic being towards death. Paul’s new life of faith corresponds to Heidegger’s authentic existence enriched with moments of visions into the truth of eternal being. The haunting ubiquity of death reveals this truth all the

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time.29 Hence, in his early Christian confrontation with death the apostle Paul proves to be one of the most authentic people who ever lived. His faith is lifesaving in its willingness not to cling to life, but to lose life. This readiness for martyrdom is the Christian conception of Gelassenheit. It understands salvation through redemption. Heidegger’s Gelassenheit is his later explication of his early concept of authenticity. Faced with the inevitable, Dasein can ‘let itself be’ what it has always been, that is, ‘essentially’ authentic. In the face of death the existential imperative speaks with the vision of immortality. To be heeded, the call of conscience must speak a temporal language. However, it does so with the voice of eternity. In its authenticity, Da-sein (as being-there) knows that its ‘truth of existence’ (SZ, p. 308), that is, its truth of being itself, has a place in the Da of its being there. Its future, which has always been, releases from within itself the presence of the past into the immediate present. This experience of temporality is the meaning of Dasein’s being (SZ, p. 326). It carries with it in the midst of experienced mortality a sense of immortality. In authenticity Dasein becomes aware of the reality of transcendence, which in the Judeo-Christian tradition is known as eternity.30

Deeper New Testament Roots Leben ist Tod, und Tod ist auch ein Leben. Life is death, and death is also a life. Friedrich Hölderlin Indem der Tod kommt, entschwindet er. Die Sterblichen sterben den Tod im Leben. Im Tod werden die Sterblichen un-sterblich. As death comes, it vanishes. Mortals die death in life. In death mortals become im-mortal. Martin Heidegger, Hölderlins Erde und Himmel (1959) With his appropriation of Hölderlin’s proposition on life and death late in his philosophical career, Heidegger has closed a circle. Early in his philosophical career, Heidegger was concerned with the Pauline understanding of human existence. This interest was motivated less by religious ambitions than by metaphysical endeavours. Heidegger was driven to write an ontology of human existence that would bring him closer to the question of the meaning of being. By January 1919 Heidegger had, as a student of Catholic theology at the university of Freiburg, finished both his dissertation and habilitation in the field of Catholic philosophy. Although he remained a member of the Catholic Church, he had already left the system of Catholicism to devote himself fully to the task of secular philosophy under the authority of his teacher Edmund Husserl. Religious convictions had become exclusively personal matters for him. Under

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no circumstances could he assume Catholic priesthood. The a-religious science of philosophy, unrestrained by confessional premises, had absolute priority. Here, he was in total agreement with his teacher. This agreement meant a significant shift away from his early student years when he defended Catholicism as a sound and consistent system in total agreement with the absolute truth of the divine.31 During the time Heidegger taught at the University of Marburg, he had regular and frequent contact with the Protestant New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann. During the winter semester in 1923–24 he attended Bultmann’s seminar on Paul. From this time on, the two influenced each other in lectures, seminars and in private correspondence. However, before Heidegger had left Freiburg to accept the offer of a teaching position in Marburg, he had already studied some of the Pauline epistles.32 In the winter-semester of 1920–21 Heidegger gave a lecture course entitled ‘Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion’.33 In this lecture Heidegger explores the early Christian life experience. He looks at the earliest Christian testimonies in the New Testament, specifically Paul’s epistles to the Thessalonians and the Galatians, with a few references to other epistles, where he encounters the direct expression of what he considers to be the conscious experience of factical life seen in its plain historicality. The interest is primarily philosophical. As he puts it, ‘the factical life experience (faktische Lebenserfahrung) is the departure point of the way toward philosophy’ because it is only in this experience where ‘the turning’ (Umwendung) toward philosophy can occur, so that philosophy can ‘return’ (Umkehr) back toward its factical origins.34 The roots and destiny of philosophy lie here because the reality of actuality (Wirklichkeit) is most vividly at work in the factical life experience as the place of genesis and change within and as the passage of time. ‘The historical’ receives its original meaning here as ‘immediate liveliness’ (unmittelbare Lebendigkeit), where nothing is yet covered up by objective history, but everything is plain in its total originality. The experience is so radically new and authentically real that the metaphysical terminology of the philosophical traditions has been bound to failure, being intrinsically unable to grasp ‘the meaning of factical Dasein’.35 Heidegger discovers that the early Christian life experience is distinguished by its naked awareness of a basic feature of existence, its temporality.36 Life according to this factical experience is seen in its enactments (Vollzug), not in its contents (Gehalt). It is marked by the sense that it is never completed but always in the process of its completion. In reading Paul, Heidegger comes across a strong, though unclarified sense of temporal life, a sense that was widely shared in early Christianity, the awareness that neither a general chronological prediction nor a detailed description of human existence could objectively define the Christian factical life experience. Paul informs Heidegger of an experience whose description is beyond chronological objectification. The Christian factical life experience lies beyond objective history

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(Objektgeschichtliche) as it is completely immersed in history in its original sense of enactment (Vollzugsgeschichtliche).37 Heidegger realizes that genuine religious experience is a lived experience. To put it in Sheehan’s words, he realizes that Christians perceive themselves in ‘factually historically enacted situation[s]’ that refuse to ‘be numbered according to before and after’. Their ‘religious situation . . . is enacted historically.’ This ‘vollzugsgeschichtliche Situation’ is a ‘phenomenological phenomenon’. It ‘is only accessible through . . . performed or enacted understanding (vollzugsmäßiges Verstehen)’,38 an understanding that comes with the Christian faith. Intrinsic to the Christian faith is the awareness of life’s finitude. The Christian affirmation of finitude brings life to the point of an actual communion with Christ. The community with Christ consists in the everyday experience of death. ‘Faith is dying with Christ.’39 The light of the Christian faith in the living God (1 Thess. 1:9-10f.) overcomes the darkness of the fear of death (1 Thess. 5:4f.) and with it also the destructive consequences of the facticity of death. Thus, death is the entry ticket into a lived community with Christ, and the earthly version of eternal life. It would go almost without saying that the Christian notion of a victory over death (1 Cor. 15:54-55) does not spare Christians the experience of death, if the παρουσια-expectation of Christ’s return did not also feed just such hope of rapture before the factual occurrence of the physical death event (1 Cor. 15: 51-51; 1 Thess. 4:14-18). Possible non-occurrence of death’s factuality, however, does not erase its facticity. Death remains an intrinsic Christian reality despite all such expectations.40 Christian life remains a struggle (Kampf).41 There is no relief of its restlessness. Constant insecurity in factical life is not coincidental but essential and necessary to the Christian experience.42 Heidegger is fascinated by the paradoxical message of the Christian faith. The experience of a life fulfilled is unique. It can be had only in the total experience of utter facticity (1 Thess. 5:1-28; 2 Thess. 1:3-12). Perfection is had through imperfection. Eternity shines through mortality. This Christian paradox of salvation through surrender finds its way into Heidegger’s concept of death. The spiritual dissolution of the fear of death does not dispel death. Death is not a factual, life-ending event, but a lifelong factical condition. It does not end life but conditions life to the possibility of authentic life. The Christian life lives to its fulfilment its authentic being-towards-death. It is here, in the Christian conception of death where Heidegger first traces the meaning of being.43 The lived experience of Christian faith consists of deeply felt affections that become its dispositional make-up. With “tribulation” and “joy” (θλιψις and χαρα) Christians attest to the meaning of their being. This dispositional condition is the Christian identity. For Heidegger it is so essential to human existence that it becomes his fundamental condition of anxiety. The early Christian experience speaks through fundamental human dispositions and, by doing so, attests to a notion of primordial temporality. Heidegger sees in the Christian disposition a fundamental force that generates time. He explains, ‘Christian religiosity lives temporality as

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such’ in the sense that ‘the Christian experience lives time itself’. ‘To live’ is here to be understood in the transitive sense of generating the time of factical life through the intrinsic involvement in its enactments.44 Temporality is the modality in which God is present to the human being. For the Christian believer, God is present in the plain factical life experience.45 The Christian experience of facticity makes manifest a fundamental sense of historicality (Geschichtlichkeit). To be historical means having fate and being aware of it. Christian death-consciousness understands the fatefulness of existence as a factical condition. Its confrontation with life’s finitude conditions the possibility of assuming responsibility for past, present and future possibilities.46 There is no escape from it. Christians ‘remain’ (Erharren, αναµενειν, 1 Thess. 1:10) responsible in this fundamental and original sense.47 As Sheehan puts it, ‘one has this kind of “understanding” [only] by taking risks, trying things out, “projecting” them.’48 To do so despite death’s factual uncertainty in the midst of the reality of its factical certainty is the source and manifestation of faith. Heidegger is fascinated by the early Christian experience of existence as something unobjectifiable, factical and historical. In the experience of life’s originality (Ursprünglichkeit) Heidegger has found the place where philosophy has both its onset and destiny because the ‘originality of the absolutely historical [is] in its absolute unrepeatability’ the source of a ‘more original conceptuality’ (ursprünglicherer Begrifflichkeit). Philosophy consists in this step back (Rückgang) into the primordially historical (Ursprünglich-Historische) where it is more than obvious that and how mortality conditions the life situation of the particular individual who in the ‘I-ness’ (Ichlichkeit) of his and her ‘I’ (Ichliche) lives the time of factical life through the enactments of its pressing imminence.49 The experience of mortality is essential to temporality as the place where God’s presence is felt in the restlessness, uneasiness, anxiety and dangers of early Christian daily life (Rom. 5:3-5). Vulnerability is key to the Christian experience and the voice behind the call of Heidegger’s existential imperative,50 which has its religious equivalence in Christ’s divine call to become his disciples, to follow his path in pursuit of his cause. In Jesus Christ, God’s call (κλησις) is and remains out there in the world (2 Thess. 1:11) to be heeded by those (1 Cor. 1:26) who have the courage and stamina to become and remain (µενετω, 1 Cor. 7:20) God’s ‘eclectic’ people (εκλεκτοι, Rom. 8:33), the ‘(s)elected’ (κλητοι) few who demonstrate worthiness of the Christian cause (Rom. 8:28).51 The response to this call is the beginning of a new life (καινη κτισις, Gal. 6:15), conceived by courage, born by anxiety and endowed with a hitherto unknown freedom toward death (SZ, pp. 254, 266). This new, authentic life (ζωη) continues to be lived whenever the call is heeded. It is the substance of immortality, visible only as the ‘salvation’ (Heil, σωτερια) of authenticity as which time stands still in moments of vision to ponder over the meaning of being.52 Such new life ‘is’ real in its uniqueness only in so far as one ‘has’ it, that is, as it is lived with all worldly consequences of distress, resentment and need.53 Ontologically

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hidden in metaphysical darkness it is accessible first and only ontically in the early Christian experience.54 In its historical originality, the temporality of Christian living is intrinsically related to God’s eternity. Only those who live this kind of life know of its lasting value. ‘For you yourself know this with certainty’ (αυτοι γαρ ακριβως οιδατε) Paul reassures the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5:2).55 Heidegger reiterates that this knowledge rests on the new life (ζωη) of those who are thus, in this process of faith being saved (σωζοµενοι) to preserve and enrich their new life.56 To live ‘now’ (jetzt, το νυν) in the present of Christian facticity is the ‘temporal’ fulfilment of promised eternity.57 The promise of immortality is met whenever and wherever its proclamation (Verkündigung) ‘remains alive along with it’ (immer mitlebendig dableibt).58 The comparison of Pauline theology with Heidegger’s philosophy brings to surface parallels between the Christian experience of faith and the concept of authenticity. With his concept of authenticity, Heidegger has secularized the new life of Christian faith. The Christian self-conception of death instrumentalizes death for the transcendence of death. Death is the key to a new life. In anxiety the Christian makes use of this key. ‘Why am I in peril every hour?’ Paul’s rhetorical question bears the key to the Christian mystery (µυστηριον, 1 Cor. 15:51) of resurrection (1 Cor. 15:30). There is no life without death. The authenticity of resurrection costs the price of mortality. In his anxiety Paul is acutely aware of this truth of Christianity. For this truth, Paul exclaims emphatically, ‘I die every day!’ (1 Cor. 15:31). Anxiety conditions both faith and authenticity as both respond to life’s unpredictabilities. Anxiety authenticates. A self authenticated has seized on opportunities of self-realizations. Shortcomings fuel anxiety. Since one always lags behind what one could do and be, the existential imperative calls us relentlessly. Christians heed the call with a new way of living and a new sense of freedom. An unpolished freedom of speech speaks uncompromisingly backed up by actions that testify to a new courage to be. Paul captures this new experience in his concept of παρρησια. Παρρησια is fearless self-assertion of faith.59 Natural fear is still real. The living flesh (σαρξ) still clings to life in its concern for itself. For Paul σαρξ is therefore both the medium and metaphor of sin (Rom. 6:12f.; 7:5f.). The guilt of falling short is the sin of inauthenticity. Christians respond to this all-too-human weakness with a self-defence device (Rom. 6:1-14). Humility accepts temporality. It sees in temporality the power of creating the eternal reality of the divine. Heidegger secularizes this recognition of ‘giftedness’ (ελαβες, 1 Cor. 4:7) into the state of Gelassenheit. Abandoned to the human condition Dasein is released – away from hubris to the modesty of simple being. The disposition of anxiety ‘opens a space for authenticity’ to heed ‘the call of conscience’ to come ‘to grips with its own facticity’. Herein lies the meaning of mortality. One’s own passing-away is not just an inevitability, but a possibility. It enables the individual to face finite temporality with both the prospect and the experience of immortality.60

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Secular self-absorption is a sin for Paul (1 Cor. 15:32-34). Heidegger stays away from moral judgements of the inauthentic. Nevertheless, it is difficult not to sense a moral division in his distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity. Heidegger presents his distinction in highly evaluative terms.61 The inauthentic urge for absolute self-control is at odds with the impossibility of self-mastering temporality. Paul’s kairological insight into the lasting value of authentic life defies the objectification of life into the chronological order of a linear biography where death appears, if at all, only postponed, and is never seen as a real possibility conditioned by facticity, which conditions all of existence. Heidegger’s kairos is the Augenblick that opens the eyes for authenticity in ‘moments of vision’ where Dasein retrieves its forgotten immortal self, unlost and undispersed, secluded from the They, liberated into an actualized authenticity from its inauthentic compulsion of self-possession. Paul, too, speaks of the kairos as a liberating moment where a new, eternal life begins in Christ to leave behind the sinful hubris of absolute self-control.62 With his concept of authenticity Heidegger has secularized the Christian faith. He has demythologized faith to the bare roots of existence. Rudolf Bultmann’s interpretation of Pauline theology provides further evidence of the Pauline influence in Heidegger’s thinking.

The Evidence of Bultmann for Paul’s Influence on Heidegger Martin Heidegger’s existentialist analysis of human existence seems to be only a profane philosophical presentation of the New Testament view of who we are. Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology The New Testament theologian Rudolf Bultmann has recognized the Pauline influence on Heidegger’s thinking. He sees in Heidegger’s thinking not only a philosophical accomplishment but also a theological opportunity to pursue his programme of demythologization. For Bultmann, the continued relevance of the New Testament depends heavily on the translation of the Christian message, couched in mythological thinking, into conceptions of the modern world. Bultmann sees in Heidegger’s existential ontology a means to realize the task because it is, as we have seen in Heidegger’s own treatment of Pauline theology, motivated by the New Testament self-conception of the Christian believer. Heidegger’s philosophy captures fundamental traits of human being as they present themselves in the New Testament. Although they are embedded in an ancient mythological worldview and caught in forgone conceptions of man and world, Heidegger manages to express the early Christian experience of human existence in secular terms. Bultmann is thus justified to employ key concepts of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology to tackle the theological task of

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retrieving the core message of New Testament myths for his own time. In order to relate the knowledge of faith couched in ancient cosmological and anthropological conceptions intelligibly to the technological mindset of the modern scientific age, Heidegger’s existential analytic does Bultmann a great service. The theologian John Macquarrie recognized this interdependence between Heidegger’s philosophy and Bultmann’s theology. In his book An Existentialist Theology he compares Bultmann’s theology with Heidegger’s philosophy.63 By doing so Maquarrie re-conceives the Christian faith in terms of Heidegger’s existential analytic. He unveils Heidegger’s concept of authenticity as the practice of faith in one’s ownmost possibilities. A closer look at Bultmann reveals the affinity between the two thinkers. Bultmann embraces the existential analytic of SZ because it rests on tenets of the Christian faith. The existential imperative is one of the core messages. ‘The New Testament,’ Bultmann says, ‘also sees that man can be only what he already is’ and that therefore ‘the authentic life [of faith] is possible only because in some sense it is already a present possession.64 Bultmann deliberately speaks Heidegger’s language when he recognizes the importance of death for faith. Thus, he emphasizes that ‘[i]ndeed, faith is identical with th[e] readiness for dread, for faith knows that God encounters us at the very point where the human prospect is nothingness, and only at that point.’65 Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone, and not by works of the Law, is based on this particular Pauline insight into the nature of faith. ‘[H]umanity . . . is [however] null without God, . . . [it] is open to God only in the recognization of its nullity.’ Each man is therefore placed ‘before a decision – the decision as to how he wants to understand himself: as one who wins his life and authenticity by his own resources, reason and actions or by the grace of God.’66 For Paul, and by extension Bultmann, the Law is a trap. It lures humans into the hubris of a self-assertive, god-like self-mastery of life. ‘The New Testament’, however, Bultmann says, ‘addresses man as one who is through and through a self-assertive rebel who knows from bitter experience that the life he actually lives is not his authentic life and that he is totally incapable of achieving that life by his own efforts.’ That he tries to gain absolute selfcontrol nevertheless proves that ‘he is a fallen being.’67 The New Testament comes to the rescue out of this predicament with its claim that authentic life is indeed possible but ‘only when man is delivered from himself,68 from his temptation to self-destruction out of his compulsion to self-possession. Heidegger offers a similar, but nevertheless fundamentally different solution with the clearing (Lichtung) of Gelassenheit (releasement) as Dasein’s response to the ‘guilt’ of its ‘fallenness’. For Heidegger the external force of God in Jesus Christ falls out of the existential-ontological picture. The salvation of authenticity is for Heidegger, too, indeed a gift, but a gift of nothingness, and not of God, and thus, it appears to be a process of self-salvation. For Bultmann the redemptive response to sin’s guilt of fallenness happens as a ‘gift to the man who has fallen to his knees before God’.69 Christian

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recognition of human fallenness is crucial. It happens in humility. It is here in this humble admission of guilt where and how the Bible speaks directly through the course of history into the present as if it spoke for the first time. The human nature of temporality does not change in time. The biblical language couches the notion of an imperative to freedom in the talk about ‘the work of the Holy Ghost’.70 God’s revelation is an ongoing eschatological process through which Dasein is urged to accept its temporality. An acceptance forbids the fixation of God as an objective entity. God’s revelation in the life of Jesus is not finished with the end of this life. It is not an act accomplished ‘once and for all’.71 Paul’s ‘εφαπαξ’ in Rom. 6:10 means precisely this that ‘it does not mean the datable uniqueness and finality of an event of past history, but . . . in a high degree of paradox . . . such an event of the past is the once-and-for-all eschatological event, which is continually re-enacted in the word of proclamation.’72 The eschatological event, which began with Jesus, ‘is always present in the words of men proclaiming it to be a human experience.’73 Precisely because the Christ-event has happened ‘once and for all’, salvation through it is not an event once and for all but can and therefore must be reinitiated through the persistence of faith in its truth, which thus continues to be revealed. In the same fashion, Heidegger’s authenticity is not had once and for all but is regained repeatedly through the power of recollection. Recollective self-appropriation retrieves the authentic self from the state of forgetfulness where it was lost in the They. Bultmann has been ‘willing to learn from Heidegger’74 just as Heidegger has learned through him from Paul. The historical uniqueness of the Christian situation is disclosed in the understanding of the Christian faith as an ‘issue of decision’.75 Faith is the paradox ‘that the eschatological process which sets an end to the world became an [ongoing] event in the history of the world.’ The event continues to occur ‘in every true sermon, and in every Christian utterance.’ Thus, Bultmann can claim that ‘Christ is not a past phenomenon, but the ever-present Word of God, expressing not a general truth, but a concrete message.’76 The concreteness of the Christian message has nevertheless universal claim but one that is highly personal. It denies historical objectification. There is no guarantee for faith to be an objectively true reality for all to see. If there was, faith would and could not be an issue of authentic decision.77 Bultmann draws direct support from Heidegger’s Dasein-analysis of the early Christian life experience for his own existentialist interpretation of Pauline theology. In one of his replies to his critics Bultmann states Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis of empirical existence as selfcontained and self-resolved in Being towards death does not debar anyone . . . from the existential venture. Rather, it shows that the existential venture is always personal, and it clearly emphasizes the appeal . . . ‘to selfhood, to authenticity, to actual being, to a sinking into the original, historical facticity

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(Sosein), in order to be appropriated – the appeal to earnest questioning in a hopeless situation.’78 Bultmann calls this appeal in Paul’s words the hope of faith that ‘points toward the future’ because it relies on the new self-understanding that, as the relationship to God, ‘righteousness’ is the goal of faith (Gal. 3:11; Rom. 1:17). Justice is always both, already here as the call of an imperative already heeded by its believers into the indicative of the new life of faith, and it is still ahead as the future promised to the believer while the old world continues to persecute the reality of that promise (Gal. 5:5; Rom. 5:1). Faith is thus understood as a struggle. Bultmann captures this present-absent-ness of righteousness in his concept of the ‘eschatological Now’.79 It is only to the believer, who dares to uphold the truth of the message of Jesus Christ in word (through understanding and proclamation) and deed (through its immediate translation into direct action), that the end of history up to the eschatological event of Jesus Christ on the cross and in the resurrection has arrived and continues to arrive in his and her continuing present. The effect of this concrete experience of faith is a total transformation of one’s self into a state of truthfulness. Heidegger calls it authenticity. For Heidegger, too, the appeal to selfhood is grounded on the present-absent-ness of authenticity. Voluntaristic attempts to be authentic lead directly into inauthenticity, just as faith cannot fulfil itself with an ambitious work ethic. Authenticity occurs only as a gift in moments of vision when the call of conscience throws Dasein back into the facticity of its temporality conditioned by the presence of death as the central aspect of Dasein’s existence. Heidegger’s descriptions of inauthenticity coincide with Bultmann’s conception of New Testament sinfulness. Bultmann’s ‘eschatological Now’ encountered in acts of faith corresponds to Heidegger’s concept of authenticity, which is actualized in moments of vision.80 We have seen that there are limits to the mutual agreement between Heidegger and Bultmann on Paul. Bultmann sees in Heidegger’s courage to face death in authentic resoluteness still the sinful act of self-assertion because to him the exclusion of the notion of God opens the door to the possibility of self-salvation. For Heidegger, regaining lost individuality is, however, a human affair. Authentic being is a natural disposition of humanity. Divine intervention is not at work here. Bultmann, on the other hand, although he concedes that faith is indeed the disposition of genuine humanity, points out that the New Testament speaks – in the Bultmannian sense of the eschatological event in the kerygma – only to Christian believers who humbly acknowledge their total incapacity to release themselves from their fallen state. Thus, Bultmann restores the authority of God. Only the act of God can grant deliverance from the human plight.81 For Heidegger the restoration of the true self is, although highly personal, not a formal-religious but a secular-human matter. He is not interested in the practice of confessional religion, but in the fundamental

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understanding, the self-conception of human existence. As a theologian, Bultmann speaks about the conditions of the possibility of divine-human interaction that lead to salvation. Heidegger, on the other hand, intends to provide ontological insights into the nature of human existence that can bring him closer to the question of the meaning of being. With his concept of Gelassenheit, he comes closest to the Christian ethic of humility. Gelassenheit opens the space of the human encounter with the divine. However, the divine is never personalized into a deity, but operates with angelic forces that inspire the poet with songs of ontological truths to illuminate humanity with the meaning of being. Consequently, in his later years Heidegger’s language becomes less metaphysical and more poetical.

Heidegger’s Incomplete Conception of Dasein as a Communal Dasein Greet one another with a holy kiss. 1 Cor. 16:20 Dasein [ist] überhaupt durch Jemeinigkeit bestimmt [ . . . ]. Dasein is characterized by mineness. SZ, p. 43 Dasein ist Seiendes, das je ich selbst bin, das Sein ist je meines. Dasein is a being which is in each case I myself; its being is in each case mine. SZ, p. 114 When Heidegger secularizes the Christian faith into his concept of authenticity, one essential quality gets lost. The loss has political consequences. Paul is writing to congregations he has founded. His letters are admonitions directed against immoral forces of an unethical world. Catalogues of virtues characterize the new Christian life. A community ‘which by its very nature does not belong to the world’ bonds together in friendship.82 Central to the intimacy of this kind of friendship is Christ’s presence in the Christian life. The experience is had only when it is shared. Sharing, however, is a community-founding act. What gets shared is the experience of a community that is the presence of Christ by virtue of dispositions constitutive of factical life as which the daily religious encounter can take place. Love, joy, peace and suffering construct the Christian reality (Gal. 5:6. 22). They unite followers to a fellowship-community.83 In faith, Dasein reveals its communal dimension as a church. The word derives its meaning from its Greek source ‘εκκλησια’. The Greek literally refers to those who are ‘(s)elected’, ‘called together – out of’ the many unwilling to listen and respond to God’s call with an active recognition that the teachings of Jesus contain

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lifesaving and life-giving power. The call is heeded with the admission of moral-physical weakness. Humility accepts the weakness with the result of a willingness to live by the strength of the uncontrollable. The need for support becomes obvious. It opens up a new life lived for one another (1 Cor. 10:33b).84 Fellowship of suffering liberates the sufferer from the loneliness of suffering to communal comfort. To the Christian believer the experience of community is crucial. Christ is present in its experience of liberation from isolation.85 It is here where Heidegger and Bultmann part company. Like Bultmann Heidegger recognizes the experience of isolation in the loneliness of suffering. Unlike Bultmann he sees in isolation through suffering a principal, almost exclusive condition for authenticity. Authenticity is first an individual mode of existence. Authentic communities are less likely to occur. Indeed, Heidegger conceives of Dasein as a fundamentally social being. As a being-towards-others Dasein must be seen in the context of a plurality of Daseine who together form some type of community into which every Dasein finds itself thrown as a beingwith-others. However, Heidegger is suspicious of social settings in general since in them he sees the breeding-ground of anti-individual forces that unite themselves in the They (das Man) against individual uniqueness and greatness to unfold its so-called ‘dictatorship’ over the individual. The inconspicuous control of each by the many is as a dominion by anonymous others (Herrschaft der Anderen, SZ, p. 126) in fact performed by everyone over everyone. No one is excluded from this covertly tyrannical rule; all participate in it both as victims and perpetrators. The fact that an authentic individual can emerge from inauthentic submersion in the mass has its roots here. The fundamentally social quality of Dasein as Mitsein conditions the possibility of its variations including individuation understood as authenticity via the escape from the crowd. There is one event in life that secures authenticity against one’s own will via the forced separation from others. Most are unwilling to face death voluntarily. Naturally, it is death, which pays most an unwelcome visit. One says, death is coming. In its approach death asserts its silent presence in life to reveal itself unannounced. When it does so, one is severed from others. One knows one is dying, by oneself, all alone. Death individualizes; it affects the whole of existence exclusively. The sudden death-encounter foreshadows the possibility of the unimaginable, the non-existence of oneself. The confrontation with an impossible experience, with the experience of the impossible and with one’s own non-existence haunts Dasein into authenticity. It authenticizes the particular individual to its ownmost self. Thrown back to itself, Dasein is stripped of its relations into its absolute mineness. Overwhelmed with itself in the face of the unimaginable extinction of itself, Dasein assumes the highest degree of mineness. Anxiety (Angst) is its self-recognition. It individuates Dasein to its self. In this exclusivity Dasein is uniquely itself. Thus we see how in Heidegger’s philosophy the subjective event and phenomenon of death conditions authenticity first and foremost as an existential-ontological reality of the individual, a reality,

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which is always present as an ontic-existentiell possibility. The individuated Dasein is no longer part of a crowd. The social-ethical implications of authenticity as a property of the individual for a community of fellow-Daseine are not explored by Heidegger. Ironically, despite the highly evaluative associations that accompany Heidegger’s concept of in/authenticity, ethical questions are consciously, yes, even forcibly,86 excluded from what Heidegger considers to be a purely non-evaluative, ontological examination of existence.87 His ethical neutrality excludes objectifying premises. Dasein is neither a thing present-at-hand (vorhanden) nor ready-to-hand (zuhanden), although both conceptions have been applied to human existence by the metaphysical tradition, in science and in politics. For Heidegger both Dasein’s non-presence-at-hand and its nonreadiness-to-hand are essential to the core of its being.88 The ethical neutrality in Heidegger’s thinking clashes with the judgemental language used to conceive of in/authenticity. The tension reveals Heidegger’s own presupposition. His eclipse of the ethical obscures the need for it. The non-ethical reveals a fundamental apoliticism that is prone to unwise political moves. For Heidegger there are no ontological principles for the ontic pursuit of a political cause. Yet Heidegger’s ontological thought has an ontic side in real life that he cannot ignore. The political currents of history challenge his ontology and put it to the test. His involvement in National-Socialism is a self-indictment. The lack of an ontological ethic is a political trap. The mineness of in/authenticity has moral implications. Unexplored they leave Dasein vulnerable to political exploitation. Heidegger’s political moves transform the individual subject of Dasein to a communal subject of a nationalsocialist fabric, which portrays Dasein’s lostness in the organized collective as the salvation of a resolute authentic whole with the destiny of a redemptive history. Here Heidegger reveals his preference of authenticity to inauthenticity despite declarations that suggests otherwise.89 Shortcomings such as these cannot hide the fact that Heidegger has managed to do what Kierkegaard deemed impossible. His existential analytic proves to be an existential system comprised of existentiales with care as the fundamental constitution of Dasein’s being and death as that moment in Dasein which is constitutive to the totality of Dasein’s being.90

Implications and Consequences Im Erklingen des Wortes (Verkündigung) werden Kreuz und Auferstehung Gegenwart, ereignet sich das eschatologische Jetzt. Rudolf Bultmann, Neues Testament und Mythologie In the sounding forth of the word (proclamation), cross and resurrection become present and the eschatological Now takes place. Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology

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He who hears my word . . . has eternal life. John 5:24 Das Rufen der Sänger is ein Hinausschauen zur Unsterblichkeit. Martin Heidegger, Hölderlins Erde und Himmel The calling of the singers is a looking out to immortality. Martin Heidegger, Hölderlin’s Earth and Heaven The intrinsic connections between Heidegger’s philosophy and Paul’s theology cannot hide the difference between the two. The universal, yet individualistic description of the factical life experience of human temporality in Heidegger differs from Paul’s theological imperative, which speaks in concrete terms of ecclesiological encouragement to the communities of the early Christian church. Paul tries to convince his fellow-believers of the kairological paradox of eternal salvation in the eschatological Now in the midst of human mortality.91 Heidegger’s description of communal Dasein is insufficient. He associates communal aspects of human existence almost exclusively with inauthenticity. The collective is the primary place of inauthenticity. It threatens the integrity of the individual. The conditions of the possibility of an authentic community are unexplored. Despite these shortcomings, we can draw important conclusions for the exploration of the existential-ontological connections between language and death, which pertain to the foundation and meaning of human existence. For to Heidegger this has been always clear; words speak with their original force ([ . . . ] Wörter [werden] wieder Wort) when they remain faithful and attached to the birthplace of their origins (Ort uralter Eignis) to which mortality ‘calls’ (ruft) the human being like (Sterbliche eignend dem Brauch) the pealing of silence (Geläut der Stille), which is the silent tolling of the bells of language.92 When Heidegger ignores the pealing of silence, he puts the existentialontological exposition of history of Chapter 5 in Division Two of Being and Time to the test in his collaboration with National Socialism in 1933.93 This brief period of overt political engagement was driven by naive political blindness rather than fundamental philosophical convictions. Here I agree with Graeme Nicholson when he says ‘that Heidegger was betrayed by hubris that his mere words could transform National Socialism.’ Nicholson contends that this hubris is not ‘a weakness or failure of Heidegger’s philosophy’94 but a problem of his personality. Others read Heidegger more critically. Karl Löwith sees in Heidegger’s affiliation with National Socialism a direct consequence of a tacit conversion of Dasein from an individual into a communal entity already at work in Being and Time but complete and explicit in the Rectoral Address.95 Division One of Being and Time and Division Two up to the fifth chapter focus on Dasein as an individual being as being-in-the-world, being-with-others and being-toward-death. It is not until Chapter 5 of Division Two that we finally run into some collective sense of Dasein where Dasein is explicitly viewed in its

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communal setting. If Dasein as being-in-the-world is essentially being-withothers that shares a common past with its fellow beings, then its individual fate (Schicksal) must somehow translate into the destiny (Geschick) of its respective community (Gemeinschaft), or Volk. How exactly this would work remains unclear in Heidegger’s philosophy. The transition must occur with the ‘hero’ who is chosen by the individual for the collective. The individual struggles with the choice for those whose accomplishments once furthered the community, accomplishments, which, even if historically without effect, can be retrieved from the past for present and future possibilities of the community (SZ, pp. 385, 386). Individual fate (Schicksal) can thus mutate into collective destiny (Geschick, SZ, p. 384). The difference between the individual and the collective remains categorical. A community cannot die as individuals do. There is no imminent threat of a (factically) certain (factual) uncertainty a community could face as an individual does. Factual death events usually affect the individual not a whole community. In the rare cases where this does happen, we recognize it as a political (e.g., genocide), natural (e.g. earthquakes) or medical (epidemic) catastrophe, not an exclusively personal or individual tragedy. Although extreme geographic, historical and political conditions can threaten the existence of a whole people or a community, it is not possible for a country to ‘die for me’,96 as it is possible for an individual to die for a country. That death individualizes can be said of an individual only, not of a people, although history teaches that deadly threats to a community, even if only imagined or constructed by propaganda, can unify the community to a collective whole in self-defence. In both cases, individuation as well as unification, we have instances of authentification. There is an authentic community Heidegger envisions. It is the (small) community of friends, which not only preserves the individual but also enhances the individuality of each for the sake of all. Such a community stands and falls with the contemplative conversation (geselligen Besinnung) of the direct dialogue (Gespräch) that is an apprenticeship in the craft of thinking (Handwerk des Denkens) which invites everyone to become thinkers and poets to pave the way for an emerging master (Meister).97 The individual choosing a hero or becoming one in collaboration with others may be such a case. There are turning points in history where such authentification may apply even to a greater collective. A people can indeed restore, reform or define their identity in situations of crisis. Rediscovering the past in deliberate acts of recollection (Wiederholung) to envision a future cultural history may lead a people to a new destiny (Geschick). The early writings of the German intellectual Ernst Jünger may be seen as such an attempt of national self-restoration. His piece Total Mobilization, published in 1930, was read by Heidegger.98 Together with his war novel The Storm of Steel, first published in 1920; however, it glorifies war as a total work of art put on the world stage to overcome the decadence of European nihilism, but is, in fact, an expression of it. The aestheticization

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of the horrors of death as an experience of ‘cosmic significance’99 expose the wilful deliberation to authenticize human existence by force of a deadly struggle fought for the greater being of a people that faces the loss of its values. ‘Germany lives and Germany shall never go under!’ are the final words of the novel authored by a man who heroically fought an epic war of 4 years and continues to believe himself and his comrades ‘entrusted with the true and spiritual welfare of our people.’ By standing ‘for what will be and for what has been’ Jünger pictures himself as both the hero and the individual choosing his hero for the sake of his people.100 What stands behind this celebration of the ‘wondrous’ ‘spectacle’101 of global and merciless102 warfare, waged for the aim of replacing the lost heroisms of the ancient myths, is a desperate resoluteness that stands in contrast to the later Heidegger’s Gelassenheit, as the condition of the possibility of authenticity. We are more likely to find a depiction of such a disposition in Erich Maria Remarque’s World War I novel All quiet on the Western Front, first published around the same time as Jünger’s essay, in 1928.103 Like Jünger’s work, this book too is an authentic piece of writing to the extent that it is born out of first-hand experience. In contrast to Jünger’s work, however, it dispenses with glorifications of the terrible. Instead, it paints a picture of total devastation, which can no longer admit heroic illusions and romantic falsifications of death. Death is seen as a primarily individual experience whose personal ramifications are so destructive in the violent context of war that it affects and destroys a whole generation. The preface makes it plain. The book ‘will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.’ It is precisely the historical uniqueness of the novelty of global and total warfare that led to the writing of the book. Ten years after the end of the war Remarque was still trying to come to terms with the indescribable in order to understand what had happened to him and millions others. This is the point on which Heidegger’s existential philosophy hinges. The urge ‘simply to tell’ points at intrinsic connections between language and death. Language discloses what death conceals. This connection motivates Heidegger. Death’s factical reality drives humans into speech to overcome the nothingness of the concealments, which loom from death’s factuality. Death’s facticity transcends its factuality. The connection is a driving force in language and continued language evolution. The Christian experience, which is captured in the proclamation (κηρυγµα) of the ‘word’, illustrates the same point. The promise of continued individual existence through the kerygmatic fellowship with Christ lies in the relentless re-experiencing of the eschatological event that is continually re-enacted in the proclamation of the word. In one respect the Bible is not much different from other books. It is motivated by the intention to speak to the individual, repeatedly, as if for the first time in order to extend past experiences and to recollect passed events for continued re-experience and continued re-enactment. However, unlike other books, it does so with the

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promise and gift of salvation. With SZ Heidegger secularizes this promise for the everyman, notably with his concept of authenticity. The yearning for immortality is constitutive of human existence. Existence strives beyond itself. Its desire to immortalize motivates words, works, and deeds; it generates language as the source and residue of all actions. Through language the individual seeks to replicate itself in its relation to others. This is the struggle, which Muslims call ‘jihad’ and Christians know as Kierkegaard’s ‘persistent striving’. Humanity strives toward the ‘truth of subjectivity’. The ‘subjectivity of truth’ has the ‘particular individual’ as its ultimate ‘subject’. The urge to self-replicate through events of authenticization in the face of imminent annihilation unites humanity into a linguistic community as the place of ontological survival.

The Existential Nature and Ontological Origin of Language Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstückelt Geprägte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt. Nor any time nor any power can shatter Imprinted form growing from living matter. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Urworte, Orphisch: ∆ΑΙΜΩΝ (translation based on John Whaley)104 We shall now move into the next chapter to look more closely at the existentialontological aspects of Heidegger’s language theory. In doing so, we shall detect a linguistic-ontological connection with death. If it is true that for Heidegger possible non-existence conditions humanity’s linguistic existence, we should be able to detect an account of language origination in Heidegger’s theory of language that connects language with death. The next three chapters are devoted to an existential-ontological understanding of Heidegger’s conception of language. In the third chapter I will rely on Being and Time rather heavily. I shall nonetheless allow myself excursions to other writings where necessary. I will discuss the question of the ontological status of language. In doing so, I will show why Heidegger must conceive of language as an existential entity, and why language can nevertheless, and most often is, understood as an equipment that serves the purpose of information transportation carried out in acts of communication. The recognition of the ambivalent nature of language is important for the extrication of a Heideggerian account of the origin of language. This account must begin with Heidegger’s existential conception of language in order to get a full grasp of the ontological nature of language. This being said, it follows that I will contend (a) that Heidegger operates with a particular theory of language origination (Chapter 3), (b) that, more specifically, Heidegger provides definite answers to the

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question of how language emerges and evolves on the existential ground of human being (Chapter 4) and (c) why there is language at all, that is, why language appears in ‘cohabitation’ with human existence only, and not otherwise (Chapter 5). These three issues surround the question of the nature of language. I shall address them in the subsequent three chapters in order to reveal a linguistic-ontological link with death, that is, an existential-ontological connection between language and death, upon which Heidegger’s thinking strongly, although largely inexplicitly, operates. The words of Goethe foreshadow the conclusion, which is intrinsically at work in these three chapters. Language is not an artificial construct based on the dead ‘matter’ of human inventions, but an organic whole, which has grown with time from the living matter of the human body.

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Chapter 3

Heidegger on the Origin of Language in Being and Time1

Das Werk der Sprache ist die ursprünglichste Dichtung des Seins. The work of language is the most original poetry of being. Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘Introduction’ to Heidegger’s The Origin of the Work of Art2

Language and Being Gadamer’s words capture Heidegger’s conception of language well because Heidegger says the same in so many different ways. That language is the work of being becomes manifest in its works of being. Language is most productive and alive in its attachment to its original source. Heidegger’s ontological conception is in tune with the Judeo-Christian tradition where the word is seen in its divine origin as both life-giving and life-saving. According to Genesis 1, God creates the world with the divine word. More specifically, the New Testament teaches that the Christian discipline of discipleship consists in the imitation of Christ. In its vision of immortality such practice of faith lives a paradox. Immortality is had in mortality. Crucifixion conditions resurrection into salvation. Enriched with the wisdom of this mystery of life, the Christian experience perpetuates itself through its own proclamation. It consists in the persistent repetition of itself, the continued reproduction of the eschatological Now throughout history. The word of salvation becomes the salvation of the word. Born from a redemptive historical struggle, the Christian message proves itself a source of redemption. Informed of the Christian salvation experience through Paul and Bultmann, Heidegger produces his own story of immortality through language. The humility of Gelassenheit opens the space of authenticity. Here language is free to speak its poetical thoughts in thankful recollection (Wieder[-]holung) of what is, has been and can be. In moments of vision, language (re-)generates itself into the salvation of poetry. For Christians the social context for salvation is the church community of εκκλησια, which provides the courage to martyrdom into sainthood.

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For Heidegger the social context of authenticity is the solitude with being. Here Dasein meets and becomes itself poet and singer to enter a community of friends where dialogue (Gespräch) continues the redemptive process. Language responds to death, which provokes humans to speak and dispel the threat of nothingness that looms in death. The New Testament kerygma of resurrection through the word reappears in Heidegger as the language of the poet and thinker. Here, in their origins, in the proximity with being, which is induced through a confrontation with death, words have their source and the force of immortality. ‘Das Rufen der Sänger ist ein Hinausschauen zur Unsterblichkeit’, says Heidegger in his later essay ‘Hölderlins Erde und Himmel’:‘The singers’ calling looks out and forward to immortality’.3 With these words in 1959, Heidegger closes the circle he began drawing in BT. Language has its origin in the encounter with being, an encounter that is induced by the experience with death. In what follows, we shall see in detail how Heidegger has envisioned the divine powers of language, in particular emergence, evolution and motivation of language. In BT Heidegger addresses the question of the origin of language as a purely philosophical problem (see, for example, Paragraphs 32–35). His discussion is based on a wilful re-appropriation of the classical ancient Greek definition of man as ‘ζωον λογον εχον’ (living entity that talks). The more familiar Latin definition of man as ‘animal rationale’ (rational animal) promotes a one-sided emphasis on the human capacity to reason. The Greek perspective, by contrast, characterizes humans primarily by their ability to speak (reden). The implications of this re-definition of human nature can be more fully appreciated within Heidegger’s framework of the phenomenon of discourse (Rede). Discourse is the pre-linguistic articulation of the intelligibility of human existence (Dasein). The world, comprised of things ready to hand, constitutes the totality-of-involvement in which existence obtains meaning. Units of meaning correspond to entities and their relation to each other as well as to Dasein. Dasein owes its meaningful integration into the complex structure of the world to discourse. Since the world as a totality-of-significations constitutes an essential part of Dasein, the world is patterned in articulated units of meaning. According to Heidegger, as words accrue to these significations (wachsen zu), language appears as the linguistic manifestation of discursive understanding. Discourse, as Heidegger defines it, is an innate potentiality for language. It is Dasein’s pre-linguistic state of understanding its own being in the world. As such discourse is the necessary and sufficient condition of the possibility of language. The apparition of language then turns out to be a primordial act of organic creation motivated by the drive to disclose existence in the act of communication. Consequently, Heidegger says In significance lurks the ontological condition that enables Dasein, as something which always understands and interprets [itself and its world], to

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disclose such things as ‘significations’, which themselves in turn are the foundation of the possible being of word and language. (SZ, p. 87)4 What follows is an exploration of the ontological condition for the existential possibility of ontic language.

The Phenomenological Description of Human Existence as Dasein Heidegger’s most important philosophical work Being and Time is a profound and thorough investigation of the nature of human existence. His work, however, must not be misunderstood as some kind of psychological, biological, anthropological account or any other sort of specialized scientific treatment of the question of ‘what man is’ (SZ, pp. 45ff.). Heidegger considers his investigation to be more fundamental than all of these scientific approaches. He claims with his work to have delivered a philosophical account of the question of human being. Philosophy, according to Heidegger, is universal phenomenological ontology (SZ, pp. 38, 11f., 27f., 35, 37). As such it precedes and is the foundation of all other sciences. It is primarily concerned with the question of the meaning of being. This fundamental ontological question can be properly addressed only by those entities who pose the question of being which in turn is the reason why the method of inquiry necessarily has to be a phenomenological one. That is to say, the meaning of being is conceived only through and within the nature of human being. Human nature appears to be a fundamental disposition that can be avoided neither in philosophical nor in scientific thinking. This essential feature of unavoidability has another side. It proves to be a necessary condition of the fundamental inquiry. Without it, no access to the realm of being would even be available. The philosophical method of phenomenology takes this inevitability of the presupposition of the human nature into account. It looks at the ontological conditions of human existence because they reveal the foundations of human nature. It is in this sense that Heidegger considers his account in Being and Time a fundamental ontology. Fundamental ontology is primarily concerned with the phenomenological analysis of human existence. Its ultimate concern lies in a response to the question of the meaning of being. ‘Dasein’ is the philosophical term that Heidegger has chosen to refer to human existence in this fundamentally ontological sense. Its literal meaning ‘being-there’ serves as a first explication of the nature of human existence. Dasein is first and foremost being-in-the-world. The term is coined to signify Dasein’s fundamental structure and constitution. Only within a world can Dasein unfold its being. Were there no world, Dasein would not exist and vice versa (SZ, pp. 45, 52ff.).5 If it is true that Being and Time provides a so-called existential analysis of Dasein (SZ, pp. 12f.), such a fundamental analysis of

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human existence must necessarily approach and touch upon the question of the nature and origin of language. This is indeed the case. However, Heidegger does not simply engage in an uncontroversial repetition of the self-evident claim about human nature according to which ‘man’ is commonly defined as a ‘rational animal’ whose capacity to reason finds its unique manifestation in language. He both affirms and rejects this ordinary definition. To understand such a re-appropriation of the widely shared philosophical description of the human being as a rational animal, it is indispensable to take a closer look now at how Heidegger undertakes this double procedure.

Discourse and Language Heidegger indeed repeats the claim about the rationality of human nature. However, this repetition is based on a much more profound and original understanding of the term ‘rationality’. He goes back to the Greek root of the Latin phrase. The Latin phrase ‘animal rationale’ has become the source of the traditional philosophical understanding of the uniqueness of human nature founded upon rationality. As a definition it has become common sense. The sense of the Greek original, however, does not exclusively focus on the narrow interpretation of human endowment with rationality. The Greek original refers to man’s being, that is, to Dasein, as the ζωον λογον εχον. Its literal meaning is not restricted to the narrower Latin sense of humans as living beings who have and are distinguished through their capacity to reason. Heidegger’s wilful re-appropriation of the original philosophical definition makes this clear:

The later way of interpreting this definition of man in the sense of the animal rationale, ‘something living which has reason’, is not indeed ‘false’, but it covers up the phenomenal basis for this definition of Dasein. Man shows himself as the entity that talks. (SZ, p. 165)6 The Greeks did not have a separate word for language. This accounts for the one-sided focus of the traditional interpretation of the philosophical definition of human nature on the meaning of reason and rationality for λογος. The full sense of λογος is recollected in its verbal cognate λεγειν. Heidegger sees in ‘λεγειν . . . the clue for arriving at those structures of being which belong to the entities we encounter in addressing ourselves to anything or speaking about it’ (SZ, p. 25).7 Our practical and theoretical encounter and dealings with entities in general, including ourselves, is not determined, nor grounded by the potentiality for the concrete expression of language in the empirical sense of vocal utterance. It is not the utterance of vocalizations that is most unique to human beings but their ability to discover the world and Dasein itself (SZ, p. 165). Such a discovery goes hand in hand with the establishment of a totality of significations. Dasein’s world is a meaning-ful world, a world made up

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of significations. It is an organized complex of entities that bear fundamental practical and theoretical relations to each other. These relations comprise a pattern of references that make up and structure Dasein’s world. The fundamental significance which the world has for Dasein is the basis for the possibility of language. Significations to which words refer are impossible to have without a significant order that Dasein discovers in and as its world.8 This ability to comprise a world by addressing ourselves to and speaking about the entities we encounter (SZ, p. 25)9 is what Heidegger calls Dasein’s ‘potentiality for discourse’ (Redenkönnen). Discourse is more fundamental than the phenomenon of having a language. Heidegger sees in discourse the necessary condition for the possibility of language. His interpretation of the Greek phrase ζωον λογον εχον makes exactly this point. To him the phrase refers to ‘that living thing whose being is essentially determined by the potentiality for discourse’ (SZ, p. 25).10 Heidegger draws a fundamental difference between discourse (Rede) and language (Sprache). Discourse is the existential-ontological foundation of language (SZ, p. 160). Language is the ontic, that is, concrete empirical manifestation of its ontological root. In a way, discourse may be considered to have two sides. Both its ontic and ontological side belong and refer to the same phenomenon. What has already been articulated in discourse finds its vocal proclamation in the expression of words. Such a concrete enactment in language has the character of speaking. ‘The λογος (discourse) [becomes and] is φωνη (voice), namely φωνη µετα φαντασιας—a vocal utterance filled with insight and meaning’ (SZ, p. 32f.).11 Such meaningful utterances are instances of language. Language is discourse expressed by being spoken out in words (SZ, p. 161).12 We call this ontic expression of discourse language. Heidegger summarizes the ontological relationship between the two in the following way: ‘Discourse is existentially language’ (SZ, p. 161).13 He can even be more concise and simply say that ‘[discourse] is language’ since ‘for the most part, discourse is expressed by being spoken out, and has always been so expressed’ (SZ, p. 167).14 In order to develop a full understanding of what has so far been said, the following questions need to be addressed. If discourse distinguishes human existence from other living beings, what exactly is discourse? Moreover, if discourse is the ground for linguistic expression and speech, what initiates the process of its transformation into language? Furthermore, we need to point out what language is in contrast to discourse. Is it possible to highlight the emergence of language through a detailed description of the process of the transformation of discourse into language? In order to fully clarify the distinction and the relationship between discourse and language, I will introduce three key concepts that Heidegger uses: the concepts of Interpretation (Auslegung), Assertion (Aussage) and Communication (Mitteilung). Each of these concepts contributes to Heidegger’s eventual conclusion that language is an inevitable outcome of Dasein’s sociability.

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Dasein as Interpretation ‘Interpretation’ stands for the German ‘Auslegung’ which literally means ‘laying-out’. Something can be laid out only when it is already understood. According to Heidegger, Dasein, indeed, has a fundamental understanding of its own existence. It has an understanding of its own world in which its being unfolds itself under the concrete conditions of human existence. The type of understanding (Verstehen) that characterizes Dasein must neither be mistaken with acts of cognition nor with epistemological achievements that result in knowledge. The phenomenological meaning of understanding refers to a pre-epistemological state of awareness in which the facticity of existence is disclosed to Dasein. The basic condition of human existence is determined by this fundamental self-awareness in virtue of which a whole world becomes ready to hand (zuhanden). This world is meaningful for the sake of (umwillen) Dasein’s being in this world. The circumspection (Umsicht) of Dasein’s concern (Besorgen) for itself transforms this understanding into common sense (Verständigkeit, SZ, p. 147) in which the whole world appears familiar to us as a totality of significations (Bedeutungsganzheit). Each entity turns out to bear manifold relationships to other entities. The referential totality (Verweisungsganzheit) is of essential practical significance (SZ, p. 69f.). Dasein understands its world through a context of involvements (Bewandtniszusammenhang) of one thing with another. Such an understanding of the world’s expediency is fundamental to the being of Dasein. Expediency and usefulness are discovered and developed for the sake of a possibility of Dasein’s being in this world (SZ, p. 84). Dasein’s understanding lays out (auslegen) the world according to the projective nature of its understanding which discovers the world through a structure of serviceability and usability. The world is discovered as a complex context of assignment relations (Verweisungsbezüge). Each instance of involvement is built upon the structure of the ‘in-order-to’ (Um-zu) relationship (SZ, pp. 68ff., 84, 148f.). Entities are encountered as fulfilling the purpose of furthering the flourishing of human existence. The project (Entwurf) of understanding is always aimed at this goal of protection, survival and human flourishing. The purposeful ‘toward-which’ (Wozu) of things ready to hand (zuhanden) is ultimately directed to the ‘for-the-sake-of’ (Umwillen) the ‘being of Dasein, for which, in its being, that very being is essentially an issue’ (SZ, p. 84).15 When Dasein encounters and discovers its world through its projective understanding, this understanding comes to itself. Dasein appropriates (zueignen, SZ, pp. 148, 158, 160) what it has implicitly understood and makes it explicit (ausdrücklich), not in the sense of a linguistic assertion, but in the sense of making that which is understood manifest by taking it apart (auseinanderlegen) with regard to its structure that is patterned by in-order-to relationships. This transition from the inexplicit (unausdrücklich, SZ, p. 157) to the explicit

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understanding is what Heidegger calls interpretation (Auslegung). The type of interpretation Heidegger is aiming at is the concrete and pragmatic act of understanding some particular thing as something particular. Interpretation is built upon the as-structure through which something is understood as something. This is why interpretation is rooted existentially in understanding and not vice versa. The kind of understanding that may be considered to arise from interpretation is knowledge that results from abstract and theoretical thinking. Interpretation of this kind is an epistemological act of cognition. This is not what Heidegger has in mind when he talks about Auslegung (SZ, pp. 148f). Interpretation, in the Heideggerian sense, makes explicit what16 understanding has already seen inexplicitly. What is implicitly understood in understanding is made explicit in the life-long and existential process of interpretative articulation. However, interpretation itself has yet to be expressed. Both understanding and interpretation are the pre-predicative seeing of things ready-to-hand (SZ, p. 149).17 Such seeing is not yet expressed linguistically (ausgesprochen), but it is made expressible (aussprechbar) through interpretation in which the predicate to be assigned to the entity is made to stand out. The predicate is loosened from its unexpressed and inexplicit inclusion in the entity to which it is to refer (SZ, p. 157).18 Interpretation thus lays out the reference structure of entities that now become explicit in the manifest articulation of their understanding (SZ, p. 149).19 When understanding becomes explicitly patterned through the articulation of an as-structure, it is interpretation. ‘The “as” makes up the structure of the explicitness of something that is understood.’ It makes up the explicit structure of understanding as interpretation. Thus ‘it [the “as”] constitutes interpretation’ (SZ, p. 149).20 The first step in the process of understanding is that we see, for example, things like a chair as a chair-like thing. We understand it to be a chair through its use, that is, by the act of sitting on it. The recurring discovery of things like a chair, the discovery of the whole world through the constant encounter of things, solidifies and strengthens such initial and immediate understanding. This stabilized understanding consolidates itself into interpretation. We now see things ready-to-hand as a chair, as a table or as a door. Such explicit understanding of the world through interpretation still lies before the linguistic explicitness (expression) of any assertion (SZ, p. 149).21 Interpretation endows understanding with an as-structure and thus articulates explicitly what is already inexplicitly understood without articulative interpretation. Interpretative articulation makes understanding explicit on an existential level. On the ontic level of language, however, it is still linguistically unexpressed (SZ, p. 149).22 The act of articulation through interpretation constitutes what Heidegger identifies as discourse (Rede). ‘Discourse,’ says Heidegger, ‘is the articulation of intelligibility’ (SZ, p. 161). Interpretative articulation of understanding takes place as discourse. When we interpret our world, we understand it explicitly. Such explicit understanding is manifest in and as discourse. Discourse is the act

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of an understanding that has come to and thus understands itself as interpretation (SZ, p. 148).23 We have seen earlier that discourse as interpretation is the root and the origin of language.24 However, it still remains to be seen how exactly discourse and language are linked to one another. If discourse itself has its ontic manifestation in language, the transformation from the ontological level of discourse to the ontic level of language must be described.

The Assertion as the Path to and the Realm of Language It is in section 34 of BT where the phenomenon of language is explicitly addressed in its relation to discourse. However, simply to observe and to state with Heidegger that discourse is language, because language is the linguistic expression (Ausgesprochenheit) of that which has already been understood and interpreted as an explicitly laid-out impression of Dasein’s understanding of itself and its world does not explain how and why such an intelligibility expresses itself linguistically (spricht sich aus) and is ‘put into words’ (kommt zu Wort). How and why is it that ‘words accrue to’ (wachsen Worte zu) significations of Dasein’s intelligibility (SZ, p. 161)? To answer this question, we have to go back to Heidegger’s notion of interpretation and recover the full impact of Dasein’s interpretative activity. More precisely, we now have to turn to a ‘derivative mode of interpretation’ (abkünftiger Modus der Auslegung) which Heidegger calls ‘assertion’ (Aussage). Interpretation is a pre-linguistic existential part of the existentiality of human existence,25 since it ‘is carried out . . . in . . . action[s] of circumspective concern’ where the use of words is not necessary (SZ, p. 158). However, such ontic derivations of word-formations, which correspond to entities laid out in interpretation, from these same acts of interpretation, that is, word creations based on the correspondence to entities and actions encountered and rooted in the activity of interpretation, lie within the scope of existential-ontological modifications of interpretation (SZ, p. 150).26 What has been modified in such a modified interpretation is the fact that with the process of word-creation, interpretation has assumed the existentiell-ontic form of language. It has become expressed (ausgesprochene) interpretation. Thus, it is no longer ‘just’ explicit, that is, laid out in and as interpretation (Aus-legung) but also spoken out and spoken forth in and as assertion (Aus-sage). The cause, source, path and consequences of this linguistic transformation now have to be delineated (SZ, p. 157).27 The ontological origin of assertion is interpretation. Interpretation is in turn rooted in concernful circumspection (besorgende Umsicht) of understanding where every thing is first encountered and discovered as equipment (Zeug) ready-to-hand (zuhanden). The assertion objectifies those entities to objects (Gegenstand) of statements. It abstracts from the entities’ a priori characteristic of

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equipmentality (Zeughaftigkeit, SZ, pp. 68ff.) by no longer using them as (als) tools with which (womit) to perform tasks which concernful understanding (besorgendes Verstehen) makes us do. Assertion merely looks at them as things present-at-hand (vorhanden) about which (worüber) one can now converse with other people. The equipmental structure falls out of the focus of concernful understanding of circumspective interpretation (umsichtige Auslegung). Subjected to conceptions of assertions, equipment loses its original pragmatic function of practical expediency. It is now primarily perceived through the presence of its properties (Eigenschaften) with which one tries to come to terms. It has been reduced to a mere thing. Heidegger calls this transformation a ‘changeover (Umschlag) in the fore-having’.28 It can be further specified as a changeover from equipmentality to thinghood (Dinglichkeit), from readiness-to-hand of equipment (Zeugzuhandenheit) to constant presence-at-hand of mere things (Dingvorhandenheit, SZ, p. 99), from usefulness to whatness (das Was). To be more precise, what has been changed is the as-structure of interpretation. The change-over takes place from the existential-hermeneutical or primordial ‘as’ of interpretation to the apophantical ‘as’ of assertion which points at the thing which has thus become the focus of theoretical interest. Things are now no longer understood in their primordial practical serviceability but viewed as isolated objects of theoretical, that is aesthetic, scientific or philosophical consideration.29 Three main meanings of assertion have thus come forth and can now be identified with the following functions: (1) indexicality, (2) predication and (3) communication. All three features are at work together in each assertion. An assertion points out an entity (Aufzeigung) by virtue of the entity’s properties attributed to this entity by the use of predicates (Prädikation) which designate the character of the thing thus identified (Bestimmen) and now ready to be conveyed by way of its newly defined identity to others (Weitersagen) that share (teilen) similar interests in the same thing (Mit-teilung).30 To be assertion, assertion cannot remain on the level of mere apophantical predication. The third feature of assertion, communication (Mitteilung), is necessary for the decisive move onto the theoretical level of language. As communication, assertion becomes an act of speaking forth (Heraussage). In fulfilment of communication, assertion is always expressed linguistically (ausgesprochen). However, how is such a transformation initiated? By virtue of interpretative discourse, Dasein is disclosed as being toward the object of interpretation talked about in discourse (Sein zum Beredeten der Rede, SZ, p. 156). In the derivative mode of interpretation, that is in the intentional act of assertion, this mode of being toward does not get lost. On the contrary, it continues to determine Dasein’s way of being as a being toward that which is pointed out (Sein zum Aufgezeigten) in the assertion. Since Dasein is primordially being-with (Mitsein), it can invite, entice or simply make others assume the same mode of being toward the object in question. Dasein thus shares (teilen) its

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own being toward the object with others. The object is now seen through the eye of the common perspective (Mitsehenlassen) of a shared being toward this very object. Assertion in this sense is sehendes Miteinanderteilen, a mutual sharing with one another that sees. It is here where the literal meaning of the German term ‘Mit-teilung’, a meaning that is not immediately evident but that can be recovered from the English translation ‘communication’, comes into play in Heidegger’s philosophical account. Mit-teilung is a sharing of that which is seen in the centre of discursive interpretation with others. It is a mode of being-with-one-another and as such an existentiale (Existenzial) of Dasein. Communication is motivated by its tendency to bring those who listen into the same participation in a disclosed being toward the object laid out in interpretative discourse. Such discourse cannot help but express itself, since it is communication (SZ, p. 156).31 When Dasein expresses itself out of its drive to communicate, language is spoken (SZ, p. 156).32 Language emerges in the realm of assertion as an existential constitution of Dasein, which as a being-with is driven to communicate.33

Conclusion: Why and How There is Language All discourse is articulated understanding, and all understanding is dispositional understanding (befindliches Verstehen, SZ, pp. 133, 142, 144, 148, 160f.). What is understood is Dasein’s disclosed being in the world. The structure of discursive articulation achieves its explication through interpretation. Discourse as such is thus always explicit but not yet expressed. Discourse structures the intelligibility of Dasein’s being-in-the-world in a significant way.34 It discloses significations (SZ, p. 87). Discourse is always talking about some particular thing(s). It is always focused on and concerned with some specific entity (Beredetes). However, anything that can be talked about in discourse is always already talked to (angeredet) in some definite way. To some extent it has already been interpreted. Since Dasein is essentially being-with, such interpretation can become the theme of an assertion. However, not everything that is understood and interpreted will be expressed in an assertion. In most cases it will not. In assertion, the phenomenon of communication becomes expressively manifest. Dasein is never isolated by itself. It is as being-with co-dispositional (Mitbefindlichkeit) co-understanding (Mitverstehen) and as such it is the understanding of itself as a being-with (Verständnis des Mitseins). Such a Dasein-with (Mitdasein) shares the disclosure of its existence with others in communication. In the literal sense of sharing its disclosed existence, communication is a constitutive structural moment of discourse. The tendency of making-known (Bekundung) Dasein’s disclosedness is a structural element of discourse. Discourse has the character of self-expression (Sichaussprechen). ‘In talking, Dasein expresses

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itself’ (SZ, p. 162).35 This self-expression is the linguistic manifestation of the dispositional understanding of Dasein’s existence. Since Dasein is essentially its disclosedness (SZ, p. 133)36 and since this disclosure is truly understood only as a disclosed being-with-one-another, Dasein’s self-expression cannot help but assume the ‘factical linguistic form of language’ (faktische Sprachgestalt). Through language the existential element of discourse, communication, takes ontic shape. In and as language, discourse achieves its ontic realization in the form of linguistic expression. The existential need for and the purpose of the disclosure of existence, which is an existence always shared with others, is satisfied and achieved by virtue of shared communication. Such an existentially shared need must inevitably trigger the process of the generation of language. What is expressed in language is best and most authentically understood when it comes closest to the primordial act of original appropriation of entities (ursprüngliche Zueignung des Seienden) through the respective interpretation in discourse (SZ, p. 168). The act of appropriation is the place where the original struggle of word creation takes place. Only an understanding that is most familiar with this struggle comes closest to being authentic and genuine understanding (SZ, p. 169).37 The totality of Dasein’s discursive structure, however, is never completely expressed in language and never even comes close to such an expression. Verbal expressions are just linguistic pieces cut out from the unfathomably rich source of discourse.38 Hence, in the ongoing process of language evolution, the human adventure of world discovery continues to take place. The initial equipmental appropriation of the world into a network of interconnected objects is subject to repetition, reformation and restoration. The world never remains the same but continues to change in its rediscovery through ever new encounters. The readinessto-hand, through which things first show up as equipment in the circumspective concern of Dasein’s discourse, may shift. It may even give room to what the later Heidegger then calls the ‘thinging of things’ (Dingen der Dinge) as which entities can present themselves to the contemplative state of Gelassenheit where the original encounter with the thing itself gets reinitiated into a rediscovery of the world to be the groundwork of continued poetical word compositions which we know as the silent dialogue of the language of thinkers and poets.39 To summarize, interpretation (Auslegung) and assertion (Aussage) provide the groundwork for the explanation of the emergence of language. These two phenomena permit the conceptual and linguistic structures that are entailed by language to emerge. Heidegger identifies the phenomenon of communication (Mitteilung) as a type of being-with (Mitsein) in which the transition from discourse to language takes place. Mitsein, Dasein’s fundamental disposition to sociability proves to be the ultimate ground on which language develops. What has been said in this chapter does not explain how words actually come to be. However, the account offers an explanation of why and how there is language at all. The need for language is an existential need rooted in the

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constitution of Dasein’s being. Dasein as understanding, interpretation and discourse is a social being, a being-with that is fully realized in all its existential aspects only by virtue of communication through language. This fundamental need is first and best satisfied in onomatopoetic word formations, that is, in creative and linguistic imitations of what is primordially encountered in the continuous existential act of interpretation of and discourse with the world.40 To put it in Heidegger’s poetical words: ‘[Man is]/. . . Being’s poem,/just begun, [ . . . ].’41

Chapter 4

The Legacy of Herder in Heidegger’s Language Origin Theory How Heidegger Ontologized Herder

aber dies habt ihr all vergessen, daß immer die Erstlinge Sterblichen nicht, daß sie den Göttern gehören. gemeiner muß, alltäglicher muß die Frucht erst werden, dann wird sie den Sterblichen eigen. but this all of you have forgotten, that the Firstlings never belong to mortals first, that they always belong to the Gods. the fruit must become more common first, must become a daily fruit, then it will become the mortals’ very own. Friedrich Hölderlin, ‘Aber die Sprache . . .’ Mich erzog der Wohllaut Des säuselnden Hains Und lieben lernt ich Unter den Blumen. I was reared by the soothing sound of the whispering grove And under the flowers I learnt to love. Friedrich Hölderlin, ‘Da ich ein Knabe war . . .’ In the previous chapter, I showed that Heidegger operates with a specific theory of language origins. The goal of this chapter is to elucidate the way Heidegger conceives of word emergence and language evolution. A comparative reading of Herder and Heidegger brings insight to this question. I shall show that Heidegger’s notion of the equiprimordiality of disposition and understanding is grounded in Herder’s holistic concept of the human being as a ‘thinking sensorium commune’. These conceptions of dispositional thinking will prove to ‘clear’ the way to onomatopoetic word-formation to bridge the gap between

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internal and external language. Hölderlin’s words quoted above foreshadow the conclusion. In their origins, (Erstlinge) words and language do not stand under human command. On the contrary, as long as humans are in tune with nature and dwell in the world, they stand in divine correspondence with language. As soon as humans assert control over language, they misunderstand the nature of language and begin to destroy it. Heidegger says as much in one of his last written pronouncements on language with respect to the rise of computers in our dealings and workings with language in March of 1976.1 In contrast to the widely accepted linguistic (mis)conception of language as a means and tool (equipment) of communication understood as intersubjective information transportation, Heidegger posits his highly nuanced existential-ontological conception. Human world interpretation ‘lays out’ reality (Auslegung) in ‘pre-linguistic terms’ (articulation), namely, in terms of discourse (Rede) that is not yet language (Sprache) in the ontic sense of sign and speech but conditions it. How this happens is a mystery. The comparative reading of Herder and Heidegger, which follows, will bring light to the puzzle. Although different in their terminology, it is no coincidence that both thinkers treat the question of language origination similarly. The riddle’s key, Heidegger’s concept of the equiprimordiality of disposition (Befindlichkeit) and understanding (Verstehen) on one hand and Herder’s holistic concept of the human being as a ‘thinking sensorium commune’ on the other reveals Heidegger’s hidden dependence on Herder. For Herder, humans are through and through sensuous beings. Their capacity to reason consists of the concentration of all their senses into one state of focused attention (Besonnenheit) where the distinguishing feature (Merkmal) of a thing is linguistically transformed into a distinguishing word (Merkwort) for possible future recognition of and reference to the thing in what thus has become a distinct human world, Herder’s ‘Merkwelt’.2 Herder’s explanation of the process of onomatopoetic mimesis provides a basis upon which to interpret Heidegger’s claim that an understanding (Verstehen) never occurs without a particular emotional state (Befindlichkeit). In essence, emotions act as catalysts of the process of word-creation, thus bridging the gap between discourse and language.

Prelude: Setting the Stage for Bridging the Gap Before I proceed to disclose in full Herder’s influence on Heidegger, it is necessary to take a step back and set the stage on which a comparison of the two thinkers can take place. The provocation with which this chapter will be read and the rejection of my claims that may follow force me to dispel any premature suspicions by doubters of the Herder–Heidegger connection from the beginning. I shall do so by drawing direct support from specific Heidegger passages, which often remain notoriously underappreciated.

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Let me first speak to the popular attack Heidegger continues to endure to this day, especially by those who do not even make serious attempts at understanding his philosophy. One has to be neither a Heidegger-hater nor an apologist to know that Heidegger saw himself as the spiritual leader in and of a time of political crisis in which Nazi Germany launched its catastrophic drive to national self-assertion on the global stage. 1933 and 1934 were crucial years. The rectorship at the University of Freiburg and the texts and speeches produced during that period suffice to implicate Heidegger in National Socialist politics. Whether Heidegger had similar ambitions in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland is much less evident. By then Heidegger had receded from active politics, which is not to say that he had become apolitical. His silence about the devastating events around him is nevertheless conspicuous. 1939 happens to be the same year in which Heidegger taught his Herder seminar. The co-occurrence of these events alone, however, is not sufficient reason to reject ‘atemporal’, ‘ahistorical’ and ‘apolitical’ interpretations of that text for their alleged failure to allude to the imperial aggression of Nazi politics. Neither is the fact that the historical circumstances did not even enter the seminar discussion sufficient reason to discount the charge of Heidegger’s implication in Nazi terror. Much more would have to be said once one enters the political stage. A discussion addressing the issue seriously would necessarily change the purpose, nature and direction of the present investigation.3 It is also evident that the charge of political incorrectness can always be made in principle in the context of Heidegger whenever Nazi politics is not part of a Heideggerian discussion. Many promising discussions have run into dead ends because of such ideological restrictions and conditions. Such a charge can be made on principle with respect to any philosophical discussion as long as imperial politics remain unaddressed in connection with whatever philosophical discourse is taking place. The question whether the political ought to condition any philosophical discourse is indeed worthy of discussion but is not the aim of this analysis. These comments should suffice to make the reader aware of the larger context within which the following discussion takes place. In what follows, I do not say that Heidegger’s discussion of language as presented in SZ amounts to a language origins theory. What I claim is this: Heidegger’s conception of language as presented in SZ can only make sense on the basis of a Herderian conception of language origins. Heidegger’s theory of language origins must be pieced together from other writings because he did not lay out such a theory in SZ, which in itself does not mean that he did not rely on such a theory in SZ. On the contrary, a quick look at the tri-partite fore-structure, the ‘fore-having’, ‘foresight’ and ‘fore-grasping’ will confirm my contention. In the context of Herder the concept becomes self-evident. The lack of a treatise on the origin of language does not necessarily mean no such conception was and is at work in Heidegger’s philosophy. However, we need to address the question of why Heidegger did not present a coherent theory of language origin in SZ if it is

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true that such a conception was at work in his composition of the sections on language, specifically his brief one paragraph outline of the fore-structure of understanding. Let me offer the following three reasons: (1) In its initial composition, SZ was an ontological sketch, basically an unfinished work in need of further explication promised in subsequent compositions. That promise was made at the end of the introduction in § 8 (SZ, pp. 39–40). (2) One reason why an extended treatment of language emergence did not make its way into SZ may well be because at this stage of his thinking Heidegger considered a detailed exploration of such a question the work of ontic sciences such as Linguistics and Anthropology. In fact one of Heidegger’s criticisms of Herder, expressed in the 1939 seminar, supports this conjecture. There, Heidegger says Herder, like the rest of the metaphysical tradition, lacks the ontological stance necessary to conceive of the origin of language properly, namely, ‘existential-ontologically’ as the workings and doings, that is, the active presence, of being. (3) The ontological status of the word is significant. The word is ontologically ambivalent. It is both of ontic and ontological reality. This double nature brings us closer to the source of language emergence, the enigmatic transition from the ontological to the ontic sphere of human existence. The ontology of human existence, its existential existentiellness and existentiell existentiality hinges on the word and vice versa. The word has its origin in human being, in the human connection with being. Its existential-ontological origin is (of) human being. In its inception the word is embodied by force of comportmentality. The human body speaks (the language) of being by lending it the voice of its empirical presence. This ontological ambivalence is reflected by Heidegger’s treatment of the question of language origins. On one hand the question is and will always remain an ontological mystery.4 However, it is a question of continued philosophical attention. On the other hand one can illuminate the darkness, though never exhaustively, yet at least sufficiently, to the extent that a satisfactory account of wordformation can be given. Word-formation can be treated ‘poietically’ in the literal and metaphorical sense of the word. Heidegger’s later philosophy equates philosophical thought with poetry. Denken becomes Dichten when it approximates being to capture its meaning. It is true that the motivation behind Herder’s essay is in a fundamental sense not philosophical enough for Heidegger. However, the fact – and Heidegger’s recognition of it – that Herder’s essay does not bear on the question of the meaning of being does not disqualify Herder as a substantial source for Heidegger’s understanding of language emergence. Despite Herder’s

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ontological ignorance, Heidegger believes that Herder was on the right track, that he was onto something without realizing it. And that is why Heidegger (a) does not tackle the question of language origins in SZ but (b) takes Herder seriously, nevertheless – silently as in SZ, and explicitly, as in the 1939 seminar. Herder’s novel ‘sense’ of hearing, Heidegger says, inadvertently and unbeknownst to Herder himself, brings Herder in touch with the silent word of being. Herder thus manifests an ontological sense that ‘scents’ the silent presence of being without yet explicitly recognizing it. Through this ‘scent’ being works itself into its clearing through Herder’s empirical findings. This is how Heidegger reads Herder. What Heidegger explicitly acknowledges in 1939, he may well have discovered much earlier. In fact, the resemblance of terminology already in SZ suggests that the philosophical influence was already at work then. Herder’s literary and poetic vocabulary resonates strikingly with Heidegger’s philosophical terminology already in SZ. Herder has moved beyond and away from the reifying treatment of language. In its origins, language is not just – and never primarily – an object used for communication, not an equipment ready-to-hand for the purpose of information transportation, not a thing present-at-hand to be subjected to scientific examination, but rooted in being itself it emerges via the dispositions of human being from the center (clearing) of human existence. Language is of the kind of Dasein, of human being, and must henceforth always be seen in this ontological ambiguity. Because language is essentially akin to Dasein’s being, it can function as a communication tool and thus be of interest to the questioning mind. Heidegger’s elliptic response to the question posed in SZ (p. 166) (of) what type of being language is must be understood inclusively once the existential-ontological nature of the origin of language is understood. In fact, Heidegger has already answered the question earlier when he speaks of language as ontic speech as which ‘discourse has a “wordly” being of its own.’ As this ‘innerwordly entity’, it may be and always is also dealt with as ‘a thing readyto-hand’, which can furthermore be ‘broken up into word-things presentat-hand’. These ontological distinctions are reminiscent of de Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole but of course not the same. Regardless of the linguistic and informational functions language assumes, it is always already existentially rooted in discourse and thus fundamental-ontologically of the being of Dasein (SZ, pp. 160, 161). Heidegger does not disregard the ontic sciences. His interest in them is based on a philosophical insight he points out in § 9: What is ontically closest and most familiar is ontologically farthest away and highly unknown. Thus it gets constantly overlooked in its ontological significance (SZ, p. 43). Language is a paradigmatic example that illustrates the problem. Nothing is closer to us than the words and language we speak. Yet the more they are used, the more words lose their meaning through the process of semantic bleaching via habituation and become schematized elements of the grammar. Ultimately, these most

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frequent words like ‘the’ and ‘of’ are the most difficult for us to define. Linguists have recognized this as a process by which language is continuously grammaticized. In Herder, Heidegger recognizes a philosophical mind of his kind, one who has overcome the ontic familiarity of language to look at its existentialontological roots. Heidegger shares the novelty of conception. He does so by conceiving of both language and the human being in their nativity. His phenomenological conception is devised to understand how in its earliest encounters with the world the human being provides the stage for language to come into being. This is why I disagree with Hannah Arendt’s judgment, shared by many, that Heidegger overlooks altogether Dasein’s natality in his concern with Dasein’s mortality.5 Someone may be tempted to say that I ‘acknowledge that there is no explicit evidence in Heidegger’s writings that support[s] [my] claim that there is a “coherent theory of language origins” in Heidegger.’ This would be a misrepresentation of my position. My claim is the following: There is explicit evidence in Heidegger that allows us to piece together a coherent theory of language origins (which Heidegger did not put forth in a separate piece of writing). Key passage in SZ is the discussion of ‘Interpretation’ (Auslegung) in § 32, particularly p. 150, where Heidegger introduces his conception of the fore-structure of understanding in which all Interpretation is grounded. Heidegger’s conception of the fore-structure (SZ, p. 150) makes sense only if one adopts Herder’s conception of language origin. The foundation of Interpretation in the forehaving, fore-sight and fore-grasping of what is about to be explicitly recognized in a definite – explicit and thus expressible – conception is both a pre- and pro-terminological understanding of the encountered thing to be understood as something particular as which it is then known nominally, that is, by its proper name. As Heidegger says, and I translate, ‘Interpretation has always in each case already made its decision for a particular conceptual and terminological graspability (Begrifflichkeit). That is why and how Interpretation is grounded in the fore-grasping of a fore-conception (Vorgriff).’ Again, one wonders why Heidegger did not spend more time and thought on this very brief and dense passage. He may have thought to have sufficiently touched upon the ontological relevance of the idea of the fore-structure dispensing with further ontic elaborations on the more specific process of wordformation and language emergence. On the other hand, the few things he says in his 1935 lecture course ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’ (EM, p. 131) suggest that the process of language origination is a highly ontological event, too mysterious to possibly be illuminated exhaustively ontically. It is my contention that Heidegger must be read contextually, that is, continuously within the immense corpus of his work. The specific approach one takes does not matter as long as one remains active in this movement of what Nietzsche famously labelled vorwärts- and rückwärts- lesen, reading backwards and forward in the style of a cow’s rumination. Heidegger did indeed take a turn during his

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career. His language became less metaphysical and more poetical. This turn however is as Heidegger himself repeatedly recognizes not a turn away from the (his) beginning, but always a return, which includes the continued return to SZ, as we witness in his Beiträge and as he points out in his ‘Preface’ to Richardson’s book Through Phenomenology to Thought.6 It is therefore not only valid, but indispensable and therefore imperative to read Heidegger within his own context. Different texts speak to the same issues from different angles at different times. The turnings in Heidegger’s thinking do not make his thought inconsistent. They are complementary reflections that constitute a whole panorama of understanding. Heidegger discusses the fore-structure of understanding in terms of the conceptual graspability (Begrifflichkeit) of a world comprehended (SZ, pp. 150, 157). With this discussion Heidegger offers a solution to solve the problem of bridging the existential-ontological gap between discourse and language. The gap is opened up with the existential-ontological distinction between the two language-concepts. The fore-structure bears the bridge. I will show how with Herder in mind this fore-structure offers itself to Heidegger as such a solution. Consequently, I do not ‘import’, as some may think, ‘the distinction between “inward” reflection and “outward” expression . . . into Heidegger from Herder.’ That distinction is there in Heidegger already. ‘Die Hinausgesprochenheit der Rede ist die Sprache,’ Heidegger says unequivocally (SZ, p. 161). ‘The way in and as which discourse gets spoken out and spoken forth [, and is hence ontically expressed,] is language.’ Heidegger’s conception of discourse expressed into speech allows him not only to say that ‘discourse is existentially language’ (SZ, p. 161) in the sense of an abstract lexicon of langue, but also that discourse is ‘most often and always already’ parole, the ontically spoken, concrete form of it. This is why and how Heidegger can also simply say, ‘discourse is language,’ without further qualification, because ‘for the most part discourse expresses itself (spricht sich aus) and has always already expressed (ausgesprochen) itself. It is language.’ As and in this state of expression (Ausgesprochenheit) discourse is ontically and orally language, that is, parole, namely, speech (SZ, p. 167). With this being said, let me briefly look at the units of speech which Heidegger calls ‘assertions’ or ‘statements’ (Mitteilung). Recall from Chapter 3 that there are three functions that Heidegger sees at work in assertions: indexicality (Aufzeigung), predication and the speaking forth (Heraussage) of communication (Mitteilung). It is the latter that is of particular interest in this case. Every assertion establishes a relationship between its participants and witnesses. Communication is event, space and means of building a community of participants via this act of sharing the subject matter of discourse. The point is not the matter at issue, not the object of the discussion. The point is that that which has been pointed out and which then gets further predicated is not itself the point but gets seen together with others from the perspective of the speaker. The fundamental issue is not the thing spoken of but the speaker him- and herself.

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We do not speak to disseminate information but to promote our own take on things, that is, our own being toward those things. Heidegger calls this Mitsehenlassen (letting others see with us) a ‘sharing’ that ‘shares’ (teilt) a particular perspective of a thing, that is, the specific ‘being-toward’ (Sein zu) the particular thing indicated by the author of the assertion through which it now gets seen collectively. ‘“Geteilt” wird das gemeinsame sehende Sein zum Aufgezeigten.’ Whether this ‘sharing with one another’ (Miteinanderteilen) through acts of ‘passing along and retelling’ (Weitersagen) will found an authentic community is a separate question not at issue here (SZ, p. 155). The point for Heidegger is to have shown that speech founds community and how the circle of a speech community is vibrant in its mutual, that is, existential–ontological, sharing of ideas. Language is first and foremost the need of the subjective individual to enlarge her- and himself into the collective. All strive for such special recognition. One wants to be understood, not conceptually, in acts of cognition that provide conceived realities only, but authentically, in the ontological sense of one’s specific ontic existence, which Kierkegaard calls the ethical reality of the particular individual. In this human drive lies hidden the origin of language. Heidegger is fond of the inner workings of language. He loves to play with cognates, synchronically within a language, and diachronically within the same language and between different languages. His two favourite languages are German and Greek. He specifically plays with alliterations and phonetic symmetries. He does so to give additional force to his philosophical positions because he is convinced like Parmenides that ontological truth is intrinsic to language. The inherent relationship between language, thought and being brings forth features of language that are reminiscent of this primordial mystery of language origins. The intrinsic connection becomes equally manifest in phonology, grammar and the lexicon. The spoken vernacular, more than the standardized official languages, has retained the resemblances between linguistic features and the objects that gave rise to them. Onomatopoeia is just one example of the phenomenon of iconicity in language. Linguists talk about correlations that assert themselves between meaning and modes of expression. These so-called ‘diagrammatic’ relations between objects and their meanings on one hand, and their expression on the other hand, continuously reassert themselves onto the surface of phenomenal speech. Not only do fine semantic distinctions get ‘diagrammed’ on the surface of formal morphology, but intrinsic features identified by linguists as ‘diagrammatic iconicity’ affect, in addition to the grammar, also the lexicon.7 But let us stay with the more widely known phenomenon of onomatopoeia. In his dialogue Cratylus, Plato plays with the idea that basic alphabetical sounds (phonemes) are already loaded with meanings provided by nature. There is not just one particular sound, or even a small, yet limited number of sounds, but innumerably many phonetic ways of wrapping phonemes around (meanings of) objects. Iconicity does not stop here. The art of poetry and prose reinforces what

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language has already made phonetically, grammatically and lexically manifest. Thus, Heidegger deliberately thinks etymologically within the German language and across different languages to promote and give evidence to the linguistic ontology of (his) philosophy. He composes philosophical verses in his Allemanic vernacular and alludes to diachronic and cross-linguistic lexical relations. He does so, for example, in his fondness of the phonetic similarity between his concept of ‘Ereignis’ and Aristotle’s concept of ‘ενεργεια’ or in his conviction of a fundamental relation between the German ‘Machenschaft’ (of the uncanny force of concealed being) and the Greek ‘το µαχανοεν’ (EM, pp. 121–122), literally loaded with associations of violent force. He even sees a relation between the Greek ‘ουσια’ and the German ‘Wesen’ and senses s (ahnen) an ontological force behind the formation of the word being, sein and εον or ειναι. The Greek word ‘βαρβαρος’ can serve as a key example for how onomatopoeia actually work, both for Herder and for Heidegger. It originally didn’t carry the negative connotations associated with the word ‘barbarian’ today. The word was originally used in reference to (a) all those who did not speak the Greek language and (b) all those who, for this reason, could not be understood by native Greeks whose ears had never been tuned to foreign sounds and who would identify sounds unintelligible to them with a simple Greek transcription revealing what Greeks heard when exposed to foreign languages: ‘bar-bar’. In this, its primary sense, the word is a perceptual self-reflection. Associations of rudeness and brutality entered its semantic field only after the Greek experience of the Persian war. However, even the New Testament can still make use of the term without stigmatization of the other. There it can simply mean ‘unintelligible’ (I Cor. 14:11), or be used in reference to natives and inhabitants of an island (Acts 28:2. 4), or point in general at someone or something that is specifically non-Greek (Col. 3:11), which is how and why the expression ‘Ελληνες τε και βαρβαροι’ (Greeks and non-Greeks) became an all-inclusive periphrasis to encompass all peoples, so that none would be left out (Rom. 1:14). ‘Baa-baa’, the English imitation of a sheep’s bleating, has nothing to do with the Greek ‘bar-bar’. To the Greeks, sheep were not ‘barbarians’. We learn this from Homer’s Odyssey, where ‘µη’ (mæ) is used to imitate a sheep’s bleating. However, anecdotes about how the sound a sheep makes gets adopted by children as a nominal designation for the animal which even adults may then use, nicely emphasize the straightforward ways language responds to the primordial needs of humans in their initial encounters with a new world that thus, by naming things the way they are and appear, becomes a less uncanny and a more familiar world. Herder uses precisely this example to make the point that we find names for things only when a noticeable characteristic stands out and comes to stand for the entity, as the bleating does for the sheep. Heidegger builds on this example, noting that by virtue of calling these bleating beings

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‘mäh’-sayers, the speaker acknowledges their being and implicitly also the uncanny and therefore unrecognized silence of being itself.8

Heidegger’s Language Origin Theory Revisited There is no doubt that Heidegger developed a coherent theory of language origins even though he does not present it as such in his writings. Such a theory can be put together from pieces scattered throughout his work. I have done so in the previous chapter depending primarily on Heidegger’s existential analytic in SZ. I will quickly summarize the results before addressing an issue that remains largely illusive when considering Heidegger’s writing alone. Language is one of many ontic phenomena identified as existentiales by Heidegger in SZ. It enters the account in various forms: first, in its silent and internal modes of interpretation (Auslegung) and discourse (Rede) through which Dasein’s pre-epistemological understanding (Verstehen) of the world becomes explicit (ausdrücklich) – interpretation may thereby be understood as the articulation of discourse. The two should neither be confounded with Fodor’s ‘language of thought’ nor with Pinker’s ‘mentalese’;9 what Heidegger has in mind is non-theoretical understanding achieved through mere πραξις (praxis). In its externalized mode of oral language (Sprache), discourse becomes expressed (ausgesprochen) and obtains ontic appearance as the way in which theoretical discourse takes place in assertions. Assertions (Mitteilung) identify and predicate objects and events by taking a definite stance toward them. The stance-taking is of psychic, physical and theoretical nature. Thus, assertions are meant to share (teilen) their stance with (mit) those exposed to them. The sharing (mit-teilen) invokes communication and founds community (Mitsein). It remains unclear in Heidegger’s account how words actually come to be. Part of this mystery is the deliberate ambiguity of Heidegger’s conception of language. ‘Discourse is existentially language’, Heidegger says in SZ (p. 161). Heidegger points at a linguistic double nature: Language is an ontic-existentiell phenomenon and of existential-ontological reality. In its empirical appearance it is ‘ready-to-hand’ as speech and ‘present-at-hand’ for scientific research. Its ontological presence consists in the disclosure of Dasein as the birthplace of the truth event. We must therefore distinguish two aspects of language origins. Language has its ontologic-historical origin in the silent word and occurrence of being. The silence of being corresponds (entsprechen) to the discourse of Dasein’s soliloquy. Its empirical resonance consists in the concrete event of word-formation. It is here where the German romantic enlightenment philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder fits in neatly. Heidegger does not give us an ontic description of word-creation. The few hints we get are rather cryptic. Herder bridges the gap Heidegger left open between (unexpressed) discourse (Rede) and (spoken) language (speech) by shedding light on what Heidegger

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calls the mystery of language origins (EM, p. 131). In his more explicit comments, Heidegger embraces Herder’s treatment of language origins. He does so mostly silently as in SZ with his discussion of the tripartite fore-structure of understanding (SZ, pp. 150ff). Occasionally he credits Herder. In his 1946 essay ‘Wozu Dichter?’ a quote by Herder gives us a clue to how Heidegger conceives of language origination. Albert Hofstadter translates

A breath of our mouth becomes the portrait of the world, the type of our thoughts and feelings in the other’s soul. On a bit of moving air depends everything human that men on earth have ever thought, willed, done, and ever will do; for we would all still be roaming the forests if this divine breath had not blown around us, and did not hover on our lips like a magic tone.10 The biblical associations are apparent. The creative wisdom of God’s breath continues to do its work in the human being. Language is the product of human creativity. ‘The breath’, Heidegger comments, ‘means directly the word and the nature of language.’ This breath has the magic power of God’s creativity – of recreating the world by painting a picture of it with the picturesque colors of its sounds. We can overcome the romantic aspects of Herder’s conception of language origins by taking him seriously as Heidegger does in his 1939 summer semester seminar dedicated to the study of Herder’s 1772 treatise ‘Über den Ursprung der Sprache’ (‘On the Origins of Language’) published as Volume 85 in the Gesamtausgabe. Reading through the notes on the course, one senses the ambivalence with which Heidegger treats Herder’s essay. On one hand Heidegger points at the ontological distance between himself, the phenomenological ontologist, and ‘Herder together with the whole of Metaphysics’ (GA 85, p. 146) because unlike Heidegger, Herder still stands too close to the rational objectifications and the calculative logic of the metaphysical tradition. Herder’s flaw lies in the fact that he ‘does not look for the understanding of being (Seinsverständnis); he simply does not search [for it] (er sucht nicht)’ (p. 148), because he does not know of the ‘active nature of the occurring presence of being (Wesung des Seins)’ (pp. 92, 98). He too, like every metaphysician, treats language simply as an object of scientific study. Such an approach is in itself not false. Language, however, much like being itself (Seyn) is never just a being (Seiendes) but the clearing of being (Lichtung des Seyns) in which the truth of being (Wahrheit des Seyns) comes to the fore of Dasein (p. 98) – ‘as and in Da-sein’ (p. 92). A proper understanding of language must recognize the ‘transcendence’ of the ‘ontological difference’ (p. 145). This difference is most visible in the two competing conceptions of the word. Word-objects (Wörter) are the material of linguists. Looking exclusively at words as the basic ground material of research, however, misses their fundamental ground (Grund und

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Abgrund) of being (p. 137). The vast data of linguistic studies and the extraordinary pace (Schnelligkeit) required to test them (p. 66) blocks the view beyond the established walls of word data at the origin of words and language in the ‘silence of the word of being’ (pp. 76, 90). It is from this mysterious ground (Abgrund) whence words first emerge with the original force of their poietic meaning as words (Worte) that speak things into existence (EM, p. 11). Heidegger appropriates the two plural forms for the word ‘word’ in German, Wörter and Worte, to bring out this aspect of the ontological difference. Only with the emergence of words (Worte) out of ‘the word of being’ can words (Wörter) and language(s) come into being (GA 85, p. 56). On the other hand, despite Herder’s lack of an ontological-historical (seynsgeschichtliche) vision, Heidegger cannot hide his fascination with Herder’s approach to the question of language origins behind all these reservations. Although Herder is tangled up in the ‘acoustic-phonetic’ side of language, it is this empirical side of ‘sounds’ (Laut) that intrigues Heidegger at the same time. For ‘he (Herder) does not even notice that he already conceives of hearing (Gehör) in an essentially different fashion’ (p. 128). Unbeknownst to his own investigation, he has moved beyond the empirical of ‘ear and sound’ (Ohr und Ton, p. 113) toward the fundamental-ontological of ‘listening obedience’ (Horchen und Gehorchen, p. 113) without having arrived there yet. That is his accomplishment. He already is part of the transition (Übergang) toward the silent clearing of the word of being. The apprehension (Vernehmen, p. 113) of the silent clearing of the word of being is the force triggering language into existence, its recognition philosophy’s other and new beginning. Thus Herder ‘senses’ (ahnt, p. 113) that it is this silent clearing of being (Stille des Seyns, Lichtung des Seyns) that turns – through the power of listening silence (Erschweigung der Stille, pp. 66, 128, 133) – the silent word into the expressive sounds and shapes of the human mouth, hand and face (Lichtung und Lautung, 113). ‘Sensing’ (Ahnung) the ‘more primordial’ (Ursprünglicheres), Herder manages to move away from the objectifying logic of grammar. Convinced that ‘the divine nature of language’ originates in ‘the life-force of the human being’ (p. 82), he no longer perceives words as objects only, but searches for the experience of their origination by delving into the creative force of the disposition (Fahrt in die Gestimmtheit und Stimmung) that gave rise to them. He thus participates in the silencing voicing of the word (erschweigenden Anstimmung des Wortes, pp. 149). It is this authentic experience that gives authority to Herder’s account to the extent that it provides insight into Heidegger’s existential-ontological conception of language origins. Heidegger ontologized Herder for the purpose of his existential analytic, to bridge the ontic-ontological gap between discourse (Rede) and language (Sprache) left open in his existential-ontological account. The reservations expressed in his notes do not hide Heidegger’s fascination with Herder. A closer look will reveal this legacy of Herder in Heidegger’s language origins theory.

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Although it is hard to pin down a direct influence before 1939, claims that Heidegger did not rely on Herder cannot ignore the influence of Herder’s ideas into Heidegger’s time. Herder stands at the turning point to the modern ‘expressive-constitutive’ theories of language. In what follows it will become apparent how Heidegger’s thinking can operate only on the basis of Herder’s original source.11

Word Creation as the Birth Event of Language In a very elliptic remark Heidegger notes that the totality of significations of Dasein’s intelligibility of the world emerges in manifold aspects on the verbal surface to assume the shape of words for the purpose of revelatory expression. It is important to recall that while words reveal Dasein’s understanding of itself and the world in the expressive fashion of linguistic utterances, it is the expression of a word that has accrued to significations and not vice versa.12 The emphasis Heidegger lays on this rather obscure description of word formation is threefold: (1) Since intelligibility aims at self-revelatory verbal expression, significations ultimately get expressed in words as a means of linguistic self-realization. Words, however, do not exist as a priori entities waiting like empty vessels to be filled with meaning before meaning actually arises. (2) Instead, words are modelled upon a world that has already been understood. (3) The modelling of words occurs as an evolutionary process of necessity. The process is comparable to natural growth where genetic information predetermines the development of species into individual subjects. Genetic information, however, is itself determined by the natural environment. Just as the intelligibility of nature reveals itself in the evolution of the species, so does Dasein’s fundamental understanding of its existence in its world come to terms with itself in language. A detailed description of the transition from a pre-linguistic understanding of the world to its linguistic conception is not part of Heidegger’s ontology.13 Nevertheless, the actual extrication and formation of predicates has its place in Heidegger’s philosophy. Some of Heidegger’s suggestive remarks point at an ontic description reminiscent of Herder’s account. Herder’s account does indeed bridge the ontic-ontological gap between discourse (interpretation) and language (assertion) for the following three reasons: (1) It offers a detailed description of the creation of words as a natural process that relies on the characteristics of human nature. (2) Such a description fits smoothly into Heidegger’s ontological account because Heidegger’s account relies itself on the ontic, the fundamental empirical features of human nature. Heidegger adopts Herder’s non-dualist and holistic concept of humans as thinking sensoria communia into his equiprimordiality (Gleichursprünglichkeit) of understanding (Verstehen) and disposition (Befindlichkeit) in terms of dispositional understanding (befindliches

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Verstehen). (3) Herder’s distinction between the thinking of internal discourse as dialoguing in the soul and spoken language understood as vocalizations of internal speech is a potential source of Heidegger’s distinction between discourse or interpretation and language or assertion that necessitates its bridge in the ontic-ontological formation of words as the birth event of language.

Herder’s Ontic Description of Language Origins Similar to Heidegger, Herder depicts humans in the ancient Greek tradition as animals that have language and can talk (ζωα λογον εχοντα). They stand in contrast to the so-called αλογοι, the linguistically mute, a-rational animals. Even though humans are born linguistically mute (stummgeboren), it lies in their nature to develop language.14 Herder’s concept of human reasoning is key to his conception of language origination. He operates with a variety of words stretching from reason to reflection and Besinnung or Besonnenheit. The latter two terms are of technical importance and provide insight into Herder’s theory. I will for now stay with Taylor’s rendition of ‘focused attention’.15 As the term suggests, Besonnenheit consists in the concentration of the senses into a state of attention. Such concentration elevates humans from the confinements of animal life to what Herder calls ‘freier Besinnungskreis’, the unbounded sphere of reflection. The free sphere contrasts with the bounds of ecological niches into which animals are entrenched by the dictatorial power of their instincts. Acts of reflection (Besinnung) awaken the human spirit to a state of awareness (Besonnenheit) that understands (sich besinnen) by the power of unlimited recognition (Anerkenntnis, Anerkennung). Reflection always moves from known into unknown worlds. Recollective recognition establishes and appropriates those worlds only to move on to conquer new worlds. Thus, as Nietzsche points out a century later, humans are driven by the restlessness of their spirit to create their own history.16 The notion is of course not new to the philosophical tradition. Aristotle is one of the first to identify the questioning mind as a human trait. Questioning is the state of human being; the search17 for answers its activity. Significant here is Herder’s holistic concept of human nature, which is fundamental for his language origin theory. Distinctive features (Merkmale) get selected from the totality of sensations to keep on moulding the human conception of the world. Acts of reflection (Besinnungen) engrave those distinguishing features into the human soul as internal words (innerliches Merkwort). The eloquent silence of discourse is where Herder and Heidegger join company. The recognition of characteristic traits allows humans to take a primal leap (Ursprung) into language, which, although internal (innere Sprache), is now invented.18 Herder’s Merkmale invoke both the representations of things (Vorstellungen) and the

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sensations (Sensationen, Empfindungen, Gefühl) that accompany their recognition (Herder, pp. 54, 56, 57). Thus, a Merkmal can be visual, acoustic or emotional, or a combination of these modes of recognition.19 A particular priority among the senses is not essential for word-invention. Nevertheless, Herder sees in hearing the key to a spoken language.20 Heidegger describes it as the centre (Mitte) of the human sensorium, which functions as a switch that transforms sensations into sounds.21 Not only do the distinctive sounds of nature allow the world to be recognized by its acoustic traits like the bleating of sheep22 but also all mute things and events are now connected with the sounds humans produce in the recognition of them. A sense-sound-reflex-reaction23 underlies the human linguistic world-conception. The recognition of things through sounds makes use of sounds as the distinctive features (Merkmal) that assume the function of unspoken, internal and distinguishing words (Merkwort). This recognition is still silent to the extent that it is verbally unexpressed.24 Silent world recognition occurs both in the imitative appropriation of natural sounds (Naturtöne)25 and as an expansion of the natural language (Natursprache) through inventions of new sounds.26 Silent sound-words get vocalized into verbal neonates subject to further modulation. The world is now transparent in a system of emotional sense-sound-correlations27 to be moulded into different languages.28 To summarize, there are two empirical conditions necessary for the emergence of human language for Herder: (1) The condition of total sensibility states that ‘man is thoroughly made up of emotions.’29 Humans share this empirical nature with other animals. (2) The condition of intelligibility conceives of the human being as ‘a thinking sensorium commune’.30 Reflection is based on sensation concentrated on the sense of hearing responsible for the semantic elevation of sounds to symbols.31

Ontologizing Herder Chapter V of SZ, which examines the nature of language, is introduced with the notion of Dasein as always faced with itself (sich finden) by being entrenched with particular moods (Stimmung).32 Heidegger takes note of Dasein’s emotional self-disclosure in terms of Befindlichkeit (affectability/disposition).33 His concept of Dasein’s world-disclosive clearing (Lichtung)34 corresponds to Herder’s unbounded sphere of reflection. Neither Heidegger nor Herder consider humans exclusively sensory. In Besonnenheit the senses achieve their selfawareness. The moodedness (Gestimmtheit) of existence is the basis of Dasein’s intelligibility. Thus, Herder’s thinking sensorium commune finds its ontological translation in Heidegger’s equiprimordiality (Gleichursprünglichkeit) of affectability (disposition) and understanding. Heidegger’s ‘dispositional understanding’ (befindliches Verstehen) corresponds directly to Herder’s Besonnenheit.35

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The empirical holism of either thinker is the basis of linguistic intelligibility. Thus both are faced with a fundamental circularity between thinking and language. Neither can develop without the other. As Herder says, we ‘develop the two concepts, reflection and language, together, or not at all.’36 Herder’s solution is his poetical conception of the sense of hearing. Sounds get voiced into acoustic images of the world. Analogously, but more inclusively, Heidegger’s solution lies in his poetical conception of the whole human body. Key is Heidegger’s concept of comportment (Verhaltung) in which the silence of discourse becomes visible as the physical expression of its articulation. The physical dimension of human existence asserts its reality in this expression. Heidegger writes that expressed language is a direct product of understanding in lectures preceding SZ. In his 1925 lecture course ‘History of the Concept of Time’ Heidegger notes that ‘comportments (Verhaltungen), . . . taken in the broadest sense, are through and through expressed experiences (ausgedrückte Erlebnisse).’37 In the context of their specific significance they assert explicit reference to things and events and thus turn the expressive action into an assertive expression.38 Words evolve from these wordless events, because in them ‘we see what is said about [a specific] matter.’39 Heidegger has widened the locus of language origins from voice and ear to the whole body. His conception of comportmental word inventions can account for linguistic expressions into which comportments evolve to trigger the transition from discourse to language.40

Language as a Work of Art In his embrace of Herder, Heidegger universalizes the word-(per)formative event. His medium of recognition shifts from hearing to sight. The sight of comportments reveals their intention to give them symbolic status. Symbolism rests on reference through resemblance. Comportments borrow their intelligibility from the source of their induction, the object or event, to which they relate through their initial reaction to them. The comportmental response is modeled after the object of reference. Both Heidegger and Herder promote this notion of onomatopoetic imitation. Herder speaks of ‘living euphonies’ (lebende Wohllaute), ‘harmonious soundwords’ (Klangworte), ‘audible colours’ (Tonfarben) or, simply, ‘mighty words’ (Machtwörter) that ‘paint and sing’ the proper names of the things they designate.41 ‘Lived experience[s]’42 provoke the physical depiction of passions (Leidenschaft körperlich schildern) to design comportmental reminders of the ‘living sounds’ (lebendige Laut) and images of a ‘singing nature’ (singende Natur). The sources (Quellen) of nature instruct humans to conduct physical reconstructions compressed into ‘living expressions’ (lebenden Ausdruck).43 Heidegger uses similar language to promote the same idea in his later writings when he talks about the ‘thinging of things’, the ‘worlding of the world’ and the

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‘peal of stillness’ that instruct humans to ‘name’ things into (their) existence to bring them ‘to shine and ring’ (zum Leuchten und Klingen).44 To put it in Aristotle’s metaphysical language, both see in sounds and movements acoustic, visual and kinetic matter to be molded into acts and forms of melodic sound-words (Tonwort) and emblematic picture-words (Bildwort). In them the object of reference as the object of their origin receives its phonetic and visual reflection.45 Heidegger’s endorsement of Herder goes beyond Herder’s empiric insights. Heidegger sees in the artwork of language the primordial truth event. Consequently, he considers poiesis the truth of language. The ontological shift lies hidden here. The existential-ontological meaning of truth resides in the apophantic-ontological truth of meaning. In their original design words mean (to say) the things themselves. This is the primordial source behind the force of expressions. Thus, there is no room for sophistications about the impossibility to lie.46 Once a distinction between apophantic-ontological and ontic-logical truth is made, as Aristotle shows in his Metaphysics (Θ)– which Heidegger adopts into his distinction between truth and correctness – lies find their proper place in correspondence theories of truth. Language, however, speaks truly only if the linguistic reference of words to particular things properly reflect and restore Dasein’s initial relation to those things. Such truth only happens linguistically. The event has, as Heidegger says, its original place in and as language.47 Consequently, language is the archetypical truth event. Outside of it is no truth.

Conclusion: Herder in Heidegger Herder bridges Heidegger’s linguistic-ontological gap between discourse and language. His silent words of recollective recognition (Merkwort) are one side of the same coin of language evolution. At the time of their conception ‘marker words’ or ‘concept words’ assume immediate expressive function as empirical signs of visible and audible words (Mitteilungswort). Key to the conception of the transformation of ‘concept words’ to ‘communication words’ is Heidegger’s concept of the comportmentality of language derived from Husserl’s concept of ‘physical presence’ (Leibhaftigkeit). Dasein’s embodiment infuses consciousness with a sense of the physical dimension of (its) corporeality. The physical dimension of human existence is the hinge upon which the transformation from concept to communication takes place. On the stage of the human body recognition is expression, because recognition cannot help but have an expression in – and as – the – its – human body, which relates to the object of recognition with its comportmental stance. In this relation recognition is manifest and receives its expression, which is to say, relation is expressed recognition, since recognition translates itself into its expression via the body as the medium of translation. It is in this sense that Herder can qualify the recognition (Anerkennung, erkennen) of criteria (Merkmal) of things and events as the

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‘naming’ (Namengebung, Namennennung, nennen) of these things and events. Once recognized, they are already expressed and thus communicable. Consequently, Herder concludes, ‘the first criterion that I grasp is a recollective word of recognition for me, but a word of communication for others.’48 Communicability (Mitteilbarkeit) rests on corporeality. The expression, consisting of sounds and movement, is itself object of recognition. If it gets recognized in the context of its relation to the thing or event that gave rise to it, it assumes the symbolic function of a sign ready to be adopted as a word, which, by force of its physical, that is, visible, audible, i.e. sensible form, communicates ‘experienced ideas’ (Erfahrungsideen) and ‘sensual concepts’ (sinnliche Begriffe) to unite humans to the shared experience of their reality.49 The corporeality of human intelligibility conditions the possibility of language. Language results from the unity of two interdependent and complementary forces: impression and expression. The empirical holism of body and mind, of reflection through sensation and its immediate comportmental manifestation accounts for this unity through which language speaks. Speech gives voice to thought-emotions. For ‘humans’, as Herder says, ‘sense with their understanding. It is thus that they can speak their thoughts,’50 since understanding proceeds from the senses. Herder invokes his German language to reveal this insight as the truth of the matter. His designation of reason as Besonnenheit qualifies it as sensibility, namely as the sense-ability of sensation to evolve into thought. Consequently, reason proceeds in Besinnungen, empirical reflections rooted in sense-perception. What liberates this sphere of reflection from the bounds of animal instincts is the lack of a one-sided reliance on any one of the senses, which explains Herder’s definition of the human being as a thinking sensorium commune. With his concept of dispositional understanding (befindliches Verstehen) Heidegger adopts Herder’s empirical holism into his existential ontology. Key is the principle of equiprimordiality (Gleichursprünglichkeit) that connects sensation with understanding. The connection opens up the free and unbounded zone of reflection ( freier Besinnungskreis), which Heidegger simply calls clearing (Lichtung). It is the light of language that illuminates the clearing with the revelation of truth. The world is lit up with the conception of words as the focal points of recognition. In a way, Charles Taylor confirms this reading when he sees in Herder’s free sphere a ‘linguistic’ or ‘semantic dimension’,51 since it is here where the embryonic stage52 of the soul’s internal language is brought to term, that is, comes to terms with itself to give birth to an external (spoken) language via onomatopoietic imitation,53 which for Heidegger is the truth-event that allows him to define language as a work of art. The birth of language takes place as a transition from discourse (Rede) to language (Sprache). Herder’s embryonic stage of the inner language of the soul, his recollective criteria (Merkmale) and distinguishing words (Merkworte) are products of empirical reflections (Besinnungen). It is by taking Herder’s empirical holism up into his ontological account with his notion of the

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equiprimordiality (Gleichursprünglichkeit) of discourse, Interpretation (Auslegung) and disposition (Befindlichkeit) that Heidegger manages to bridge the ontological gap between discourse and language. Onomatopoietic imitation is Herder’s ontic description of the linguistic-ontological birth-event. For Heidegger, too, language originates in the onomatopoetic event. BT touches upon the idea implicitly. The later understanding of language as a work of art, however, is a clear indication that Heidegger has not only embraced, but ontologized Herder’s ontic account of language origins.

Ontological Implications Heidegger detects in words an original naming power (Nennkraft) that lets them speak. In their inception words speak a truth at work as art. This original naming power can and will fade. Words get worn out (abgenutzt) and used up (verbraucht) when used as equipment (Zeug). Our daily conversations cannot escape this fate. Words do not just reveal truth. Their transmission of information inadvertently conceals the truth of their original conception, because language naturally participates in the human enterprise of world-domination (Betriebsamkeit), and this in a businesslike fashion (betriebsmäßig). There is nothing wrong with this, as long as we remain connected to the truth of the roots of words. Heidegger’s concept of ‘correctness’ (Richtigkeit) has its proper place here. As soon as correctness replaces truth (Wahrheit), it is of a totalizing nature. Politics, economics, science, culture and art itself are no longer art, but get turned into businesses (Betriebsanstalt) whose success (Machenschaft) is per definition correct. When the use of language itself has become a business, words are passed along (Weiter- und Nachreden) without an ‘original appropriation of that which is talked about’ (ursprüngliche Zueignung des beredeten Seienden). Dasein’s ‘primary relationship-of-being-toward the respective entity’ (primäre Seinsbezug zum beredeten Seienden) is lost. Groundlessness (Bodenlosigkeit) of inauthentic speech (Gerede) sets in. Such economic use of language exhibits the ‘uninhibited »hustle«’ (Hemmungslosigkeit des ‘Betriebs’ ) of idle, busy and scientific talk where words lose their intimate touch (Entwurzelung, Abtrennung) with the thoughts and emotions that engendered them into being and coined them to unique agents of being.54 Once words are available for repeated use, there is no longer the immediate need to think of them authentically (erdenken) and to speak them in a genuine manner (ernennen). For both Herder and Heidegger such a decay (Verfall, Verfallen) of language is inevitable, but it does not constitute the end of language.55 If being is what it is there is always the possibility for renewal. The continued evolution of language has its source here. This is a lesson we also learn from Parmenides. Herder and Heidegger are both aware of the fundamental possibility of recreation through continued word-(re)formation. Heidegger does not, however,

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simply repeat Herder’s romantic vision of the poetic origin of language. Heidegger’s account enriches Herder’s account with an existential-ontological truth. It is the poet as the original thinker and philosopher who recovers truth by retrieving the genuine (echt) sources of life that abide in truth as that which is real (Wirkliche). The poet restores and preserves language as an artwork by ‘using’ its words without abusing them, i.e. ‘in such a way that the word thus becomes and remains truly a word.’ This is not a tautology. Heidegger formulates a central claim of his existential analytic. Poets speak in words that ‘happen’ to ‘reveal’ ‘truth’ (αληθεια). In the course of the truth-event (Ereignis) language assumes a higher ontological status (seiender) than the rest of the world’s entities. The artwork language is always closest to ‘that which is highest in being’ (das Seiendste des Seienden). Truth only happens within this proximity to being itself (Sein). Consequently, beauty is first and foremost of ontological value. It is truthfulness seen in its closeness to a reality that is otherwise hidden in the forgetfulness of everydayness. Beauty is real only when it transports Dasein onto an elevated state of being. Such elevation takes place both in art and philosophy, or, as Heidegger puts it, it is achieved in and as the thinking of being itself (Denken des Seins) – both in the objective and subjective sense of the genitive.56 Linguistic existence bears witness to such thinking of being. Language is of an essential quality of the highest ontological order. Through language Dasein remains in touch with being itself, even if it is not aware of this, as Heraclitus reminds us. We sense the importance of this insight in Heidegger’s own poetry. When Heidegger states that ‘[man is] / . . . Being’s poem, / just begun, [ . . . ],’57 he depicts the human being itself as an ontological poem, rawly wrought as discourse by Interpretation,58 whose ontic reality best unfolds itself in so-called ‘gregarious and companionable reflections’ of ‘recreative conversations’. Genuine conversations only take place in poetic language.59 As poetry, (authentic) communication founds community on the ground of being.60 The meaning of being resides in the language of poetry. When Heidegger says that ‘poetry that thinks is in truth/the topology of Being’61 he means exactly this. Language always longs for its poetical origin, which it recollects when it operates on the ontological stage of authentic community. The place of community is its proximity to being. We have seen how in this proximity the individual receives and assumes her and his collective extension.

Chapter 5

The Birth of Language as Language of Death Death as the Birthplace of Language

Heilige Gefäße sind die Dichter, Worin des Lebens Wein, der Geist Der Helden, sich aufbewahrt, ... Er kann im Gedichte nicht leben und bleiben, Er lebt und bleibt in der Welt. Holy vessels the poets are, in whom life’s wine, the spirit of heroes, is preserved, ... He cannot live, he cannot stay in the poem, He lives and he remains in the world. Friedrich Hölderlin, ‘Buonaparte’ Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter. What remains is a gift of the poets. Friedrich Hölderlin, ‘Andenken’ We have seen in the previous two chapters that Heidegger has answers to the following two questions, (a) whether language has a beginning, which he affirms with a decisive ‘That’ and (b) what kind of beginning that is, to which he offers strong allusions to Herder’s ‘How’ of language emergence. In addition to the Whether or That and the What or How, Heidegger tackles a third question: Why is there language at all? What causes ontic language to emerge from existence? Although Heidegger has not addressed the question specifically, he is aware of it. His concept of death and his theory of language both show traces of the concern. Once his treatment of language and his treatment of death are seen in the context of each other, the link between the two becomes evident. The connection between language and death will prove to be the answer to the third question posed here. Hölderlin’s words quoted above show that the connection between language and death is commonplace in the history of ideas.

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It is the ‘poet’ as the ‘maker of words’ who in recognition of things and their uniqueness endows them through the spirit of their heroism with endurance through time. Names recognize the subjective uniqueness of things. A brief discussion of a scene from a well-known film will illustrate the point to lead us into the existential-ontological heart of the matter.

Why Is There Language At All? Dances With Wolves is a film that gave director and actor Kevin Costner considerable recognition.1 The title bears explicit reference to the problem of intercultural confrontation displayed in the movie. More specifically, it shows in a simple way how the linguistic unit of a name arises from a concrete life-situation. Concreteness and simplicity of the experience in which the name creation occurs are significant. Dances With Wolves is not just a film title. It is not randomly chosen or arbitrarily constructed to rename the film’s protagonist Lieutenant Dunbar played by the director. The expression Dances With Wolves marks characteristic features of a man unknown to a group of Native Americans, whose land he has chosen for his new home. His new identity not only deserves but demands a new designation. Dances With Wolves is a proper name that speaks of the character of its bearer. It speaks of the personality of a man whose presence perplexes a people. Dances With Wolves has been observed trying to befriend a wolf. That has given him his name. The name is engendered by perplexity to diffuse the uncanny mystery that surrounds the personality that has caused puzzlement in the first place. The name thus fulfils two basic functions. It is, first, a spontaneous expression of and a reflective response to a puzzle encountered with curiosity. It is, secondly, in the Hegelian sense of Aufhebung, the immediate confinement, the preservation and final dissolution of the uncanniness that surrounds the encounter. The act of naming thus has two functions: (1) it familiarizes by (2) recalling the mysterious. We may adjust a Latin idiom to this finding and say: ‘Nomen non est omen, sed animo et cogitatione per cognitione comprehendere. – Nominare non est omninari, sed res praestantes animo videre et mirari.’ A comprehensive translation would have to note that ‘naming is not so much the prophesied fate of wishful or fearful thinking but the deliberate recognition of remarkable events observed with astonishment.’ It is in such surprise that Aristotle locates the beginning of philosophy. Heidegger gives it another twist. Wonder is the birthplace not of philosophy per se but of words and language as such. Thinking is motivated by primordial encounters. It accompanies the encounter of the things themselves. Original thinking proceeds in word creation and continued language evolution whose inventions constitute our philosophical understanding of the world. What has so far been noted is not the whole lesson of the story. The film tells the story of a people faced with the possibility of extinction. The particular name creation occurs

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out of an existential threat. Threatened are both individual and communal being. This circumstance is not anecdotal or fictional and hence unworthy of further deliberation. On the contrary, historical tragedy informed the film and throws light on the process of linguistic productivity. Wonder and fear are existentiell expressions of existential threat. Heidegger calls awareness of such threat – both in the subjective and objective sense of the genitive – ‘anxiety’ (Angst). Children give expression to the fundamental disposition as they acquire language and learn – so to speak – to speak . . ., namely, their awe at their gradual world discovery. Excitement and fear are two sides of the same coin. The adventure of world discovery does both at the same time, enable and endanger the vulnerable existence of the living. In other words, life and death depend on each other. Death is both, (1) the real (ontic) experience of (2) its (existential) facticity. As such it is (at) the centre of life. It is life. We have looked at the intrinsic interrelation between the facticity and factuality of death in previous chapters. We can now state, it is death in its ontic possibility and existential reality that gives rise to language to forego the dangers of life to enable life. An etymological reflection of the word ‘etymology’ will put this contention to the test.

Linguistic-Ontological Implications of Onomatopoeia We learn from Plato’s dialogue Cratylos that wonder and astonishment determine course and content of the individual biography of words. The physical characteristics of words, their phonological and morphological shape, reflect their specific history of genesis, their verbogony or onomatography. The physical features of a linguistic unit do not arbitrarily mediate semantic values wilfully attached to words. These features are the manifestation of the semantic motivation which gives rise to a word in the first place. They bear the semantic content of the word and are its flesh and blood. Words are not in themselves meaningless. They are not deliberate or arbitrary expressions. Their communication proceeds in manifestations of linguistic mediation. Their physical and semantic features motivate, inform and enforce each other. This mutual conditioning founds and grounds the word. The reciprocal co-constitution of sign and meaning occurs with the interplay between a linguistic form and its semantic content. The genitive of the possessive pronoun is significant. It is indicative of the intrinsic reciprocity which constitutes the word-creative relation between a linguistic sign and its meaning. The reciprocal relation is the terminological ground upon which word formation happens. The relation is not a random connection of two otherwise independent entities, sign and meaning, joined together into the linguistic unit of a word. On the contrary, the relation is purposefully accidental.2 Sign and meaning do not exist without the other. One only exists in the context of the other. They either coexist, or do not exist at all.

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We call knowledge of this interdependence ‘etymology’. I will briefly reflect upon the significance of the word. An etymological analysis of the term ‘etymology’ will reveal the ontological implications entailed by onomatopoetic mimesis. The etymology of a word tells us its history by tracing its morphological and phonological elements back to their earliest recorded or detectable occurrence, possibly not just in the same language where it currently appears but also in related languages still spoken, as well as in ancestral languages no longer alive. An etymological examination recollects cognates, which elucidate meanings that stand behind the original formation and motivate the continued modification of the word. The Greek language refers to these basic linguistic units as ‘ετυµα’. An ετυµον carries the literal meaning of a word in its original appearance. The meaning it reveals is literal in a strict sense. As the earliest linguistic ancestor identifiable, it bears the most intimate, the most direct and thus an immediate relation to the thing, event or state of affair intimated in and motivating the creation of the ετυµον. The intention of semantic evocation by force of both the establishment of an immediate relation between a word and a section of the human world on the one hand, and the continued maintenance of the linguistic relation on the other, stands behind the meaning of the Greek adjective ‘ετυµος’ itself. The adjective implies that something said about something is the case. It suggests that what is said about the matter corresponds to the reality in which the matter has been encountered. The correspondence is distinct in such a genuine way that the expressive way in which it is put forth terminologically, speaks with onomatopoetic force. This onomatopoetic force is the source of a word’s semantic transparence. The physical, that is, phonemic and morphemic constitution of a word matches its meaning in a discrete and distinctive way which is why words manage to communicate their semantic source with the linguistic force of an expression. Words, in this sense, too, have a body and a mind inseparable from one another. Their union is essential to the being of a word. This observation calls forth another etymological noteworthiness. The Greek adjective ‘ετεος’ is closely related to ‘ετυµος’. Both carry the same meaning. The etymological relation reveals a more distant connection with the Greek verb ‘ειµι’ and its related forms ‘ειναι’, ‘ων’, ‘ουσα’ and ‘ον’ (to be, being). ‘Ουσια’ is a direct derivation from the feminine form of the present participle ‘ουσα’ by means of nominalization with the substantivizing suffix ‘-ια’. Ουσια refers to the essence, substance and nature of a thing. Heidegger sees in its German correspondent ‘Wesen’ a cognate. Ουσια exerts this reference to a thing’s essence not simply because it re-presents that thing to stand for it. Ουσια is perceived to present the thing in a fundamentally ontological way. It is that thing. This relation of being to beings is at work in words. It induces their inception to give birth to meaning. The primordial relation between being and beings is the ontological ground upon which language operates. It conditions

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the possibility of the word–object reference. A word comes to be and continues to maintain its linguistic existence by virtue of its ontological relationship with a thing, event or state of affairs it thus signifies. Significations of words hinge on the existentiality of the human relation to things. These relations condition the human understanding of the world. Words bring forth the world conception by force of their being. For a word’s being is rooted in the being of entities.3 This ontological immediacy between word and world, which is conditioned by human existentiality, accounts for the linguistic transparence of words. It is the human being, which establishes the word–subject relation through the existential force of its being exposed to the things themselves. A word can speak of its subject because the word is, and thus makes manifest, the human relation to the subject. It speaks by force of being engendered by its own subject to which humans relate. The word–object relation, which connects a verbal expression to the object of its reference, is based on the initial, primordial, ontic-ontological relation between thing and being at work within human existence. The onomatopoetic force with which words speak originally in their onticontological relation to human existence is central to Heidegger’s linguistic ontology. Words speak ontologically in their relation to the ground of being. In their proximity to being (Sein selbst, Sein selber) they come into being. Like works of art they remain in their originating essence not to be used up as pieces of equipment. Words are indeed used as equipment. Practical use subjects them to the effects of overuse and abuse. This is inevitable and necessary. Information transportation employs words as message transmitters. The constructive destruction of words occurs through repetition (Wiederholung), which conditions speech.4 Once repetition supersedes recollection (Wieder-holung)5 and reappropriation of ontological insights into the things themselves (Sachen selbst) that gave rise to words, language ages to superficial, groundless or meaningless everyday speech. The process of linguistic aging into trivial insignificance not only necessitates but also is itself the condition of the possibility of linguistic renewal. Once words speak again as if for the first time, they recapture what was lost and with it the attention of the listener. Recollective speech is innovative and creative; it is unique to primordial thinkers of being, the poet and the philosopher.6 Linguistic revival is a poetic-philosophical act. Both verbal decay and renewal may happen in speech. Speech is an ambivalent event. It can de- or re-authenticize language, and through it, its speakers, depending on whether it is or is not in touch with its ontological source. Ontological groundlessness (Bodenlosigkeit) of speech leads to an existential eradication (Entwurzelung) of language, to a kind of an unfocused floating of existence (Schwebe) in a world thus not fully understood and therefore underappreciated, as long as its speakers – and, by extension, their lexicon, lack the existential truth of first-hand experience, the ontological proximity to the things themselves. The loss of authenticity is a direct result of a forgetfulness of being, a forgetfulness that is unaware of the ontological origin of words (SZ, pp. 168–170).

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Since being remains the perpetual force behind words, language is always ready for its own onomatopoietic resurrection into authentic speech. The time is always ripe for poets and thinkers who recognize in the verbal decay the shadow of death. Inauthenticity is haunted by its own prospect of nothingness. Fear’s urge to escape non-being foreshadowed by death throws us right into it. This paradox is matched with another, since anxiety escapes this irony with the courage to endure it. It embraces non-being in the midst of being by embracing being in the midst of non-being. Poets speak out of this paradox. Their language borne of the experience of nothingness draws us closer to the source of being. Anxiety gives words their life, being and meaning as they are spoken into and out of the nothingness of non-being. Word-formation is a creatio ex nihilo into the permanence of being. That is how, as Heidegger puts it with the help of Hölderlin, ‘[t]he singers’ calling looks forward and out to immortality.’ For ‘[m]ortals die death in life’ to ‘become immortal in death.’ Thus ‘[a]s death arrives it disappears.’ It disappears through the poetic power of the wordcreative thought of being.7

Overcoming Death through Language One incentive of language consists in its direct response to the transience of time and oblivion through death. Language intends to undo and reverse spiritual vanishing in time and physical disappearance in nature. Commemoration in all its forms, adoration, praise, grief etc. compose words as live elements of recollection. The Homeric accounts give us a taste of the human endeavour. Words are coined to fulfil the purpose of attestation. The desire to testify motivates early speech. The early history of language is a history of religion. In the JudeoChristian tradition God speaks to create the world.8 The words of the Hebrew prophets praise good deeds and condemn misdeeds. Myths recall earliest encounters with overwhelming mysteries. The Christian proclamation consists in the resurrective power of divine words of salvation. Tradition, itself, secular or religious, offers glimpses into eternity. Without language there would be no tradition or history. Both are informed by death that accomplishments expire with forgetfulness. Language is designed to overcome this fatal destiny. The literary critic George Steiner has repeatedly drawn attention to the existential connection at work between language and death. In his collection of essays from 1967 Language and Silence 9 Steiner contends that ‘language has a “life” of its own in a [strict] sense that goes beyond metaphor.’10 An ‘internal [and] independent vitality [operates] in language’ that makes language vulnerable to moral abuse, physical destruction and political corruption. This vitality, however, is also responsible for the moral enrichment and spiritual renewal human existence receives through language. The life force of language can decline to irrational brutality. It can be re-animated to new heights of spiritual

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revelation.11 Steiner sees in the vitality of language the condition for the possibility of the poetic strife for lasting recollections to overcome death. Based on this vitality in language, ‘the poet has made of speech a dam against oblivion’ despite the fact that ‘death blunts its sharp teeth upon his words.’ Quintessential poets like Homer emerge as ‘master-builder’ of words to ‘[rebel] against time’. Already the fact that ‘our languages have a future tense . . .,’ Steiner observes, ‘is of itself a radiant scandal, a subversion of mortality,’ which allows ‘men, in whom language is in a condition of extreme vitality,’ such as in ‘the seer, the prophet’ and ‘the poet’, to ‘look beyond, and to make of the word a reaching out past death.’12 Steiner concludes by paraphrasing Ovid’s wondrous description of the death of Orpheus in order to bring the miraculous death scene13 to the point of a paradoxical statement: ‘Out of the gates of death man pours the living stream of words.’ He then generalizes this statement into his own formulation of the existential paradox: ‘All great writing springs from le dur désir de durer, the harsh contrivance of spirit against death, the hope to overreach time by force of creation.’14 It is here where Steiner touches the heart of Heidegger’s linguistic ontology. Heidegger agrees with Steiner’s contention but in a radical and universal way. Steiner aware of this agreement can thus qualify ‘Heidegger’s ontology [as], in essence, a theory of beginnings.’15 Language as such has an existential-ontological beginning. Its origin lies in the experience and the awareness of death. Heidegger captures this insight in the following statement: Language can only have arisen from the overpowering (Überwältigenden), the strange and the terrible (Unheimlichen), through man’s departure (Aufbruch) into being. In this departure language was being, embodied in the word (Wortwerden des Seins): poetry (Dichtung). Language is the primordial poetry (Urdichtung) in which a people speaks being (das Sein dichtet).16 Language emerges in ontic-ontological leaps out of the experience of nothingness into a world of entities. Language appears in the form of psycho-physical units we call words. Words are fundamentally more than just carriers of information. The being of a word has existential implications. Words are existentialontological extensions of human existence. The verbal entity of a word shares its being with Dasein in a fundamental way. Dasein projects, reflects, attaches and transforms concrete, ontic-existentiell life-situations into word-entities. Words are ontic-ontological reflections of Dasein’s lived experiences. Dasein transforms itself into words. The purpose of words lies in the linguistic-ontological procreation of Dasein’s ontic-existentiell reality, its linguistic extension into ontological perpetuity. With language as the linguistic offspring of human existence, Dasein enters the reality of its world as a totality of beings in reach of this totality, and thus finds itself in the midst of an ontological mission. The linguistic offspring of human existence is both of existential-ontological reality

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and of ontic-existentiell origin. Words are of a concrete physical nature and a referential-designative function. Acts of linguistic generation proceed in ontic-ontological steps of word-formation. Heidegger says as much when he states that ‘[i]t is in words and language that things first come into being and are. For this reason the misuse of language in idle talk, in slogans and phrases, destroys our authentic relation to things.’17 Our relations to things are in their origins authentic (echt). This originality is never captured once and for all. It requires repeated re-appropriation. Dasein is essentially a being toward entities. Its being is essentially directional and intentional and as such it is being-toward-death. The existential paradox lies in the directedness toward death, which tries to overcome death through the linguistic-ontological embrace of being(s) in the face of death. Like humans, words are of an existential-physical nature. Without this nature they would not speak. They would be silent and not be words. Words articulate – vocally or manually. Their expression is of physical force, which relies on the existential-ontological source of the human being as the foundation of their being. Ontically words are psycho-physical entities; ontologically they are as poetic artworks primordial poetry (Urdichtung). As entities that signify and designate (Bezeichnung, Merkzeichen) aspects of human reality they are existential recreations of the human being.18 Although not of living flesh they are of a linguistic nature that is motivated by the mortality of living flesh. This existential-ontological connection, which for Steiner is so apparently at work between language and death, will be analyzed in greater detail in the remainder of this chapter.

The Existential-Ontological Connection between Language and Death Ur – sprung, ‘primal leap’, is Heidegger’s word for an absolute beginning. The word is rich with ontological implications. Language arises with an onticontological leap out of non-being into existence. It continues to evolve in onticontological strides into being. Language is ‘humanity’s departure [from nothingness] into being’ (Aufbruch des Menschen in das Sein). It is a linguisticontological departure into history. History departs into the world of reality. The departure ploughs the earth, breaks up its ground and opens up worlds. Aufbruch breaks open – into – the ontic reality of humanity by opening up the presence of concrete entities to break them loose and open and take them apart for the sake of analytic understanding. In SZ Heidegger speaks of the ontological strife in terms of a ‘preconceptual’ departure into being. In EM Heidegger speaks of the strife as a bridging of the ontic-ontological gap between discourse and speech. The bridge provides discourse with ontic language through the departure as it proceeds in

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word-formations of being (Wortwerden des Seins). Word-formations grasp, reveal and re-present entities by disclosing their being to transform each into the linguistic entity of a word (Gestaltung des Seienden). The departure singles out an entity by cutting it loose (anschneiden), thus pre-conceptually severing it from the totality of beings. Heidegger calls the result of this departure into being ‘poetry’, Dichtung. From its beginning language is Urdichtung, primordial poetry. It is an original leaping ahead (Ursprung) out of the unpenetrable fathoms of nothingness into the ontological foundations of being, a leaping from the foundations of being into the presence of speech. Speech speaks with the verbal force of the being of words, which share their ontological status with the things themselves.19 Speech originates in the nature of human being itself. Human being motivates and mediates language evolution. What drives language to evolve is the need for authenticity in the face of the omnipresent experience of nothingness in death. Anxiety recalls this reality of nothingness that triggered the human departure into the being of time (history) and the time of being (lived experience of reality). Language responds to this facticity of death. Inevitability and irreversibility that define death both in terms of its factual uncertainty and factical certainty are the modes of an existential memory of nothingness.20 Language, reminiscent of this, its origin as the origin of human existence, transcends this origin into its own existential self-perpetuation.

Through death to language Awareness of death’s omnipresence is fundamental to existence. Death’s facticity cannot be escaped. Anxiety attests to this inability. The threat, prospect and certainty of non-being fill death with existential meaning. With the permanent imminence of its threat (ständige Bedrohung, SZ, p. 265) death asserts a reality essential to existence. Existence either denies or accepts the truth of non-being. Acknowledgement consists in ‘the courage for anxiety in the face of death’ (Mut zur Angst vor dem Tode, SZ, p. 254). Dasein individualizes itself into a self that recognizes its own finitude. Denial consists in a loss of ‘freedom toward death’ (SZ, p. 266). The loss is a lostness in the vast possibilities of being. Lostness lacks resoluteness. Resoluteness crystallizes the randomness of possibilities into realistic possibilities of concrete life-situations of a genuine self (SZ, pp. 264, 297–300). Dasein may embrace or disguise its mortality. In either case death remains at work in existence as liberating anxiety or destructive fear. With the possibility of non-being death reveals unfathomable depths of being, whose conception perceives nothingness as part of existence. Misconceptions of death as a non-entity ignore death’s existential presence as essential to human being. The traditional disregard of the ontological difference equates human being with an essence. It ignores the existentiality

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of existence with the ontological superficiality of the metaphysical tradition (SZ, pp. 89–100). Death is not a singular event, as George Steiner points out.21 It does not exert itself uneventfully. The event is death’s reality. Possibility conditions reality. As the uttermost possibility death conditions all possibilities, thus even Dasein itself as an actuality (SZ, pp. 143–148, 248, 250f.). Within the reality of its factical certainty death is unoptional. Suicide and murder do not make death optional. Although we can bring about death prematurely by force or choice, we cannot choose to do the opposite; we cannot undo death and we cannot choose not to die. Death’s unoptional possibility individualizes (Vereinzelung) existence into a separate (als einzelnes) personality. Since death is in each case mine, its irreplaceable (unvertretbar), non-relational (unbezüglich) mineness (Jemeinigkeit) constitutes the reality of a self that is its ownmost (eigenste) possibility, its self-possession. The prospect of death throws Dasein onto itself. Dasein stands face to face with its own being by force of the imminent possibility of non-being. This ‘eminent imminence’ (ausgezeichneter Bevorstand) of its possibility not to be cannot be bypassed (unüberholbar). Dasein has to live its own life in as much as it has to die its own death. The significance of the existential situation comes down to this paradox: Death is (as) a state of being the event of life. Life lives death, since death is life. Thus faced with itself Dasein stands in its contrast to others in relation with others. As Dasein continues to become itself, its life unfolds within the circle of the existential imperative. We ‘become what [we] are’ (SZ, p. 145) if we are what we can become. Only in anticipation of death do we live our lives to its fullest potentials. Unconscious refusal to acknowledge death’s existential reality or deliberate disregard of death’s presence in existence diminishes these potentials. In either case, the potentiality for being includes non-being as an existential reality. Life is lived in the event of death.22 Dasein’s anticipatory nature is just one of three structural moments in Heidegger’s final explication of Dasein’s being as care (Sorge). Human being is an a priori fait accompli. This is a simple phenomenological fact captured in the concept of ‘thereness’ or ‘Da-sein’, our ‘being-there’. Its tripartite structure unfolds the meaning of being human in the three dimensions of the unconditioned ‘there’ (Da). As simply being there Dasein is (1) always ‘ahead-of-itself’, namely as something that is (2) ‘already-in’ a world and as such (3) ‘alongside’ entities encountered within the world.23 ‘Being-ahead-of-itself’ is Heidegger’s ontological description of Dasein as ‘existence’. ‘Already-being-in’ refers to the ‘facticity’ of Dasein’s ‘thrownness’. ‘Being-alongside’ recognizes Dasein’s inevitable ‘entanglement’ (Verfallen) with inner worldly entities. Entanglement consists in the continual ‘falling’ (Verfallen) of Dasein’s ‘state’ of ‘fallenness’ (Verfallenheit) into the world. All three moments, existence, facticity of thrownness and falling fallenness of entanglement constitute the totality of a structural whole (Ganzheit des Strukturganzen). They make up the unity (Einheit) of Dasein’s

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being. The a priori24 connection (ursprünglicher Zusammenhang) between these moments is what comprises the primordial unity of Dasein’s being.25 The nature of this structure now needs to be taken into closer consideration. Fallenness is a positive ontological description, not a negative moral evaluation of Dasein’s natural concern with the world. The persistent ‘concern’ (Besorgen) with things in Dasein’s world connects them with Dasein’s being ‘for the sake of which’ they are encountered. The encounters happen for the benefit of Dasein’s being. Dasein projects its sense of mortality onto its encounters. Each encounter is virtually made in the face of death to avoid a premature occurrence of its factuality. The biological instinct of survival is an existentiell necessity. Ontic Survival requires a practical and pragmatic understanding of the characteristic features of objects that make up Dasein’s world. Dasein recognizes in their features (Auffallen) things themselves (Sachen selbst), and in them their possible exploitation for the purpose of its well-being. The existential purpose (Worumwillen) uncovers and establishes so-called ‘in-order-torelationships’ (Um-zu, Wozu), which entities bear to each other and are essential for Dasein in a world of a referential totality of involvements (Verweisungsganzheit, Bewandtnisganzheit). Consequently, Dasein first encounters things as equipment (Zeug), things ready-to-hand (Zuhandenes) for particular use. Each encounter happens ‘for the sake of’ Dasein’s being.26 Death thus stands behind each thing Dasein encounters and recognizes by virtue of its circumspective and comportmental concern. Encounters relate things to Dasein in a pragmatic and ontological way. The practical relations Dasein bears to things carry their ontological meaning in the characteristic features of things encountered and the possibilities those features contain for their use to further Dasein’s well-being. This ‘for the-sake-of-which’ (Worumwillen) of Dasein’s particular ‘being-toward’ (Sein zu) each thing is essential to each linguistic entity (word) into which circumspective comportments around things evolve once the concentration of meaning in Dasein’s relations to particular things strengthens to the point of self-distinction to assume designative function. Dasein’s practical concern for pragmatic survival assumes linguistic value through this ontological extension of Dasein’s being to a verbal entity. Dasein’s comportmental concern evolves to linguistic-ontological units (words) to respond to its possible non-being. In an ontic-ontological sense death causes Dasein to speak. Death drives Dasein to seek in the encounter of things possibilities of continued being. Language turns up as an entity of such possibilities because it owes its being to the being of Dasein. Language speaks with the ontic force of an individual voice and comportmental gestures of a particular Dasein. Concrete existence keeps language alive even after the individual sound of a voice has expired and the gestures of specific comportments have ceased to exist. For language does not just have ontic-existentiell reality in acts of speech. It speaks with the endurance of its existential-ontological origin.

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From death to language Death causes humans to speak. It is an existential origin of language. Language recreates aspects of human being to prolong, renew and perpetuate individual existence. Anxiety drives Dasein’s linguistic procreation into the formation of a language as a language springs forth from concrete actions. Humans literally come to terms with a world that conditions their lives. Language is their psychophysical response to challenges posed by concrete life-situations. Concrete praxis of human actions evolves into a language. For Heidegger these actions are not random acts but deliberate intentions that have found expression in comportments (Verhalten, Verhaltung). Their pragmatic practicality is meaningful in a strict sense. Actions are manifestations of a specific understanding of reality. Humans understand their world through expressions to articulate their impression of the world. Their world conception is never unexpressed but becomes manifest in comportments, which are its expression. As direct reactions to Dasein’s concrete life-world, human actions are, though pre-linguistic, not non-linguistic acts. Their directedness toward the challenges of life is the origin from which they emerge. They co-r-respond to Dasein’s life-world. Intentionality generates actions, which already form proto-linguistic units of being human destined to evolve into the expressedness (Ausgedrücktheit) of explicit language. Language becomes explicit as it gets spoken in vocalizations and gestural signs.27 Hence we can say anxiety drives language into being, more specifically, into human being, to transcend death through the experience of its factical immanence, which is its presence of human existence. Language speaks (itself) from death in existence into being. There are two fundamental ways in which a language is spoken. When a language is spoken in its original mode of being, words speak directly from the awareness of death. Their speech is authentic. As words become available and are ready to hand, they no longer speak with the existential urge of their original design. Their speech becomes inauthentic. Authentic speech retains or recreates the word-(per)formative conditions that brought a word into being. It proceeds in verbal recreations, re-appropriations and recollections. Its world is experienced as if for the first time through encounters of the things themselves. Poets and philosophers speak that way, or better, those who speak that way are poets and philosophers. As thinkers of being they draw their language directly from the source of their being in the world. Unfathomable28 and inexhaustible29 is this source. Hence, the speech of the poet and philosopher remains new in its uniqueness, since it relies on authentic, first-hand experience. Consequently, authentic thinkers do not imitate or repeat, but (re-)create and recollect their thought. In their authenticity language evolves originally and primordially. It evolves in recurrent events of linguistic-ontological (re-)appropriations that keep words alive with the ontological force of their original meaning.

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Inauthentic speech, on the other hand, consists in word repetitions (Wiederholung). It dispenses with encounters of the things themselves. It lacks genuine being toward (Sein zu) its objects.30 Although Dasein is still in touch with things, as it finds itself alongside them, it is no longer drawn toward them. The resulting speech is groundless (bodenlos); it lacks the authority of the ontological ground of its own origin. Having lost the ontological touch of things, it is compelled to speak about them. Superficiality follows. Inauthenticity does not speak of things. It speaks about them from hearsay. Dasein floats (Schweben) above them unable to re-appropriate them recollectively (Wieder-holung). As its words are available for repeated use, everyday speech becomes equipmental in its ontological status and functions as a tool for information transportation. Once words relate back to their origins, they recover their existential meaning to speak again poetically. In their correspondence between language and existence they engage humans in linguistic-ontological recollections of themselves to transcend the transience of time and suspend the ontic forgetfulness of human being. It is here where the existential-hermeneutical circle between language and death comes to a close. As an existential response to Dasein’s being words have an ontological status. Words do primarily two things. They (a) attest to the truth of human reality by (b) embodying the reality of such truth. In words humans exist ontologically as linguistic entities. As linguistic entities of existential status, words reveal truths of life. Since the existential force of their being corresponds to the being of Dasein, words speak lived truths of existence. They speak with the authority of authenticity: in their emergence from death they speak to die death. Words owe the locutionary force of their being to the mortality of existence. Heidegger’s linguistic ontology is significant specifically with respect to the death of a language. A people lose their identity with the loss of their native tongue since words shape, capture, encode and write history and culture of that people. Heidegger’s identification of language as an existentiale bears important implications for the tragedy of language loss. With the loss of language a people loses wisdom, culture and world-view that once enriched the worldliness of Dasein (Weltlichkeit) with ontic-ontological insights into the existential-existentiell reality of human existence.31

Death speaks language into existence Death asserts its omnipresence in life with a fundamental sense of mortality. Human mortality speaks with the dispositional voice of anxiety. Anxiety authenticizes existence linguistic-ontologically. Death, in its unoptional and irreplaceable reality, speaks with an inter-subjective voice. In acts of speech, circumspective-comportmental self-recognition in relation to the things themselves (Sachen selbst) assumes the designative quality of signs. The comportmental recognition transcends Dasein’s finitude in terms of linguistic-ontological

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entities, which evolve into words. Linguistic-ontological survival ensues in word(per)formative world- and self-recognition. The result is language. Language is the self-manifestation of human self-conception. Language is not a private entity. It is both a communal and a personal property. It personifies Dasein into a collective entity. Individualized Dasein finds suspension and preservation, in the Hegelian sense of Aufhebung, in language. Ontologically language is ambivalent. It is a collective and a singular entity. It relates back to both the Dasein that speaks and the Dasein(e) spoken to. Dasein as being-in-the-world is being-in-the-word. It exists linguistic-ontologically by virtue of its existential intentionality that has comportmental dimensions. Dasein can only be in a world as being-in-the-word, that is, as a being-toward the particular things that comprise its world. Its being-toward happens through linguistic-ontological recreations of the entities in relation to which Dasein unfolds its being comportmentally. The complex structure of its being, Dasein’s whole existentiality unfolds itself ontic-linguistically. As being-toward-death Dasein clings to the things themselves. In its ontic-ontological embrace of the world Dasein holds onto itself. Its existential self-relation with the world is of existentiell value. It is this ontic-ontological foundation that enables Dasein to perpetuate itself linguistic-ontologically, into a linguistic-ontological self-extension of existence into language. Language comes into being as an ontological equivalent to human being. Faced with its self-negation of non-being, existence reaches out from under itself, the nothingness of non-existence, beyond itself, to its collective-ontological persistence of language. It is thus that death speaks language into (human) existence.

Conclusion Existence, death and language – Heidegger’s three apodictic statements Now that the existential-ontological connection between language and death has come to the fore, we can pass judgement on three statements Heidegger makes independently of each other. In spite of the independence of their formulation, each can be understood in light of the other two. (1) In the 1949 ‘Introduction’ added to the 1929 inaugural lecture given at the University of Freiburg ‘What is Metaphysics?’ Heidegger asserts the following: ‘Only human beings exist.’ Other entities are not of the existential nature essential to human existence. Rocks, trees, horses, angels, God etc. are (entities) but do not exist. Their being does not have Dasein’s existential structure; it does not consist of equiprimordial existentiales, which open up human existence to being itself.32

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(2) In a lecture from 1951, ‘. . . Poetically Man Dwells . . .’, Heidegger says with sudden abruptness: ‘Only humans die.’ Humans exist (west) as mortals and are called mortal (Sterbliche) because they possess the distinctive ability to die. The capacity of dying (den Tod vermögen, Sterbenkönnen) makes humans fit for a life-long dwelling (Wohnen). Dwelling characterizes the human way of living. Humans exist in their world alongside and toward its entities. As they do so, they ‘take poetic measure’ (im Dichterischen, Maß-Nahme) of them. The phrase used in the title of the lecture is borrowed from Hölderlin. ‘Dwelling’ is Heidegger’s later term for what he calls in SZ ‘discourse’ through ‘interpretation’. When Dasein ‘dwells poetically’, ‘interpretive discourse’ transitions from the ontic possibility of its ontological reality to an ontic reality to become actualized in authentic speech. Poetic speech is original in the double sense of the word. It is unique in its primordial apprehension of the things themselves. Poetic speech captures the truth of being(s) in such a way that it resonates in those who listen to the poet’s word-(per)formative composition.33 (3) This leads us to the third statement about the distinctive nature of human existence. Heidegger makes the statement in his 1935 lecture-course ‘An Introduction to Metaphysics’. There he says in his typical apodictic manner: ‘To be a human being is to speak.’ Speech is exclusively human. It distinguishes humans from other entities, such as stones, plants, animals, or gods. Human beings have a linguistic essence. ‘In the depth of their being,’ Heidegger says, ‘humans are speakers, the speakers.’34 Thus, Heidegger confirms the traditional claim that only human beings have language. Heidegger has repeatedly identified the linguistic quality with the ancient Greek definition of the human being as a ζωον λογον εχον. A human is a living thing that has, is, and always stands in the power of the λογος of discourse (Rede). Λογος is the existential foundation of language actualized in ontic-existentiell speech (Sprache).35 It is essential to existence to be entrenched by ‘death’s menacing presence’ of non-being (Umdrohung des Todes).36 Death is not simply non-existence. It asserts its active presence into existence as existence. Existence thus qualified by death is properly understood literally, as that being which is constantly beyond and ahead of itself. In this sense of ‘ek-sistence’ (εξ-ισταµαι) it is ‘outstanding’, that is, never quite itself, but always in the process of becoming (more like) itself. Death is present within existence as this ontic-ontological negation of existence, its un-being in its unbecoming, which, in fact, defines existence as this Heraclitian paradox of being always in the process of becoming. Death is the other, the complementary side of being.37 The presence of death in existence qualifies Dasein’s being in such a way that it renders human beings ‘more in being’ (seiender) than all other entities.38 The ontological distinction of ‘being more in being’, essential to human nature, is Heidegger’s ontological designation of Dasein’s openness to being itself. The ontological proximity, Dasein’s elevated degree of being (closer to being), is manifest in the phenomenon of language

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as such, which can and must now be more properly understood more specifically as ‘mortal speech’ (sterbliches Sprechen). ‘Mortals are, in that there is language,’ says Heidegger. If Heidegger identifies poets as mortals par excellence, it is because he detects in them an enhanced capacity of deliberately wandering toward death in an exemplary way. Their wandering becomes explicit in their particularly poetic speech, which is thus particularly mortal. Their speech consists in an immediate, original expression of the human dwelling on earth.39 Dwelling is nothing less than the adventurous and uncanny exploration of life in all its ontic-existential domains by virtue of a ‘measure-taking’ that discovers, resurrects, coins and produces words. Words arise in (or as) poetic self- and world recognition. They speak of fatal and successful encounters of the world. They express anxiety to overcome it ontically, but never definitely. What is ontically possible, remains impossible ontologically. Death is part of the essence of human existence. Hence, humans continue to speak; and language continues to evolve. Existence is in this sense essentially linguistic. The rise of language from the encounter with death has its paradigmatic expression in the poetic experience. Poetry is being’s workshop (Werkstatt) of language. It is the place where the never-ending task of being human takes place. Heidegger claims that ‘only humans exist’. His concept of death sees mortality as an exclusive mode of human being. He conceives of mortal being as proceeding in comportmental steps that are mental-physical acts and evolve into word-formations of being (Wortwerden des Seins). The word-(per)formative procedure does not undo the factical reality of death. On the contrary, it transcends it with ontic manifestations of the existential reality of language to confirm the facticity of death linguistic-ontologically. Language is an entity that comes to be ontically to reveal existential realities of Dasein’s individual existence. In speech it emerges out of Dasein’s facticity to reveal and preserve the reality of its being through the procreative power of psycho-physical embodiments of being that constitute language in its spoken mode. Heidegger sees in the writings of ancient Greek philosophers such as Parmenides and Heraclitus evidence of the poetic, word-(per)formative effects of the linguistic-ontological process of language-origination. His own philosophical work is intended to reinvent, re-constitute and re-introduce into philosophy the poetic art of mortal speech. For this purpose he employs everyday language. In the most simple of words Heidegger sees long-forgotten poems whose existential-ontological insights fell into oblivion with the common, repetitive use of words in daily speech.

Linguistic-existential implications Words are procreative recreations and recreative manifestations of the manifold ontic-existentiell aspects of human existence. They are ontological

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equivalents of Dasein’s being in its concrete reality. Words share Dasein’s ontological status. Thus they speak with the existential force of Dasein’s ontological source. As existential-ontological extensions of human existence and linguistic offsprings of human life, words in their inception and authentic expression are not interchangeable tools for information transportation. Their primordial force drives our linguistic productivity. Consequently, Heidegger conceives of the formation of words as an original human craft. Since words constitute in their initial formation the truth and reality of human existence, they reconstitute as linguistic embodiments of the truth and reality of being human this truth to make manifest the reality of human being whenever they are used. In the Greek sense of ποιησις words are works of art (τεχνη). Hence, language is in its beginning primordial poetry. Due to this primordial, ontological origin of language, words function as perpetual attestations to the truth and reality of human existence. Heidegger’s linguistic-ontological conception of language has at least two consequences. (1) There are two fundamental ways of speaking a language, that of repetition (Wiederholung) and that of recollection (Wieder – holung).40 The former has the tendency to inauthenticize language to (uneigentlich) speech of idle, everyday talk (Gerede). The latter (re)constitutes the authentic (eigentlich) mode of the speech of poets (Dichter) and thinkers (Denker) of being, who excavate and re-appropriate long-forgotten truth treasures of language. (2) Total translatability of one language into another becomes virtually impossible. If language is a treasure mine of human wisdom, such existential wisdom can indeed be retrieved, but only within that language. Only then can it be related to speakers of another language. It can, however, not be had (λογον εχον!) authentically by non-native speakers as it is had by native speakers of the original language. That would amount to speaking and thinking the original language by means of another language, an absurdity, which ignores the existential-ontological nature of language and is reminiscent of Kierkegaard’s famous distinction between the ethical and conceived reality of the particular individual, which also is impossible to bridge.41 The impossibility of bridging the existential-ontological gap between two languages can only happen through what Walter Benjamin calls ‘repoetization’ (Umdichtung). More will be said about this in Chapter 7. Heidegger’s three apodictic statements have become philosophically more transparent. We have seen how they constitute the pillars of his linguistic ontology. Although we find them formulated independently of each other dispersed in Heidegger’s writings, they reveal their full significance when understood in the light of one another: (1) ‘Only human beings exist.’ (Der Mensch allein existiert.) (2) ‘Only humans die.’ (Nur der Mensch stirbt.) (3) ‘To be a human being is to speak.’ (Menschsein heißt ein Sagender sein.)

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Humans exist (1) as mortals (2) linguistically (3). Their speech responds (3) to death (2) as the reality in and of life (1). The response is an expression (3) of the lived experience (1) of death (2). Speech intends both to suspend and to preserve the life experience of death, which is only had through such speech. It is in this sense that Heidegger recoins the ancient Greek definition of the human being as a ζωον λογον εχον. Humans have language when being involved in the world. Their being-in-the-world happens as language production. It is the being of words that unfolds Dasein’s being as a being-toward the things themselves, which comprise this world, into its linguistic-ontological perpetuation.

Chapter 6

The (Linguistic) Awakening of Spirit in the Presence of Death A Heideggerian Reading of Hegel’s Conception of Language

Ich weiß, daß mir nichts angehört Als der Gedanke, der ungestört Aus meiner Seele will fließen, . . . I know, nothing belongs to me except the thought, which is striving to flow unobstructed out of my soul, . . . Johann Wolfgang Goethe, ‘ Eigentum’ Was fruchtbar ist, allein ist wahr – What is fruitful alone is true – Johann Wolfgang Goethe, ‘Vermächtnis’ Was kann der Mensch im Leben mehr gewinnen, Als daß sich Gott-Natur ihm offenbare, Wie sie das Feste läßt zu Geist verrinnen, Wie sie das Geisterzeugte fest bewahre. Has life for man a higher aspiration Than God-in-Nature open to his seeing, Who turns to spirit matter’s liquidation, Who keeps the spirit’s work in constant being. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, ‘Bei Betrachtung von Schiller’s Schädel ’: ‘Schillers Reliquien’ (‘Schiller’s Remains’)1

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The Immortalizing Nature of Language I have shown that there is a fundamental link between language and death in Heidegger’s existential ontology. The existential-ontological connection provides an answer to the question of why there is language at all. Language is the human response to the threat of death to overcome together with the fear of death death itself with the prospect of some sort of immortality. This response of language is of existential value. Heidegger’s contention that ‘only humans exist’ translates into his two other contentions: ‘only humans have language’ (ζωον λογον εχον) because ‘only humans can die’ (ζωον θανατου ον). The latter is to be understood both in its active and passive sense. Read together, these three apodictic absolutes – existence, language, death – stake out the essence of human being. Death’s factical reality of existence causes language to speak, first – in the equiprimordial sense of Heidegger’s existential ontology – as discourse (Rede), which, then, is immediately poeticized (Dichten) into (ontic) speech, (gesprochene Sprache). In and since its inception, language is poetry (ποιησις): the poietic event of creation. Poets are original (re-)creators, and as such perpetual originators of language. They stand in, and thus understand, the immediate imminence of death. Standing under the factical influence of death, they conceive, in an exemplary fashion, of the meaning of existence as residing in a personal transformation from individual facticity to collective existentiality. The transformation happens through language and overcomes death’s confinement of existence to finitude. Heidegger’s linguistic ontology operates with a theory of language, which relies on a concrete-ontic account of language origination. Key is the literal meaning of the Greek notion of ποιησις as a work of art. The artwork of poetry as poesy overcomes the finitude of existence. The implications of such overcoming require further investigation since they are not just of existential, but of fundamental-ontological importance. The fundamental-ontological connection between language and death relates existence most directly (seiendste) to being itself. This fundamental-ontological relation qualifies language as the highest reflection of and direct correspondence to being (Entsprechen). Based on this special relation language can provide a kind of divine saving power which consists in and proceeds as acts of thinking and poetizing being (Denken und Dichten des Seins). Heidegger conceives of language in terms of a linguistic ontology that thinks and speaks being into linguistic existence. His linguistic-ontological explorations provide ample room for the thesis that he nurtured and relied on ‘the truth’ behind the concept of linguistic-ontological survival. Hegel and Benjamin have touched upon similar insights into the immortalizing nature of language. A careful reading of both will allow me to conclude with a detailed discussion of the fragments of Parmenides’ philosophical poem to demonstrate how much Heidegger’s thinking is embedded in and indebted to

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Parmenides in whom I see the inspirational source of the hidden tenets of Heidegger’s linguistic ontology. We find in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit considerations on language in suspicious proximity with discussions of death. Conversely, examinations of death appear strangely embedded in the context of reflections on language. The coincidence is no accident. The implications deserve greater exploration. Before moving directly to the examination of Hegel’s phenomenology of language and death and its assessment in the context of Heidegger’s linguistic ontology, I would like to refer to a parallel discussion led in the footnotes of this chapter. This separate and much briefer discussion will put more emphasis on the relevance and the importance of reassessing the nature of language from a phenomenological and ontological standpoint. This parallel discussion will illustrate the relevance of Hegel and Heidegger for some of today’s philosophers who distance themselves explicitly from the German romantic tradition. This is to say, my reading of Hegel from a Heideggerian viewpoint will be accompanied by another discussion primarily of John Searle’s book The Construction of Social Reality, in which Searle reflects on the ‘essentially constitutive’ function of language for the ‘institutional facts’ of the ‘social reality’ of the human world. Searle calls the social reality comprised of institutional facts ‘institutional reality’. This second discussion was motivated by a lecture that bore the same title as Searle’s latest book in which he categorically rejected considerations on subjectivity and language by the protagonists of the German romantic tradition, that is, as he put it, by ‘the German philosophers who all start with the letter “H”.’2 I object to the categorical rejection primarily because I find it unnecessary, and for that reason very unfortunate, since in his attempt to construct an ontology for an explanation of the metaphysical nature of our social reality, Searle could have easily derived strong support from the very people he chose to discount. I will demonstrate this in the commentary in the footnotes. I have chosen to keep the two discussions separate in order to prevent unnecessary complications. The main purpose of this chapter is to reflect on Hegel’s conception of language and death in the context of Heidegger’s philosophy of language. The parallel discussion with Searle is aimed at highlighting the philosophical values of each thinker in the context of the other.

Self-Consciousness: The Social-Linguistic Reality of Spirit Whereas Heidegger’s existential analytic has its starting-point in Dasein’s throwness into the world, self-consciousness is the ‘turning-point’ of Hegel’s phenomenology. During its developmental movement towards self-revelation, Spirit, as described by Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit, reaches its significant

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‘turning-point’ with the emergence of self-consciousness. When consciousness evolves into self-consciousness, it is no longer absolutely alone and entrenched in itself. It is a plurality. The idea of self-consciousness implies a plurality of conscious individuals who keep each other immersed in ‘the spiritual daylight of the present’. With the self-conscious individual Spirit has entered the scene and with it the notion of a social reality. ‘A self-consciousness exists for another. . . . Only by virtue of its relation to another does it in fact exist.’ Consciousness becomes self-conscious in its recognition of its otherness. Self-recognition completes the spiritual unity of either consciousness. Completion is the spiritual movement of self-consciousness. It is ongoing and consists in the dynamic state of mutual recognition (Anerkennung). Self-consciousness is both subject and object of this movement. It oscillates between ‘I’ and ‘We’.3 The oscillation forces consciousness ‘out of itself’. Having come ‘out of itself’ it can be reconnected with(in) itself. Alienation conditions the possibility of renewal. Both movements are necessary for the spiritual emergence of self-consciousness. Self-consciousness emerges from the confrontation of one consciousness with another. The self of either consciousness has its origins here in the oscillation between the ‘I’ and ‘We’, which is the dynamic state of a spiritual awakening: a ‘facing and being faced of one self-consciousness by another self-consciousness’. The transition from the private isolation of consciousness to the mutual recognition of one self-consciousness by another results in a collective of individual subjects. The concept of Spirit has its original place in such a collectivity, where ‘“I” is “We”, and “We” is “I”’. The private ‘I’ of the selfentrenched and disconnected consciousness does not have a full sense of individuality without its transition into a collective ‘We’. Unless the movement of the return back from another subject into one’s own self is completed, one’s own ‘I’ remains defective since it lacks the completeness of full recognition. Full recognition is only held in balance by the reciprocity of the movement of mutual acknowledgement. Only when one consciousness is the middle term of the other can they together ‘recognize themselves as mutually recognizing each other’. Each is the middle for the other’s self and has in the other the centre of its own selfhood. The self-conscious ‘I’ is as a ‘We’ a collective ‘I’ (§§ 184, 179, 178, 177).4 If self-consciousness is the seat of the collective ‘I’ as a self in the ‘We’ of a community, a story of transition from the individual to the communal must be told. Hegel talks about such a transition in terms of mediation of brute physical and linguistic encounters. At the end stands a social order. Language rises with(in) such an order from the emergence of self-consciousness. ‘The pure self as the self of self-consciousness’ has its ‘real existence’ (Dasein) in language. ‘In language as speech, the independent and separate individuality of selfconsciousness comes into existence, however, in such a way that it exists for others.’ Only in its existence for others does it also exist for itself. The other conditions the possibility of a self. As a self comes out of itself to be retained

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within itself, it becomes explicit as a self through language. Language speaks only as it asserts itself into speech. Speech gives expression to mutual recognition to instantiate the collective self-consciousness implicit in language. Language is thus both the private existence and the collective reality of self-consciousness. It is both in-and-for-itself and for others. In and as a collective self, Spirit assumes its real existence in the self-conscious individual who co-exists with others. Language is the reality of this individual within a collective (§§ 508, 509, 510).

The Language of Mutual Recognition In his book Language and Silence, George Steiner has demonstrated how language is implicated in objectifications of the human being. In his account of the social-linguistic reality of self-consciousness, Hegel recognizes that language contributes to counterproductive and reverse acknowledgements of the other. Ignorance, disregard and resentment obstruct mutual recognition to the point of oppression and annihilation. Consequently, violence and deceit have their place in language. When recognition is one-sided, it proceeds exclusively from the direction of a slave-consciousness to that of a master-consciousness. The language, which results from the uneven relation, is that of the ignoble and the noble consciousness. Both consolidate and undermine the imbalance between the two. On one hand the status quo of reification is confirmed by the one-sided flow of recognition from the oppressed slave towards the oppressive master. The unilateral affirmation, however, turns the hierarchical relation upside down. The defect in the violated self-consciousness of the oppressed is in fact a defect in the self-consciousness of the oppressor who cannot achieve full acceptance without recognition by a self-consciousness that is its equal, that is, itself equally fully recognized as an individual and independent being. Since the master’s self-consciousness depends on the slave’s state of mind and since the slave’s state of being is one of subjection into oppression, the master is uncertain of his own self-consciousness, and, thus, actually unessential to his own being. The experience of utter negation to the absolute extreme of lived fear in near death elevates the slave’s state of mind beyond that of the master. The experience of forced labour performed in the docile obedience of servitude is a liberating experience. It enriches the slave with the experienced notion of a liberating creative force, which has made his existence explicit. The force of this self-expression, says Hegel, is ‘the significance of fear’ (§ 196). Through its formative work the servile self-consciousness returns to itself. Its self-awareness asserts the right to its own existence. It is this self-assertion that destroys the oppressive hierarchy. Inequality is not only turned on its head to initiate another revolution. Revolution is headed toward a balance of power. History seeks the path of

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reconciliation through the reciprocity of mutual recognition (§§ 190–196, 501–526). Language originates and evolves in this struggle of mutual recognition. The struggle is borne in acts of speech. Speech-acts are indexical in nature. They are simple, expressive deeds and as such communicative. In a narrower sense they are self-expressive, transparent and self-explanatory actions of symbolic value. A self exists in such speech, in the essence of its deed and, hence, essentially linguistically. Practical self-expression achieves the individuality of a consciousness that becomes certain of its own existence as a self. Self-certainty knows itself. Its self-knowledge is the reality of self-consciousness. This reality results from encounters with others who acknowledge its truth of self-certainty. Courage and freedom to risk confrontations with others constitute the self of self-consciousness. A self exists only in such relations. Its existence is a collective existence and only as such is it self-conscious. Speech acts make a self conscious of itself since in speech a collective existence stands in relation. Not only does speech originate in the deed but it is also as its origin deed itself. Both mute speech implicit in the deed and the deed of an explicit speech act constitute the collective and individual existence of Spirit. Spirit comes into existence in the form of self-conscious individuals who relate to each other in the collective body of a community. ‘Language,’ says Hegel, ‘[is] [as the manifestation of Spirit] this [communal] existence of Spirit’ (§§ 650–652). In this, its existence for others, self-consciousness is universal self-consciousness and as such immediately present in language. Language is the objective reality of the individual self-consciousness, the ‘pure “I”’ of a collective self within a community of individual selves. As a collective self, the individual self extends itself to others by entering together with others into the medium of language. Language separates individual selves from themselves to merge them into the self of a collective ’I’, in which they return to themselves fully individualized. In language a self perceives itself as perceived by others. Likewise, a self perceives another as this other self perceives itself. The reciprocal linguistic ‘perception is the [social] existence that has become a self.’ Language returns a self into its private-individual existence within a collective. Language is this paradox: it is both result and execution of the social construction of the individual self.5 It provides particular selves with universal selfhood, which preserves their individual subjectivity. This transcendence from the private to the collective reality of self-consciousness is the meaning and function of language (§ 652).6 Language transcends individuality to preserve it within a collectivity. This transition into a social state of being establishes the body of law, which consists of the simple ‘complaint’ and the ‘command’. Both are the first linguistic steps self-consciousness takes in its rise to its ethical state of being a self among others in order to speak the ‘language of the ethical Spirit’ and to make its first attempts to walk ‘into the spiritual daylight of the present’ (§ 177). The present is marked by the constraints of social relations in which existence

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becomes a self and the self becomes existent. It leaves the muteness of its isolated and self-indulging state of being behind to face the challenges of co-existence by ‘shedding a tear about [the] necessity’ associated with the interdependence of collective existence. Words and language are this ‘shedding of [ . . . ] tear[s]’. Language ‘only emerges as the middle term (Mitte), mediating between independent and acknowledged self-consciousnesses’. Only by the power of the constricting forces of mediation through language can a self actually exist. It exists among other selves or not at all. Hence, ‘the existence of this self (daseiende Selbst) is an immediately universal, multiple, and, in this multiplicity, simple acknowledgement’ of itself and of others by itself and by others. Selves exist only mutually, that is, in the total transparency of their linguistic manifestations. When language speaks, it speaks itself by speaking as much as a self as a self speaks it, the language. Such an act of self-explicative speaking is the total act of self-expression. It is the act of making explicit (Aussprechen) the content of one’s own self, which, ‘as the content of the language of conscience is the self that knows itself as essential being (das sich als Wesen wissende Selbst),’ that is, the universal selfconsciousness existing as an individual and member of a society, whose ‘speech (Aussprechen) is the true actuality of the act of duty,’ since it is the sense of duty, which validates an action by being ‘made actual in language’. The validation happens in law, which means in its constant enforcement (§ 653). Duty is the reality of language since language is the praxis of duty. Language supersedes the ‘distinction between the universal consciousness and the individual self’. Law of duty and duty of law speak a language whose reality is the universal self, because each of its speakers ‘acknowledges all other selves and is acknowledged by them’ (§ 654). The praxis of law and duty is the only means of universal self-expression, which actualizes ‘the pure self’ into the reality of ‘the general good’. In light of the ‘universal best’, the pure self has put itself under the free obedience to ‘the abstract universal’ of the collective. In language the pure self is not just some ungraspable, unessential abstract thing. It becomes visible as a collective force that unites particular individuals into the service for a state. While the state guarantees physical protection and survival to its individuals, the language spoken by these individuals founds and grounds the state. Language does not just symbolize, it constitutes their existential survival. It universalizes the individual to citizenship, to a universal(ized) self, which is the community of a society, that is, the state (§§ 508–510).

The Problem of Linguistic Universalization Hegel explains in Chapter 1 on ‘Self-certainty’ of Part A on ‘Consciousness’ how linguistic universalization actually works. Any gesture that points at a particular object is already a movement that expresses (ausspricht) the universal

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truth of the specific object. The particular selection can only occur as a process of recognizing one specific thing among many other things. This recognition already contains and speaks the truth of the particular. Its truth consists of the movement from the particular through innumerable other particulars to the universal. Any gesture that points at a particular entity does not just point at this singular and sensuous thing. It points at it as a thing that stands for a universal or a ‘negative This’. The ‘sensuous This’ itself, however, ‘that is meant’ in the gesture is not said. It ‘cannot be reached by language.’ Gestural recognition identifies the essential qualities of a thing and universalizes them into linguistic concepts, which have their continued and enduring existence not in the physical world but in consciousness. Hence, language ‘is the only present that can survive’, as Findlay explicates Hegel’s notion of linguistic universalization in his commentary to the Phenomenology of Spirit. As the universal present, language embraces both past events and the fluctuating variations of specific contents, but it does not pass away with them. It only adjusts its enduring existence to these fluctuations where it is necessary, that is, where the alterations are of essential importance with regard to the things themselves. Were the impossible actually possible, could one actually ‘say “actual things” (wirkliche Dinge), “external or sensuous objects” (äußere oder sinnliche Gegenstände), “absolutely singular entities” (absolut einzelne Wesen) and so on,’ and would one thereby not necessarily have to ‘say of them only what is universal’, each speech act would re-create a particular physical world, would speak things into (re-)existence. This is indeed absurd. The temporary, external and sensuous world itself remains unutterable. Only when universalized in the act of selective (aufzeigen) perception (wahr-nehmen), can its rational truth be captured in the conception of things through words and thus become speakable as a universal. Hegel concludes from this observation that ‘the unutterable (Unaussprechliche) is nothing else than the untrue, the irrational,’ namely ‘what is merely meant’ (§§ 107–110).7 It is remarkable that the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard agrees with Hegel’s observation, but disagrees with his conclusion. According to Kierkegaard, unspeakability does not necessarily determine the untruth of a particular subject matter. On the contrary, when it comes to human existence, it is precisely the uniqueness of the individual human experience that cannot be captured in words. What escapes the general conception of words constitutes the truth of the existing individual. The famous dictum ‘truth is subjective’ epitomizes Kierkegaard’s polemics against Hegel to make this point. Kierkegaard’s distinction between the ‘ethical reality’ and the ‘conceived reality’ explicates the point more expressly. The ‘ethical reality’ is his reference to the lived experience, which is authentically had and known only by the existing individual herself and himself. The ‘conceived reality’ trying to understand the experience of another person is an inauthentic conception of the ethical reality and therefore always external to it, regardless of how seriously one tries to grasp the personal reality of another. Precisely because inter-subjective understanding

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has these limitations, humans are called to communication. Humans stand under the imperative of language, because in its concrete uniqueness individual existence cannot be universalized. The existential system, which Kierkegaard deems impossible, is, indeed also for him, as for Hegel, the goal of language; but it is unreachable. When humans speak, they try to do just this, understand the other as they understand themselves. The limitation Kierkegaard sees for a systematic conception of existence has the following implications for language: (a) Language emerges to bridge the unbridgeable gap between the subjective truths of individuals. (b) Language evolves toward the impossible. (c) Regardless of how much or how well humans express themselves, it is never sufficient. Inter-subjective understanding never reaches the degree of authentic-original experience. This is why (d) humans continue to speak to bridge the inter-subjective divide by narrowing the existential-ethical gap.8 Ludwig Feuerbach, once a student of Hegel in Berlin, can be read and understood along the lines of Kierkegaard’s critical objections to Hegel. In his dissertation from 1828 ‘Über die Vernunft’ (‘On Reason’)9 Feuerbach draws a strict distinction between the spiritual and the emotional world of the human being. ‘The emotion which I have,’ he says, ‘is without a connection with thought.’ The categorical disconnection results from the immediacy of the sensuous experience. Immediacy renders sensations incommunicable. The ‘incommunicability’ (Unmitteilbarkeit) of the immediate reality of the sensuous individualizes the human being into isolation. The fathoms of sensuousness remain unbridgeable in the emotional world. Emotions are a strictly private-personal property. They imprison the individual. No one can ever be certain about the emotional state of the other (1975, pp. 19, 21). Reason, in contrast, has the liberating power of identifying the individual. It can unify individuals with one another by transcending the ‘absolute boundaries’ of the private sphere of sensuousness and entering the public sphere where each individual represents the whole human species (‘ist . . . selbst die menschliche Gattung’). As a thinking being the human being stands in ‘unity with all other humans’. As reason supersedes the boundaries of private-individual sensations, as it elevates the individual human being from its sensuous isolation into the collective state of thought where everyone stands in a spiritual unity with all others, ‘I am,’ says Feuerbach, ‘simultaneously I and the other’ (1975, pp. 21, 22, 26). The truth of the matter, says Feuerbach, is revealed by language itself. We speak of ‘sym-pathy’, ‘em-pathy’, ‘com-passion’ and ‘com-miseration (‘Mit-gefühl’, ‘Mit-leiden’), because we feel with others, often very strongly. In contrast, we cannot speak of concepts like ‘syn-gnosis’, ‘sym-perception’, ‘syn-conception’ or ‘syn-(com)-prehension’ (‘Mit-denken’, ‘Mit-gedanke’), because such concepts are pleonastic tautologies. They violate the principle of the categorical difference of thought and feeling. Based on this distinction, thoughts and concepts are of the universal quality of reason. They are already the common property of self-conscious individuals. Hence when communicated they speak with total

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integral entirety, undivided and unclouded. In Feuerbach’s conception of reason, the communication of pure thoughts is a tautological effort, a kind of mutual reassurance about something that is already commonly understood. Thought-concepts just need to be elevated onto the centre-stage of reason for the purpose of recollection and re-appropriation. In contrast to the transparent universality of reason, sensations posit individuality through divisive distinction. Their postulation of individuality constitutes the ontic-emotional isolation of the individual (1975, pp. 20, 23, 24, 27).10 The universality of reason requires that in order to apprehend the dispositional reality of a particular individual, endless efforts of communication are necessary. Since particular emotions cannot be had authentically by others, a proper conception of the other depends on continued communication. Intersubjective understanding relies on the kind of communication, which lets people relate to one another in ways that approximates the authentic conception of the other. This is a paradox. It is a paradox of which Feuerbach himself is not aware, although it follows from his considerations. Feuerbach ignores it since it undermines the contentions of his own premises. It contradicts the postulation of the categorical separation of concepts and emotions. The very word with which we refer to the linguistic act of self-expression can illustrate the conflict in Feuerbach’s position. The word ‘communication’ (Mitteilung), the implications of which Feuerbach does not address, can be understood as postulating the opposite of what he says, namely, the supersession of the categorical separation. Feuerbach’s categorical distinction of thoughts from feelings does in fact resonate with Heidegger’s conception of the existential reality of human nature. We can claim against Feuerbach that dispositions are indeed communicable. The claim has two basic implications. Despite their distinctive difference thoughts are inseparably connected to emotions. Their distinction conditions the possibility of their relation. Heidegger takes note of the relation with his concept of ‘dispositional understanding’. Communication becomes possible on the existential ground of dispositional understanding. Concepts originate in isolated dispositional worlds to transcend the isolation. They connect individuals in the very instances of language we call communication. Dispositional isolation conditions and necessitates the possibility of communication. With Feuerbach we can say, since no one can literally share one’s own individual feelings with another person (teilen . . . mit), since sensations as such are not themselves communicable (mitteilbar, 1975, p. 20), communication (Mitteilung), as an instance of language (Sprache), emerges from the very attempt to do the impossible, namely, to try to virtually become the other as we relate to the other emotionally by means of conceptions in order to share one’s own being with an other (sich selbst mitteilen). Concepts arise from this impossibility. They are not detached, but rooted in experiences. Thus, we have softened Feuerbach’s position. In our relations with others we identify with them, emotionally

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through conceptions. When we do so, we act linguistically. Heidegger calls such acts comportments (Verhaltung, Verhalten). They are self-expressions that reach out to the other to capture and share our impressions of the world. Feuerbach’s position is consistent with Kierkegaard in some respects. The difference between the two rests on a truth value judgement. With Hegel, Feuerbach attributes the higher truth to the universality of reason. Kierkegaard objects to such a metaphysical presupposition. He sees a higher truth in the concrete uniqueness of the particular individual. Herder, Heidegger and Benjamin side with Kierkegaard on this point for different reasons. Herder conceives of the human being as a ‘thinking sensorium commune’. The reflective power of human reasoning is rooted in the free circle of sensibilities ( freier Besinnungskreis, Herder 1981, pp. 21ff, 28, 80–84, Herder 1975, pp. 15ff, 22, 56–60). Heidegger posits ‘dispositional understanding’ (befindliches Verstehen) as the equiprimordial interdependence between affectability (Befindlichkeit) and understanding (Verstehen, SZ, pp. 133, 142, 160–162). With his peculiar notion of ‘conception’ (Empfängnis) Benjamin draws a mystic-mythological connection between the human being and other entities.11 The connection is fundamental. It is based on the primary senses of hearing, vision and feeling and accounts for the ‘mimetic faculty’ humans have to produce ‘sensuous’ and ‘non-sensuous similarities’ in mimetic comportments.12 All three thinkers reject the categorical separation of thoughts from feelings as a too rigorous, antiquated and arbitrary metaphysical postulation. The Descartian dichotomy ignores the empirical ground of language, which consists in the sensuous foundation of reason. In fact, Feuerbach has matured to this position in his later thinking. ‘To base the mind not upon Nature,’ he says in his 1851 critique of religion, ‘but, vice versa, Nature upon the mind, is the same as to place the head, not upon the abdomen, but the latter upon the former.’ Feuerbach had already staked out his radical position of material realism ‘in direct opposition to the Hegelian philosophy’ in 1841 with his critique of Christianity where he states in the ‘Preface’ that ‘for my thought I require the senses . . . I found my ideas on materials . . . only through the activity of the senses.’13 If we appreciate the ontological value of judgements like these in light of the nature of language, we can perceive language as the existential response of the experience of intersubjective isolation to this experienced isolation by individuals who want to overcome the inter-subjective abyss. Heidegger’s concept of ‘com-munication’ (Mit-teilung) depends on such a conception of language origins. Communication is essentially an existential move. It originates in an existential-ontological effort of sharing the experience of one’s own being, that is, one’s own onticexistentiell (lived) world perspective with (teilen . . . mit) others by means of communicating with words (mit-teilen). This ontological conception of communication qualifies words and language itself as existential entities (SZ, pp. 155, 162). Wittgenstein touches upon this existential significance of language. He displays familiarity with Kierkegaard’s distinction of authentic and inauthentic

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modes of understanding. In his Philosophical Investigations he applies this distinction to our understanding of language. There are two ‘kinds of use of “understanding”’, which ‘make up its meaning, make up my concept of understanding.’ On one hand, ‘[w]e speak of understanding a sentence in the sense in which it can be replaced by another which says the same.’ Lack of original uniqueness makes such replacement possible. Language, which operates on this level of understanding, speaks of the inauthentic reality of the particular individual conceived by another. Such language captures, as Kierkegaard puts it, the conceived reality, which is never ethically true. ‘[B]ut,’ Wittgenstein continues, ‘[we speak of understanding a sentence] also in the sense in which it cannot be replaced by any other.’ As soon as language reaches this type of uniqueness, it speaks of ethical truths, which give insight into the authentic, or as Kierkegaard says, ‘ethical reality’ of the particular individual otherwise inconceivable by others. Just as the private reality of an individual is exclusively that individual’s personal property, the message of a particular sentence, a phrase or a stanza in a poem, can be uniquely enclosed and revealed only by the locution of the particular words, which comprise its composition. Phrases and sentences of this type, Wittgenstein observes, reveal ‘something that is expressed only by these words in these positions.’ Their content is context- and word-specific, very much like the sound of music is context-bound and intrinsic to the notes of the composition. A piece of music cannot be replaced by another piece. One must listen to the particular theme to have an original impression intrinsic to the piece. An original composition remains unfathomed in its manifold connotations and associations that accompany uniqueness of sound and meaning. Likewise the uniqueness of an individual experience makes understanding it irreplaceable whenever it gets authentically expressed.14 Wittgenstein’s two conceptions of understanding do not just apply to individual sentences, printed or written, but to all sentences, thus to every statement and expression, and consequently to language as such. Each word and expression can be understood in two ways, authentically and inauthentically. We operate with both ways and switch from one mode to the other since none eclipses the other. Wittgenstein has effectively pushed Kierkegaard’s concept of the ethical (subjective) truth of the existing individual in distinction to that individual’s conceived reality by another onto the stage of language. Not only is there an ontic gap to be bridged linguistic-ontologically between individuals in their relation to each other through communication. The same gap exists in language as such and between different languages since individuals speak (a) language, which is result and manifestation of the subjective truth of these individuals. Benjamin has effectively applied Kierkegaard’s notion of subjective truth to languages. For him, too, languages are existential entities. We shall see in the next chapter how he thereby anticipates Heidegger’s concept of language. Benjamin speaks of the unspeakable truth of the existing individual as an untranslatable

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uniqueness a particular language possesses to express distinct experiences shared by individuals of the same language community. All good translation happens in the recognition of the untranslatable truth of a language. It is the recognition of the specific truth of a particular (foreign) language which modifies the defining characteristics of the language of the translator to the extent that the language of translation acquires the flexibility of appropriating linguistic features specific to the foreign language. The task of the translation thus becomes the task of ‘re-poetization’ (Umdichtung). Re-poetization is the art of capturing the ethical truth of the other.15

Hegel’s Conceptual Truth of Perception In a very slight and subconscious concession to the position which Kierkegaard has so famously embraced, Hegel, in the midst of his strong emphasis on the rational, substantial and permanent character of truth as a universal, makes use of two little words, which, although only briefly, hint at the subjective nature of truth. The linguistic reference to ‘external objects’, Hegel says, as ‘actual (wirkliche), absolutely singular (einzelne), wholly personal, individual things’ describes, despite their individual concrete or sensuous uniqueness, ‘only the most abstract of generalities (das Allergemeinste), and thereby ‘expresses its sameness with everything rather than (vielmehr . . . als) its distinctiveness.’ Kierkegaard would object to Hegel’s equation of the ‘external’ with the ‘personal’. This, however, is a side issue. More important, Hegel seems to be aware of the singular value of the individual uniqueness of things although he rejects the significance of their individual existence for his search for universal truth. His rejection, however, is not absolute. ‘When I say,’ he says, ‘“a single thing”, I am actually, and more so, also (vielmehr ebenso) saying what it is from a wholly universal point of view, for everything is a single thing; and likewise “this thing” is all that one wants.’ Hegel’s radical rejection is not blind. He seems to see the importance of the individual thing itself for the expressive force of language. Pointing out a particular thing ‘elevates’ it to a universal thing. The act of pointing is an act of universalization. The universalizing gesture ‘takes up’ (aufnehmen) the thing ‘as it is in truth’. This truth is ‘in fact the truth of sense-certainty’. It is no longer just the ‘knowing [of] something immediate’, but a ‘perceiving’ (wahr-nehmen), which by ‘taking’ something as it ‘truly’ is, ‘takes the truth of it.’ Truth thus taken lives on in word-conceptions. How these words actually come to be, Hegel does not say. However, sense-certainty is now exposed as the ground from which language emerges. Hegel recognizes the empirical foundation of language. Language is rooted in selective recognitional (aufzeigen) perception (Wahr-nehmung). The act of pointing indicates a truth that finds its initial expression in the act of deictic recognition. When Hegel looks at gestures as subsequent attempts to ‘help out language’ (dem Sprechen . . . nachhelfen), he does not

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rule out the possibility that such attempts could have well been the initial steps of language evolution. Their support consists in a return to the deicticempirical inception of words, which have subsequently, in their development into words, moved away from their gestural origins. Hegel’s Phenomenology leaves room for this conception of language evolution (§ 110). The Hegelian truth of perception operates in the immediacy of sensecertainty and overcomes it. Its truth becomes explicitly visible in the physical act of predication (Aufzeigen). The act is a linguistic move. It is reminiscent of Heidegger’s concept of the as-structure, which constitutes what he calls interpretation (Auslegung) through which understanding (Verstehen) comes to itself. The movement of ‘pointing-out’ (Aufzeigung) is one of the three meanings that comprise Heidegger’s concept of ‘assertion’ (Aussage). The ‘apophantic “as”’ of assertion is ontologically rooted in the ‘original movement of the existentialhermeneutic “as”’ of interpretation in understanding (SZ, pp. 154, 158). Heidegger’s as-structure conditions the possibility of recognition. According to Hegel, this recognition of perception extricates general truths and sets off their transformation into universal concepts. Herder locates this linguistic transformation in the unbounded circle of reflection in human reasoning (Besinnungskreis der Vernunft) where the process of word creation is triggered (Herder 1981, p. 28; Herder 1975, p. 22). We have seen how Heidegger has ontologized Herder’s account. However, even though we do not find a similarly detailed account in Hegel, we can ascertain with him that the original experience of sense-certainty provides the empirical ground for the universalizing supersession that takes place with the physical act of predication in the concrete movement of the pointing-out.16 Cause and condition of this linguistic leap can now be determined on the basis of this observation.

The Foundations of Language in Death and Nothingness Kierkegaard’s concept of the ethical reality of human existence as the subjective ground on which existential truth constructs its own linguistic revelation has its place also in Hegel’s Phenomenology. We still have to provide an account, which can explain how and why such a linguistic leap comes to be. In Heidegger we find traces of such an account. Heidegger redefines Kierkegaard’s subjective truth ontologically as the ontic substance and existential essence of human being. Despite Kierkegaard’s impassioned postulation that an existential system is a philosophical illusion, we see in Heidegger’s existential analytic the provision of such an account. Kierkegaard’s subjectivity evolves into Heidegger’s fundamental disposition of anxiety. Thus Heidegger ontologizes Kierkegaard’s subjective truth of the particular individual into his existential truth of Dasein. It is here where his phenomenological ontology provides the tools that can account for the emergence of language from prelinguistic objects. We have

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seen how Heidegger’s as-structure is the ontologized version of Herder’s notion of the recognitional attention of reflection.17 Hegel’s own considerations about language origins begin exactly here among sensuous things. As prelinguistic things, they do not point beyond themselves. The only thing they reveal is ‘the complete certainty of their nothingness’. The truth of this nothingness is the lesson to be learned from the immediate reality of sense-certainty. This ‘truth about sensuous things’ not only causes ‘doubt of their being’ (Zweifel an dem Sein), but also ‘despair of it’ (Verzweiflung an ihm). The experience of this despair leaves one with two options. On one hand, one is forced to acknowledge the truth of nothingness of sensuous things both by being exposed to their decomposition and by bringing about this destiny of their nothingness through consumption, use and inevitable destruction. ‘Even the animals’, says Hegel, are not shut out from this wisdom but, on the contrary, show themselves to be most profoundly initiated to it; for they do not just stand idly in front of sensuous things as if they possessed intrinsic being, but, despairing of their reality, and completely assured of their nothingness, they fall to without ceremony and eat them up. And all Nature, like animals, celebrates these open Mysteries which teach the truth about sensuous things. (§ 109) On the other hand, although humans take part in this natural celebration, their initiation in this celebration is not as profound as that of the rest of the natural world, or rather, it lacks that exclusive totality. This lack is related to the fact that humans ‘do, in fact, stand in front of sensuous things’ and if not ‘idly’, then with the focused attention of restless curiosity. Their search for ‘intrinsic being’ does not rest at one particular thing but moves from one thing to the next until the recognition of the universal occurs with the supersession of the concrete. The other way of acknowledging the truth of the nothingness of the sensuous sets in here. The response to the cycle of annihilation is a movement to the universal from the concrete. Since animals do not accomplish that move, they do not even attempt to ‘say’ what they could only ‘mean’. In their practical confirmation of the mortal nature of natural things, animals cannot help but consume them, and this is why they do not attempt to talk about sensuous things (§ 110).

Ontological survival through language Hidden in these ‘Mysteries’ lies the answer to the question ‘why and how humans differ from other creatures in their way of relating to the nothingness of things’. It is the answer to the question ‘why humans speak’. As they acknowledge nothingness, humans both annihilate and preserve the things they encounter. With the emergence of the universal from the concrete, language

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has become a means of preservation. Thus humans respond with language to the experience of nothingness. In language they not only acknowledge the transitoriness of things by participating in it. Like other things, words, too, come and go. Despite the ubiquitous effects of transience noticeable also in language where it functions as an essential part and cause of continued linguistic evolution, language overcomes the presence of nothingness. The linguistic means of conceptual universalization preserves the experience of concrete entities. As it recognizes a particular thing among other things, conceptual universalization does, of course, not preserve the particular thing itself. The recognition, however, universalizes it to a linguistic entity. Even though it must leave the individual thing itself behind, it does not ignore it as if it had never been encountered. The encounter is a step in the pre-linguistic ladder toward the human realm of language. Humans are not only the subjects but also objects of encounters with the entities of their world. Indeed, as subjects humans are also objects of those encounters. All their encounters are always also self-encounters. Humans are thus subjected to the universalizing process of linguistic formation. The human subjection to the linguistic process of universalization is not just an inadvertent occurrence that happens alongside the conceptual universalization of other things. The human subjection to the process of universalization is the original force of the process itself. Linguistic universalization is a form of self-preservation in which humans satisfy their natural urge for survival, their longing for continued existence. This is neither trivial nor an empty desire awakened in the face of the factical inevitability of death. It is not wishful thinking arising from the hollow ground of the impossible. It is an existential-ontological urge rooted both in the ‘doubt of the essence [of the nothingness] of sensuous things’ (Zweifel an dem [nichtigen] Sein der sinnlichen Dinge) and in the ‘despair’ (Verzweiflung) that sees itself confronted with this nothingness. By virtue of their existential-ontological nature, humans seek possibilities of a way out of the fate of nothingness to the destiny of a continued existence. The possibility opens up with their social-linguistic formation (Versprachlichung), conceptualization or spiritualization (begeistet, § 505).18 Hegel identifies this transformation as the emergence of self-consciousness. We have seen how Hegel qualifies the self-conscious individual as a subject whose reality can neither be conceived without a language, in which (its) spirit becomes manifest, nor without a society in which this spiritual reality can operate and develop to higher (ethical) forms of existence. The self-conscious individual has had the experience of death. The death experience enables the individual to be both a universal and an individual being. Self-conscious, it is implicitly all other individuals and explicitly uniquely itself. Both in- and foritself (an und für sich), it constitutes ‘the universal [being] in [concrete] existence’ (seienden Allgemeinen) and thus establishes the actual power of the state whose reality consists in this union of the universal and existence. The universal

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substance of the state relies on the self-chosen self-sacrifice of its individuals who disregard all personal priorities of private privileges in order to bring into existence the ‘person’ as the essence, the end and the content of the state. The language of this person is the ‘counsel’ (Rat) spoken in the vision of the general good (zum allgemeinen Besten, §§ 503, 504, 505).

Preservation through annihilation The greater good perfects self-consciousness to the point of absolute self-renunciation in the face of death. Paradoxically, such surrender preserves the ethical substance of the Self, as it continues and perpetuates its existence in the actuality of the state power. The paradox of preservation (sich erhält) through renunciation (Entäußerung), sacrifice (Aufopferung) and surrender (sich hingibt) unto death, which Hegel observes in the social construction of the self-conscious individual, is the same paradox that is at work in the process of language evolution. It is the paradox of (the conceptual) preservation (of the universal being) through (the) annihilation (of the concrete, individual entity) mentioned above (§§ 506, 507). ‘This alienation (Entfremdung), however,’ Hegel says, ‘takes place solely in language.’ The social construction of self-consciousness is a linguistic transformation, that of the individual into a universal self. The state evolves with and from the development of language. ‘In the world of ethical order’, language appears as the ‘law and command’ (Gesetz und Befehl). ‘In the actual world’ of concrete existence it is the counsel (Rat). In itself, language appears to be the total transparency of ‘the pure “I”’. Since language is the form of its own content, it derives ‘the power of its speech’ (Kraft des Sprechens) from its own actions. Hegel goes on to explain that this is so because ‘language is the real existence (Dasein) of the pure self as self; in speech (language), self-consciousness, qua independent separate individuality (die für sich seiende Einzelheit des Selbstbewußtseins), comes as such into existence, so that it exists for others.’ In its existence for others, the ‘I’ is an ‘objectivity’ (Gegenständlichkeit). By virtue of its real, objective existence, which consists of its utterance (sich ausspricht), the ‘I’ is ‘heard or perceived’ (vernommen). The perceived expression (Äußerung) of language is the real existence and objectivity of the ‘I’. Since the expression of language contains the ‘I’ in its purity, ‘[language] alone expresses (spricht . . . aus) the “I” as the “I” is in itself.’ In the expression of language the ‘I’ is, in fact, both, ‘this particular “I” – and at the same time equally the universal “I’’ (dieses Ich – aber ebenso allgemeines)’. The manifestation of the ‘I’ in the expression (Äußerung) of language is the externalization (Entäußerung) and vanishing (Verschwinden) of this particular ‘I’, which based on its alienation continues its existence (sein Bleiben) in its universality. Paradoxically, it is its vanishing in speech in which the ‘I’ persists and continues to exist. Based on this paradox,

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Hegel can say that speech is ‘an infection’ (Ansteckung) in which the ‘I’ enters the unity with other ‘I’s’ for whom it exists as an objectivity and for whom, now, in addition, it assumes the persisting reality of universal self-consciousness. Once it is perceived or heard (vernommen), its real existence has died away (verhallt). Such dying is not a vanishing into nothingness but a vanishing away from nothingness into the universality of existence. The disappearing particular self passes over into other selves. This movement of self-preservation through others is the movement of universalization through perception. Death initiates this movement of preservation through annihilation. From the experience of its reality language emerges seemingly out of nowhere. The mysterious relation between language and death is contained by this paradox of perseverance through disappearance (§ 508).

From death to language Although Hegel provides neither a detailed ontic nor a specifically ontological account of the emergence and evolution of language out of the nothingness of death and despite the fact that his theory of language lacks historical and linguistic depth, there is a lot to be discovered in his conception of language. Heidegger is not the first philosopher to have linked the presence of language to the nothingness of death. Whereas Heidegger’s conception of language is rooted in existential-ontological considerations, Hegel perceives language within a broader historical context that reflects the construction of the socialcultural reality of Spirit. For both Hegel and Heidegger it is significant that the beginning of human history coincides with the evolution of language. For Heidegger history begins as an ontological ‘departure of the human being into being’ (Aufbruch des Menschen in das Sein). The mystery of language is couched in the mystery of the ontic-ontological origin of humanity. The beginning of human history consists in the rise of language from ‘the overwhelming and overpowering, the terrible, the strange and the uncanny’ (dem Überwältigenden und Unheimlichen). Language speaks with the overwhelmingly violent experience of the uncanny encounter with nothingness whose reality becomes most concrete in the confrontation with death. The threat of death triggers ‘the embodiment of [the human] being in the words of language’ (die Sprache als Wortwerden des Seins). For Hegel, too, language meets the urge for survival; it is the persistent satisfaction of the insatiable. The phenomenological movement of Spirit culminates in its linguistic self-revelation. The decisive turning-point is reached with selfconsciousness. Self-consciousness emerges from the deadly struggle of mutual recognition. In this struggle death is no longer a meaningless occurrence of immediate nature, but initiates the construction of a social reality to condition

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the possibility for the linguistic-ontological survival of the individual who has become indispensable and ‘imperishable’ (unvergänglich) in the free service for the community of a state. ‘The constant becoming’ (bleibende Werden) of the ethical substance of such a community consists in the ‘enduring basis’ (Bestand) of a people, that is, in the ‘alternation of successive generations’ (Wechsel der sich fortwälzenden Geschlechter). The ‘enduring being’ (Bestehen) of the individual is the community. A community prevails, as it is paradoxically empowered by the threat of destruction, the negative essence of war and death. Threat and terror of death’s nothingness enhance the individual’s urge for selfpreservation (Selbsterhaltung) and strengthen the force of perseverance (§§ 452–460). Death is the individual’s ‘Lord and Master’ (absolute Herr, §§ 194, 455, 590–595). Daily dealings with death elevate the concrete existing individual to the linguistic realm of universal individuality. How that supersessive elevation actually takes place, in what particular steps, Hegel does not specify. However, we learn why such a transformation takes place at all. ‘Language,’ says Hegel, ‘is the more truthful (das Wahrhaftere).’ In sense-certainty, where language is entrenched, we can only ‘mean’ (meinen) what we would like to ‘say’ (sagen), but what ‘is just not possible for us ever to say, or to express in words,’ namely, the concrete particular thing itself, the ‘sensuous being’. As soon as ‘we utter (sprechen . . . aus) the sensuous [content] (das Sinnliche),’ we do not say what we can only mean, the actual sensuous thing itself; we can say it only ‘as a universal’ (als ein Allgemeines) and thus always utter the universal (das Allgemeine) only, namely, ‘Being in general’, ‘Being itself’ (das Sein überhaupt).19 The transition from the act of meaning to the act of saying is the linguistic move toward truth, which as ‘the universal is the true [content] (das Wahre) of sense-certainty’ (§ 97). For Heidegger, this exposition of truth occurs with the construction of the as-structure through interpretation with which humans relate to their world and assume an understanding of it. Such truth is completely contained by language. Since truth originates in the physical reality of sense-certainty, so does language too. Language not only has a concrete physical beginning it is despite its essential universal qualities also of a physical nature. Like physical objects it can and has to be ‘perceived’ (vernommen) in order to be understood. This double nature of concrete physical ‘objectivity’ (Gegenständlichkeit) and conceptual universality provides language with the distinct existence and quality of universal individuality. The universal existence of its individuality constitutes the continued existence of the individual. Language, in its use, its continuous evolution and original emergence, thus satisfies the human drive for survival. The satisfaction occurs immediately and constantly. What is biologically impossible is ontologically possible with the construction of the linguistic reality of society.20

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Conclusion Hegel’s mystic conception of language operates with the existential-ontological connection of language and death. Death is the ‘Lord and Master’ of selfconsciousness. In their deadly confrontations with one another, humans elevate each other to the linguistic realm of Spirit, which has its reality in the socialcollective existence of self-consciousness. The process of this elevation consists of the superseding act of linguistic universalization. The supersession of concrete particular entities does not annihilate their sensuous being into nothingness. It preserves their individual existence in the linguistic form of universal concepts. Their preservation is an instance of the conceptual truth of sense perception. Language thus appears to have a double nature. Its foundation in the concrete realm of sense-certainty provides it with an objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit), which allows it to be perceived (vernommen) in the concrete instances of speech acts. However, language does not just consist of the particular, momentary and transient existence of the concrete, linguistic entities of individual words spoken by individuals. Since words are not only produced but also perceived and understood, they have a collective reality in addition to their private reality. It is essential to language to be both a private and a common property of those who speak it. The essential quality of its ‘universal individuality’ conditions the possibility of the transcendence from the vanishing concreteness of sense-certainty (the particular entity) to the enduring perseverance of perceived truth (the universal entity). Since language exists only as a living language in its spoken form, humans who speak it satisfy their existential urge for continued existence. Faced with death, humans find in the existential entity of language a means for personal-ontological survival. Hegel’s conception of language as the spiritual awakening of truth set off in the confrontation of consciousness with the omnipresent threat of death anticipates Heidegger’s notion of language as an existential entity and the ontic-ontological realm of truth revelation.

Chapter 7

Walter Benjamin An Unacknowledged Predecessor of Martin Heidegger

And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul? Walt Whitman, ‘Children of Adam’

Introduction: Demystifying Benjamin with Heidegger We have seen in the previous chapter how similarly Hegel and Heidegger think about language and death. Hegel is revealed as a forerunner of Heidegger’s linguistic ontology (Sprachontologie). We turn now to a contemporary of Heidegger, whose work parallels Heidegger’s and thus accentuates the tenets of Heidegger’s conception of language in the context of his concept of death despite the fact that the two thinkers did not explicitly exchange or mutually support each other. Walter Benjamin’s work on language shows a strange affinity with Heidegger. By itself Benjamin’s reflections on language can easily mystify the reader. However, when read in the context of Heidegger, they become more accessible. This may come as a surprise. However, despite their mutual independence, the conceptual links between their philosophies of language are not accidental. Benjamin, similar to Heidegger, sees in language an entity of cosmic proportions. It is a ‘world essence’ that permeates the universe. From the omnipresence of language ‘speech arises’. Hannah Arendt quotes these words by Benjamin in her introduction to Illuminations, the first volume of Benjamin writings to appear in English in 1968, a volume she edited in order to point out the closeness of thought with Heidegger.1 As language shares its ontological status with the human being, it is the medium in which the human being comes to terms with itself: the encounter with the world is a discovery of words and as such a commentary on and by the human experience. Human being is this linguistic process. Life is lived in spoken form.

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Speech accompanies human existence as its intrinsic being, that is, its essence. It is with the endless formation of words that being tries to put an end to its ending. Language thus responds to the ever-looming threat of death. In its response language transforms the natural urge of self-preservation into an existential act of linguistic survival. It is itself, when spoken, result and satisfaction of this urge. In the appeal to language the dying being speaks itself into the continued existence of the living. Similarly to Heidegger, Benjamin conceives of language as an existential entity through which mortal being seeks immortality. We shall see how his conception of linguistic self-preservation is reminiscent of Heidegger’s linguistic ontology.

On the Value of Comparing the Uncompared Benjamin has written extensively on language. None of his writings appear to be influenced by Heidegger. Arendt is aware of this fact in her introduction to Illuminations, which makes the affinity between the two thinkers so striking. We know that Benjamin has read Heidegger’s habilitation on Duns Scotus from 1916,2 but he leaves us an ambiguous judgement. On the one hand, he expresses dissatisfaction and disappointment with the meagre results he finds in Heidegger’s work. On the other hand, he seems inhibited to the point of not pursuing the study of the scholastic concept of language and its theory of meaning any further than Heidegger has done. This ambiguity may explain why Benjamin did not dig more deeply into Heidegger’s linguistic ontology.3 Conversely, there is no evidence that Heidegger took particular notice of Benjamin’s contributions to the question of language. Benjamin was too unknown a figure in his own time, as Arendt points out, to be noticed by someone of such fame as Heidegger. If we are correct in presuming a strict independence of the work of both scholars, what importance can a comparison have? The question becomes more critical if we note that the approach of the two contemporaries to the problem of language differs significantly. Benjamin looks at the nature and origin of language from a mystic–mythological angle. His language never fully detaches itself from its religious–philosophical source. Heidegger’s language, in contrast, is more fully secularized. As a philosopher he ontologizes the question. The result is a language theory that shows systematic and analytic features. Despite these differences, there are fundamental qualities the two have in common. Both exhibit a general love for language as such. Neither hides his intense fondness for the German language in particular. What appears to be a coincidence is of philosophical significance. The kinship originates in a shared conception. For both, language is an existentiale. Both see and hear language speaking with the ontological force of being, which is a force that denies to non-being any form of existence. With the ontological capacity of

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speech nothingness has lost its reality and human being has managed the impossibility of overcoming the facticity of death. In what follows I will outline Benjamin’s theory of language.4 It is critical that one demystify Benjamin’s religious–mythological approach. What Heidegger has done for himself, we must do for Benjamin. When Heidegger decided to leave his theological past behind, it would catch up with him more often than he realized, especially toward the end of his career as he de-metaphysicalizes his later thought. This shift in his later years is a move some find annoyingly cumbersome. Others call it the ‘turn’ (Kehre). The idea of the turn should not be misunderstood as a ‘reversal’ as John Macquarrie points out.5 Heidegger himself recognizes that he never really severed his theological ties. On the contrary, he admits that ‘without this theological origin I would have never walked the path of thinking.’ Theology has taught him that the past’s ‘origin (Herkunft) is and always remains (bleibt) [one’s] future (Zukunft).’6 In this respect his turn is always partly also a return toward his origin, even though he never goes back, but continues to pave his path with the heritage of his origin always near him, always in sight, to those who dare to look back. What is true for Heidegger applies to Benjamin as well, ‘whose early philosophical interest’, Arendt points out, ‘was theologically inspired’ (Illuminations, p. 41). My reading will provide a secular, linguistic-philosophical interpretation of Benjamin’s thought, which can flesh out the essence of a linguistic conception that can thus manifest its agreement with Heidegger’s existentialontological thinking on language. The agreement, once established, will highlight Heidegger’s insight into the nature of language, which remains misunderstood as long as it remains disconnected from the human experience of death. For [w]ithout realizing it, Benjamin had actually more in common with Heidegger’s remarkable sense for living eyes and living bones that had sea-changed into pearls and coral, and as such could be saved and lifted into the present only by doing violence to their context in interpreting them with ‘the deadly impact’ of new thoughts, … (Illuminations, p. 46) We will see that the ‘pearls and coral’, words Arendt borrows from Shakespeare,7 are the words that preserve the truth of human existence by universalizing individual uniqueness into the collective property of a speech community’s language. The fact that this universalized individualization implies acts of ‘violence’ which comes with every genuine interpretation is a given for Heidegger as well, as we know from his introduction to SZ (pp. 38–39, cf. pp. 326–327). Hence, Arendt lets the insight resonate with Benjamin’s words. The ‘deadly impact of thought’ bursts open the gate to the future where the newly discovered and newly formed can assert itself against the confinements of the past (Illuminations, pp. 44–45). I will give final support for my reading of

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Benjamin in the context of Heidegger in the concluding remarks of this part of the investigation.

Ubiquity of Language It has already been pointed out that Benjamin’s philosophical thinking operates on a universal conception of language. To him, language is a world essence. Consequently, all things and events have some form of language. There is nothing in this world that is not permeated by an omnipresent linguistic entity. Language assumes a different form and texture, a different kind of concreteness in the different realms of life, things and events. With different intensity, language asserts its presence in the different realms of life, things and events. Never and nowhere is language completely absent, not even in inanimate things or trivial events. Everything is to some essential degree of a linguistic nature. Only the linguistic density varies from entity to entity. Linguistic variation is itself an essential part of the nature of things. The very presence and occurrence of things is a medium and occurrence of language. It is, in each single case, language itself, in which all things and events present themselves as the things and events they are. Their existence is a form of communication. What they communicate is the essence of a particular thing. Language is a form of existence, and, vice versa, existence has, in each case, primarily, a linguistic reality. It is the essence of language that it asserts existence. In brief, language is existence. All forms of existence are linguistic acts and states of affairs. If all things, events and states of affairs are linguistic acts and states of being, our participation in them and perception of them must themselves be essentially linguistic acts as well. This is indeed the case. Every action is a linguistic reflection. Every perception is a linguistic act of reception (Empfängnis). Things are only present and real to us insofar as their existence, to which Benjamin refers as ‘mental being’ (geistiges Wesen), is communicable (mitteilbar), namely, as linguistic entities (sprachliche Wesen). They are mental beings insofar as they are perceptible, ready to assume existence, by extending their existence, in such reception, thus manifesting themselves as linguistic beings, as which they are indeed intelligible and hence communicable. Were this not the case they would neither be received, nor even perceived. This ignorance of them would constitute a case of non-existence. Linguistic entities are the manifestation of a thing’s being through communication (Mitteilung). Communication is that form of existence that manifests reality. Things and events are real to us insofar as they communicate themselves to us in the form of their respective language. A language constitutes, comprises and conveys the essence of a particular entity, which communicates its being in it. Recognition is based on language. We recognize (erkennen) things

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in, through and as their particular language. The recognition (Erkenntnis), through which we see and understand the world, proceeds in the linguistic steps of spoken (ausgesprochen) words. Benjamin calls such words names (Name). Humans are the linguistic beings that name (benennen) things and speak by naming things. The human language of names and naming is the place of world-discovery and world-encounter. Name-giving is an ongoing event of ‘revelation’ (Offenbarung). Through the linguistic act of naming (Benennung) language communicates with itself literally to come to terms with itself by coming to itself explicitly and expressly in the discovery and as the encounter of things. Names are entities in the state of being expressed. They are experienced instances of human knowledge (Erkenntnis). Knowledge is this self-awareness of the human language. Its power of knowing relies on the spoken word. Anyone familiar with Heidegger already recognizes the first conceptual links. The act of naming is a word-creative event of ontological importance through which language asserts its existential independence. Even though Heidegger does not share the aspect of totality in the cosmological claim of Benjamin’s universal conception of language, Benjamin comes very close to Heidegger’s conception of language as an existential agent that determines human actions and perceptions.8

Translatability of Language If name recognition constitutes the human knowledge of things and if this knowledge is manifest in an explicitness achieved by the expressive force of sound (Laut) and sign (Zeichen), then there are two basic conclusions to be made with respect to the difference between the language of things and the human language. The language of nature in general, and the languages of things in particular, are mute (stumm) and nameless (namenlos) languages. No form of expressedness (Ausgesprochenheit) communicates them. This does not mean that things do not really have what we commonly consider language. Neither does this mean that thing languages are not really communicative. The languages of things do communicate. They could not be considered languages if they didn’t communicate. Their form of communication proceeds exclusively through the material community (stoffliche Gemeinschaft) they reside in with one another. Things appear to us only in their material connection and interwovenness (materiale Gemeinsamkeit). Their appearance to us is an instance of the totality of their communication. The communication of things comprises everything into the communality (Gemeinschaftlichkeit) of an undivided whole called ‘world’. This active, although mute, but, nevertheless, linguistic appearance receives (empfängt) the explicitness of a linguistic expression, in which the presence of things is recognized in the form of a linguistic impression left behind on the human mind as (strictly speaking the memory of) sounds and signs.

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Acoustic and visual impressions are acts of linguistic communication of another kind. In contrast to the material community of things, the impression of things on humans brings forth an immaterial and purely mental (rein geistig) community. This community is an entity of a new type, which we commonly recognize as the human language. Its existence consists in its intimation with the things themselves. Sounds and signs symbolize both, its immateriality and spirituality on one hand and on the other hand its foundation in its concrete materiality, from which it can never sever its ties. The fact that the purely mental is deeply grounded in the concreteness of matter accounts for its expressiveness. The material heritage of its origin provides it with the force of speech. The medium of sound, light (for vision) and the physical body (which gives birth to the immaterial form) bears the communicative power of the human language. Sound, light and the human body are essential, because fundamental, to human communication. All other, younger forms of communication, that is, print and Morse code as representations of phonology, and phone and telegraph as transmitting technologies of those codes over long distances, which all seem to have increased their independence from the physical substance, would and could not even be intelligible without such fundamental dependence. Although the difference between the human mind and brain is fundamental, we need to acknowledge the fact that the brain is fundamental to the mind, and that without the physical impact the brain is able to endure there would not be an immaterial intelligence of the mind. The question of what happens to the mind once the brain is gone (in death) will occupy us later in different ways. The immateriality of the human language consists in its impact on the human mind. Benjamin sees in the act of intimation with and within the things themselves the event of a translation from the less perfect languages into more perfect ones. The human language proves itself to be the most perfect language since things reveal themselves completely (Offenbarung) in its words as the domains of recognition and knowledge where they get most expressed (das Ausgesprochenste) and become purely mental. In the recognitional event of the word, which is the word-creative act of ‘revelation’ (Offenbarung), ‘the purely mental’ (das reine Geistige) comes to the fore as a ‘concept intrinsic to the spirit of language’ (Inbegriff des Sprachgeistes). Things are linguistically most existent (sprachlich existenteste) in words since it is here, in the expression of the word (Ausdruck), where they are most accurately (unverrückbarste) and precisely (prägnanteste) fixed (fixierteste) into their visual and acoustic expressibility (Aussprechlichen) and expressedness (Ausgesprochenen). The word-perceptibility of the things themselves through vision and audition is the condition of the possibility of the communicability of the human language, which is thus necessarily rooted in materiality. Benjamin calls this foundation of language in matter the ‘thingly spirit of language’ (dinglichem Sprachgeist).9

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The translation of thing languages into human language happens in the event of reception (Empfängnis). The event must necessarily have manifold results. The richness of its possible outcomes is contingent on the wealth of variation material reality naturally manifests. The flexibility of matter and material appearance accounts for the reason why there are so many languages spoken by humans. Benjamin speaks of hundreds (hunderten) of languages. He is not fully aware of humanity’s original wealth of thousands of languages, a heritage, which has unfortunately suffered a catastrophic decline due to the effects of linguistic racism, colonialism and imperialism that have accompanied and still accompany even to a higher degree today the hegemonic ambitions of empire.10 What such loss means for humanity philosophically is already obvious now. If language is the house of being, as Heidegger says, where the revelation of its truth occurs, as Benjamin confirms, any loss impoverishes the human spirit. The existential-ontological insight into the truths of life has suffered a tragic, since irreparable, loss. In the instance of a vanished language, the history itself of its culture comes to a halt without the prospect of revival, unless communities are left that can and will insist on relying on surviving records of their once spoken language for the purpose of social, cultural and religious life. This possibility of history is intrinsic to humanity where the translation from thing to word takes place. Reception we have seen is this event of linguistic transition. Reception is a human faculty whose active form lies in the mimetic ability of similarity production. The urge to become like something else does not just permeate human behaviour; it determines human behaviour to the extent that human being must be understood to consist in acts of invention through creative imitation. Imitation (ähnlich zu werden . . .) motivates human behaviour (. . . und sich zu verhalten). Consequently, human behaviour is reflective of a particular world-conception. From this follows that mimetic behaviour is the material from which human language is formed. Human world-conception is word-conception. Words are conceived with-in (with and in) the human conception of the world. Those words, which come to term, both literally and metaphorically, are born to join the human language. Benjamin talks of a ‘molding [of the human being] to (Angleichung an) the structure of cosmic being’.11 Traces of this mimesis are manifest in the sensory spheres of similarity (sinnliche Ähnlichkeit), known as onomatopoeia. Since not all words are obviously onomatopoetic, Benjamin develops the concept of non-sensory similarity (unsinnliche Ähnlichkeit). Non-sensory similarity is not an a-sensory phenomenon. On the contrary, it is an empirical abstraction from the obvious and concrete connections between the mimetic object and the mimetic act to a relation that no longer makes manifest the direct, sensory connections between the object and the further evolved linguistic entity that becomes a word.12 The shift from sensory to non-sensory similarity is another reason why there are so many human languages.

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That words in their origins and essence are comportmental artworks and language in its essence originally poetry finds strong support in Heidegger. Heidegger’s phenomenological conception of language defines the poetic qualities of language in terms of word evolution. The poetic features of language are reflective of the early steps of language formation. This poetic legacy is characteristic of every language and puts restrictions on the possibility of translation.13

Untranslatability of Language Heidegger has strong reservations concerning the translatability of language.14 Benjamin, too, sees severe restrictions when it comes to translations between languages. The limitations of translation are contingent on a fundamental antithesis (Gegensatz). The antithesis is at work specifically between what is and gets communicated and what is not yet communicated and, more generally, between the communicable and the non-communicable. The tension between the two sides of language is the driving force behind the transition from the uncommunicated to the communicated. That transition is never exhaustive, and never definite, but always accidental, that is, it is contingent on the particular situation of the process of transmission. As the antithesis is driving the uncommunicated towards communication, it ensures that the uncommunicated gets to some extent communicated with some measure of perfection and imperfection. The antithesis is always in the process of seeking its resolution in the constant evolution of language. Thus, it is responsible for generating all non-human and human languages. Language does not just consist of the communication of the communicable. It has also a symbolic side where the non-communicable resides and seeks new forms of explicitness and expression. In the symbolic function of language the non-communicable reveals its presence first in symbols and then in more explicit signs. Linguistic signs originate in the symbolic realm of the non-communicable. With the emergence of linguistic signs, elements of the non-communicable are moulded into new forms of linguistic existence.15 Within the sphere of the human language this antithesis takes on the form of a conflict (Widerstreit). The conflict is one about the task of linguistic formation. While the unexpressed (expressible) will always struggle for better expressions, the conflict is mainly waged between the expressedness (Ausgesprochenen) of the expressible (Aussprechlichen) and the unexpressedness (Unausgesprochenen) of the inexpressible (Unaussprechlichen). Since this conflict can never be settled with total satisfaction, it remains the fertile ground for continuous linguistic innovation.16 It keeps languages alive within the process of an ongoing evolution. Benjamin calls this living aspect of language the ‘holy growth of language’ (heilige Wachstum der Sprachen).17 Each language paves its own original way of

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resolving the tension between the uncommunicated (that is both communicable and remains ultimately incommunicable) and the realm of its potential and eventual communication. Resolution happens through verbal flashes of revelation. Since no verbal solution will, despite its uniqueness, ever be final, languages remain in the constant motion of change. All languages share this linguistic underground of the uncommunicated that is in persistent search of communication. Languages thus bear an a priori relation to one another. Their relatedness transcends the bounds of history and etymology. The uniqueness of every language makes all languages linguistic complements of one another. Hence, unified, they would, if possible, speak with total transparence a pure language (die reine Sprache). In the state of individualization, however, each language points at the same world, at the same things in this world, but differently. This difference is both the condition of the possibility of translation and it accounts for the impossibility of translation (Illuminationen, p. 54). A translation is ‘more’ than just the semantic transportation of information from one linguistic entity to another, which we call communication (Mitteilung). Each language is distinct in its unique ways of intuiting and intending (Art des Meinens) the same things (das Gemeinte as das Selbe und Identische). ‘That which is meant’ (das Gemeinte), is in each case the same thing and as such identical (das Selbe und Identische) with the object of intention by other languages. Das Gemeinte, Benjamin says, is always das Selbe und Identische, regardless what language is spoken and how a language speaks of the particular thing. However, how a language intuits the particular thing is unique to the language. The distinctness of directing attention to particular things (sich richten auf) constitutes the ‘more’ of the intentionality with which a language gets hold of a thing and comes to terms with it. The particular grasp of a thing by a language is unique to that language. It cannot be authentically reproduced by another language without changing the grip on it. The particular conception of one language can be evoked by another, yet only with a fleeting hint. Thus, strictly speaking, the specific conception of anything by a particular language remains literally untranslatable. There will never be an identical reproduction of a different type. All good translation recognizes this aspect of its task: there is always an untranslatable residue that is unique and essential to a particular conception. Only with this recognition does the distinct essence of a language’s conception get carried over into a new language like a fading echo re-awakened. Benjamin calls this art of translation ‘re-poetization’ (Umdichtung). Re-poetization is a poetic recreation. It is a creative adaptation achieved by force of ‘molding’ the limited and limiting perspectives of the native tongue ‘into’ (sich anbilden) other modes of intention and other manners of intuition. This gets achieved by appropriating the art of meaning (Art des Meinens) that is most peculiar to the original language as one’s own. Such moulding has an eye-opening and horizon-widening effect. The broadened insight into the things themselves does not come without a price. Linguistic violence is necessary to bring it about.

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The courage toward it and the ability to endure it are spiritually enriching. For Heidegger, too, as we have seen earlier, it is this linguistic violence that conditions the pursuit of philosophical truth. Heidegger’s linguistic ontology thus resonates directly with Benjamin’s poetic truth preservation.18

Corpo-Reality of Language Concepts of violence, growth and decay, have been applied to linguistic entities. They suggest a life force at work in language. The linguistic revelation of existential and ontological truth through verbal renditions of the existentialontological underground of the human language in sounds and signs requires an existential source and a stage, where these truth events can take place. Human being is this source and stage of language. Human being provides language with a living body. Concepts such as ‘life’ and ‘spirit’ describe language not just metaphorically but also reveal its essential reality (Illuminationen, pp. 51f.). Since human languages are the only languages that are spoken, Benjamin considers them living languages. They are alive in speech. They evolve and survive only as long as they are spoken. Once a speech community vanishes, its language has died along with it. Its unique conceptions of reality are lost to humanity unless attempts at revival based on records and preserved memories have a realistic prospect of success. The question of survival does not concern speech communities where languages evolve into countless variations. Language is a collective entity. It does not face mortality like an individual speaker. As long as it is spoken, it is in the process of constant renewal. Old features vanish; new ones emerge. Only in the mode of being-spoken, as speech, is language what it is, a living entity, which does not face the fate of death. Survival concerns the mortal individual. If language is not mortal the way an individual is, we need to understand the difference. Speaking it has something to do with it. Language as speech affects an individual’s mortality to the point that it is effected by it. Speech is the place and act of the extension of individual being into the collective. The existentialontological extension of individual existence undoes what mortality is about to do. Death has triggered language into existence as its response to death to overcome it. As the only being that speaks its language, the human being is engaged in its own extension into a life-long operation of linguistic survival. To Benjamin this is not an outlandish idea. That language has such magiccreative powers we know from the Biblical creation myth according to which God spoke the universe and everything in it into existence. Humans have inherited some of the divine powers of God’s language. They are the only ones who can name things by speaking them into the reality of human recognition, which makes up the intelligible life-world. Doing so results in self-extension. Language overcomes individual mortality with its self-induced immortality. The collective

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body of language, with all its physical attributes of manifestation, constitutes a spiritual body that remains, as long as it is spoken, unthreatened by the individual fate of death. The Greek definition of human being as ζωον λογον εχον bears this implication of linguistic survival. How exactly this prospect is given is unclear and needs to be worked out. The possibility of linguistic survival is given with the empirical reality of the human body (Leiblichkeit, cf. Illuminationen, p. 52). Language speaks only through the human body. It does so by taking on the shape of the human body, by adopting it, assuming its expressive forms to make them its own. The stage and matter, on which and from which language is formed, is the human body itself. As humans react to the world, they compress inadvertently their impressions of reality into concrete-physical (re-)actions, which become the linguistic material for the formation of language to express the impression. Language formation is this linguistic-physical reflection of reality that makes the human conception of the world transparent. The reflection of human world conception reveals itself in the individual act from which it proceeds to become a sign with specific meaning. The simplest body movements already speak with the implicit force of a specific expression. All human behaviour is in this sense comprehension. What is manifest in the act has found its mimetic (re)production in this act as its authentic reflection. Consequently, the human body is the source for the construction of a reality that reveals a world conception in this actual response to a world encountered. Language has no other reality than that of the human body. The corporality of the human body is the corpo-reality of language. Only in its corpo-real existence is language speech, is it spoken. The ‘corpo-reality’ (Körperlichkeit) of language is most visible in its still existing earliest epic form. The art of storytelling (Erzählung) is a manual craft (Handwerk). Not just the voice, but hands, eyes and ultimately the whole body and soul are involved in the praxis of relating one’s life-experiences to others. The Greek word ‘πραττω’ (πρασσω) captures the idea. The praxis (πραξις) of language evolves from our daily interactions. The linguistic fall-out of our lived experiences gathers in the lively expressions (lebendige Rede) of gestures (Gebärden), words (Begriffe) and signs (Zeichen). In its simplest activities the human body generates a linguistic sediment. With the empirical richness of this linguistic residue listeners and readers together with the performer and author ‘actualize’ the most remote life-worlds, by ‘bringing them to the fore of their presence’ (vergegenwärtigen). They bring back to (their) life the lives and worlds of a reality past. Their actualizations resurrect, as it were, physical and spiritual realities. Such memory is at work in the ‘Figur’, ‘Haltung’ and ‘Körperlichkeit’, in the ‘figure’, in the ‘comportment’ or ‘attitude’ and in the ‘corporality’ of an existence that makes up the reality of human life, including that of the storyteller her- and himself.19 This ‘sensuous side’ of the human language is most eminent in the ‘manual craft’ of storytelling. The example makes evident how necessary materiality and

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sensibility is for the possibility of speech. It is precisely the transience of spiritualized matter, the fleeting experiences of the human spirit materialized into the physical forms of the human body that requires their repetition through which and as which their communication in speech happens. Repetition through speech as the recollection of remote, forgotten realities no longer present, communicates them into the present (vergegenwärtigen). Their communication is their presence. They remain present in the communicative act. Continued communication not only keeps their memory alive, but recreates them in their own right of a renewed existence. Seen from this perspective language appears as a fundamental event of life, in which death plays, not just its natural, but an essential, a foundational, linguistic-ontological role. If ‘death sanctions all storytelling’, as Benjamin says it does, it is death that propagates the linguistic preservation (bewahren) of life in the lived and living speech, the lebendige Rede, in which life comes to its verbal expression. Here experience has finally left its solipsistic isolation. It has suddenly become communicable (mitteilbar) to get exchanged, virtually endlessly, in the chain of tradition (Kette der Tradition). The ‘faculty to exchange experiences’ (Vermögen, Erfahrungen auszutauschen) is a faculty that merges the individual being of concrete existence together with other human beings to create the collective being of the speech community. Its members now share an experience that unifies them to this collective of common being whose spiritual reflection consists in the existence of a language that is commonly spoken by these members. The ‘epic faculty’ (epische Vermögen) thrives on this linguistic-ontological ground. It enables the storyteller to tell her story. Its generative force (Keimkraft) retrieves and recollects lived memories (Gedächtnis, Erinnerung) into a revived imagination. The survival of these recollections proceeds in a ‘continued living’ (Fortleben). It happens in (and as) the art of storytelling (Weitererzählen). The ‘tradition’ of ‘storytelling’ shares its stories by ‘handing them down and over’ with the spoken word designed to take root in the listening audience. Linguistic survival of individual being rests in this temporal and temporary manifestation of the invisible reality of eternity. ‘The thought of eternity’, Benjamin says, ‘has always had its strongest source in death.’ In the formation of language the thought of this source has been the motivational force, which borrows its strength from an inexhaustible source. The age-old experience of the facticity of death is the existential ground on which language evolves from the concrete, physical and mortal reality of human existence.20

Conclusion: Congeniality of Heidegger’s and Benjamin’s Language Theories The idea that truth is an existential event of linguistic revelation is at the heart of the language theories of both Heidegger and Benjamin. It is here where the

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kinship between the two thinkers becomes most evident. Although the difference of terminology does not at first suggest an intrinsic kinship, upon further scrutiny it is possible to detect a close affinity of ideas. What Heidegger describes as life’s ongoing linguistic truth-event, as the Ereignis of α−ληθεια, understood in its literal sense as the event of disclosure resulting in the state of unconcealedness, Benjamin illustrates in the metaphor of an enlightening process (Vorgang) of the bursting into flames (Aufflammen) of an artwork in which the form of the work achieves the highest intensity of its illuminating power. The revelatory event of such a disclosure (Offenbarung) is epitomized in the formation of concepts as words and names (Begriffe). Concepts are as much the concrete and physical manifestation of empirical phenomena as they are representions of universal ideas. Concepts play an intermediary role (Vermittlerrolle) between phenomena and ideas. This intermediary role makes the ontological status of language not identical, but equivalent to that of human existence. Very much like Heidegger, Benjamin discovers an existential correspondence between language and human existence.21 The correspondence is one in both the metaphorical and the literal sense of the word. If language is the response of existence to its facticity of death, death communicates its factical reality to the existing individual. Mortality is the issue in this kind of correspondence. The awareness of it asserts itself with the task of literally coming to terms with it. Both Heidegger and Benjamin consider the human body a fundamental linguistic source. All human actions speak with the expressive force of language. Modes of human behaviour are not only precursors of linguistic expressions into which they eventually evolve. Comportments could not evolve into the linguistic units of words, were they not already performed with a fundamental degree of expressness (Ausdrücklichkeit).22 Their initial relation to the things and events themselves which brought them into being as a reaction to them inadvertently speaks through them as they may now continue to evolve to a linguistic sign. This explains why both Heidegger and Benjamin see the phenomenon of onomatopoeia at the beginning of language evolution. Ultimately, all words, and language as such, are works of art of poetry (ποιησις) in this fundamental sense. They are made (ποιειν) from specific comportments, from the daily behaviour of the human body that functions both as their material and formal cause. The expressive life-force of the human body provides room for the poetic revelation of its lived experiences, its continuous encounter with the world. Both thinkers see in this poiesis a strife (Streit), a conflict (Widerstreit) and an opposition (Gegensatz). Heidegger sees in it a striving between earth and world that results in a world-opening artistic event of creation. Benjamin sees in it the transition from the unexpressed prelinguistic underground of human existence to the expressedness of the communicable. Precisely this is the point Heidegger makes in his discussion of the fore-structure of understanding in SZ (150f, 155, 157f., 161). Through fore-conceptions (Vorgriff) humans have of things in their interaction with the world each thing bears its own conceptuality

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(Begrifflichkeit), which can be drawn (schöpfen), as its proper name, as Benjamin would say in allusion to the creation myth, from the Sein-zu of this original relation to it. Heidegger calls this state of primordial relatedness to things the ‘fore-having’ (Vorhabe) and ‘fore-sight’ (Vorsicht) of the initial world-conception (Auslegung), from which the process of word-creation can ensue. For such a creative revelation to happen linguistically a certain attitude toward and perception of the world is necessary. Benjamin calls it the disposition of ‘reception’ (Empfängnis), Heidegger the perspective of ‘releasement’ toward the things themselves (Gelassenheit).23 Reception and releasement are the fundamental ways of human ‘being toward’ the world. For Heidegger it is the Sein-zu, the being toward things encountered. For Benjamin it is the heeding of the call of beings humans translate into proper names for them. For both Heidegger and Benjamin this mode of being in the world is a basic linguistic behaviour. It consists of comportments (Verhalten, Verhaltung) from which language emerges. Language is essentially this, a recreative reflection of the human being toward things by means of comportmental reactions to them. As these comportmental reactions get refined in their repetition and evolve to linguistic signs, the private being of individual existence toward things becomes public property. In the transposition of personal experience, from its individuality to community, an event of transcendence takes place. The transformation of the individual into the collective body of language does not dissolve the individual. On the contrary, it preserves it. Language evolution is the temporal stage of eternity where existence turns its natural instinct of self-preservation into a poetic craft of linguistic-ontological transcendence. The poetry of the human body transcends the physical bounds of nature, which all end in death. The result is the persistence of individual existence in the collective – ontological survival made possible via the ontic domain of the prelinguistic body. Language is the response of existence to its finitude. The fact that two thinkers, who are otherwise so diverse as Benjamin and Heidegger, could share the same insight into the nature of language suggests the discovery of an existential truth. Both Heidegger and Benjamin are committed to a secular religion couched in the demythologized terminology of a linguistic ontology, which construes human being as expressing the existential urge for survival to satisfy it in, as and through language. In Language individuals continue to exist collectively. The secret lies in the mystery of the word itself. Each word is a trace of humanity. It contains traces of lived experiences. Benjamin shares this concept of truth with Heidegger. Not only was Benjamin a book collector but he was also an avid collector of events with high symbolic value, of philosophical fragments, of quotations, aphorisms and proverbs. The shorter an insight is worded, the higher and more lasting its truth-value is. Like Nietzsche, Benjamin wanted ‘to create things on which time tests its teeth in vain; in form, in substance to strive for a little eternity.’ Benjamin knew that this is done with the concision of

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precision – in ‘the aphorism, the apothegm’ (die Sentenz), which are for Nietzsche ‘forms of “eternity”’.24 For words speak with the power of primordial truth in our authentic recollection of them. As we learn and relearn to speak them, they spring forth directly from the things themselves, which they thus name into existence, and in whose existence we thus partake. The Greek has preserved this original meaning of the word. Λογος collects and recollects things. Hence, it is something to be collected and recollected. We pick up λογοι in our encounters of things. We encounter λογοι in things. They are essentially the things we encounter in their designation and discovery (disclosure) of them. Thing encounters bring words into existence. We speak and generate them by re-collecting (λεγειν) our original encounters with the world. If the formation of words is essentially the creation of a work of art, namely, that of language as such, as Heidegger and Benjamin suggest, they are like the enduring (dauernden) jewellery, the ‘pearls and coral’ of language, as Arendt says in her allusion to Shakespeare. Not only their endurance through time but also their striking beauty hidden in the depth of the sea is a symbol for the inconspicuous truth buried in the artwork which truth thus permeates in its concealment to erupt in moments of vision like flashes of lightning that disclose it temporarily. ‘The work’s shining truth content’ bears ‘the survival of the subject matter’ to transform the work into a lasting piece (die dauernden Werke) that touches upon immortality (Unsterblichkeit). Its shining life force is inexhaustive and inextinguishable. It continues to burn (fortbrennt) like a flame with the force of an everlasting life. We are faced with ‘the enigma (Rätsel) of the flame itself: that of being alive (des Lebendigen).’ For this to happen the critical search for truth becomes the force of history. The search reaches its goal in its victory in, and thus, over death (Illuminationen, pp. 63–64). This is an experience each individual has as she speaks the language of eternal truth.

Chapter 8

Heidegger’s Parmenides The Journey to Truth as the Emergence of Language into Immortality

Seid nur fromm, wie der Grieche war! Liebt die Götter und denkt freundlich der Sterblichen! Be pious, as the Greeks were! Love the Gods and think fondly of the mortals! Friedrich Hölderlin, ‘An die jungen Dichter’ (‘To the young poets’)

The Journey to Truth as the Thought of Being Finally we can revisit Parmenides’ philosophical journey to the goddess. We shall do so with Heidegger as a guide. Shortly after his retreat from his active involvement in National Socialist politics in the years of 1933 and 1934, Heidegger tries to leave behind the philosophical shackles of metaphysics with such compositions as his Beiträge and to penetrate Presocratic thought in a series of lecture courses on Parmenides and Heraclitus in 1942–44 with his method of proper (eigentliches), essential (wesentliches) or ‘inceptive thinking’ (anfängliches Denken). Manfred Frings, the editor of those lectures, published in Volumes 54 and 55 of the collected works (Gesamtausgabe), expresses his astonishment at what appears to be Heidegger’s stubborn disregard of the devastating events around him that had crippled Germany and the rest of the world.1 George Kovacs echoes the sentiment to give it an ontologic-apologetic twist. The nightmares of human history, he says, do not invalidate the question of being. On the contrary, they expose it as the most pressing question in need of primordial thought undisturbed by the ontic events of an unontological history of beings (Seienden). The importance of history consists in its ontological value as Seinsgeschichte. Insofar as history in general and politics in particular can inform the ontological quest, an entanglement with political occurrences is

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indispensable. The task is to avoid the lure of beings into traps of ontic dispersion that lead to a fragmentation of thought at the cost of conceiving (of) the ‘more primordial’ history of the truth of being. Heidegger may not always have succeeded in discerning the line between the ontic-ontological and ontictrivial. He may occasionally have trespassed into ‘historiology’, the ‘mere scientific or ontic history’. His ontological eye, however, remained focused on the ‘radically historical’ question of being.2 Even if one agrees with Kovacs, one must concede that humans in general, including Heidegger, inadvertently participate in ontic history. Not only is Heidegger aware of this human condition but he also exemplifies it. Consequently, he does not ‘distance philosophical thinking from . . . politics’, as Kovacs contends (p. 35) but tries to understand one through the other. Theodore Kisiel has shown that judgements such as those by Kovacs and Frings are rather deceptive.3 Heidegger never really divorced politics from philosophy. As Kisiel notes, ‘Heidegger’s passing comments on the current events of his immediate times, in the manner and style of a newspaper columnist, proliferate in his lecture courses from the early thirties and continue unabated until the end of his life . . .’ This is most evident in his lecture course ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’ from the summer semester 1935, where Heidegger’s philosophical apprehension of ‘geopolitics’ becomes explicit. What had changed after 1934 was significant. With his resignation from the rectorship Heidegger lacked any visible political stage from which to launch his politics of being. Thus, very much like Nietzsche more than 70 years earlier, before and after the Prussian-French war of 1870–71, in which he participated as a medical orderly, Heidegger was doomed to sit, by his own choice, somewhat secluded from the terribly exciting events around him, not in the Alps as Nietzsche did, but not far away from them in the provincial University town of Freiburg. There, like Nietzsche before him, Heidegger ‘buried himself in thoughts of unique depth until he was puzzled by them, and consequently being both very worried and worriless at the same time, he wrote down his thoughts about the Greeks.’ The events of war do not put the validity and relevance of these thoughts into question. On the contrary, the fact that they were born in the times of war, and as Nietzsche says, ‘despite such troublesome times’, speaks for their fundamental importance.4 In his attempts to overcome metaphysical presuppositions Heidegger was hoping to ‘recollect’ (wieder-holen) long forgotten ancient Greek thought that was born out of an intuitive and intimate encounter with and, in this sense pre-ontological, understanding of being. Heidegger thought that such a basic understanding would be of fundamental benefit for humanity. He does not, of course, try to reinvent the ontological wheel of the Greeks. His recollection (Wieder-holen) is no repetition (Wiederholung). He knows that this beginning would necessarily have to be the new beginning of a different kind, which he simply calls ‘different thinking.’5 It is a beginning that reopens the past with the prospect of a new

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future, a future that is ‘new’ in the sense that it leads humanity to its ‘proper’ destiny. Trying to rethink early Greek thinking is a delicate undertaking. It requires the immersion into unfamiliar territory and entails the detection of forgotten truths. It motivates conceptual transformations and results in the re-emergence from an experience that will leave one changed. We are thus confronted with a problem Heidegger addresses repeatedly, the problem of translation. According to Heidegger, translation ought to be understood in the literal sense of the word. ‘Über-setzen’ (‘tres-passing’) refers to the passage from one point (of view) to another. The challenge is one of paying proper tribute to new sights. One has to find words that can describe and thus provide the insight into new sights of being. Ontic sightseeing leads to ontological insights only if such Einsicht (insight) really becomes Aussicht (outlook) by the force of a novel use of language. Thus, the return to the initial vantage point is no longer simply a return. The perspective of the starting point has changed with the views collected during the journey. Unless language reflects the change, it will be short-lived. The insight is lost like a forgotten dream that lacked a linguistic outside for recollection. Only its linguistic explication can invite readers and listeners to review the new panorama of being.6 Parmenides struggles with this problem, and Heidegger struggles with him. Here lies the incentive for the poetic device of both and my inclination to travel with both into the unknown. The experience of thought is borne in the formation of words, phrases and a whole new language of a different thinking. Unless one appreciates the difficulty of saying the unsaid and unsayable, one is inclined to reject attempts at speaking the thought of being. In what follows I am undertaking a mystical experiment. I am trying to rethink Heidegger’s attempts to travel with Parmenides and to travel with Parmenides with Heidegger on our side. I invite myself and the inclined reader to this journey together and let myself (and perhaps others) be inspired to novel ways of understanding being. I will follow Heidegger’s and Parmenides’ lead and walk their ways of thinking to advance ‘abruptly’ (sprunghaft), in primal leaps (Ursprung) of understanding (επιστηµη). I thus hope to become initiated into the mystery of thought and being in order to understand how the equation of both constitutes language and speech. To do so, I need to demonstrate that the comportmental dimension of understanding is of corporeal nature and that it is this nature of corporeality that makes an understanding through language possible in the first place. I will examine how this physical dimension of intentionality conditions the possibility of communication. It will prove imperative to consider the ontological nature of communication (Mitteilung) as a sharing of (our) being with one another: Mit-teilen is Mitsein and vice versa. The communal being of language lies here in its organic construction as an artwork. Its ontological nature reveals it as the ontic domain of eternal being that promises immortality. This promise is Parmenides’ invitation au voyage.

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The Conjunction (Gefüge) of Being Heidegger sees in Parmenides a forerunner of his quest for truth.7 For him Parmenides is the first to point at a connection between language, thought and being, and thus to touch on the ontological difference between being as such (Sein) and beings as particular entities (Seiendes). To capture this difference in Parmenides, Heidegger translates two Greek words, λεγειν and νοειν, the following way: λεγειν ‘lets-[being]-lie-before-[us]’ (vorliegenlassen) so that νοειν can ‘take-[being]-to-heart’ (in-die-Acht-nehmen). Both make up the ‘roots’ (Grundzüge) of Greek thinking, since they apprehend in that which is present (beings) that which is always elusive in its (!) presence, namely, being as such (Sein). ‘Being is,’ Heidegger says in SZ, ‘the transcendens pure and simple’ (das transcendens schlechthin). Being is both present in its absence and inconspicuous in its presence. Languages, which do not have a word for being, such as ASL (American Sign Language) or Indonesian, confirm the point. They give expression to being elliptically, expressing the presence of being by its verbal absence. To elucidate the deeper meaning of the transcendence of being, Heidegger provides a note in the margins to his private copy of SZ which states that as ‘the ecstatic’ (the transcendence of) being (Seyn) is ‘the roof and thought’ (‘ überdacht’ !), the ‘horizon’ of beings (Seyendes) (SZ, p. 440): ‘transcendence [is to be understood] as the ecstatic – the temporal (Zeitlichkeit) – temporality; but [as the] “horizon”! Seyn hat Seyendes “überdacht”.’ Thus, in their apprehension of the transcendence λεγειν and νοειν demonstrate how thought (νοειν) and being (εον) combine to give rise to language (λεγειν). That is the ‘event’ of the ‘truth of being’ Heidegger alludes to in the final words of his comment: ‘However, [one has to perceive] transcendence from the truth of being: [as] the event (Ereignis).’ To explicate this truth of being, Parmenides’ poem does both: (1) It speaks of the word-creative force of being as (2) it is itself evidence of this event. Although known to us only in fragments,8 it provides enough evidence for the reader to conclude with Parmenides that being is the source of word-creation. In tune with this conclusion, Heidegger writes the marginal note to emphasize that an ‘event’ like this (Ereignis) is the ‘transcendence, but [derived] from the truth of being (Seyn),’ to become and to remain explicit as truth – in an event come to the fore, as an event come true (SZ, p. 440). In their concision Heidegger’s words are precise: ‘Transzendenz aber von der Wahrheit des Seyns her: das Ereignis.’ Transcendence is the sudden transparence of the present asserting its presence in the event: the revelation of the truth of being. Heidegger qualifies the connection between λεγειν and νοειν as a ‘conjunction’ (Gefüge). As being (εον) gets apprehended (νοειν), it is laid out into open visibility (λεγειν) to become expressible in its explicit noticeability. The conjunction of vorliegenlassen and inachtnehmen hinges on being. It is this hinge that gives rise to ‘words’, ‘word-compositions’ and ‘language’ as such.9 The force that forms the connection, that holds it together and sustains it as the source of

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language is the same force that calls human (ανθρωποι)10 mortals (βροτοι)11 onto the ‘path of thinking’ (Denk-Weg).12 Heidegger’s Denk-Weg is Parmenides’ travelling route. Both heed the call (Geheiß, Heißen) of being and travel the road to it. What leads to being is that which springs forth from it. Hence, language is their means of transportation. Humans are called to speak of and to the truth of being. They respond to the call through ‘correspondence’ (Entsprechung) – both to and with being. Consequently, being finds itself reflected in this correspondence. Language is this reflection. It ‘cor-responds’ (ent-sprechen) to the call of being.13 To unearth the roots of Greek thinking further, Heidegger delves deeper into Parmenides’ poem, apparently with the help of Heraclitus: Heeding the call consists in the correspondence between the Λογος of being as such and the λογος of human being, that is, between being as a whole (εον) and beings in particular (ταυτα, τα εοντα). Language arises out of this primordial ‘bond’ (Bezug) between the whole and the particular and continues to evolve from it. Consequently, in its origins language is a ‘faithful’ (wahrhafte) explication (λεγειν) of a ‘proper thinking’ of being by giving voice to this ‘οµολογειν’, the ‘correspondence’ between divine being (Parmenides) or Logos (Heraclitus) and human logos in touch with beings. As its literal meaning suggests, it is a correspondence that aims at ‘saying the same [thing, that is being] with [the voice of] Λογος,’ but in terms that did not exist before and are derived from encountered entities. They are called into being to give witness (Wissen, σοφον εστιν) to the primordial ‘bonding without terms’ (Heraclitus, Fragment 50). The interrelation between humans and being escapes the language of metaphysics. This is why the later Heidegger deliberately adopts the language of the early philosophers. Despite the apparent opposition between Parmenides and Heraclitus, Heidegger contends that both say the same thing. Both, he says, ‘stand on the same ground.’ Both speak from the source of being with the force of being about the presence of being. Heraclitus’ ‘becoming’ consists in the ‘rise’ of being into ‘appearance’ and its ‘disappearance’ from such ‘presence’. As for Parmenides, being is ‘emerging-appearing presence’, implying the concept of being as ‘appearing’ in terms of rising and declining presence. For Heidegger, Heraclitus’ ‘becoming’ is the appearance and the disappearance of Parmenides’ ‘being’. Parmenides’ ‘being’ is as the event of being’s appearing a ‘becoming of being’.14 Based on this fundamental relation between the two philosophers, Heidegger repeatedly turns to Heraclitus’ Fragment 50 in order to understand how Parmenides comes to terms with his experience of the truth of being: Ουκ εµου, αλλα του λογου ακουσαντας οµολογειν σοφον εστιν εν παντα ειναι. Do not just listen to me, but if you have listened to Logos, the foregathering (of being as such), with due obedience and hearkening attention, then (you will see that) knowledge consists in saying the Same as Logos and with Logos, namely, by gathering oneself in the midst of this pre-ontological

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foregathering of being in the whole with regard to its to-gather-ness and thus to recognize and say that ‘One is All’.15 Both Parmenides and Heraclitus, and thanks to them their pupil Heidegger, have acquired the art of thinking. It consists in contemplations of being. Such contemplation is itself an expression of being. Its experience transforms the ontological traveller into a composer of being.16 The travelling composer must return to give linguistic testimony of the experience of the thought of being. Thinking in this fundamental sense is ‘poetry’ in the literal sense of ποιησις (creation): a poietic disclosure of the ontological venture. It is the return into word-composition to remain what it is, the revelation of being. The meaning of being lies in such revelation. When the thinker becomes the poet, when thinking becomes poetry, the truth of the Gefüge between νοειν and λεγειν is at work in word-compositions of being. That Denken (thinking) is essentially Dichten (poetry) is the truth of being. The transformation from thinker to poet happens in the proximity to being, where thought lets the human being speak truths of being out of this experience of being in truth.

Twofoldness (Zwiefalt) of Being Parmenides has different words for being. He uses εον, εµµεναι and ειναι interchangeably. Often, however, these words occur together, as they do, for example, in Fragment VI, 1 which Heidegger addresses on many occasions, notably in his lecture course ‘Was heißt Denken?’ (‘What is called Thinking?’): ‘Χρη το λεγειν τε νοειν τ'εον εµµεναι. εστι γαρ ειναι.’ ‘One must attend (to) and apprehend being. Being calls into being beings. Thus is being.’ A literal translation does not do justice to the passage. Let me therefore paraphrase it: It is necessary that being is attended (to) and apprehended [there is no way around such an attentive apprehension. [For] being [affects everything and thus] calls into being [all] beings [including humans by way of thought and speech,] [who (re)collect and spell out thoughts that think being and are the presence of being.] For [this is what it means to be that] being is. [By virtue of the occurrence and presence of its being (there), being calls into existence what thus is (in and as language and thought).] Parmenides speaks here in tautological pleonasms, a mode of speaking which Heidegger also adopts. Parmenides does so in order to point at an ontological ambiguity. Heidegger calls this ambiguity ‘Zwiefalt’ (twofoldness, duality) of being: that between being (εον) and beings (εοντα, ταυτα).17 In order for a being to be (ειναι), it has to abide in being (εµµεναι). Consequently, being occurs in and as (the being of) a being. Thus Heidegger brings out two aspects

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of Parmenides’ εον εµµεναι: (a) ‘the being of beings’ (Sein des Seienden) and (b) ‘beings with respect to being’ via the respective being of each (Seiendes hinsichtlich des Seins), that is, ‘beings in being’ (Seiendes im Sein). For Heidegger this ontological ambiguity is at work in Parmenides’ use of the participial εον, to refer to being. The term is not designed to clarify the ambiguity. Perhaps no term can fully do this. Heidegger does not think that he has himself been much more successful in making the distinctions sufficiently explicit. His own constructions (‘the being of beings’ and ‘beings in being’), he says, rather obscure than clarify the issue. The genitive ‘of’ and the locative ‘in’ are ambiguous themselves. Heidegger’s concern is not just the ontological difference, but goes beyond it. In addition to disambiguating ‘being itself’ and ‘beings’, he further distinguishes the ‘being of beings’. Hence, he in fact operates with a three-way distinction: being itself, beings and being of beings, calling the latter ‘beingness’ (Seiendheit or Seiendsein) in other places.18 It is no surprise that with this distinction in mind Heidegger, too, can and must still speak highly ambiguously. Not only do ‘beings (Seiendes) abide (west) in being [as such] (Sein),’ he says in his 1952 lecture course ‘Was heißt Denken?’, but ‘being [itself] (Sein) abides (west) as the being (Sein) of beings.’19 The ambiguity is intrinsic to being. It accounts for the λεγειν τε νοειν τ’εον (the expressive apprehension of being) as the Gefüge of being and calls for the affirmation of the ‘bond’ between being and human being. It is the nature of human being to have access to the beingness of beings in its Sein zu (being toward). Beingness functions as the hinge in the conjunction between being as such and beings. It is the ontological joint with which language and thought, thought and speech, λεγειν and νοειν are fundamentally connected. The λεγειν τε νοειν τ’εον as the Gefüge of being hinges upon this being of beings. It makes speaking about beings possible, and thus enables the human being to speak of being itself. This ontological ability is intrinsic to the human being. With the Gefüge of being there occurs an immediate shift from thinking to poetry back to thinking being itself. The empirical fallout of this ontological activity is language in its spoken form as ‘the event’. What is this nature of the human being that provides access to the being of beings and via this beingness to being itself? The ontological possibility entails the call for actualization. Parmenides’ saying in VI, 1 can be understood as an ontological imperative. It is the call not to take things simply at face value. Things are never isolated, independent entities, unrelated to one another or to being itself. Nor are they merely of use for specific purposes. In SZ Heidegger points at the latter type of being as fundamental to things in their readiness to hand (zuhanden). He does so with his concept of equipmentality (Zeug). Based on the functional perspective of the world things can even be reduced to mere things when deprived of their intrinsic nature of this at-face-value of equipmentality. In their presence at hand (Vorhandenheit) they can be subjected to purely

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analytic inspections, as is done in scientific research. Scientific and expedient perspectives of things are valid and necessary approaches to the world. A few years before Heidegger’s discussion in SZ (§ 18) of the ‘worldliness of the world’ in terms of the ‘a priori perfect’ of the ‘totality of involvements’ that lets things first appear in their ‘reference context’, the Jewish thinker-poet Martin Buber pointed at the necessity of this primordial type of being of things for the survival of human beings. Buber did so paradoxically with his own version of poetic thinking in I and Thou published in 1922. Buber cautions his readers and warns that there is a most fundamental way to relate to all things. It is a way of being that constitutes the very nature of human being. Buber speaks of the mystic bonds to the world for which one has to maintain a fundamental readiness so that they can flare up in instantaneous flashes of eternity that give humans a divine sense of immortality.20 Parmenides has paved a parallel path to eternal being with his poem. His poem is a call to let things be what (and how) they are in the midst of other beings. His poem recalls the context of the being of beings in the whole (Sein des Seienden im Ganzen), as Heidegger puts it, and thus, with respect to the fundamental-ontological source of being itself (Sein selbst) or being as such (Sein als solches), it appeals to the ontological traveller to let things first be themselves as they are entrenched in being in the whole (Sein im Ganzen). The poem warns against an all too hasty engagement in the convenient reduction of things to their usefulness to humans. This ‘let-it-be’ (εστι γαρ ειναι) is an act of reception that lets humans perceive ‘the things themselves’ and move ‘toward’ an authentic conception of them.21 Heidegger calls this move in SZ ‘encounter’ (Begegnung). The encounter ‘discovers’ things and ‘lets them be (sein lassen) the way (so und so) they are so that (damit) they can be how (wie) they are [in the first place] (zunächst).’ Later in his 1955 speech ‘Gelassenheit’ Heidegger refers to this ‘letting be’ as ‘die Gelassenheit zu den Dingen’, the ‘releasement’ of and ‘abandonment toward things’.22 This mystic encounter of things and the releasement toward them reveals a fundamental aspect of the nature of things. In his 1962 lecture ‘Traditional Language and Technological Language’ Heidegger becomes most explicit when he says that in their primordial nature things are essentially ‘useless’.23 Only the recognition of this ‘uselessness’ brings us closer to things and thus to being itself. The fact that this abandonment is fundamental to comportments (Haltung, Verhaltung) will be crucial in the subsequent discussion. For now it suffices to point out that releasement toward the things themselves is the step that brings us onto the path of thinking (Denk-Weg). It keeps us moving (Bewegung) on the road (Unterwegs) to being itself where things appear as what they are, that is, as themselves (αληθευειν).24 What we are confronted with is not a Heideggerian version of naïve realism. Heidegger advocates a ‘transcendental’ realism that develops an ontological eye for the empirical presence of things. Heidegger,

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Parmenides and also Buber talk about a way of seeing that goes beyond sense perception. They teach a meditative and contemplative approach to the way things are. They look at things as gates to eternal being. Now that we are at what some call the end of philosophy in Heidegger,25 it is appropriate that we turn to the beginning of Philosophy in Parmenides who first touched upon what Gadamer calls ‘die vorgängige’ or ‘ursprüngliche Entsprechung’ (the primordial correspondence) and ‘das schlechthin Vorgängige’ (the purely primordial): the fundamental-ontological connection between language, thought and being.26 Parmenides does so, however, in the face of the threat of non-being.27 Parmenides’ poem is a warning against the conflation of being with non-being. Non-being cannot be known in terms of being. Any pretension to do so must end in ontological confusion (δοξας . . . εν ᾧ πεπλανηµενοι εισιν).28 Conventional thinking (εθος)29 is bound to treat non-being as being. The temptation to fall into this fallacy is overwhelming. It is therefore wiser to get an ontological grasp on the nature of being first, before the problem of non-being can be tackled (Fragment VII). This is what Parmenides sets out to do. His poem is a quest for being itself that fends off assertions of non-being, which distort the ontological truth of the reality of being (. . . πελειν και ετητυµον ειναι).30 It is this threat of nothingness that connects being to thinking. The threat of non-being lets being be the source and force of proper thinking (νοητον). Thought can thus reveal the absolute reality of being through being’s presencing in beings as speech (φατον). The λεγειν-τε-νοειν-Gefüge has revealed a double grounding. The ground of its ontological ambiguity is both: being and nothingness. Parmenides is aware of this double ground. Heidegger detects in it the Abgrund (abyss) of the ontological difference that points at the Ungrund (groundlessness) of being in nothingness. The ontological feat has an existential side essential to the mystic adventure. In his book In the Dark Places of Wisdom, Peter Kingsley describes Parmenides’ journey in terms reminiscent of Heidegger’s existential ontology as a journey toward his own death (53). The poem tells of his journey ‘down to the underworld, into the regions of Hades and Tartarus’ (52). The proximity to death reveals the secrets of life and endows the returning traveller with the wisdom needed for healing purposes. The philosopher Parmenides was a healer and prophet and practiced the art of incubation into another world and state of being (consciousness) under the authority of Apollo, the divine patron of the healing arts.31 To understand the mystery of being, the simple logic of rigid science will not do. In Parmenides’ poem we sense a divination guided by awe (Ahnen) that directs thinking. His spiritual voyage to the goddess is a mystical embrace of being. Unlike Hegel, who bans ‘the unmethod’ of such intimations from ‘the seriousness and necessity of the concept’,32 Heidegger adopts Parmenides’ approach with a sort of secular inspiration by the divine. He characterizes this type of thinking as a ‘scenting’ (wittern, Witterung) that touches upon the unseen nature of things.

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The scenting of νοειν unconceals their nature (Entbergung, αληθειη) as things themselves.33 We see the wisdom of language come to the aid of Heidegger and Parmenides even in English. ‘Scenting’ derives its locutionary force from ‘sensing’. The former entered English via the French ‘sentir’ and owes its semantic domain to the Latin root ‘sentire’. The latter entered English in the Latin ‘sensus’. Both Latin originals were already pregnant with both the concrete, empirical meaning of sense perception and the derived metaphorical meaning of understanding. We see the same semantic ambivalence in the Latin ‘sapiere’ which literally means ‘to taste’ and ‘to have a taste’ but took on the additional metaphorical meaning of ‘knowing’, ‘understanding’ and ‘being wise’ which points to its relation to the Greek σοφος (wise). Both examples remind us of the empirical roots of knowledge. Ultimately all forms of knowledge can be traced back to basic sensations. What Heidegger and Parmenides are calling for is not a reduction of thought to sense perception, but, on the contrary, an extension and re-invention of thought with an appeal to the source of its empirical origin. Such an appeal completes the epistemological stance toward the object of the encounter and ‘lets it be’ seen as the very thing it is, or as Heidegger puts it, as the thing itself (die Sache selbst). The idea that epistemology has an empirical foundation is not new to the metaphysical tradition. Aristotle shares such an idea. In his Metaphysics Θ 10 (1051b 17ff.) he promotes a concept of αληθεια that is based on empirical encounters. About the being of truth (το αληθες) and the truth of being (το ειναι), he says, one cannot be mistaken (1051b 25. 27f. 31: απατητηναι; 1052a 2: το δε ψευδος ουκ εστιν, ουδ’ απατη), but only ignorant (1051b 25: το δ’ αγνοειν; 1052a 2: αλλ’ αγνοια). Knowledge (b32: νοειν; b25: φασις; b24: φαναι) of a thing (b26: το τι εστιν) constitutes a truth (1052a 1: το δ’ αληθες το νοειν αυτα) in so far as such knowledge is based on a physical encounter with the thing (b24: θιγειν). Has the encounter not taken place (b25: µη θιγγανειν), the being and actuality of the thing (b30f: ειναι τι και ενεργεια) remains unknown (b32: µη [νοειν]), and further examination, which would lead to qualitative (and no longer just factual) knowledge (b3. 7–9: αληθευειν as οιεσθαι) in the form of descriptions of the thing in question (b25: καταφασις) is ruled out. Thus, we can draw a twofold conclusion. (1) Scenting as empirical knowing paves the path of thinking. (2) Thinking as ontological knowing is rooted in empirical knowledge. – Parmenides’ journey to the truth of being reawakens the ontological question. Those who travel with him confront the question empirically and ontologically. The empirical encounter of beings bears being’s call to the path of thinking. On this path each step is a thought of being. Each thought is had in an instance of truth. Heidegger calls the journey ‘Denkweg’, a way paved by thought. Only on this path ‘thinking of being’ takes place. ‘Denken des Seins’ proceeds successfully in poetical productions. Denken

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is Denken only as Dichten des Seins. Parmenides’ poem confirms this in a twofold way with both its literary and literal embrace of truth – in the formation of its own speech.34 Truth is encountered in the things themselves made manifest in ‘corresponding’ words.

The Promise of Immortality through the Truth of Being We get a sense of immortality from Parmenides’ truth-encounter. His poem begins with Parmenides being led by ‘immortal charioteers’ ‘on the divine road’, which is the path of thought and knowledge, to the goddess who awaits him, welcomes him and receives him kindly with words promising incorruptible truth. Parmenides transcends the earthbound opinions of mortals about being and takes a glance at its eternal truth with the mind’s thoughtful eye.35 Although the goddess is not named, the text makes obvious who she is. Peter Kingsley sees Parmenides travelling down the road into the underworld where Hades’ wife Persephone is waiting for the seeker of truth (pp. 49–54; 93–100). Heidegger’s take is less mythological. He, too, cautions the reader not to weaken the impact of the opening lines. Parmenides does not encounter any goddess, but in her the unfathomable source of revelation, which is why she cannot simply be considered a divine protector of truth, but truth itself, ‘Αληθειη’, that is, Truth herself. Heidegger sees in the poem Parmenides’ epiphany of truth. The poem is a testimony of the spiritual experience of the divine and thus constitutes itself an instance of truth. Readers and listeners bear witness to a unique encounter and are called to share it. Parmenides gets initiated into the realm of truth through verbal and visionary instantiations of truth in the goddess Truth herself. Truth welcomes, greets and invites the mortal visitor to be her guest. For Heidegger, ‘Truth’ is the name of the goddess because the goddess is truth itself. As Kingsley puts it, ‘The name of a god is the power of the god’ (p. 95). Such power emanates from the words spoken by the goddess. The internal togetherness of word and thing has its origin here at this place where words first get spoken, at the onset of understanding. Words have the power of speech, because in their origin ‘they contain their significance and meaning inside them.’ Kingsley (p. 96) alludes here to what Gadamer (p. 73) calls ‘word magic’ (Wortmagie), which sees in the word the thing itself. The ontological unity of word and thing, the identity of their being makes the object of thought its subject, that is, communicable. The essence of being – as is the case for any being – is borne by the name that can best speak with the force of – its – being. The name that comes closest to the truth of being to speak of it in absolute terms can only be ‘Truth’ itself. A proper name captures the essence of a thing by referring to that thing properly with the force of its being. In empirical language (speech) successful naming represents the thing phonetically or

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visually for the purpose of immediate recognition. If a thing’s essence is best reflected by a genuine name, ‘Truth’ must be the authentic name of being as such since the being of being itself can only be itself, that is, being. That is Parmenides’ point: Outside of being there is nothing else (VIII, 36–37). The being of being is true as truth itself. Before we reject the apparent tautology in these statements as circular, we need to remind ourselves of Heidegger’s fondness for tautologies. Let us therefore appreciate Heidegger’s position more critically with a closer look at the opening lines. Parmenides is led (Frg. I, 1–2: ϕερουσιν; πεµπον; βησαν; αγουσαι) by immortal charioteers (Frg. I, 24: αθανατησι συναορος ηνιοχοισιν) on a divine road (Frg. I, 2–3: ες οδον . . . δαιµονος) of enlightened knowledge (Frg. I, 3: η . . . ϕερει ειδοτα ϕωτα) to the goddess (Frg. I, 22: θεα). Heidegger recognizes in this goddess Truth itself. He sees in the term ‘Αληθειη’ in Frg. I, 29 and II, 4 an explicit reference to, yes, even the sudden appearance of the goddess herself in the word. In recognition of this, the term is capitalized in some editions. The edition by Hermann Diels, which Heidegger used, capitalizes both terms. We should at this point, however, not be misled, Heidegger warns, to detect in the poem simply a personification of the truth-concept to a goddess-figure (den allgemeinen Begriff ‘Wahrheit’ zu einer unbestimmten Göttinnengestalt »personifiziert«). It is the whole poem that reflects the encounter with truth, not just the phrases that mention truth explicitly. As an encounter with truth the poem is an experience of truth. It is Truth that speaks the words of the poem, and it is an experience of truth to listen to those words, to apprehend and recollect them as Parmenides has done by writing them down and handing them down as rare glimpses at truth. According to Heidegger, ‘Parmenides calls the goddess “Truth”,’ because ‘here (in this poem) truth itself is experienced as the goddess.’ Frg. I, 29 supports this perspective, where Truth is perceived as a state of perfection, as a perfect mode of being, namely, as an ‘unshaken heart of wellroundedness’ (Αληθειης ευκυκλεος ατρεµες ητορ). The reason why Heidegger refuses to see in the occurrence of the word-name ‘Αληθειη’ simply a ‘richer and more colorful’ mythological ‘personification’ (Hypostasierung) of the ‘rather abstract’ and ‘universal concept’ of truth, lies in his suspicion that such a conception of truth forgoes the existential nature of the truth experience. For Heidegger the learned (besserwissenden) speculations are misguided (ein einziger Irrtum, gelehrter Fehlauslegungen), because they lack the existential experience. Only the right path of thinking (II, 1–4: οδος, Πειθους κελευθος) provides such authenticity. It paves the way to truth (II, 4: Αληθειηι γαρ οπηδει) by constituting (the experience of) truth in forms of true knowledge. Parmenides makes manifest that the way to truth already is a form of truth. True knowledge (I, 30 & VIII, 28: πιστις αληθης) is knowledge that apprehends things for their own sake.36 That Parmenides transcends common sense (Frg. I, 30: βροτων δοξας) in order to reach such a divine understanding of being as truth itself is reflected

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in Frg. II, 4: ‘Πειθους εστι κελευθος (Αληθειη γαρ οπηδει).’ ‘This is the path of Persuasion and Credibility (for it follows and attends to Truth).’ Such transcendence is (among other passages) also reflected in Frg. I, 31–32: ‘Αλλ’ εµπης και ταυτα µαθησεαι, ως τα δοκουντα χρην δοκιµως ειναι, δια παντος παντα περωντα.’ ‘But nevertheless you will learn these things too, namely, that the things held true must be [held] true (ειναι) in a genuine and proven way, [since] everything pertains [in some way] through everything.’ The truth of being (ειναι) can be touched upon by the right opinion (ως τα δοκουντα). The perception of eternal truth recognizes its nature in the persistent existence of things through space and time (ως τα δοκουντα χρην δοκιµως ειναι δια παντος παντα περωντα). Human understanding can reach this divine realm of being even though it cannot retain or remain in it. Let us recall that the words we read in the poem are those spoken by the goddess to Parmenides. For Parmenides and Heidegger, such a divine source alone accounts for the force with which the poem speaks through time to every reader willing to participate in the truth-encounter. ‘The poem of the thinker speaks’, says Heidegger, ‘by bringing to words and language the Word of the goddess.’37 The ‘Word of the goddess’ is the truth of being itself. To really appreciate the divine ‘Word,’ the reader faces the challenge of becoming, if not the thinker himself, then a thinker her- and himself by letting the saying be and speak with its original voice, by listening to the words of the goddess, that is, by reinvoking Parmenides’ word-(per)formative feat of saying the unsaid and unsayable through him- and herself with embodiments of being in the word. We are faced again with the problem of translation. Heidegger alludes to what he has said in his 1935 lecture course ‘An Introduction to Metaphysics’. ‘Language’, he says, has its origin in the departure of humans into being. In this departure language was as the embodiment of being: poetry.’38 All good translation is committed to truth in the sense that it is poetry. In the task of translating properly lies the connection between Denken and Dichten. Po(i)etical thinking says the unsayable without violating Hegel’s distinction between ‘saying’ and ‘meaning’ (meinen).39 It does so in Walter Benjamin’s sense of ‘repoetization’ (Umdichtung).40 The explication of truth is inexhaustive. Truth can never be said all at once, once and for all, but needs to be said repeatedly, and always from different perspectives in order to be and to remain what it is, that is, the way it is: in its sameness always new. This is what proves it true. Heidegger endorses this paradox one more time in his 1962 lecture ‘Traditional and Technological Language’. There he says The [spoken language] itself contains and grants the unspoken. . . . [The tradition of a language] lays claim to the human being to say the world anew from the language that is preserved and thus to bring what is not-yet-seen into appearance. However, this is the poet’s task (Beruf).41

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To Heidegger the poem itself is metaphor for, symbol of, and, if read properly, the journey itself it speaks about. It thus suggests that απειναι (absencing) and παρειναι (presencing) are to be supplied to the full meaning of being. Ειναι is not ‘mere duration’. It bears the dynamic aspects of ‘occurring’ and ‘being at work’, which Heidegger captures in the verb (!) ‘wesen’.42 The truth of being (Sein) is to be always in the ‘strife’ (Streit) of revelation.43 The strife consists in the continuous fluctuation of the disclosure and concealment of being itself in beings themselves. Heidegger identifies this strife as the ‘occurrence’ (Ereignis)44 of the being (Wesen) of truth, which includes un-truth (Un-wahrheit) as a non-event, that is, the non-occurrence of a potential truthencounter.45 The possibility of the truth-event is conditioned, as Parmenides says, by the fact that ‘εον εµµεναι - εστι γαρ ειναι’ (VI, 1), that ‘no being can be deprived of its own presence, because this simply is what it means to be’, namely, ‘to assert the presence of one’s being.’ Parmenides’ ontological observation reveals his insight into the nature of being made explicit later in the poem: ‘ουδεν γαρ η εστιν η εσται αλλο παρεξ του εοντος’ (VIII, 36–37). ‘For nothing else either is or will be (something else) besides being itself.’ Being is as the source of beings also the force of their appearance to and disappearance from the mindful eye of the ontological traveller. Absolute nothingness (ουδεν) has nothing to do with such thinking and has no place in such disclosure. Every truth-event repeats Parmenides’ journey as a disclosure of being itself, made explicit (ποιησις) in word-formations of beings as speech (πεφατισµενον). The disclosure happens to Dasein in movements (Bewegung) from darkness to light, in the passage from the uncanniness of the unknowable nothingness to the poietic salvation of being: its disclosure in the linguistic artwork.46 The disclosure peaks in the ‘clearing’ (Lichtung)47 experienced in ‘moments of vision’ where the ontological concern of the ‘es geht um’48 becomes transparent as a striving for (χρη) the continuation of one’s own being in and as the extension into being itself and of being itself into oneself. In Parmenides’ journey this urge for ultimate continuation has found its metaphorical and existentialontological expression. The traveller arrives at the source of being where no trace of nothingness is found. ‘For without there being anything (Ου γαρ ανευ του εοντος . . .),’ Parmenides explains, ‘you won’t find thought and are therefore unable to apprehend anything (. . . ευρησεις το νοειν)’ (VIII, 35–36). Consequently, thinking is always already on its way to being, and thus itself a manifestation of the persistent presence of being. Descartes says so much with his ‘cogito ergo sum’. One’s own non-existence cannot be thought. On the contrary, thought always confirms existence. In SZ Heidegger’s care-structure captures this existential-ontological urge. As Dasein’s being, care (Sorge) is the existential expression of Parmenides’ urge for ontological survival (αειζωον).49 Human being is always in this process of leaving the non-being of death’s

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nothingness behind to overcome death.50 In its essence existence is persistence. It strives for the perfection of never-ending completion. The drive for ontological survival is twofold. For Heidegger it occurs as self-authenticization and thing-appreciation. Both events occur together and open up a ‘playground’ (Spielraum) of Gelassenheit, which Heidegger calls in SZ ‘the realm of Dasein’s existential-ontological constitution of its factical potentiality for (authentic) being’ (p. 145). It is here in this ‘ecstatic-horizontal realm of being’ (pp. 368, 369) where Dasein becomes what it is by letting things be what they are. Heidegger identifies this ‘becoming of being’, both of Dasein and of the things themselves, in SZ as Dasein’s ‘potentiality for being’. Dasein is ‘possible’, and fundamentally so, both in the existential-ontological and onticexistentiell sense, namely, as ‘being toward death’ (p. 266). In its authentic mode, which is of interest here, Dasein’s being toward death consists in its ‘courage for anxiety in the face of death’ (p. 254). Anxiety experienced as the ultimate courage to face the unknown is filled with a sense of liberation. Religion knows this experience as salvation and redemption. Heidegger calls it less religiously ‘freedom toward death’ (pp. 266, 264). It is a gift of death to become and be free for and of it. The strength of this courage sets Parmenides free for his journey to the underworld to be enlightened by the queen of the dead about the secrets of life. Two years after SZ in his 1929 inaugural lecture to the University of Freiburg ‘What is Metaphysics?’ Heidegger spells out the implications. It is ‘only for a moment,’ namely, in ‘the fundamental disposition of anxiety’ that ‘the human being in its Dasein’ ‘is brought before the nothing itself’ so that ‘the nothing is revealed’ ‘in human existence’. In the 1943 ‘Postscript’ to this lecture Heidegger underscores the point again. It is through ‘the readiness toward anxiety’, which ‘reveals the nothing’, that ‘the human being, who is the only one among all beings that is called upon by the [silent] voice of being, experiences the wonder above all wonders: that being is.’51 The experience of anxiety is as the experience of nothingness the experience of being itself. Heidegger drives the point home with the words of Parmenides: ‘εστιν γαρ ειναι,’ ‘beings, that is, being. For being is.’ In being what it is, being is always already revealed in beings. Motivated by this ontic-ontological wonder, Parmenides acts on the freedom of courage toward the unknown. He undertakes his journey to the truth of being to transcend the threat of non-being.52 It is the spiritual transcendence of this ontological journey in which the truth of being occurs. Transcendence is the hidden truth of being.53 Its becoming is being. Its being means becoming. The truth of being (Sein) lies in the (presencing) being (Wesen) of truth. It consists in the suspension of nothingness as a ‘departure’ from it with the courage to face it. We have already alluded to the fact that this ‘departure (Aufbruch) . . . into being’ happens for Heidegger as ‘the embodiment of being in the word” (Wortwerden des Seins). Kingsley’s insight is remarkable in its simplicity and for

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the ease with which he states it (p. 96): ‘[D]eath is the place where all words come from – like sparks that have their origin in fire.’ Parmenides’ visit to the underworld, his near death encounter with Persephone, instructs him on the truths of being. His linguistic-ontological formations comprise the force of truth. They reveal the source of truth as both, the being of truth as the truth of being at work in the poetic thinker. ‘Proper thinking’ is poetry. It is, as Heidegger says in the ‘Postscript’, ‘an event of being’.54 Despite the apparent novelty of these words Heidegger says essentially nothing new. Parmenides has put this insight into what Heidegger calls ‘das Wortwerden des Seins’ in strikingly similar terms: truth ‘is’, he says, since ‘being is truth’55 ready to be made explicit’ (φατον) ‘in word-formations of being’ (του εοντος, εν ᾧ πεϕατισµενον εστιν).56 In accordance with Parmenides, Heidegger specifies this relation between being and truth as a primordial correlation in the human being where ‘being and truth “are” equiprimordial.’57

Comportment: The Embodiment of Being into the Body of Language From what has been said we can conclude the following: Truth is the relation to being brought to the fore of human existence. In this relation lies the seed of immortality. Relating to being(s) is no a-physical act of cognition. Cognitive abstraction is not at the heart of it, but a result. Ontic-ontological ‘bonding’ (Bezug) comprises the whole being of human nature. Its tripartite carestructure (of being-in, -alongside and -ahead) emerges from a phenomenological conception of physical presence: human being consists in the factical existence of finding itself in the world next to other beings (falling). Two years before the publication of SZ, in his 1925 summer semester lecture course at the University of Marburg entitled ‘History of the Concept of Time’,58 Heidegger captures this insight into Dasein’s particular proximity to being in one word: comportment (Verhalten, Verhaltung). ‘Comportment’ points at the ontological directionality of ontic intentions that motivate human behaviour. The prospective (beingahead) and circumspective (being-alongside) facticity (being-in) of human existence owes this, its inter-est (interesse) in being(s) to the physical reality of its own being. Due to this inter-est, in the literal sense of the word (of being-in-between), the human body embodies being. Its activities reflect ontic-ontological understanding. Its physical movements are intentional and loaded with comportmental assertions (Aussagen) about the world. Language has its place of ontic-historical origins (evolution) in the human body: in comportments. The linguistic force of comportments brings Dasein ‘closer to being’ than other beings. Its higher ontological proximity makes it ‘fuller in being’ (seiender) than other beings.59 Since words have arisen from comportments, they must be seen as comportments. Each takes hold of an aspect of being. Their concentration on one part

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of the body transforms visibility into recognizability. Quick repetition and easy recognition preserve these human encounters with being as linguistic signs, into which comportments evolve to become ontological conceptions that can be ‘shared’ (teilen) to open the gate to ‘communication’ – in the fundamentalontological sense of ‘Mit-teilung’ (SZ, p. 155). What is shared is one’s (insight into) being. Expressive power stems from the physical dimension of the ontological intentions behind comportments. Words owe their meaning to their physical heritage. Human being in its physical confrontation with the world and its objects lends its body to words and language. Words and language speak with the expressive force of the human body. The ontological conception of words as comportments reveals how the ‘forestructure’ of understanding (SZ, p. 150) operates in its three moments. ‘Forehaving’ (Vorhabe) is the comportmental hold of being that gives insight into specific aspects of being, the ‘foresights’ (Vorsicht), which constitute a ‘pre-verbal grasp’ of things and result in the ‘fore-conception’ (Vorgriff) of pre-linguistic concepts. Heidegger conceives of this word-formative structure in terms of a poietic craft: the constructive making of ποιησις. Language originates in this act of artistic creation. Words and language arise from the recognition of and reaction to a world encountered. The recognitional reaction is a comportmental reenactment of world-encounter. Language mirrors the world. Its poietic conception of the world leaves room for metaphorical extensions. Conceptual abstractions are built upon concrete conceptions (intuition), which lend themselves to applications to more extensive forms of world-perception (ideation, ideating abstraction). They thus open up a whole new world of conceptual universalizations.60 We find support for this reading of Heidegger both in Heidegger’s reflections on Parmenides and in Parmenides himself. Frg. XVI gives us a clue. Here Parmenides compares (ll. 1–2: ως . . . τως) the physical composure of humans, the constitution of the human body, its comportments in general, literally ‘the mixture of much wandering limbs’ (κρασις µελεων πολυπλαγτων) to ‘the way thoughts are at work in humans’ (νοος ανθρωποισι παρεστηκεν). ‘Thinking takes a stance’ (νοος . . . παρεστηκεν) to something particular. Heidegger calls this the fundamental composure of Dasein’s Sein zu, the ‘being-toward’ of its understanding (SZ, p. 150). ‘Thoughts take issue’ with particular things to which humans ‘relate’ via distinct comportments. Thinking is the assumption of an attitudinal stance that is grounded physically in the human body and thus always visible. ‘For’, Parmenides continues to explain (ll. 2–4), ‘that which thinks (οπερ ϕρονεει) in humans is the same (το γαρ αυτο εστιν) as the natural constitution of the body and its parts’ (µελεων ϕυσις). The human body is intelligible. The essence of human being lies in its physical intelligibility. For both Heidegger and Parmenides understanding proceeds in comportments, which, in turn, produce understanding. The terms ‘Ver-stehen’ and ‘επι−στηµη,’ like the Anglo-Saxon ‘under-standing,’ are properly understood in the literal sense of their morphological roots, when the equation between

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comportment and understanding is understood in the primordial sense of a physical ‘stance-taking toward’ things thus encountered. Verhalten is Verstehen and vice versa. Comportments bear witness to a world understanding. They establish intentional ‘relations’ with things via a physical approach to them. Thus they maintain the fundamental bond (Bezug) with being itself. The meaning of being lies hidden here. Dasein ‘is always ahead of itself’ as an ‘ex-istence’ by force of its persistent striving toward being via beings, of which it takes hold through the tripartite fore-structure of ‘understanding’ (επ-ιστηµη). Existence ‘happens’ in acts of understanding: The ontological drive of existence toward being proceeds through ontic conceptions of beings in terms of comportmental concepts. The physical dimension of human existence reveals the εξ-ισταµαι of human being as an επ-ισταµαι of other beings. Heidegger’s etymological excursions are done with the philosophical purpose of pointing out this fundamental connection. Manfred Frings emphasizes this point in his discussion of those passages. ‘The word επιστηµη’, he says in his discussion of Heidegger, ‘means “to place oneself before something so that something shows itself before one” (επιστασθαι). This implies having a knowing relation to, or having a knack of something’ (sich auf etwas verstehen).61 To put it bluntly, humans think with and through their bodies. They do not just ‘have’ a body; they are their bodies. In a strikingly similar fashion Heidegger makes this very point in his Parmenides lecture when he contrasts the human being to animals. ‘No animal has a hand,’ he says. However, in the strict sense humans do not ‘have’ hands either, but ‘are’ ‘essentially’ their hands, ‘since it is the word as the essential domain of the hand that is the essential ground of the human being.’62 Comportments become most expressive in the human hand, where they develop into condensed expressions of intentionality. It is the nature of intentionality to become most explicit. This desire for manifestation is constantly at work in the hand (manus) where the desire achieves fulfilment. What is hidden in the Latin ‘manifest(us)’, the ‘evident’, literally ‘that which is made visible with a strike by the hand’, comes more easily to the fore in the Greek. Heidegger points at the connection between this ‘need’ for expression, χρη, and the expressive ‘hand’, χειρ. Parmenides’ Fragment VI, 1 needs to be reread in this context: ‘Χρη το λεγειν τε νοειν τ’εον εµµεναι.’ ‘It is a human need to verbalize the apprehension of things encountered.’ The urge for explicitness has made the hand what it is, ‘the reciprocal relation between beings and the human being’, the region where ‘being reaches out to humans.’ This is how humans ‘comport themselves’ (sich verhält). Comportments happen ‘through the hand’. In the specific relation to things as πραγµα (Handlung!) things become present, ready (vor-handen und zu-handen) to be further manipulated and manufactured, because the hand has already ‘fitted itself to the thing’ (sich dem Ding anmessen). It is this ‘fitting cor-respondence’ (das sich anmessende Entsprechen) that allows the human being in its essential relation to beings and being itself to become expressive and speak.63 In word and language being is thus at work to reveal itself via the human being. In his 1936 lecture ‘The Origin

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of the Work of Art’ Heidegger puts forth this notion of being-at-work. Work-being (ποιησις) is the expressive force through which language speaks. In language human being reveals the nature of the truth of being as the essence of truth: revelation is process, product and end result (εργον) of work-being. In the human being being is at work to reveal its truth poietically, through language as its work of art. In comportments being itself asserts its presence as the expression of its being thought. Since being’s expressibility is never exhausted, Parmenides concludes that ‘thinking is always more [than one would first think; it is] full [of unexpected surprises.]’64 Consequently, comportments are never arbitrary responses to specific encounters. They do not happen at random, but accidentally. Particular intentions and sudden encounters generate them. In a sense, they are intentions made explicit as reflective reactions to events and encounters. They are specific to the encounter of a particular thing to which they respond. Thus they express the respective experience non-arbitrarily, but accidentally to make it transparent. Explicitness rises with the degree of transparence and vice versa. Other situations may provoke a different comportmental recognition of the same thing encountered. Comportments are therefore never exhaustive; they never reveal the absolute reality of (a) being. Hence, being – as any particular being – always also remains largely unthought.65 Truth lies exactly here, where words point at the unsayable without ever being able to say it, either partially or in its totality. Consequently, ‘[t]he true is’, Heidegger says, ‘the unsaid, which remains the very unsaid that it is, but only in that which is said strictly and properly,’66 which is the case when properly thought. Proper thinking means precisely this: ‘to let lie before one (vernehmen) what is unsaid in thinking through what is said, and so come to grips with what silences itself toward us in the very unsaid’ (im Ungesagten sich uns entgegenschweigt).67 Proper thinking is this eloquence of silence that refuses to be silenced by the ubiquitous noise and speed of life. Speech has its origins here. In the silence of recognition, in slow and long paths of thinking a word comes to be by bringing to word and into being that which the word names and to which it owes its own being. The true will and can happen to us only on those slow ways of proper thinking.68 If it does, it happens in us and through us. We are the centre of its revelation. For Heidegger and Parmenides the corpo-reality of language and thought is based on the comport-mentality of the human body which accounts for the continued apprehension of being.

Conclusion: The Salvation of Truth Immortality through language Let us summarize: Corpo-r(e)al language consists in the comport-mental apprehension of being. The fundamental-ontological relation (between being and humans) allows ‘εον to speak throughout language and to maintain for it the

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possibility of speech.’ It does so ‘in every word-composition (Wortgefüge), . . . particularly in those junctures of the language (die Fugen der Sprache) which are not specifically put in words’ (nicht eigens in die Verlautbarung kommen).69 Heidegger speaks here in his 1935 lecture course ‘Was heißt Denken?’ as a student of Parmenides. He does so consistently. In the years of SZ he conceives of the conjunction of language (Gefüge), the ‘λεγειν τε νοειν’, as the ‘interpretive’ apprehension of ‘discursive understanding’. In the 1936 lecture ‘The Origin Work of Art’ those junctures become the place of word-creative ποιησις (Denken as Dichtung). Word-creation is world-production through world-conception. World-conception proceeds in acts of expressive perception (Ausdrücklichkeit), as apprehension and comprehension (Auffassung und Erfassung). Thus, for Heidegger, the world has always been already thoroughly spoken through and through in some kind of interpretation by the understanding of perception. He says so as early as his 1925 lecture course ‘History of the Concept of Time’.70 Perceptual understanding makes the world transparent in expressions. Expressions transcend the concrete particularity of things and preserve it in and as their universal idea manifest in the comportmental expressibility of words. This movement toward universalization is reminiscent of Hegel’s sublative transition from sense-certainty to perception.71 What is meant is never said, because it is the unsayable. What is said can only point at that which is meant, but must remain unsaid. However, for Hegel the concrete, particular thing, which is merely meant, but never said, is as the unspeakable ‘sensuous This’ the untrue, whereas for both Heidegger and Parmenides this particular thing itself gives rise to words and speech and is as this linguistic–ontological source the truth of being in the word. Hence, as a linguistic body, where words leap into existence, the human body supersedes its temporality. As a linguistic source its speech acts bear the force of a transcendence that aims at a continued existence beyond its finitude, ideally in immortality. Since language is the sublative transition from individuality to collectivity, such linguisticontological survival of the individual becomes a human possibility.72 For both Heidegger and Parmenides language is thus conceived (of) as the medium of (self-)preservation.73

Dasein’s linguistic body Heidegger shares Parmenides’ ontological conception of language. Intrinsic in this conception is the experience of the real, physical world. We have seen how the human body is constitutive of this reality. To accuse Heidegger of disregarding Dasein’s body, as William Blattner, among others, does,74 disregards the empirical realism upon which Heidegger’s linguistic ontology is built. Heidegger’s Dasein is not bodiless. It is true that Heidegger does not talk about human sexuality. This alone, however, does not support the claim and is by itself too juvenile to make the claim. The human body resides in all of

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Heidegger’s conceptions of Dasein, in his concepts of disposition, anxiety, fear, concern, etc. The in-order-to structure of Dasein’s equipmental world is directed toward the ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ of Dasein. Dasein is a living thing that wants to preserve the conditions of continued living; it is future-oriented. In its ‘ex-istence’ as ‘being-ahead-of-itself’ it lives in ‘anticipation’ to protect and further itself, its well-being. As this being-toward it has a sense of time and manifests features of time. Time is the expression of its being as a life aware of itself. The care-structure, the essence of its being, comprises all three aspects of time. Dasein could not die, know of its death and have a sense of time, were it not for its directedness toward death via its body. Its mortal body infuses it with a sense of being toward death. In this sense (its) being is time. Cerbone’s criticism is more to the point.75 It is true that Heidegger does not engage the term ‘body’ to talk about the concept and the phenomenon of Dasein’s bodily existence. This does not mean that he omits Dasein’s bodily nature from his analytic. It is the term ‘Dasein’, ‘being-there’ in all its multifaceted aspects (existentiales) that addresses the issue to avoid the traps of dualism (SZ, p. 56). Dasein would and could not be anywhere or be anything, were it not for its body, the physical presence of its ‘da’, its ‘there’, which is the empirical reality of its being-in-the-world. Dasein does not just have a body, but is (as) its body. How crucial this distinction is, we learn from a passage in HCT (p. 154, PGZ, p. 207). The term ‘body’ deflects the phenomenological look away from Dasein’s ‘way of being’ to the ‘outward appearance’ of its integral existence, thus positing a compositional nature (body, soul, spirit) that ignores the indivisible ways of its being. This is a result Cerbone comes up with at the end of his discussion when he suggests that Heidegger understands the human body ‘as a locus of Dasein’s way of being’ (p. 224). However, Heidegger never fully excluded considerations of Dasein’s physical nature from his analytic in the first place. The statement in SZ (p. 108) announcing that ‘Dasein’s bodily nature (Leiblichkeit) hides a whole problematic of its own not to be treated here,’ pronounces a specific exclusion from the present discussion of section 23 about Dasein’s spatiality, not a categorical exclusion from SZ. Already section 26 speaks of the body again (p. 117) which equipments are meant to suit and made to fit (auf den ‘Leib zugeschnitten’ ) to be what they are supposed to be, that is, useful for Dasein’s continued existence. Heidegger sees the importance of the human body without adopting the term into his philosophical vocabulary.

Truth as authenticity Both Heidegger and Parmenides detect a fundamental connection between language and death. The living mortal (οι βροτοι, die Sterblichen) is entrenched in language. Heidegger calls this form of existence ‘dwelling’ (wohnen), a term

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deliberately reminiscent of Hölderlin, who, too, thinks of humans as those who ‘dwell poetically’. For Parmenides and Heidegger it is such dwelling, which constitutes a home for being. The philosophical significance is for both the same. Parmenides’ journey to truth is a philosophical journey on the one and only path76 that promises immortality.77 The promise is fulfilled78 with the apprehension of truth.79 Truth is the path of ontological investigation. It reveals the nature of being80 in and as the thought of being.81 The truth of being lies ahead at the end of this path. It thus already is the path of thinking (Denk-Weg).82 Truth is the human ‘way’ (οδος, Weg) of being constantly on the road (unterwegs) to being, in movements (Be-weg-ung) of comportment that pave the path of thinking. Being is at home here in the house of being, which is language, since it consists in speaking (of) beings.83 The experience of (the) truth (of being) is had only in words generated by ontological thought.84 Other forms of speaking are aberrations from the truth,85 since they do not partake in the event of language origins.86 Words are first spoken (λεγειν) out of the recognitional revelation (νοειν) of what (then thus) is (εον). Parmenides aims at the enigma of an ontological circularity, which he captures in the saying ‘το λεγειν τε νοειν τ’εον’. Its existential-ontological rendition Heidegger has worded in his 1925 lecture course quite famously, manifesting his own fondness for circularity: we say (λεγειν) what (εον) we see (νοειν) because we see (νοειν) what (εον) we say (λεγειν).87 Words emerge from a prelinguistic underground (Ungrund). Heidegger calls it ‘the Unspoken’ (das Un[aus]gesprochene).88 For Heidegger, Parmenides provides a perfect illustration of this event. He speaks, says Heidegger, between the words (Wörter), in the junctures (Fugen) of language. He speaks exactly there where no words have been formed before. His language is the speech of thought that is engaged in an ontological dialogue of (world- as work-) interpretation through word-formation and word-restoration. The authentic dialogue, unlike the conversation that is composed of random words (Wörter!), opens up what has never seen the light of a word to the existential-ontological process of language production. The dialogue with being is a monologue of being. It is the goddess who speaks through Parmenides to us. The authentic dialogue is Truth’s soliloquy reenacted in its readers and listeners. It brings the unspoken to the open of language. It speaks the unspoken by forging it into a word, but, paradoxically, by leaving it and preserving it as something still roaming the realm of the unspoken.89 Nothing can be said exhaustively. Everything is in need of revision and reformulation. To keep the focus sharpened, a continuous change of perspective will provide for the ongoing recognition of the same and thus the continued novelty of thought. Undogmatic thinking unrestricted by the limiting conceptions of rigid concepts proceeds in the free medium of fluid ideas that liberate the mind to the perspectival changes of life. Words speak authentically (as Worte!) only when they promote a thinking of being that names being without confining it into a word.90 Such speaking in the original voice of language

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speaks in ‘moments of vision’ that reveal the uniqueness of the unfathomable ground (Abgrund) of being. We are here confronted with a familiar topos in the history of modern thought. Rousseau’s longing for a ‘retour à la nature’ deplores the anthropological regress within the cultural progress of humanity. Like the epic poet Hesiod, Rousseau laments the loss of an ideal past, which the two describe as the Golden Age, in what reads like a hypothetical account of assumed historical facts. In the course of their history humans are thought to have lost their physical perfection and moral integrity. This criticism echoes in Heidegger fundamentalontologically. To counteract human regression Heidegger calls for a new and different kind of thinking via a (re)turn to the inception of thought. The paradox is intended, since it is unavoidable. For Heidegger, ‘truth is the inceptive nature of being.’ It is the very beginning of what is. This beginning does not lie behind us, lost in the past. It has already surpassed us and is always about to approach and happen to us – anew – provided we are ready for it, provided we rediscover and learn again (wieder-holen!) the long forgotten art of thinking. The turn of history is in fact a return. It is not a repetition (Wiederholung) of the old, and never a flight into the past. On the contrary, recollection paves the way to a new beginning. The recollection of inception conditions the possibility for a beginning that lies ahead in the future to constitute the destiny of human history. Inception is the work of proper thinking. It brings about the primal leap (Ursprung). As a leap back it is a leaping ahead into the truth of being where words speak with the original force of thought to enrich humanity with the meaning of being.91 The 1943 ‘Postscript’ to the 1929 inaugural lecture to the University of Freiburg ‘What is Metaphysics?’ explains the primal leap of inceptive thought into ‘poietic dwelling’, that is, into the verbal existence of poetic language in the following way: Inceptive thinking (as primordial thanking) is the resonance of the grace of being. In this grace that which alone is (das Einzige) lights itself up (sich lichtet), and it can happen (sich ereignen läßt): that being is (daß Seiendes ist). This echo is the human response to the word of the silent voice of being. The response of thinking (which is the speechless response of thanking in sacrifice) is the origin of the human word. It is this word which lets language come into being as the articulation (Verlautung) of the word (Wortes) into words (Wörter).92 The encounter with being has spiritual and linguistic consequences. It is so fundamental that its fall-out brings about the human being: in ‘terms’ of thought and language. We have seen how Heidegger refers to the event in his 1935 lecture course ‘An Introduction to Metaphysics’: the ‘human departure into being’ ‘embodies being in words and language’. Humans are continuously striving to come literally to terms with the event. It is so enigmatic that its decisive significance has been recognized by other thinkers as well. Aristotle begins his Metaphysics with a similar insight: ‘All humans, by virtue of their nature (φυσει) [of being human], long for [an] understanding (του ειδεναι ορεγονται)

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[of the world around them].’ The desire for knowledge is human in nature. One ‘understands’, as the term ‘ειδεναι’ suggests, by ‘having seen’ – that which constitutes one’s being. Thought, and speech as its correlate, begins as a primordial response to the human experience of being. Thinking reflects its beginning – in its continued discovery of being. Its truth is evident in the rise and evolution of language itself. ‘Θιγειν και φαναι’, says Aristotle in Θ 10 of his Metaphysics. The ‘touch’ (Θιγειν) of being happens in primordial encounters with beings ‘and instantly’ (και) produces ‘speech’ (φαναι). Here is the ‘sacrifice’ of which Heidegger speaks. It consists in the poetic venture of language, which can speak of being, but only imperfectly, and never exhaustively about being. This is the cause for the human celebration of language. Humans give homage to the original force behind their ontological journey as a testimony ‘that being is’, or, as Parmenides puts it: εστιν γαρ ειναι. It is this ontological experience of truth that authenticizes the individual human being beyond the external limitations of its being in the world. Such individualization through authenticization consists in an ontological extension of human existence. The ontological dimension of authenticity is linguistic in nature. Language is the ontological extension of the existing individual for two basic reasons. (1) Language speaks of being. Or, as Heidegger puts it, ‘it corresponds (entsprechen) to being.’ In doing so, it speaks (of) beings. This conception through speech allows language then also to speak about beings in an objectifying manner. (2) Humans speak language. In doing so, they do not just share their ontological insights of being. They also share their own individual being with one another. They thus extend their particular existence onto the social-communal level and enrich it with the collective meaning of being. Communication establishes individuality to transform it into collectivity. Communication (Mitteilung) has this fundamental-ontological sense of being-with-one-another in a community where different perspectives of being complement each other to the totality of a panoramic perception of being in the whole.

Individualizing translation as universalizing transcendence Based on this linguistic-ontological uniqueness of (human) being, it follows that the task of translation (übersetzen) is for Heidegger not simply a technicalphilological exercise of replacing (ersetzen) one word with another to convey the same message. Heidegger conceives of translation first and foremost as an existential-ontological act of self-transformation. We have to undergo an ‘epistemic’ transition that widens the scope of understanding.93 Translation in this fundamental sense happens in a process of transposition.94 Manfred Frings explains this as a ‘crossing over’ to the shore of the truth of being. Heidegger again alludes to the fundamental-ontological event of ‘recollection’

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(Wieder-holen), which, as noted, consists in the ‘original departure into being’ (Aufbruch in das Sein). Translation is a kind of repeated ‘Ur-sprung’ performed in ‘leaping’ (“sprunghaft”) acts of ‘proper thinking’ (eigentliche Denken) as the ‘jump into being’ (Absprung in das Sein). This conception of translation is not confined to the dialogue between different languages. It applies to any dialogue, in particular to the dialogue within the same language, and, notably, to dialogues within the same person, that is, soliloquies as acts of individualizing universalization. Translation in this existential-ontological sense proceeds directly from individualizing discourse (Rede) and interpretation (Auslegung) to universalizing communication (Mitteilung). Translation consists in the transposition into these original realms of speech (Sagebereich) from where re-interpretation (Neu-Auslegung) of something unique can take place as something newly unique.95 Walter Benjamin, we recall, calls this continuation of original speech ‘re-poetization’ (Umdichtung).96 What Benjamin means is the following: Since no translation can ever possibly be, as it were, an identical copy of the original in another language or even in another dialect or idiolect in the same language, the best a translator can achieve is the preservation of the ‘poetical’ truth of the original, by letting this truth ‘do its work again’ in and with another original composition that, by the linguistic and spiritual force of its poetical presence, pays tribute to that which has brought it into existence, the original that created it with the assistance of the translator who re-created it. For Heidegger such a transposition happens in a moment’s ‘leap’ of ‘vision’ of that which initiates this re-creation of the word.97 It is the ‘Ur-sprung’, both back and ahead, to the source of language where the apprehension of being transforms the human being into what it essentially is, a transcendental being, a being that transcends the individual limitations of mortal existence in its passage from transient beings to their eternal source of the truth of being. It is this transcendence to the goddess Truth that provides Parmenides and those who join him on his journey with a sense of immortality. The transcendental reality of immortality has brought Parmenides ‘to create things’, as Nietzsche says, ‘on which time tests its teeth in vain’, because both ‘in form’ and ‘in substance’ they ‘are the forms of “eternity”’ that manifest the human ‘[striving] for a little immortality’.98

Postscript Manfred Frings has joined Heidegger in this journey to which Parmenides invites his readers and listeners. By his own account he has done so not just as editor of Heidegger’s lecture courses on Heraclitus and Parmenides. ‘When I met Martin Heidegger the first time,’ he tells his readers, ‘I walked up to [the window of Heidegger’s study, looking out on a view of the Black Forest landscape above his desk. The view had been there for forty years for him. I walked

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up to] this window without any intended reason. Looking out, I nonchalantly commented, “It must be wonderful to have such a native abode.” After a little while of pondering, [Heidegger] responded, “You know – you really say something there” (Ja—da sagen Sie was).’99 Frings does not comment on the ‘da’ that had received special emphasis in Heidegger’s response. It was perfectly clear to him in that ‘moment of vision’, that, what had happened was the recognition of the ‘original resplendence’ of the ‘cosmos’. ‘Cosmos’ is the ancient Greek reference to the eternal dwelling of the gods. ‘No one has made it,’ Heraclitus says in Fragment 30, because ‘it always was, is and will be as the everlasting fire.’100 This divine touch of eternity is one of silent beauty where the gods announce their presence and invite those who are ready to participate in this kind of eternal dwelling to join them in the art of living, that is, in letting the gods do and be what they are, and thus to become what they can be and are supposed to be, θεαοντες and δαιοντες, those who have learned to meet the divine glance of being that resists the technological domination and destruction (Gestell) of all that is. Being will always offer itself as the one and only alternative to the human separation from being which objectifies all beings, including the human being, to mere resource centres (Bestand).101 Not even the countryside stretching before Heidegger’s study window has been spared from the rapid course of modern times. Shortly after Heidegger’s death, Manfred Frings remembers, he received a postcard from Heidegger’s wife, Elfride Heidegger. The photo showed the Black Forest landscape as Heidegger saw it while he was working at his desk. The view is now gone, the landscape developed, Ms. Heidegger complained to him. To sympathize fully with the deep sadness that moved Ms. Heidegger to send this note and picture to Manfred Frings, one has to recall the actual words Frings had spoken to Heidegger on his first visit. ‘Es muß doch schön sein, [eine solche] Heimat zu haben.’102 The loss of ‘home’ must always be a deeply troubling experience, since with such a loss occurs a loss of self. One’s self stands and falls with one’s homeland. It is on the homeland where a language emerges and flourishes as the language of a people that grew up on this land and continues to owe its existence to this land. This linguistic-ontological debt is being paid by a sense of self that knows itself responsible for the protection of the land. Any lack of such selfhood is reflected by the way language is spoken and a land is treated. The modern lack of intimate attachment to land and language is really a lack of self-respect. In the end it is the way we live on our land and speak our language that tells us how we treat ourselves.103 A huge opportunity lies in the intimate connection between language, land and being. The resurrection of language in authentic speech restores the word to the original force of its creation. Such recreation of the word speaks authentically. It speaks of the things themselves out of the fundamental-ontological bond between eternal being and human being that has its existential reality in the attachment to these things and the land one dwells on. To seek this

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ontological proximity and to maintain it is tantamount to the ‘epistemic’ stance of Gelassenheit. It is a state of (human) being in which Parmenides’ transcendence to truth takes place as an act of existential self-overcoming in the event of ontological self-extension. This event transcends time and space in time and space. Such experience of truth leaves us with the taste of eternity. Eternity is both ‘semperternitas’ (das Immerwährende, the everlasting) and ‘aeternitas’ (das Ewige, the eternal). It appears in the ‘standing now’ (nunc stans, das stehende Jetzt), the unbounded moment of vision (Augenblick), which Buber calls the I-You encounter that, although it happens in time, dispenses with the calculative sense of time, since time is founded in it.104 Eternity understood in this sense is not grounded in ‘something super-temporal’ (Überzeitlichkeit). Eternity in this sense is the ground and foundation of temporality and duration. It can only reveal itself to us in and out of the dimensions of time.105 This is why Parmenides’ truth encounter must happen in a journey, and it is only by travelling this journey and speaking the ontological language of truth, namely, by taking the time necessary, that we partake in his experience of immortality.

Notes

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Martin Heidegger (1976), ‘Nur ein Gott kann uns noch retten’. Der Spiegel May 31, (Vol. 30, No. 23), pp. 193–219, at p. 217. Martin Heidegger (1976), ‘“Only a God Can Save Us”: Der Spiegel’s Interview with Martin Heidegger’ (trans. Maria P. Alter and John D. Caputo). Philosophy Today, XX, (4/4), 267–285. Reprinted as Martin Heidegger (1993), ‘Only a God Can Save Us’, in Richard Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 91–116, at p. 113. Cf. Heidegger’s memorial words of thanks to Hildegard Feick for her work that made the Index zu Heidegger’s ‘Sein und Zeit’ possible. Hildegard Feick [1961] (1991), Index zu Heidegger’s ‘Sein und Zeit’. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, p. IXf. References to Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) are based on the following editions: Martin Heidegger [1927] (1986), Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, henceforth referred to as SZ; Martin Heidegger (1962), Being and Time (trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson). San Francisco: Harper & Row; Martin Heidegger (1996), Being and Time (trans. Joan Stambaugh). Albany: State University of New York Press. Henceforth both are referred to as BT. Page numbers refer to the German edition, unless otherwise noted. This ‘philological’ exercise begins with the genesis of Sein und Zeit. Meticulous etymological contemplations remain Heidegger’s philosophical trademark since this work. In his careful study of Being and Time, Arion L. Kelkel repeatedly directs the reader’s attention to Heidegger’s devotion to uncovering truths in words by wilful philological and etymological jugglings. See Arion L. Kelkel (1980), La Légende de l’Être. Langage et Poésie chez Heidegger. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, pp. 18, 156, 161, 162, 171, 172, 175, 336, 612ff. Ibid., p. 336. Cf. pp. 617, 621, 622. P. 156: ‘rupture avec une tradition académique stérilisante’; p. 161, fn. 20: ‘La terminologie de Heidegger, à l’évidence, se veut “révolutionaire” afin d’accentuer ce qu’il nommera plus tard la rupture avec la tradition métaphysique classique’. Kelkel (p. 160) sees in the concurrence of traditional metaphysical terminology and Heideggerian neologisms not so much a new language (ce n’est pas tant une nouvelle langue), but a ‘mutation’ of the philosophical heritage (q’une mutation de notre rapport à l’[la langue] ancienne). R. Philip Buckley (1998), ‘Stromdichtung and subjectivity in the later Heidegger’, in D. Zahavi (ed.), Self-awareness, Temporality, and Alterity. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 223–238, at p. 235.

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Martin Heidegger [1959] (1993), Unterwegs zur Sprache. Stuttgart: Verlag Günther Neske, p. 215. Henceforth referred to as US. Martin Heidegger (1971), On the Way to Language (trans. Peter D. Hertz). New York: Harper & Row, pp. 107f. ‘What our mother has been to us/this tombstone does not say./Yet present and future worlds shall read/To her we are thankful eternally.’ The tombstone is one of ten abandoned remainders in a forgotten cemetery hidden in a grove in Pilsen in the Czech Republic. The words were written by H. Wild for Mrs. Pollak, born Stern, who died at the age of 70 in 1878. These words are carved into one of the outside walls of the Gymnasium of McGill University on Pine Avenue in Montreal, Canada. The English translation underneath reads as follows: ‘Time dims not the achievements of the brave/Their worth shines steadfast even from the grave.’ The Greek words are carved into the wall above the entrance of the Arts Building of McGill University. These words are carved into the outside west wall of McGill’s Redpath Library. Both proverbs are carved in stone in the entrance hallway of the main library of the University of Heidelberg, Germany. A manuscript edition can be found in Beowulf, reproduced in facsimile from the unique manuscript British Museum Ms. Cotton Vitellius A. XV, with a transliteration and notes by Julius Zupitza and an introduction by Norman Davis, The Early English Text Society No. 245, Oxford University Press, London, New York, Toronto 1959. Other editions are: Howell D. Chickerin, Jr. (1977), Beowulf (Dual-Language Edition, introd., trans., comm. Howell D. Chickerin, Jr.). Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday. Heyne-Schücking (1961), Beowulf (3 Vols., ed. Else von Schaubert). München, Paderborn, Wien: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, part 1: Text, part 2: Commentary, part 3: Glossary. Michael Alexander (1995), Beowulf. London, England: Penguin Books, edition with a full facing glossary. Robert P. Creed dates the composition of the surviving manuscript between ad. 975 and ad 1025. Cf. Robert P. Creed (1987), ‘Beowulf on the Brink: Information Theory as Key to the Origins of the Poem’, in John Miles Foley (ed.), Comparative Research on Oral Traditions: A Memorial for Milman Parry. Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, pp. 139–160; p. 139 and fn. 2. Creed (1987), Comparative Research on Oral Traditions, p. 142. Robert P. Creed (1962), ‘The Singer Looks at his Sources’. Comparative Literature, XIV, (1), 44–52, at pp. 49f. and fn. 12. Creed refers to the repetitive use of formulas that can stretch over whole measures (measure formulas) or even over a whole verse (verse formulas). In ‘Beowulf on the Brink’, Creed emphasizes the importance of ‘stressed syllables’ which ‘create the intervals, the measures, of the verse’. Composition and performance of the poem is ‘marked by stresses at regular intervals (recurring stresses)’. Creed (1987), Comparative Research on Oral Traditions, pp. 144–145, 146–147. This is a term borrowed by Creed from Walter J. Ong (1982), Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, London, New York: Methuen. Cf. Creed (1987), Comparative Research on Oral Traditions, p.141 and fn.7. Loc.cit. The lines are 441, 885, 1388, 1491, 2890.

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Creed (1987), Comparative Research on Oral Traditions, pp. 149f. Creed (1987), Comparative Research on Oral Traditions, p. 152. Creed (1987), Comparative Research on Oral Traditions, p. 151. Creed (1987), Comparative Research on Oral Traditions, pp. 145–153. Creed (1987), Comparative Research on Oral Traditions, pp. 153, 155f. Creed (1987), Comparative Research on Oral Traditions, p. 150. Creed (1987), Comparative Research on Oral Traditions, p. 153. Creed (1987), Comparative Research on Oral Traditions, pp. 154, 155. ‘OE dom and its Modern English descendent DOOM derive ultimately from the Indo-European dhe, to set or put [, to establish in existence]. Modern English DO, from OE don, is a more direct descendant from this same root. A dom, then, as the OED reminds us, is something set or established. In a traditional society an action or a procedure can become established only if it is remembered. It can be remembered only if it is spoken about.’ Cf. Creed (1987), Comparative Research on Oral Traditions, p. 154. Martin Heidegger [1949] (1981), Über den Humanismus. Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 9f. Henceforth referred to as ÜH. The German has two plurals for the word ‘word’ (Wort). German linguists consciously make use of this variation to distinguish between collocated (Worte) and dissociated (Wörter) words. Heidegger is clearly aware of this distinction in meaning and attaches to it his philosophical implications. See his poem ‘Sprache’ in Denkerfahrungen, p 169. The last word (Wort) of the second line of this poem resonates heavily with the third word of the fourth line (Worte): ‘Wann werden Wörter / wieder Wort? / Wann weilt der Wind weisender Wende? / Wenn die Worte, ferne Spende, /sagen – / nicht bedeuten durch bezeichnen – / wenn sie zeigend tragen / an den Ort / uralter Eignis, / – Sterbliche eignend dem Brauch – / wohin Geläut der Stille ruft, / wo Früh-Gedachtes der Be-Stimmung / sich fügsam klar entgegenstuft.’ See also Heidegger’s second lecture of a three lecture series on ‘The Nature of Language’ given at the University of Freiburg on December 18, 1957, in Heidegger, US, p. 192 and Heidegger, On the Way to Language, p. 87: ‘Everybody, after all, sees and hears words (Worte) in writing and in sound. They are; they can be like things (Dinge), palpable to the senses. To offer a crude example, we only need to open a dictionary (Wörterbuch). It is full of printed things (Dingen). Indeed. Plenty of terms, and not a single word (Lauter Wörter und kein einziges Wort), because a dictionary can neither grasp (fassen) nor keep (bergen) the word (das Wort) by which the terms become words and speak as words (wodurch die Wörter zum Wort kommen). Where does the word, where does Saying (das Sagen) belong?’ We find a direct answer to this question in the ‘Epilogue’ (‘Nachwort’) from 1943 to Heidegger’s inaugural lecture from 1929 ‘Was ist Metaphysik?’: ‘Das anfängliche Denken ist der Widerhall der Gunst des Seins, in der sich das Einzige lichtet und sich ereignen läßt: daß Seiendes ist. Dieser Widerhall ist die menschliche Antwort auf das Wort der lautlosen Stimme des Seins. Die Antwort des Denkens ist der Ursprung des menschlichen Wortes, welches Wort erst die Sprache als die Verlautung des Wortes in die Wörter entstehen läßt.’ (‘The original thinking is the echo of the grace of being, in which the only [thing that is and that matters] is brought to light and can be made to happen: that beings are. This

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echo is the human answer to the word of the silent voice of being. The answer of thinking is the origin of the human word. This word lets language come to be as the uttering of the word in and as words’ (my translation). The human answer to the silent voice and word of being resonates in thought and speech whose words appear in and as sound and sign. The silent word of being emanates into uttered words via thinking. Hence, ‘the word, the saying,’ originally belongs to being. And this is why ‘the word gives being.’ Cf. Martin Heidegger [1969] (1981), Was ist Metaphysik?. Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 49f. (henceforth WM), also in Heidegger, Wegmarken, p. 310. Cf. Heidegger, US, p. 192. Heidegger, On the Way to Language, p. 87. Cf. Martin Heidegger [1982] (1992), Parmenides, Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 21–22, 102, 239. Martin Heidegger [1953] (1987), Einführung in die Metaphysik (fifth edition). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, p. 131. Hereafter cited as EM. Cf. Martin Heidegger [1959] (1961), An Introduction to Metaphysics. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, p. 144, hereafter cited as IM (1961), and Martin Heidegger [1959] (1987), An Introduction to Metaphysics. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, p. 171, hereafter cited as IM (1987). Martin Heidegger [1954] (1986), Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens (sixth edition). Pfullingen: Neske Verlag, pp. 7, 23. English translation in Martin Heidegger [1971] (1975), Poetry, Language, Thought (trans. Albert Hofstadter). New York, Cambridge: Harper & Row, pp. 4, 12, henceforth referred to as PLT. Cf. Otto Pöggeler’s discussion ‘Heideggers Topologie des Seins’, in Otto Pöggeler [1972] (1974), Philosophie und Politik bei Heidegger. Freiburg, München: Verlag Karl Alber, pp. 71–104. ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in Heidegger, PLT, pp. 39ff., 72–75, henceforth referred to as OWA. Cf. Martin Heidegger, ‘Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes’, in Martin Heidegger [1950] (1980), Holzwege (sixth edition). Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 25ff., 58–61, henceforth UKW. Heidegger, EM, pp. 11, 20, 29f.; Heidegger, IM (1961), pp. 11, 21f., 32; Heidegger, IM (1987), pp. 13, 26, 39. The distinction between ‘recollection’ and ‘repetition’, as pointed out earlier, Heidegger renders visible occasionally by a hyphen (Wiederholen instead of Wiederholen). However, Heidegger does not use this visualized distinction in order to reserve the meaning of ‘repetition’ for the unhyphenated word. Since Heidegger does not systematize the orthographic device, neither shall I. Kelkel, La Légende de l’Être, pp. 163, 172, 199, 330, 614, 615. Kelkel, La Légende de l’Être, p. 617. Cf. Martin Heidegger [1954] (1984), Was heißt Denken? Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, pp. 111f. (henceforth WhD). Cf. Martin Heidegger (1968), What is called Thinking? (trans. J. Glenn Gray). New York: Harper & Row, pp. 182f. (henceforth WCT). See UKW in Heidegger, Holzwege, pp. 19, 31, 33, 73. See OWA in Heidegger, PLT, pp. 35, 46, 48, 59. The notion of verbal decay was introduced into linguistic research first with the groundbreaking work of Georg von der Gabelentz (1891), Die Sprachwissenschaft. Ihre Aufgaben, Methoden, und bisherigen Ergebnisse. Leipzig: Weigel Verlag. Gabelentz (pp. 241, 242) speaks of linguistic forms that ‘fade, or grow pale’ (verblassen) and of their ‘bleaching’ (verbleichen) expressive colours.

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In his article ‘L’évolution des formes grammaticales’ from 1912 Antoine Meillet talks about the ‘loss of expressivity’ as a natural result of the frequent use of collocations. Meillet calls the effect of such expressive loss semantic ‘weakening’ (affaiblissement), which is accompanied by the weakening of the phonological form. See Antoine Meillet (1912), ‘L’évolution des formes grammaticales’. Scientia (Rivista di Scienza), 12, (26), at p. 6; reprinted in Antoine Meillet (1958), Linguistique historique et linguistique générale. Paris: Champion, pp. 130–148. In more recent research the notion that language shows signs of wear was (re)introduced into the field of linguistics as the concept of ‘phonetic erosion’, ‘semantic generalization’, ‘semantic erosion’ or ‘semantic bleaching’ and elaborated, notably by Talmy (Tom) Givón, John Haiman and Joan Bybee. Cf. Talmy Givón (1971), ‘Historical Syntax and synchronic morphology: An archeologist’s field trip’. Chicago Linguistics Society, 7, 394–415. Talmy Givón (1973), ‘The timeaxis phenomenon’. Language 49, 890–925; Talmy Givón (1979), On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press, pp. 316, 317. Talmy Givón (1995), Functionalism and Grammar, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 59, 121, 321. John Haiman (1972), ‘Phonological targets and unmarked structures’. Language 48, 365–377. John Haiman (1985a), Natural Syntax: Iconicity and Erosion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 261f. John Haiman (1985b), Iconicity in Syntax. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Joan L. Bybee (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 202ff. Joan L Bybee and William Pagliuca (1985), ‘Cross-linguistic comparison and the development of grammatical meaning’, in Jacek Fisiak (ed.), Historical Semantics and Historical Word Formation. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 59–83. Joan L. Bybee, Perkins, D., and Pagliuca, W. (1994), The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Joan L. Bybee (1998, Feb.), ‘The Evolution of Grammar’ in D. F. Armstrong and S. E. Wilcox (Chairs), Darwinian Perspectives on the Origin of Language, Symposium conducted at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Science (AAAS), Philadelphia, PA, in which Bybee considers the phenomenon of ‘semantic bleaching’ as one of the characteristics of grammaticization. A historical survey of linguistic notions of verbal decay in the context of a discussion of grammaticalization is provided by Paul J. Hopper and Elizabeth Closs Traugott (1993), Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 18–25, 66f., 87–93, 96, 145–150. Cf. ‘Sprache und Heimat’, in Heidegger, Denkerfahrungen, pp. 99, 102, 103f., 108f., 112. See ‘Die Sprache’ in Heidegger, US, p. 30. Cf. Language’, in Heidegger, PLT; p. 208. “. . .sie [die Worte] zeigend tragen/an den Ort/uralter Eignis,/. . .” ‘Sprache’, in Heidegger, Denkerfahrungen, p. 169. Giorgio Agamben (1991), Language and Death: The Place of Negativity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 82f. Heidegger, US, pp. 192, 193. On the Way to Language, pp. 87, 88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel [1970] (1983), Phänomenologie des Geistes (Werke in zwanzig Bänden, Vol. 3). Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, (BB) VI. B. I. a., p. 376. G. W. F. Hegel (1977), Phenomenology of Spirit (trans. A. V. Miller). Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, § 508, p. 308. G. W. F. Hegel [1910] (1967),

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The Phenomenology of Mind (trans. J. B. Baillie). New York, Evanston: Harper Torchbooks, pp. 529f. Kelkel, La Légende de l’Être, p. 620: ‘[C]hacun de nous de par sa naissance, sa culture et son milieu a une manière bien à lui de parler, c’est-à-dire de posséder la même langue.’ To verify Heidegger’s notion of the fore-structure of understanding cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 150ff. The citations are found in Martin Heidegger [1979] (1988), Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (GA 20). Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, (henceforth PGZ), pp. 65, 74, 75. Martin Heidegger [1985] (1992), History of the Concept of Time (trans. Theodore Kisiel). Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, (henceforth HCT), pp. 48, 56. Heidegger, HCT, pp. 30–32, 36ff., 48ff., 60ff. etc. Heidegger, PGZ, pp. 37–40, 46ff., 65ff., 81ff.: ‘. . . perception . . . is intrinsically intentional . . . intentionality constitutes the very structure of comportment itself . . . the lived experiences themselves are as such intentional. The comportments of life are also called acts: perception, judgment, love, hate. [ . . . ] act simply means intentional relation. . . . the fullness of perception . . . gives the entity bodily (leibhaft). . . . Sense perception indeed gives the entity originarily (originär), [ . . . ] intuition (Anschauung) is bodily originary (originär leibhaft), it gives the entity itself, the matter itself (die Sache selbst). [ . . . ] even simple perception, which is usually called sense perception, is already intrinsically pervaded by categorial intuition. The intentionality of perceptual apprehension (des wahrnehmenden Erfassens) is in fact simple and straightforward, . . .’ Cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 163, 164: ‘Dasein hears, because it understands. . . . What we first hear is never noises or complexes of sounds, but the creaking wagon, the motor-cycle. . . . Even in cases where the speech is indistinct or in a foreign language, what we proximally hear is unintelligible words, and not a multiplicity of tone-data.’ Cf. Martin Heidegger (1978), ‘Die Kategorien und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus’, in Martin Heidegger, Frühe Schriften (GA 1). Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 189–412; cf. pp. 290–302, 339, 410f. Cf. Kelkel, La Légende de l’Être, pp. 61–72. For his study from 1980 Kelkel could not consider Heidegger’s lecture course from 1925, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, first published in 1979. However, note in particular Kelkel’s reflections on Humboldt’s notion of ‘material signification’, a notion, which conceives of a material origin for significations. Not paradoxically, after the conflation of Heidegger with Duns Scotus on the issue of the material nature and origination of language, and the question of its intrinsic meaningfulness, Kelkel rightly sees Humboldt’s position as coming close to Heidegger’s conception of language. This self-correction is not surprising, since virtually all of Heidegger’s writings point at Humboldt’s position. Cf. Kelkel, La Légende de l’Être, p. 150. Bruce Springsteen (1978), ‘The Promised Land’, LP Darkness on the Edge of Town. CBS Records 01-032542-20. Catherine A. MacKinnon (1993), Only Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 11f., 13, 15 etc. Cf. Heidegger’s ‘Preface’ from 1962 to William J. Richardson [1963] (2003), Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought (fourth edition, Perspectives in Continental Philosophy, No. 30). New York: Fordham University Press, p. XXIII. Richardson, Heidegger, p. XVI/XVII.

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Richardson, Heidegger, p. XXIII: ‘Dieses mehrfältige Denken verlangt zwar keine neue Sprache, aber ein gewandeltes Verhältnis zum Wesen der alten.’ Heidegger speaks of ‘Wesen der Sprache’ in a deliberately ambivalent sense. The expression recalls the metaphysical sense of the noun ‘nature’ or ‘essence’ (Wesen). At the same time it invokes the active-dynamic sense of the verb (wesen) whose nominalization aims at overcoming the exclusively static sense traditional metaphysics has attributed to the term. Heidegger plays with the notion of ‘occurring’, ‘presencing’ or ‘essencing’ (Anwesenheit) of being. Richardson, Heidegger, pp. XVI/XVII–XX/XXI. Cf. Heidegger’s ‘Preface to the Seventh German Edition’ of 1953 to SZ. Cf. Richardson himself (pp. 22, 229–245, 624–633, 640), who finally operates with even a third distinction, the ‘Ur-Heidegger’ as the ultimate ‘primordial source’ behind the whole body of Heidegger’s thinking. Richardson, Heidegger, pp. XVIIIf/XIXf., XXII/XXIII. The reference of the genitive is deliberatively ambivalent. I refer to the unthinkability of nothingness, being as a whole, and, specifically, to the unthinkability of existence as a non-existent. Aristotle conceives of the voice (ϕωνη) as a genus (γενος) and/or as matter (υλη). In either case, voice cannot exist unqualifiedly apart from (απλως µη εστι παρα) the forms of its species (τα ως γενους ειδη). Neither can voice exist apart from the differentiae (διαϕοραι), which mould the vocal forms, that is, the actual spoken letters (phones that correspond to phonemes), out of the voice (τα ειδη και τα στοιχεια εκ ταυτης ποιουσιν). The differentiae thus determine the vocalizations (utterances), which are specific to each species. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Z (VII), 12, 1038a 5–9, in Hippocrates G. Apostle [1966] (1979), Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Grinnel, Iowa: The Peripatetic Press. Also in Horst Seidl (ed.), [1980] (1984), Aristoteles’ Metaphysik (Philosophische Bibliothek 308, GriechischDeutsch, trans. Hermann Bonitz, ed. Horst Seidl, Vol. 2, Bücher VII (Z) – XIV (N), second edition). Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. Jacques Derrida (1996), The Gift of Death. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, p. 39. Carol J. White (2005), Time and Death-Heidegger’s Analysis of Finitude. Βurlington, VT: Ashgate, p. 166.

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Flannery O’Connor (1988), Collected Works. New York: Library of America, pp. 137–153. Consult his 1959 lecture ‘Hölderlin’s Earth and Heaven’, in: Martin Heidegger (2000), Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry (trans. Keith Hoeller). Amherst: Humanity Books, p. 190. Martin Heidegger [1981] (1996), Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung (GA 4, sixth enlarged edition). Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, p. 165. Consult in this context the study of Jaromir Brejdak (1996), Philosophia Crucis. Heideggers Beschäftigung mit dem Apostel Paulus (Series Daedalus Vol. 8). Frankfurt/ Main: Peter Lang.

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Heidegger, SZ, p. 258: Death is ‘certain, and as such indefinite’ . . . (gewisse und als solche unbestimmte . . . Möglichkeit). Cf. Jn. 1:29; 1 Cor. 5:7; 6:11; Acts 22:16. Mt. 26:28; 1 Cor. 11:23-25; Rom. 5:8: Χριστος υπερ ηµων απεθαθανεν (Christ died for us); 2 Cor. 5:14-15: εις υπερ παντων απεθανεν (one died for all). Cf. also Jn. 10:11, 15; 15:13; 1 Jn. 3:16. Dietrich Bonhoeffer [1959 ] (1995), The Cost of Discipleship. New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 43–45. The corresponding German expressions in SZ are the following: Verkehren, p. 253; Umkehrung; Umprägen, p. 254; Ausweichen, pp. 254, 255, 257f., 260, 266 etc. Heidegger, SZ, p. 245: ‘Sobald ein Mensch zum Leben kommt, sogleich ist er alt genug zu sterben.’ Johannes von Tepl (Johannes de Tepla) is the presumed author of the Medieval text composed around 1400. In her book Le laboureur de l’être Martina Roesner traces this Medieval influence on Heidegger back to the Book of Genesis where the human being is understood as a creature formed from earth to leave as a husbandman his transient traces on earth. Cf. Martina Roesner (2004), Le laboureur de l’être. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 145, 151: Entwurf; Entwerfen. Heidegger, SZ, p. 151: ‘Das Woraufhin des Entwurfs’. Cf. p. 145: ‘das, woraufhin es [das Verstehen] entwirft’; ‘Das Verstehen ist, als Entwerfen, die Seinsart des Daseins, in der es seine Möglichkeiten als Möglichkeiten ist.’ Heidegger, SZ, pp. 143–145, 250, 266; cf. pp. 255, 262, 265. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 254, 266, 328, 338. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, p. 189: ‘Das Un-zuhause (not-at-home) muß existenzial-ontologisch als das ursprünglichere (more primordial) Phänomen begriffen werden.’ Heidegger, SZ, p. 145. The words resonate with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. The words go back to the Greek poet Pindar. Cf. Pindar, Pythian Odes 2, 73. Pindar [1915] (1997), Olympian Odes. Pythian Odes (ed., trans. William H. Race). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Søren Kierkegaard (1962), The Present Age (trans. Alexander Dru). New York: Harper & Row, pp. 63, 66, 67, 81–83. Søren Kierkegaard [1941] (1974), Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments (trans. David F. Swenson, Walter Lowrie). Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 115ff. Friedrich Nietzsche [1954] (1997), Werke in Drei Bänden (ed. Karl Schlechta). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, pp. 270, 335. Note also the subtitle of Nietzsche’s autobiographical work Ecce Homo ‘How one becomes what one is’. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, p. 145: ‘Auf dem Grunde der Seinsart, . . ., ist das Dasein ständig “mehr”, als es tatsächlich ist . . . Es ist aber nie mehr, als es faktisch ist, weil zu seiner Faktizität das Seinkönnen wesenhaft gehört. Das Dasein ist aber als Möglichsein auch nie weniger, das heißt das, was in seinem Seinkönnen noch nicht ist, ist es existenzial. Und nur weil das Sein des Da . . . ist, was es wird bzw. nicht wird, kann es verstehend ihm selbst sagen: “werde, was du bist!”.’ Heidegger, SZ, p. 43. For a full discussion of the interconnection between authenticity and inauthenticity with respect to the existential-ontological and ontic-existentiell modes of being, see Oberst (2004), ‘Heidegger’s Appropriation of Aristotle’s ∆υναµις/Ενεργεια Distinction’. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 78, (1), 25–51.

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Heidegger, SZ, p. 130: ‘Das eigentliche Selbstsein beruht nicht auf einem vom Man abgelösten Ausnahmezustand des Subjekts, sondern ist eine existenzielle Modifikation des Man als eines wesenhaften Existenzials.’ Heidegger, SZ, p. 259: ‘Uneigentlichkeit hat mögliche Eigentlichkeit zum Grunde.’ Cf. p. 317: ‘Dieses [Man-selbst] ist eine existentielle Modifikation des eigentlichen Selbst.’ Michael Zimmerman (1981), Eclipse of the Self. Athens, London: Ohio University Press, pp. 45, 46. I say this also with R. Philip Buckley (1993), ‘La Notion d’Authenticité chez Husserl et Heidegger’. Philosophiques, XX, (2), 399–422; at 409: ‘[L]a corrélation entre les deux . . . implique une constante interaction de ces deux états. Cela suggère également que l’existence ne peut jamais être complètement ou purement authentique.’ 2 Cor. 4:10: We are ‘always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifest in our bodies.’ 2 Cor. 13:4: ‘He was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God.’ Cf. 2 Cor. 5:2: ‘we groan’; 5: 4: ‘we sigh with anxiety’; 5:6. 8: nevertheless, ‘we are always of good courage.’ Cf. 1 Cor. 15:31: ‘καθ‘ηµερα αποθνησκω’ (‘I die every day’). Heidegger, SZ, pp. 254, 266. Cf., p. 384: ‘Wenn das Dasein vorlaufend den Tod in sich mächtig werden läßt, versteht es sich frei für ihn, in der eigenen Übermacht seiner endlichen Freiheit, um in dieser, die je nur “ist” im Gewählthaben der Wahl, die Ohnmacht der Überlassenheit an es selbst zu übernehmen und für die Zufälle der erschlossenen Situation hellsichtig zu werden.’ Cf. 1 Cor. 15:55f. ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. – O Death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death (fear) has been and still is ‘sin’. Sinful life can be compared with Heidegger’s ‘inauthenticity’. We are never completely purified from sin, which is the same as to say with Heidegger, we are never purely authentic. 2 Cor. 4:11: ‘For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.’ (αει . . . ηµεις οι ζωντες εις θανατον παραδιδοµεθα . . .). Cf. 1 Cor. 15:51, 53: αλλαγησοµεθα, we shall be transformed. 1 Cor. 15:30: ‘I am in peril every hour (πασαν ωραν)’; cf. 2 Cor. 4:8. 9: ‘We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down; but not destroyed.’ Cf. 2 Cor. 1:8ff.; 7:5ff. and Rom. 8:35-37, where Paul repeatedly talks about all the afflictions, tribulations, the distress, famine and persecution he is ready to endure, quoting thereby Psalm 43:23 to support his perspective of life: ‘For thy sake we are being killed all day (θανατουµεθα ολην την ηµεραν).’ Cf. 2 Cor. 5:2: ‘here indeed we groan . . .’; v. 5:4: ‘we sigh with anxiety.’ For the experience of salvation as the incomplete presence of eternal life see 2 Cor. 4:7: ‘we have this treasure in earthen vessels . . .’; v. 5:1: ‘we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.’ The passions of faith built this house. Cf. 2 Cor. 5:10: ‘According to what [we] have done, [we] receive good or evil.’ Hence acts of faith bring with them eternal life, which is the object of our ‘groaning’ and ‘longing’ (2 Cor. 5:2. 4).

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I rely here partly on Otto Pöggeler (1990), Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers. Pfullingen: Neske, p. 61. Cf. Martin Heidegger (2002), ‘Letter to Father Engelbert Krebs (1919)’, in Supplements (ed. John Van Buren). Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 69f. Rüdiger Safranski [1994] (1997), Ein Meister aus Deutschland. Heidegger und seine Zeit. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, p. 127. Rüdiger Safranski [1998] (2002), Martin Heidegger. Between Good and Evil (trans. Ewald Osers). Cambridge, MA, London, England: Harvard University Press, pp. 107f. Hugo Ott (1993), Martin Heidegger: A Political Life. New York: HarperCollins, pp. 106ff. Hugo Ott (1988), Martin Heidegger: Unterwegs zu seiner Biographie. Frankfurt/ Main, pp. 107ff. Elsbeth Büchin and Alfred Denker (2005), Martin Heidegger und seine Heimat. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Consult there the public disputes Heidegger engaged in anonymously in defence of Catholicism. Cf. Ott, Martin Heidegger, pp. 123f. ‘Einleitung in die Phänomenologie der Religion.’ Cf. Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought, p. 672. The lecture is published in Martin Heidegger (1995), Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens (GA 60). Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Martin Heidegger (2004), The Phenomenology of Religious Life (trans. Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. I rely also on discussions in Otto Pöggeler, Der Denkweg, Thomas Sheehan (1979), ‘Heidegger’s “Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion”, 1920–21’. The Personalist, 60, 312–324. Michael E. Zimmerman, Eclipse of the Self, and R. P. Buckley, the above mentioned article as well as his book R. Philip Buckley (1992), Husserl, Heidegger and the Crisis of Philosophical Responsibility (Phaenomenologica: 125). Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), pp. 10, 11. Cf. p. 15. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), pp. 32, 33, 54. Cf. p. 85 See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), p. 65. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), p. 90. Cf. Buckley, Husserl, Heidegger, p. 209; See ‘La notion d’authenticité chez . . .’ in Buckley, Philosophiques, p. 416. The Christian experience is, of course, reminiscent of Kierkegaard’s rejection of Hegel’s philosophy, a rejection he epitomized in his famous saying that ‘an existential system is impossible’. Cf. Robert Bretall, A Kierkegaard Anthology, pp. 201ff. Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 97–113. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), p. 90; Sheehan, ‘Phenomenology of Religion’, pp. 319f. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), p. 128. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), pp. 98–110. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), p. 69, 72, 150. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), p. 105. Sheehan, ‘Phenomenology of Religion’, pp. 319f. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), pp. 80, 82, 92, 104. Sheehan, ‘Phenomenology of Religion’, p. 321. Pöggeler, Philosophie und Politik, p. 62; SZ, p. 385.

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See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), pp. 97, 150, 156. Sheehan, ‘Phenomenology of Religion’, p. 320. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), pp. 88, 89, 90, 91, 92f. Sheehan, ‘Phenomenology of Religion’, p. 322. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), pp. 107, 110, 117, 118, 150. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), p. 69, 150. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), p. 100. Cf. Pöggeler, Philosophie und Politik, pp. 36–45. In SZ Heidegger calls this lived experience of everydayness ‘das ontische Zunächst’, that is, ‘that which is ontically closest’ and thus ‘ontologically hidden, unknown and farthest away’. SZ, p. 43. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), pp. 102–105. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), p. 113. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), pp. 101, 114. See GA 60 (Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens), p. 117. 2 Cor. 3:12; 7:4; Acts 4:13. 29. 31; 28: 31; Eph. 3:12; 4:19. Buckley, Husserl, Heidegger , p. 209. Cf. ‘La notion d’authenticité chez . . .’, in Buckley, Philosophiques, p. 405, n. 16. Cf. ‘La notion d’authenticité chez . . .’, in Buckley, Philosophiques, p. 418; Husserl, Heidegger . . . , pp. 209–211. John Macquarrie (1955), An Existentialist Theology. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1973. Cf. pp. 181–201. Rudolf Bultmann, ‘New Testament and Mythology’, in: Rudolf Bultmann (1972), Kerygma and Myth (Vol. I, ed. Hans-Werner Bartsch, trans. R. H. Fuller). London: HarperCollins, pp. 1–44; at p. 28. Bultmann, “Bultmann replies to his critics”, in: Kerygma and Myth, Vol. I, pp. 191–211; p. 205. Kerygma and Myth, Vol. I, p. 211. Cf. Rudolf Bultmann, ‘The Case for Demythologizing’, in: Rudolf Bultmann (1972), Kerygma and Myth (Vol. II, ed. Hans-Werner Bartsch, trans. R. H. Fuller). London: HarperCollins, pp. 181–194; p. 192. See ‘New Testament and Mythology’ in Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth, Vol. I, p. 30. See ‘New Testament and Mythology’ in Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth, Vol. I, p. 31. See ‘The Case for Demythologizing’ in Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth (Vol. II, p. 191. Cf. p. 192: ‘[F]aith accepts the incredible on authority! For the possibility of living by the grace of God can, by its very nature, be given only to me; it is not a possibility open to all for the taking. If it were, the very meaning of the revelation – the grace given to man who is nothing before God – would be lost.’ See ‘Bultmann replies’, , Kerygma and Myth, Vol. I, p. 192. Cf. ‘The Case for Demythologizing’, p. 193: ‘The “demythologized” sense of the Christian doctrine of incarnation, of the word that “was made flesh” is precisely this, that God manifests himself not merely as the idea of God . . . but as “my” God who speaks to me here and now, through a human mouth.’ See ‘The Case for Demythologizing’ in Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth Vol. II, p. 190. See ‘Bultmann replies’ in Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth, Vol. I, p. 209. See ‘The Case for Demythologizing’ in Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth Vol. II, p. 192. See ‘The Case for Demythologizing’ in Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth Vol. II, p. 182.

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See ‘The Case for Demythologizing’ in Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth Vol. II, p. 183, 192. 76 See ‘The Case for Demythologizing’ in Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth Vol. II, p. 193. 77 See ‘The Case for Demythologizing’ in Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth Vol. II, p. 192. 78 See ‘The Case for Demythologizing’ in Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth Vol. II, p. 188. 79 Rudolf Bultmann (1951), Theology of the New Testament (Vol. I, trans. Kendrick Grobel). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, pp. 318f. 80 Cf. Zimmerman, Eclipse of the Self, pp. 59ff., 144f. 81 Cf. See ‘New Testament and Mythology’ in Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth, Vol. I, pp. 24–31. 82 Rudolf Bultmann (1955), Theology of the New Testament (Vol. II, transl. Kendrick Grobel). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, p. 218. Rudolf Bultmann [1948] (1984), Theologie des Neuen Testaments (UTB 630). Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). 83 Bultmann ‘New Testament and Mythology’, in: Kerygma and Myth, Vol. I, p. 22. 84 Theology of the New Testament, Vol. II, p. 222: ‘Demonstration of love is what all the single virtues ultimately are: “mildness”, “long-suffering”, . . ., “helping each other” (αντεχεσθαι αλληλων) and “forgiving one another”. . .’ 85 Theology of the New Testament, Vol. I, pp. 348ff., Vol. II, pp. 75f. 86 This is the way H.-G. Gadamer describes it according to Zimmerman, Eclipse of the Self, p. 62; cf. ‘La notion d’authenticité chez . . .’, in Buckley, Philosophiques, p. 405. 87 Cf. Zimmerman, Eclipse, pp. 69–81. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 43, 167. 88 Heidegger, SZ, p. 43: ‘Dieses Seiende [Dasein] hat nicht und nie die Seinsart des innerhalb der Welt nur Vorhandenen. Daher ist es auch nicht in der Weise des Vorfindens von Vorhandenem thematisch vorzugeben. . . . Das Dasein soll . . . in seinem indifferenten Zunächst und Zumeist (the undifferentiated character it has proximally and for the most part) aufgedeckt werden.’ 89 Heidegger, SZ, p. 43: ‘Diese Indifferenz der Alltäglichkeit des Daseins (undifferentiated character of Dasein’s everydayness) ist nicht nichts, sondern ein positiver phänomenaler Charakter dieses Seienden. Aus dieser Seinsart heraus und in sie zurück ist alles Existieren, wie es ist. Wir nennen diese alltägliche Indifferenz des Daseins Durchschnittlichkeit (averageness).’ 90 That Heidegger ontologized Kierkegaard ‘back’ into an existential-ontological system which reconnects Kierkegaard with the ‘history of Western ontology’ is also implied, although not explicitly, by Karl Löwith, in his essay ‘Existenzphilosophie’ from 1932. Cf. Karl Löwith (1984), Heidegger – Denker in dürtiger Zeit. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, pp. 1–18; at 5f., n. 3. 91 Cf. Zimmerman, Eclipse, p. 61: ‘Heidegger’s analysis of human existence is existential-ontological, not existentiell-ontical. In Being and Time he never specifies what existentiell (personal, specific) decisions are appropriate for an individual. . . . Unlike the philosopher Heidegger, the theologian Bultmann is interested in leading people to make a choice for God. . . .His interpretation of human existence is thus existentiell, not existential.” 92 Martin Heidegger (1972), ‘Sprache’, in Martin Heidegger (1983), Denkerfahrungen. Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, p. 169.

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Cf. Buckley, ‘Stromdichtung and subjectivity in the later Heidegger’, Part II: ‘Heidegger and the “We” of National Socialism: Or, what went wrong?’, pp. 229–233. Graeme Nicholson (1987), ‘The Politics of Heidegger’s Rectoral Address’. Man and World (20), 171–187; at p. 185. Cf. Michael E. Zimmerman (1989), ‘Philosophy and Politics: The Case of Heidegger’. Philosophy Today, Spring, 3–20; at p. 3 and n. 2. Karl Löwith, Heidegger – Denker in dürftiger Zeit, pp. 124–192; Karl Löwith [1961] (1990), Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933. Frankfurt/Main: Fischer. Karl Löwith, ‘My Last Meeting with Heidegger in Rome, 1936’, in: Richard Wolin, The Heidegger Controversy, pp. 140–143. Karl Löwith, ‘The Political Implications of Heidegger’s Existentialism’, in: Wolin, pp. 167–185. Martin Heidegger (1983), Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität. Das Rektorat 1933/34. Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Martin Heidegger, ‘The Self-Assertion of the German University’, in: Wolin, pp. 29–39. Buckley, Husserl, Heidegger, p. 219. Martin Heidegger [1954] (1986), Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens (sixth edition). Pfullingen: Neske Verlag, p. 11. Cf. Martin Heidegger, Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universität. Das Rektorat 1933/34, p. 24. Richard Wolin, The Heidegger Controversy, pp. 119–122. Ernst Jünger, ‘Total Mobilization’, in Wolin, The Heidegger Controversy, pp. 122–139. Wolin, Heidegger Controversy, p. 123. Jünger, E. [1929] (1996), The Storm of Steel. New York: Howard Fertig, p. 319. Wolin, Heidegger Controversy, p. 129. Wolin, Heidegger Controversy, p. 128. Erich Maria Remarque [1928] (2004), Im Westen Nichts Neues. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Erich Maria Remarque [1929] (1982), All Quiet on the Western Front. New York: Fawcett Books. Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1998), Selected Poems (trans. John Whaley). Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, pp. 122, 123. Printed with permission of the publisher.

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An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Gyori, G. (2001), Language Evolution: Biological, Linguistic & Philosophical Perspectives. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘Zur Einführung’, in: Martin Heidegger (1960), Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes. Stuttgart: Reclam, pp. 93–114; at p. 114. Martin Heidegger, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung, p. 168. Martin Heidegger, Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry, p. 193. ‘Die Bedeutsamkeit . . . birgt in sich die ontologische Bedingung dafür, daß das verstehende Dasein als auslegendes so etwas wie “Bedeutungen” erschließen kann, die ihrerseits wieder das mögliche Sein von Wort und Sprache fundieren.’

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Notes Cf. Heidegger, SZ, p. 155: Communication is a shared being toward that which has been pointed out. Thus, communication is a being which must be understood as being-in-the-world, a being in that world in which the respective entity has been encountered. ‘Die spätere Auslegung dieser Definition des Menschen im Sinne von animal rationale, “vernünftiges Lebewesen”, ist zwar nicht “falsch”, aber sie verdeckt den phänomenalen Boden, dem diese Definition des Daseins entnommen ist. Der Mensch zeigt sich als Seiendes, das redet.’ Cf. Heidegger, SZ, p. 48. ‘Das λεγειν ist der Leitfaden der Gewinnung der Seinsstrukturen des im Ansprechen und Besprechen begegnenden Seienden.’ Cf. Heidegger, SZ, p. 87. (See Note 4) ‘Gewinnung der Seinsstrukturen des im Ansprechen und Besprechen begegnenden Seienden’. (See Note 7) ‘. . ., das Lebende, dessen Sein wesenhaft durch das Redenkönnen bestimmt ist.’ ‘Im konkreten Vollzug hat das Reden (Sehenlassen) den Charakter des Sprechens, der stimmlichen Verlautbarung in Worten. Der λογος ist ϕωνη und zwar ϕωνη µετα ϕαντασιας – stimmliche Verlautbarung, in der je etwas gesichtet ist.’ ‘Die Hinausgesprochenheit der Rede ist die Sprache.’ ‘Die Rede ist existential Sprache . . . .’ ‘Die Rede spricht sich zumeist aus und hat sich schon immer ausgesprochen. Sie ist Sprache.’ ‘Das primäre “Wozu” [toward-which] ist ein Worum-willen [for-the-sakeof-which]. Das “Umwillen” [for-the-sake-of] betrifft aber immer das Sein des Daseins, dem es in seinem Sein wesenhaft um dieses Sein selbst geht.’ Cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 68ff. Namely, the primordial and hermeneutical ‘as’ as the fundamental structure of interpretation which Heidegger contrasts with the apophantical ‘as’ of assertion. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 158, 223. See Notes 19–21, 24 below. ‘Alles vorprädikative schlichte Sehen des Zuhandenen ist an ihm selbst schon verstehend-auslegend.’ ‘Die Aussage (assertion) bedarf einer Vorsicht (fore-sight), in der gleichsam das abzuhebende und zuzuweisende Prädikat in seiner unausdrücklichen Beschlossenheit im Seienden selbst aufgelockert wird.’ ‘Die Artikulation des Verstandenen in der auslegenden Näherung des Seienden am Leitfaden des “Etwas als etwas” liegt vor der thematischen Aussage darüber.’ ‘Das “Als” macht die Struktur der Ausdrücklichkeit eines Vestandenen aus; es konstituiert Auslegung.’ ‘Daß im schlichten Hinsehen die Ausdrücklichkeit eines Aussagens (Ausgesprochenheit) fehlen kann, berechtigt nicht dazu, diesem schlichten Sehen jede artikulierende Auslegung, mithin die Als-Struktur abzusprechen.’ (Bracket is my addition) ‘Die ontische Unausgesprochenheit des “als” darf nicht dazu verführen, es als apriorische existenziale Verfassung des Verstehens zu übersehen.’ ‘In der Auslegung wird das Verstehen nicht etwas anderes, sondern es selbst.’

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Cf. Heidegger, SZ, p. 87 (see Note 4). Cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 160, 161, p. 271: ‘Jedes Aussprechen und “Ausrufen” setzt schon Rede voraus.’ (‘Every expressing and ‘proclaiming’ already presupposes discourse.’) 25 The as-structure of interpretation ‘is ontically unexpressed.’ It is nevertheless ‘a constitutive state for understanding, existential and a priori’, as Heidegger says on p. 149 in SZ: ‘Die ontische Unausgesprochenheit des “als” darf nicht dazu verführen, es als apriorische existenziale Verfassung des Verstehens zu übersehen.’ 26 ‘Die Auslegung kann die dem auszulegenden Seienden zugehörige Begrifflichkeit aus diesem selbst schöpfen . . . die Auslegung hat sich je schon endgültig oder vorbehaltlich für eine bestimmte Begrifflichkeit entschieden; sie gründet in einem Vorgriff.’ (‘Interpretation can create and draw the conceptualization that belongs to the entity to be interpreted from this very entity . . . interpretation has always already made a decision for a certain type of conceptualization, either definitely or provisionally. It is grounded in an anticipated conceptualization or a fore-conception.’) – (Italics except last are mine) (See Note 27). 27 ‘Durch welche existenzial-ontologischen Modifikationen entspringt die Aussage aus der umsichtigen Auslegung?’ (‘By what existential-ontological modifications does assertion arise from circumspective interpretation?’ [My italics]). 28 Vorhabe: The inexplicitness of understanding is comprised of the so-called fore-structure (Vor-Struktur). Understanding is being toward those entities which are understood within the context of the totality of involvements (Bewandtnisganzheit). This mode of being toward (Sein zu) constitutes the ground for our potentiality to understand what is already implicitly understood now explicitly in interpretation. Heidegger calls this potentiality grounded in understanding ‘fore-having’ (Vorhabe). Fore-having implies taking a stance from whence we acquire a perspective on something. This perspective constitutes our particular understanding of that thing. The view of the thing thus understood is the foresight (Vorsicht). In fore-having we assume a concrete position from which we immediately gain the perspective of fore-sight toward the thing encountered in its discoveredness (Entdecktheit) of our everyday encounter with entities. Foresight provides the concrete and pragmatic view of understanding. It is an understanding of things discovered through Dasein’s circumspective concern for its own well-being. What is captured in fore-having and fore-sight is conceptualizable (begreiflich). Heidegger calls Dasein’s potentiality for conceptualization ‘fore-conception’ (Vorgriff). The structural moment of fore-conception is an anticipatory conceptualization not yet actualized. This moment of understanding is comprised of the two other moments, that of fore-having and that of fore-sight. In the structural moment of fore-conception ultimately lies the possibility of concepts realized in actual word-creations and language. All three moments make up the complete fore-structure of the inexplicit understanding which itself finds its articulation in the as-structure of the explicit interpretation. 29 This paragraph is based on an interpretation of Heidegger, SZ, pp. 157, 158. Cf. with p. 224 where Heidegger speaks of ‘Umschaltung’ (switch-over) to refer to the same process of abstraction. It would be fruitful for a deeper understanding of this change-over at work in our apprehension of the world to relate Heidegger’s position of genuine and ingenuous relations to things to Aristotle’s distinction

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between scientific knowledge (επιστηµη) and prudence (H. Rackham’s 1926 translation in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics) or intelligence (T. Irwin’s 1985 translation in Aristotle’s same book) as practical wisdom (ϕρονησις) discussed in his Nicomachean Ethics, especially in Book VI (Z) where he points out that prudence is concerned with particular things (τα καθ’ εκαστα) and that this closeness to ultimate things forms the basis of valuable experience which explains why people of experience (εµπειροι) are more successful in practical life (πραξις) than theorists who lack such fundamental intelligence (1141b 2–30). The contrast is reminiscent of Heidegger’s distinction between the hermeneutical ‘as’ in interpretation and the apophantical ‘as’ of assertions. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 158, 223. (See Note 15). Compare this with Heidegger’s definition of assertion (Heidegger, SZ, p. 156): ‘Aussage ist mitteilend bestimmende Aufzeigung.’ ‘Sichaussprechende Rede ist Mitteilung.’ Language is ‘[die] beim Sichaussprechen gesprochene Sprache’. The interpretation of the last five paragraphs is based on a close and careful reading of SZ, pp. 154 and 155. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, p. 161: ‘Reden ist das “bedeutende” Gliedern der Verständlichkeit des In-der-Welt-seins, . . .’ See also Heidegger, SZ, p. 162: ‘Die Rede ist die bedeutungsmäßige Gliederung der befindlichen Verständlichkeit des In-der-Welt-seins.’ ‘Redend spricht sich Dasein aus, . . .’ Cf. Heidegger, SZ, p. 223f. ‘Dasein ist seine Erschlossenheit.’ Such an understanding is able to distinguish ‘what has been drawn from primordial sources with a struggle’ from ‘what is just gossip’ (‘was ursprünglich geschöpft und errungen und was nachgeredet ist’). The interpretation offered in the last three paragraphs is based on a close reading of Heidegger, SZ, pp. 161–163. Here we have touched on Heidegger’s concept of truth which he defines in § 44 as one of Dasein’s fundamental modes of being. Truth is uncovering (Entdeckend-sein) that results in uncoveredness (Entdecktheit) of entities. Heidegger sees in Aristotle an early compatriot who shares a contention about the notion of truth quite similar to his own. In his Metaphysics, Book IX (Θ), Chapter 10 Aristotle explains why he thinks the true and the false (το ον αληθες η ψευδος) are to be located among the things themselves (επι των πραγµατων εστι). One errs when one’s contention stands in contrast or in contradiction to the way things really are (εψευσται δε ο εναντιως εχων η τα πραγµατα). However, one is in and speaks the truth (αληθευει) if one’s apprehension and assertion of things constitutes an authentic encounter with the things in the fundamental empirical and pragmatic sense of touch and affection (θιγειν – or θιγγανειν – και ϕαναι). The opposite in this case would not be misconception or falsehood, but ignorance. Cf. Martin Heidegger (1950), ‘Die Sprache’, in Martin Heidegger [1959] (1993), Unterwegs zur Sprache. Stuttgart: Verlag Günther Neske, p. 22. Martin Heidegger, ‘Language’, in Martin Heidegger (1971), Poetry, Language, Thought (trans. Albert Hofstadter). New York, Cambridge: Harper & Row, pp. 199–200. According to Aristotle (On Interpretation, Chapter 1, 16aff) spoken words are linguistic symbols (συµβολα) of and references (σηµεια) to affections in the soul.

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Affections (παθηµατα) are the result of the effect of man’s encounter with the world on the human soul. By virtue of those affections words as a response and immediate reaction to affections appear as likenesses (οµοιωµατα) of the objects and events that have caused the impressions in the soul. Cf. Aristotle [1938] (1983), On Interpretation (trans. Harold P. Cooke, seventh edition). London: The Loeb Classical Library, Vol. I. With Aristotle in mind Heidegger could easily support the claim that language has its origin in onomatopoetic word creations. Heidegger makes explicit reference to this text in Being and Time on p. 214. From Martin Heidegger, ‘The Thinker as Poet’ in: Heidegger, Martin [1954] (1986), Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens (sixth edition). Pfullingen: Neske Verlag, p. 7. Martin Heidegger [1971] (1975), Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 4. Martin Heidegger (1983), Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens. 1910-1976 (GA 13). Frankfurt/ Main: Vittorio Klostermann, p. 76: ‘Die Verdüsterung der Welt erreicht nie/das Licht des Seyns./Für die Götter kommen wir zu spät und/ zu früh für das Seyn. Dessen angefangenes Gedicht/ist der Mensch.’ (My italics) As a being-with, Dasein is heartened to ‘companionable reflection’ through discourse (cf. Heidegger 1971: 6, Heidegger 1954: 11 and Heidegger 1983: 76: ‘Wir kommen nie zu Gedanken./Sie kommen zu uns./Das ist die schickliche Stunde des Gesprächs./Es erheitert zur geselligen Besinnung. Diese kehrt/weder das gegenstrebige Meinen hervor, noch/duldet sie das nachgiebige Zustimmen. Das Denken/bleibt hart am Wind der Sache./Aus solcher Geselligkeit erstünden einige vielleicht/zu Gesellen im Handwerk des Denkens. Damit/unvermutet einer aus ihnen Meister werde.’ [My italics]) Such a companionship becomes most authentic when expressed in poetry, since, for Heidegger, it is poetry where the most sincere disclosure of existence takes place. The poet uses the word in such a way that it can never be used up, but instead, becomes and remains a word (cf. ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ in Heidegger 1971: p. 48) that continues to speak with the same original quality of the authentic and primordial naming power that has been at work in interpretative discourse (cf. Heidegger 1971: p. 46; ‘Der Ursprung des Kunstwerks’ in Martin Heidegger [1950] (1980), Holzwege (sixth edition). Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 33 and 31). This is what Heidegger means when he says that poetry is ‘the topology of Being.’ (See ‘The Thinker as Poet’ in Heidegger 1971: p. 12, Heidegger 1954: p. 23 and in Heidegger 1983: p. 84: ‘Aber das denkende Dichten ist in der Wahrheit/ die Topologie des Seyns./Sie sagt diesem die Ortschaft seines Wesens.’ [My italics])

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Heidegger, Denkerfahrungen, p. 194. A world constituted by the recognitional encounter with things that thus comprises that world. I will say more about the term later in this chapter. For a recent discussion of Heidegger’s relation to National Socialism see Iain Thomson (2005), Heidegger on Ontotheology. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, Chapter 3 ‘Heidegger and the Politics of the University’, pp. 78–140. Cf. Dieter Thomä (2003), ‘Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus. In der

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Dunkelkammer der Seinsgeschichte’, in Heidegger Handbuch (ed. Dieter Thomä, Chapter I, § 19). Stuttgart, Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler, pp. 141–162. Cf. also documents published in Martin Heidegger (2000), Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges. 1910-1976 (GA 16). Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Heidegger, EM, p. 131; Heidegger, IM (1961), p. 144; Heidegger, IM (1987), p. 171. Cf. Miguel Vatter (2006), ‘Natality and Biopolitics in Hannah Arendt’. Revista de ciencia política, 26, (2), 137–159. Leah Bradshaw (1997), ‘Review: Communion with Others, Communion with Truth’. The Review of Politics, 59, (2), 368–371. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl [1982] (2004), Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (second edition). New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 490–500 (‘Appendix 3: Arendt’s Doctoral Dissertation: A Synopsis’). Martin Heidegger (1962), ‘Preface’/’Vorwort’, to William J. Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought, pp. VIII–XXIII. Joan L. Bybee (1985), Morphology: A Study of the Relation Between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 33–35, 36–37, 38–43, 96, 143–145. See Heidegger’s seminar notes (Aufzeichnungen und Protokolle) to Herder’s 1772 treatise ‘Über den Ursprung der Sprache’ (‘On the Origins of Language’) published in Martin Heidegger (1999), Vom Wesen der Sprache (GA 85). Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, p. 137. Martin Heidegger (2004), On The Essence Of Language: The Metaphysics of Language and the Essencing of the Word; Concerning Herder’s Treatise On the Origin of Language (S U N Y Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy). New York: State University of New York Press. J. A. Fodor (1975), The Language of Thought. Crowell: New York. Steven Pinker (1994), The Language Instinct. New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc. Heidegger, Holzwege, p. 313; Heidegger, PLT, p. 139. I say this with the support of Charles Taylor, ‘The Importance of Herder’ in Charles Taylor (1995), Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: Harvard University Press, p. 79ff.: Herder’s ‘expressivist theory of language’ stands in contrast to the ‘designative theory’ of people such as Locke, Condillac and Hobbes. Cf. Charles Taylor, ‘Heidegger, Language and Ecology’, ibid., p. 101ff.: Herder’s ‘constitutive theory’ rejects the traditional ‘enframing theory’. Heidegger, SZ, p. 161: ‘Die befindliche Verständlichkeit des In-der-Welt-seins spricht sich als Rede aus. Das Bedeutungsganze der Verständlichkeit kommt zu Wort. Den Bedeutungen wachsen Worte zu. Nicht aber werden Wörterdinge mit Bedeutungen versehen.’ Cf. Heidegger, EM, p. 11. It is my understanding that what Heidegger calls ‘bestimmte Begrifflichkeit’ (definite conceptualization) can be taken in both ways, either as a non- or preterminological understanding of the world through interpretation and discourse in which the world has become conceptualizable (begreiflich) – this is still the preepistemological and non-theoretical realm – or as the linguistic conceptualization of the world by force of a fully developed terminology of language (ausgebildete Begrifflichkeit). Words or predicates are the linguistic counterparts of entities pre-linguistically understood in discourse. The conception of concepts always occurs in the theoretical realm of language. Concepts are of an essentially

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linguistic nature (loc.cit.). Fore-conception of interpretive discourse comprises fore-having and fore-sight and consists in the imprint of terminological anticipations. It is the ontological link between understanding and interpretation. Communication in the form of assertions lays down the definite terminological cuts and links pre-linguistic interpretive discourse with the linguistic manifestation of Dasein as Mitsein in language. In the process of ‘anschneiden’ Dasein steps from understanding into discourse where things are articulable and ‘auslegbar’. In the process of ‘anreden’ Dasein steps from discourse into language via communicative assertions where things are ‘aussagbar’ and ‘aussprechbar’. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 150, 162. Johann Gottfried Herder [1772] (1981), Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache. Stuttgart: Reclam, 24f., 28ff., 41ff. See ‘The Importance of Herder’ in Taylor, Philosophical Arguments ’, p. 88. Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘On the uses and disadvantages of history for life’ (Second Meditation), in Friedrich Nietzsche (1991), Untimely Meditations (trans. R. J. Hollingdale). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 60f: Animals live a dreamlike existence of forgetfulness. Humans plunge into the state of awakening by the power of recognition. Cf. Herder, ibid., pp. 21f., 28f., 31f., 43, 85f., 100 etc. – The past participle of besinnen is besonnen from which the noun ‘Besonnenheit’ is derived. Besonnenheit refers to focused attention as a state of enlightened being that is awakened to the freedom of awareness. The noun ‘Besinnung’ refers to the assiduous activity of sich besinnen (reflection) that constitutes and results in the state of focused attention. According to Aristotle ‘it is because of this wondering (θαυµαζειν) that men began to philosophize and still do so now.’ (Metaphysics A 2, 982b 11ff.) ‘All men by nature (ϕυσει) desire understanding (του ειδεναι) which is evident in their love (αγαπησις) for sensations (των αισθησεων).’ (Metaphysics A 1, 980a 21f.) Herder speaks of the same fearful admiration and wondering in his ‘Fragments’ that initiates the creation of words to familiarize the unknown world by giving names to its objects. Cf. Erich Heintel (ed.) [1960] (1964), Herder’s Sprachphilosophische Schriften (Philosophische Bibliothek Vol. 248). Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, p. 116f.: ‘Schrecken, Furcht und alsdann Bewunderung . . . die Sprache dieser Empfindungen sind Töne, – und Gebärden. . . . Entsetzen, Furcht und Verwunderung verschwand allmählich, da man die Gegenstände mehr kennenlernte. Man ward mit ihnen vertraut und gab ihnen Namen, Namen, die von der Natur abgezogen waren, . . .’ Cf. pp. 127f. ‘Ευρηκα!’ Cf. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, pp. 31, 32f., 34. Note the etymological and conceptual closeness between ‘finden’ (to find, to discover) and ‘erfinden’ (to invent) and, thus, between ‘Entdeckung’ (discovery, disclosure) and ‘Erfindung’ (invention). Cf. 35: ‘[E]in besinnendes Geschöpf erfand Sprache.’ Cf. p. 44: ‘[B]eim ersten Merkmal ward Sprache.’ Herder is aware of the problem of invention when exclusively understood as some kind of a creatio ex nihilo. He says at p. 58: ‘[D]er Mensch kann nichts erfinden, sondern nur finden, nur nachahmen; . . .’ Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 54: ‘[D]iese Eigenschaften in den Gegenständen . . . sind bloß sinnliche Empfindungen in uns, und als solche fließen sie . . . alle in eins.’ P. 55: ‘Wir sind voll solcher Verknüpfungen der verschiedensten Sinne [Schall, Farbe, Erscheinung, Gefühl] . . .’ Cf. p. 55: ‘Bei sinnlichen Geschöpfen,

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die durch viele verschiedene Sinne auf einmal empfinden, ist diese Versammlung von Ideen [Merkmale] unvermeidlich; . . .’ P. 58: ‘[D]ie Empfindungen vereinigen sich . . .’ Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 44: ‘[D]as Ohr [ist] der erste Lehrmeister der Sprache [ . . . ].’ Cf. p. 58: ‘Das Gehör ist . . . Sinn zur Sprache.’ P. 59: ‘Organ der Sprache’ or ‘Sinn der Sprache’. Herder does not consider the example of deaf people who speak an unvocalized, but, nevertheless, explicit language of expressive signs. He, thus, ignores the possibility of the emergence of a different type of language that evolves independently of the sense of hearing. This ignorance, however, does not discredit, nor invalidate his theory of language. His theory is based on the general case of hearing people, but can easily be modified to accommodate the rise of a signed language. In his fragments we find explicit references to ‘gestures’ (Gebärden) that like sounds (Töne) can function as a foundation to a human language. Cf. Heintel, Herder’s Sprachphilosophische Schriften, p. 116f: ‘[D]ie Sprache dieser Empfindungen sind Töne, – und Gebärden. . . . Töne und Gebärden sind Zeichen von Leidenschaften und Empfindungen, folglich sind sie heftig und stark. Ihre Sprache spricht für Auge und Ohr, . . . Man ward mit . . . [den Gegenständen] vertraut und gab ihnen Namen, Namen, die von der Natur abgezogen waren, und ihr so viel möglich im Tönen nachahmten. Bei den Gegenständen fürs Auge mußte die Gebärdung noch sehr zu Hilfe kommen, um sich verständlich zu machen, und ihr ganzes Wörterbuch war noch sinnlich.’ – As soon as humans silently speak an internal language, they are bound to invent an external language. Sounds as well as gestures can serve as the linguistic material for the formation of verbal signs. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 41: ‘[Ein] inwendig sprechender Mensch . . . [muß] sich über kurz oder lang seine äußerliche Sprache erfinden . . .’ Such an external language can be, but does not have to be vocal. Only if a person is incapable of sensation through any of the senses, is it impossible for her to invent language. If current forms of language are taken as the measure, it must be concluded that sensation and sensitivity combined with either sight or hearing or touch are sufficient for the invention of language. Cf. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 45: ‘[S]elbst ein Blinder und Stummer . . . müßte Sprache erfinden, wenn er nur nicht fühllos und taub ist.’ Language in the first stages of its development is most expressive, most emphatic and most poetical. It speaks both for eyes and ears in gestures and sounds as immediate expressions and revelations of desires and emotions. Poetical language is sensual (sinnlich), since it is the language of a sensual people. Comprised of sensual words and concepts, it paints, it sings in onomatopoetic gestures and sounds for eyes and ears. See Heintel, Herder’s Sprachphilosophische Schriften, pp. 117, 127-131; esp. p. 129f: In the beginning of language the human spirit spoke primarily in the ‘mighty gestures of the body’ ([mächtige] Gebärden des Körpers) for eyes ‘to express and depict emotions and desires in a physical and corporeal way’ (Leidenschaft körperlich schildern). Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 56: ‘[Alle Sinne,] selbst [das] Gesicht war . . . anfangs nur Gefühl. . . .Das Gefühl ist dem Gehör so nahe, seine Bezeichnungen, . . ., tönen alle, als ob mans fühlte.’ Cf. See GA 85 (Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Sprache), pp. 115ff. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, pp. 32f, 44f.

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Cf. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 58: ‘Wir hörende Geschöpfe . . . sehen, wir fühlen; aber die gesehene, gefühlte Natur tönet! Wir werden gleichsam Gehör durch alle Sinne!’ Cf. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 58: ‘[D]ie Empfindungen vereinigen sich und kommen also alle der Gegend nahe, wo Merkmale zu Schällen werden. So wird, was man sieht, so wird, was man fühlt, auch tönbar.’ P. 59: ‘Aber da reißt sich vom betasteten, betrachteten Objekt ein Ton los? In den sammeln sich die Merkmale jener beiden Sinne [Gefühl/touch, Gesicht/sight] – der wird Merkwort!’ (My additions) Herder talks about the dictionary (Wörterbuch) of nature which is revealed to us through our hearing (Ohr) and which awaits the modulations of human imprint (Gepräge) by force of the organs of articulation. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 45. Exclamations of nature (Ausrüfe der Natur) are modulated (gemodelt) into verbs and nouns. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 10. Cf. Heintel, Herder’s Sprachphilosophische Schriften, p. 127f: ‘[K]urze und heftige Akzente des Geschreis . . ., unartikulierte Laute werden sich zu rauhen und einsilbigen Worten umarbeiten, . . .’ Cf. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 8: ‘[D]ie Töne [der Natursprache] reden nicht viel, aber stark.’ P. 9: ‘Sie [die Natursprache] sollte tönen, nicht aber schildern.’ P. 9: ‘Noch existiert für mich kein Wort, sondern nur Töne zum Wort einer Empfindung; . . .’ Cf. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 57: ‘Da alle Sinne, . . ., . . . Gefühlsarten einer Seele sind, alles Gefühl aber . . . unmittelbar seinen Laut hat, so werde dies Gefühl nur zum Deutlichen eines Merkmals erhöht, so ist das Wort zur äußern Sprache da.’ Cf. p. 58: ‘Die Empfindungen vereinigen sich [zum ausdrücklichen Gefühl/to expressive and expressible emotions] und kommen also [in dieser Vereinigung/ in this union] alle der Gegend nahe [nämlich dem Gehör als Ort der Töne/ hearing as the location of sounds], wo Merkmale zu Schällen werden. So wird, was man sieht, so wird, was man fühlt, auch tönbar.’ (My additions). Cf. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 9: ‘In allen Sprachen des Ursprungs tönen noch Reste dieser Naturtöne; nur freilich sind sie nicht die Hauptfäden der menschlichen Sprache. Sie sind nicht die eigentlichen Wurzeln, aber die Säfte, die die Wurzeln der Sprache beleben.’ Those original sounds are still present and at work in interjections, in the roots of nouns and verbs: ‘in ihren [der alten, wilden Sprachen] Interjektionen [Ausrüfen], in den Wurzeln ihrer Nominum und Verborum wieviel aufgefangene Reste dieser Töne!’(p. 9) Those sounds are the voice of nature (Stimme der Natur) as it is both perceived as sounds of inanimate objects and produced as the ‘Geschrei von Furcht oder Schmerz’, ‘Freudengeschrei’, ‘Heul- und Klagetöne’, that is, sounds of living creatures still visible in exclamations or lamentations like ‘Ach’, sighs (Seufzer), moanings, laughter and other inexplicit, but expressive, half expressed, half unexpressed, noticeable utterances. This is the immediate language of sensation (Sprache der Empfindung) which humans originally have in common with animals. It is not yet verbal, explicitly pronounced, artificially expressed, that is, human language (pp. 6, 8f.). Cf. p. 10: ‘Die Wurzeln . . . [der] einfachsten , würksamsten, frühesten Verben [in den Sprachen der alten Völker] endlich sind jene ersten Ausrüfe der Natur, die erst später gemodelt wurden, und die Sprachen aller alten und wilden Völker sind daher

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in diesem innern, lebendigen Tone für Fremde ewig unaussprechlich!’ (My emphasis) – Leonard Rolfe in his paper ‘Phonesthemes as Primary Word Forms’, delivered at the 12th LOS Conference at Baltimore, July 1996, comes very close to a modern and scientific reformulation of Herder’s theory of the empirical origin of words. Cf. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 60: ‘Gefühl ist der Mensch ganz.’ P. 82: ‘. . . die ganze Maschine empfindet . . .’ Cf. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 54: ‘Wir sind ein denkendes sensorium commune.’ P. 82: ‘[D]a die ganze Maschine empfindet und gleich vom dunkeln Gefühl heraufarbeitet zur Besinnung, . . .’ According to ‘an immediate natural law of the sensitive machine’ emotions get directly translated into particular sounds that thus correspond to specific emotions. This ‘law of animal sensations’ is the ground of human intelligibility. Cf. Herder, p. 57: ‘ein unmittelbares Naturgesetz der empfindenden Maschine’ – ‘Empfindungsgesetz der tierischen Natur’. Heidegger, SZ, p. 135: ‘In der Befindlichkeit ist das Dasein immer schon vor es selbst gebracht, es hat sich immer schon gefunden . . . als gestimmtes Sichbefinden.’ Heidegger, SZ, p. 135: Nothing can deny ‘den phänomenalen Tatbestand, daß die Stimmung das Dasein vor das Daß seines Da bringt, als welches es ihm in unerbittlicher Rätselhaftigkeit entgegenstarrt.’ Cf. p. 137: ‘Und nur weil die “Sinne” ontologisch einem Seienden zugehören, das die Seinsart des befindlichen In-der-Welt-seins hat, können sie “gerührt” werden und “Sinn haben für”, so daß das Rührende sich in der Affektion zeigt.’ Heidegger, SZ, pp. 133, 147, 153, 170, 270, 272, 350. Heidegger, SZ, p. 142: ‘Verstehen ist immer gestimmtes.’ Cf. pp. 144, 148. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, 32: ‘Lasset uns nur beide Begriffe entwickeln: Reflexion und Sprache.’ (My emphasis) Development of reason goes hand in hand with the acquisition of language. Cf. ibid., p. 29: ‘Heißt denn vernünftig denken, mit ausgebildeter Vernunft denken?’ No, to think reasonably means to think by means of language. Invention and acquisition of language is an exercise that contributes to the development of reason itself. Cf. p. 122: ‘Hat . . . [die Sprache] sich nun ewig so fortgebildet und nie zu bilden angefangen? oder immer menschlich gebildet, so daß Vernunft nicht ohne sie, und sie ohne Vernunft nicht gehen konnte – . . . ?’ ‘. . . .“Das ganze menschliche Geschlecht bleibt nicht das Naturgeschlecht mehr, wenns nicht die Sprache fortbildet.”’ Cf. Herder, ‘Fragmente’, in Heintel, Herder’s Sprachphilosophische Schriften, pp. 121; 125: ‘. . . daß die Völker eben durch die Sprache allmählich denken und durch das denken allmählich sprechen gelernt?’ Heidegger, HCT, p. 48; Heidegger, PGZ, p. 65: ‘Our comportments (Verhaltungen), lived experiences (Erlebnisse) taken in the broadest sense, are through and through expressed experiences (ausgedrückte Erlebnisse); even if they are not uttered in words (ausgesprochen in Worten), they are nonetheless [expressed] ([ausgesprochen]) in a definite articulation (in bestimmter Artikulation) by an understanding (Verständnis) that I have of them as I simply (schlicht) live in them without regarding them thematically.’ Heidegger calls this turn ‘a change-over (Umschlag) in the fore-having (Vorhabe)’. Equipment ready-to-hand is suddenly seen as an object present-at-hand.

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Its expediency is no longer focus of a practical attention. Newly discovered abstract qualities become the centre of a theoretical interest. The thing is now the thematic object of an assertion. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, p. 158. It is the relation (Bezug) to the particular entity (zum Seienden) that has changed. It has changed from a relation to a thing ready-to-hand to a relationship between things presentat-hand. What we are dealing with is a ‘switch-over’ (Umschaltung) of Dasein’s relation to some equipment ready-to-hand to a relationship of correspondence between the thing’s properties, detected as something present-at-hand, and the contents of the assertion, also of present-at-hand character, about the thing perceived in a present-at-hand mode. This relationship of abstract reference has itself the character of presence-at-hand. See Heidegger, SZ, p. 224. Heidegger, PGZ, p. 75; Heidegger, HCT, p. 56: ‘Our comportments are in actual fact (faktisch) pervaded (durchsetzt) through and through (durchgängig) by assertions (Aussagen), . . . they are always performed (vollzogen) in some form of expressness (in bestimmter Ausdrücklichkeit). . . . our simplest perceptions and constitutive states (Verfassungen) are already expressed (schon ausgedrückte), even more, are interpreted (interpretierte) in a certain way. . . . It is not so much that we see the objects and things but rather that we first talk about them (zunächst sprechen wir darüber). . . . we do not say what we see (sprechen wir nicht das aus, was wir sehen), but rather the reverse, we see what one says about the matter (wir sehen, was man über die Sache spricht).’ – The popular slogan ‘what you see is what you get’, is very short sighted in this respect. ‘What you say is what you see’ is much closer to the root of the matter. Thus, it makes sense to say that language modifies perception. It creates reality. Heidegger, SZ, p. 158: ‘So kann die Aussage ihre ontologische Herkunft aus der verstehenden Auslegung nicht verleugnen.’ Cp. Herder, ‘Fragments’, in Heintel, Herder’s Sprachphilosophische Schriften, pp. 110f., 116f., 127–131, 147–149. Herder, ‘Fragments’, in Heintel, Herder’s Sprachphilosophische Schriften, p. 111: ‘. . . Klangworte . . . wurden bei ihrer Geburt in das süße Meer des Wohllautes getaucht und sind, wie im lebendigen Gefühl der Sache, gebildet.’ Herder, ‘Fragments’, in Heintel, Herder’s Sprachphilosophische Schriften, pp. 128–131. Martin Heidegger, ‘Language’, in PLT, pp. 189–210. ‘Die Sprache’ (1950), in US, pp. 9–33. UKW, in Heidegger, Holzwege, pp. 1–72, esp. pp. 53–61. OWA, in Heidegger, PLT, pp. 17–87, esp. pp. 67–75. Herder revives Aristotle’s notion of spoken words (τα ονοµα εν τη ϕωνη) as symbols or signs (σηµεια) of affections or impressions in the soul (των εν τη ψυχη παθηµατων συµβολα). According to Aristotle, those affections are the same for all mankind (ταυτα πασι παθηµατα της ψυχης), as are the objects that cause the affections and of which the affections are mimetic representations (ων ταυτα οµοιωτατα, πραγµατα ηδη ταυτα). Cf. On Interpretation, 16a 4–9. The idea is that whenever one speaks, one speaks the truth, and whatever one says, must be true. Nothing that does not exist, can be put into words. If it could, it would exist. Thus, one cannot help but tell the truth. What is said, must be true, since it could be said. Cf. Plato, Euthydemus, 284aff., esp.286c: τι ψευδη λεγειν ουκ εστιν − αλλ’ η λεγοντ’ αληθη λεγειν η µη λεγειν; cp. 287a. Heidegger, SZ, § 44; esp. pp. 221–225.

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Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 43: ‘Das erste Merkmal, was ich erfasse, ist Merkwort für mich, und Mitteilungswort für andere.’ Cf. pp. 32, 33, 52, 57. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 16: ‘Ton der Empfindung soll das sympathetische Geschöpf in denselben Ton versetzen.’ Cf. p. 49: ‘Ein menschliches, sinnliches Geshöpf . . . sehe ich überall [als einen] . . . schwachen, schüchternen Empfindsamen, der lieben oder hassen, trauen oder fürchten muß und diese Empfindungen aus seiner Brust über alle Wesen ausbreiten möchte.’ Cf. p. 95: ‘Der Mensch ist . . . ein Geschöpf der Herde, der Gesellschaft.’ For ‘communication’ cf. p. 97: The circle of ideas was not just collected for oneself, ‘er war zugleich da, um mitgeteilt zu werden.’ Cf. Heintel, Herder’s Sprachphilosophische Schriften, pp. 147f.: Empirical ideas, sensual concepts are authentic expressions of emotions. ‘Im Auge, im Antlitz, durch den Ton, durch die Zeichensprache des Körpers – so spricht die Empfindung eigentlich . . .’ Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 86: ‘Der Mensch empfindet mit dem Verstande und spricht, indem er denket.’ Charles Taylor, ‘The Importance of Herder’ & ‘Heidegger, Language and Ecology’ in: Philosophical Arguments, pp. 84f., 87f., 91, 93, 95ff., 103, 111, 117. Cf. Herder, ‘Fragments’, in Heintel, Herder’s Sprachphilosophische Schriften, pp. 122, 132. Herder, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 15: We approach the language of nature through ‘Nachahmung’. Herder’s talk of the inauthentic ‘plappern’ (Heintel, Herder’s Sprachphilosophische Schriften, p. 148) becomes Heidegger’s ‘idle talk’ (Gerede). Heidegger, Holzwege, pp. 19, 31, 33, 35ff., 48; Heidegger, PLT, pp. 35, 46, 48, 50ff., 62. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, p. 161: In language discourse has a ‘worldly’ being (‘weltliches’ Sein) of its own. It is an entity within-the-world used as a thing readyto-hand (Zuhandenes). Such language ‘kann zerschlagen werden in vorhandene Wörterdinge’. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, p. 224: ‘Das Ausgesprochene wird gleichsam zu einem innerweltlich Zuhandenen, das aufgenommen und weitergegeben werden kann.’ See also Martin Heidegger (1989), Beiträge zur Philosophie. Vom Ereignis (GA 65). Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann (written in the early 30s and finished in 1936), p. 3: The ‘Vernutzung aller Grundworte [der Philosophie] und die Zerstörung des echten Bezugs zum Wort’ make it impossible to announce philosophy publicly with the essential titles that would suit philosophy. Cf. Heidegger, Beiträge, p. 78: ‘Mit der gewöhnlichen Sprache, die heute immer weitgreifender vernutzt und zerredet wird, läßt sich die Wahrheit des Seyns nicht sagen.’ Cf. pp. 123 and 177: The ‘Entmachtung des Worts’ makes the ‘Besinnung auf das Wesen der Sprache als der stiftenden Nennung der Wahrheit des Seyns’ impossible. ‘Das Wort ist nur noch der Schall und die lautstarke Aufpeitschung.’ For ‘Machenschaft’ see Heidegger, Beiträge, p. 127 etc., ‘Betriebsanstalt’ etc., ibid., pp. 143ff., 155ff. etc., for ‘inauthentic speech’ Heidegger, SZ, pp. 167–180, esp. pp. 168, 170, 177f., and Herder, ‘Fragments’ in Heintel, Herder’s Sprachphilosophische Schriften, pp. 147–149. Heidegger, Holzwege, pp. 21, 30, 38f., 42, 48; Heidegger, PLT, pp. 35, 44, 53, 56, 62. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 166, 167: The being of language has the ontological character of both equipment ready to hand (zuhandenes Zeug) and of Dasein (daseinsmäßig). In the former case, it can decay (zerfällt). In the latter case, it can

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grow and evolve (wächst). It is in this latter case where truth can happen as a linguistic revelation that designates language as a work of art that displays the principles of its origin and emergence in the truth-event. Heidegger’s ontological distinction is already at work in Plato’s Cratylus, but not fully worked out. Plato is not aware of the difference between the equipmentality of language (Zeughaftigkeit) and its character of Dasein (Daseinsmäßigkeit). See Plato, Cratylus 388b: Words (ονοµα) are instruments (οργανον) to name (ονοµαζειν) things (τα πραγµατα). M. Heidegger, ‘The Thinker as Poet’ in Heidegger, PLT, p. 4. Cf. Martin Heidegger (1954), Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, p. 7, and Martin Heidegger (1983), Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens. 1910-1976 (GA 13), p. 76: ‘Die Verdüsterung der Welt erreicht nie / das Licht des Seyns. / Für die Götter kommen wir zu spät und / zu früh für das Seyn. Dessen angefangenes Gedicht / ist der Mensch. (My emphasis) Cf. Heidegger, PLT, p. 11: ‘What is spoken is never, and in no / language, what is said.’ Heidegger, Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens (1954), p. 21, GA 13, p. 83: Nie ist das Gesprochene und in keiner Sprache das / Gesagte.) For never is ‘thinking’ (das Denken) fully brought ‘face to face with its matter’ (vor die Sache). This is why ‘[t]hinking’s saying’ ([d]ie Sage des Denkens) can and must ‘say that which must remain / unspoken’ (sagen, was ungesprochen bleiben muß). Heidegger, PLT, p. 6; GA 13 (Heidegger, Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens), p. 76: ‘Wir kommen nie zu Gedanken./Sie kommen zu uns. / Das ist die schickliche Stunde des Gesprächs. / Es erheitert zur geselligen Besinnung. Diese kehrt / weder das gegenstrebige Meinen hervor, noch / duldet sie das nachgiebige Zustimmen. Das Denken / bleibt hart am Wind der Sache. / Aus solcher Geselligkeit erstünden einige vielleicht / zu Gesellen im Handwerk des Denkens. Damit / unvermutet einer aus ihnen Meister werde.’ (My emphasis) That the evolution of language is a community-founding process is already expressed by Plato, although Plato does not focus on this effect of language. He does not even recognize it as an inevitable by-product, even though he touches on the notion that community is a linguistic source. See Cratylus, 388b, c: With the creation of words (ονοµα) we develop instruments (οργανον) to name (ονοµαζειν) things (τα πραγµατα). By doing so, we teach (διδασκοµεν) one another (αλληλους) how to distinguish (διακριτικον) things according to their nature (της ουσιας). ‘The Thinker as Poet’ in Heidegger, PLT, p. 12. GA 13 (Heidegger, Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens), p. 84: ‘Aber das denkende Dichten ist in der Wahrheit/die Topologie des Seyns./Sie sagt diesem die Ortschaft seines Wesens.’ (My emphasis)

Chapter 5 1

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Kevin Costner (director, 1990), Dances With Wolves (Film, Screenplay Michael Blake, 181 min.). USA: Panavision. A similar notion is at work in Walter Benjamin’s 1916 essay ‘Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen’. Cf. Walter Benjamin (1966), Angelus Novus (Ausgewählte Schriften 2). Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag,

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pp. 9–26; Walter Benjamin [1977] (1980), Gesammelte Schriften (Vol. II, Part 1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser). Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, pp. 140–152. Additional material is found in Walter Benjamin (1989), Gesammelte Schriften (Vol. VII, Part 2, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser). Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, pp. 785–790. An English translation is found in Walter Benjamin (1978), Reflections. Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings (ed. Peter Demetz, trans. Edmund Jephcott). New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., pp. 314–332 and Walter Benjamin (1979), One-Way Street and Other Writings (trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter). London: NLB, pp. 107–123. The essay confirms the contention that language is purposefully accidental with the following words: ‘Damit kann die Vorstellung nicht mehr aufkommen, die der bürgerlichen Auffassung der Sprache entspricht, daß das Wort zur Sache sich zufällig verhalte, daß es ein durch irgendwelche Konvention gesetztes Zeichen der Dinge (oder ihrer Erkenntnis) sei. Die Sprache gibt niemals bloße Zeichen.’ In: Angelus Novus, p. 19. Cf. Benjamin’s manuscript ‘Über das mimetische Vermögen’, in Angelus Novus, pp. 96–99, esp. p. 97; Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften (Vol. II, T (1)), pp. 210–212; English translation (‘On the Mimetic Faculty’) in Reflections, pp. 333–336. Cf. the earlier and more detailed manuscript ‘Lehre vom Ähnlichen’ (‘A Theory of Similarity’) in Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. II (1), pp. 204–210, esp. p. 207. I will discuss this in detail in Chapter IX. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 150, 157, 162 for Heidegger’s more detailed description of the specific proto-linguistic ways in which Dasein relates to the things in its world. In his 1916 essay Benjamin, too, touches upon the notion of the ontological roots of words in things. There is language in everything, he says. The spontaneous conception (Empfängnis) of names out of the nameless (Namenlosen), of human language out of the silent (lautlos) and mute language of things is an act of translation (Übersetzung durch Mitteilung) that presumes and entails recognition and an understanding which is based on what Heidegger calls the releasement toward things (Gelassenheit). Cf. Martin Heidegger [1959] (1992), Gelassenheit. Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske. Cf. the translation, Martin Heidegger [1966] (1969), Discourse on Thinking (trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund). New York, Evanston, London: Harper Torchbooks. Cf. Benjamin, Angelus Novus, pp. 9, 12, 19f. Heidegger identifies these acts of speaking with the following terms: Nachsagen, Weitersagen, Hersagen and generally as Gerede; cf. Heidegger, EM, pp. 132, 141f. 146; Heidegger, SZ, pp. 155, 165, 168f., 173ff., 22, 224, 252. Cf. Heidegger, EM, pp. 141f., 146; Heidegger, IM (1987), pp. 185f., 191; Heidegger, IM (1961), pp. 155, 160. Karl Jaspers’ judgment of Heidegger’s ‘[intense] manner of speaking’ is worthy of notice at this place in the discussion. ‘Even our first talks inspired me,’ Jaspers says in his Philosophical Autobiography. Jaspers saw in Heidegger the same will ‘to teach and to be heard’ that was also at work in himself. He felt in Heidegger a similar sense of the need to ‘[renew] the Gestalt of philosophy . . . at the universities’. Thus, from the beginning Jaspers was ‘in sympathy with [Heidegger’s] penetrating, concise way of speaking’. Jaspers goes on to specify the effect of Heidegger’s diction on him: ‘In Heidegger I saw a contemporary who had something that otherwise existed only in the past and that was indispensable to

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philosophical thinking.’ It was this type of thinking that ‘served to orient me so that I could find on my own, in exchange with the ancients, at least that form of sufficient and appropriate argument that would make it possible for me to express what had moved me so profoundly since my youth.’ Jaspers then continues to admit that ‘[m]any of the unique expressions, stories, and hints scattered throughout my work are gifts from him.’ This appreciative judgment is all the more impressive given Jaspers reputation as an unwavering, unbiased and uncompromising critic of Heidegger’s personality and work. With respect to the publication of SZ in 1927, Jaspers, among many other condemning things, said the following: ‘What I saw now was a work that left an immediate impression because of the intensity of composition, the constructiveness of conceptions, and the accuracy of an often illuminating new usage of words.’ Cf. Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.) [1957] (1981), The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers (augmented edition). La Salle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company, pp. 75, 72, 74, 76. Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry, pp. 193, 190. Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung, pp. 168, 165. Gen. 1; Rom. 4:18. Cf. Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘On Language as Such and on the Language of Man’ (‘Über die Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen’) discussed in Chapter 7. George Steiner (1967), Language and Silence. New York: Atheneum. Henceforth referred to as LS. ‘The Retreat from the Word’ in Steiner, LS, p. 25. Ibid., pp. 26, 27. ‘Silence and the Poet’ in Steiner, LS, p. 38. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XI, ll. 1–84, esp. ll. 41–53. ‘Humane Literacy’ in Steiner, LS, p. 3. George Steiner [1984] (1996), Antigones. New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 131. Heidegger, EM, p. 131; Heidegger, IM (1987), pp. 171f.; Heidegger, IM (1961), pp. 143f. For Heidegger it is the poet who (re)lives, (re)initiates and (re)generates this primordial event of language origination as if it happened for the first time again. Poetry imitates and essentially is this eternal recurrence of word-creation and language-formation. In his essay ‘Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry’ (‘Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung’) Heidegger calls this (re)creative event of recollective repetition (Wiederholung), in strong allusion to this EM passage, similarly ‘worthafte Stiftung des Seins’ (word-foundation of being) and ‘Wort-Werden der Welt’ (word-formation of the world). Keith Hoeller translates ‘the founding of being in the word’ and ‘the world becoming word’ respectively. Cf. Heidegger, Erläuterungen, pp. 40, 41, 42; Elucidations, pp. 58, 59. Heidegger, EM, p. 11; Heidegger, IM (1987), p. 11; Heidegger, IM (1961), pp. 13f. Heidegger, EM, p. 131; Heidegger, IM (1987), pp. 171f.; Heidegger, IM (1961), pp. 143f. Loc.cit. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, p. 150. For anschneiden see SZ, p. 150. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 255–259, 264–265, 307–308. George Steiner [1978] (1992), Heidegger. London: Fontana Press, p. 106. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 245, 250–251, 262–263f. For this discussion I relied on both John Macquarrie’s and Edward Robinson’s and Joan Stambaugh’s translation of Heidegger’s SZ.

192 23

24 25 26

27

28

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Heidegger, SZ, pp. 192, 249, 317. (1) Sich-vorweg-(2)-schon-sein-in [der Welt] als (3) Sein-bei [innerweltlich begegnendem Seinden]. Translation is based on Macquarrie/Robinson and Stambaugh. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 41, 45, 50, 53, 58, 65, 85, 110, 115, 193 etc. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 191, 193, 249f. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 67ff., 73ff., 83ff., 175ff., 191ff. Heidegger calls this mode of being of equipment (Zeug) the equipmentality (Zeughaftigkeit) of things ready-tohand (zuhanden). He then specifies this particular mode of being as their being-in-themselves (An-sich-sein). Cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 69, 71, 74, 75f. The encounter and discovery of these things themselves (Sachen selbst) bears a close ontological relation to the a priori of Dasein’s existentiality. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 41, 45, 50, 53, 58, 85 etc. It is only due to the existential structure of Dasein’s being that its world unfolds itself as a referential totality of involvements. Cf. Heidegger, HCT, pp. 30–32: ‘[P]erception is in itself intentional. . . . As perception, [intentionality] is intrinsically intentional, . . . [P]erception as such is a directing-itself-toward something, . . . intentionality constitutes the very structure of comportment (Verhalten) itself, . . . [C]omportment itself (Verhaltung) . . . is in its very structure a directing-itself-toward. . . . [T]he very being of comporting (Verhalten) is a directing-itself-toward.’ Heidegger, HCT, p. 48: ‘[O]ur comportments (Verhaltungen), lived experiences (Erlebnisse) . . . are through and through (durchgängig) expressed (ausgedrückte) experiences; even if they are not uttered (ausgesprochen) in words, they are nonetheless expressed in a definite articulation (bestimmter Artikulation) by an understanding (Verständnis) that I have of them as I simply (schlicht) live in them without regarding (betrachte) them thematically.’ Heidegger, HCT, p. 56: ‘Assertions (Aussagen) are acts (!) of meaning (Bedeutungsakte), and assertions in the sense of a formulated proposition (formulierten Satzes) are only specific forms of expressness (Ausdrücklichkeit), where expressness has the sense of expressing (Ausdrücken) lived experiences (Erlebnisse) or comportments (Verhaltungen) through meaning (Bedeutung). . . . [O]ur comportments (Verhaltungen) are in actual fact (faktisch) pervaded (durchsetzt) through and through (durchgängig) by assertions (Aussagen), . . . they are always performed in some form of expressness (Ausdrücklichkeit). . . . [O]ur simplest (schlichtesten) perceptions and constitutive states (Verfassungen) are already expressed (ausgedrückte), even more, are interpreted (interpretierte) in a certain way. . . . It is not so much that we see the objects and things but rather that we first (zunächst) talk about them (sprechen . . . darüber). . . . [W]e do not say (sprechen . . . aus) what we see, but rather the reverse, we see what one says about the matter (was man über die Sache spricht).’ Cf. Heidegger, PGZ, pp. 37–40, 65, 74f. Consider in this context Rilke’s notion of the ‘Open’ and the ‘worldly’ (weltische) discussed in Martin Heidegger, ‘What are Poets for?’, in Heidegger, PLT, pp. 106ff., 120ff., 128f. Martin Heidegger, ‘Wozu Dichter?’, in Holzwege, pp. 280ff., 294ff., 302f. Martin Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in Heidegger, PLT, p. 48. Martin Heidegger, ‘Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes’, in Holzwege, p. 33. Cf. Heidegger, EM, p. 20, 131; Heidegger, IM (1987), pp. 26, 172; Heidegger, IM (1961), pp. 21f., 144. In ‘What are Poets for?’ Heidegger speaks of a re-calling (Er-innerung) in the sense of a turning toward (Zuwendung, Zukehr, Umwendung), in order to specify

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32 33

34

35

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37

38 39

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the quality of the authentic directedness of Dasein’s original mode of beingtoward things themselves. See Heidegger, PLT, pp. 125, 130f., 138, 140; Holzwege, pp. 299, 305, 312, 314. An excellent and detailed discussion of the existential-philosophical implications of the tragedy of language loss is provided by Mark Abley in his article ‘The loss of language’ printed in the Montréal daily newspaper The Gazette. Cf. Mark Abley (1997), ‘The loss of language’. The Gazette, Sunday, August 10, pp. D1–D3. Martin Heidegger, ‘Was ist Metaphysik?’, p. 16: ‘Der Mensch allein existiert.’ Martin Heidegger, ‘. . . poetically man dwells . . .’, in Heidegger, PLT, p. 222. Martin Heidegger, ‘. . . dichterisch wohnet der Mensch. . . .’, in Martin Heidegger [1954] (1990), Vorträge und Aufsätze. Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, p. 190: ‘Nur der Mensch stirbt.’ (The book is henceforth referred to as VA.) Cf. Martin Heidegger, Über den Humanismus, p. 15: ‘Nur aus diesem Wohnen “hat” er Sprache als die Behausung, die seinem Wesen das Ekstatische wahrt.’ Heidegger, EM, pp. 62f.: ‘Menschsein heißt ein Sagender sein. Der Mensch ist . . . im Grunde seines Wesens ein Sager, der Sager.’ Heidegger, IM (1961), p. 69; (1987), p. 82. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 25, 48, 165. Cf. Über den Humanismus, pp. 13ff. EM, pp. 108f. Heidegger, IM (1961), pp. 119f.; (1987), pp. 141f. Cf. ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ in Heidegger, PLT, p. 34; ‘Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes’, in Holzwege, p. 19. Cf. ‘Wozu Dichter?’ in Holzwege, p. 298; ‘What are Poets for?’ in Heidegger, PLT, p. 124. Heidegger, Holzwege, p. 299; Heidegger, PLT, p. 125. Martin Heidegger, ‘Die Sprache’, in Unterwegs zur Sprache, p. 23, 30ff. ‘Language’ in Heidegger, PLT, pp. 200, 207ff. Cf. Heidegger, EM, pp. 141f., 146; Heidegger, IM (1987), pp. 185f., 191; Heidegger, IM (1961), pp. 155, 160. I say this in reminiscence of the dispute between Gabor Gyori and Stevan Harnad over the (im)possibility of translation at the 12th meeting of the Language Origins Society in Baltimore in 1996. For Kierkegaard cf. Robert Bretall [1946] (1973), A Kierkegaard Anthology. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, pp. 226–227. Søren Kierkegaard [1941] (1974), Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments (trans. David F. Swenson, Walter Lowrie). Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 284–285.

Chapter 6 1

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3

Johann W. Goethe, Selected Poems, (trans. John Whaley), Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, pp. 146, 147. Printed with permission of the publisher. ‘The Construction of Social Reality’, lecture held by John Searle at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, March 8, 1998. Searle must have had Herder, Hegel and Heidegger in mind. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1977), Phenomenology of Spirit, (trans. A. V. Miller). Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, § 177. G. W. F. Hegel [1910]

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(1967), The Phenomenology of Mind (trans. J. B. Baillie). New York, Evanston: Harper Torchbooks, pp. 226–227. I rely on the German text of G.W.F. Hegel [1970] (1983), Phänomenologie des Geistes (Werke in zwanzig Bänden, Vol. 3). Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, pp. 144f. I use the division of the English text into sections (§) as the main point of reference. John Searle could have made good use of these and other passages in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit in support of his notion of collective individuality as ‘collective intentionality’, and as a phenomenological foundation of his idea of ‘methodological individualism’. Instead Searle chooses a categorical rejection of the so-called German ‘H’-philosophers, thus neglecting the importance of Hegel’s concept of ‘self-consciousness’ and ‘mutual recognition’ as the phenomenological birthplace of language and society. John Searle’s notion of ‘collective intentionality’ is to be understood as a ‘sharing of intentional states’ that leads to ‘cooperative behavior’ which in turn functions as the foundation of any form of human socialization including conflict situations. Hegel’s discussion of the spiritual awakening of self-consciousness covers Searle’s notion of ‘collective intentionality’. § 191 points out that any form of recognition, including the negative forms of rejection, oppression and annihilation, is performed in the – positive and negative – support (!) by either side. ‘The other consciousness [namely that of the oppressed] asserts and establishes itself (setzt sich) as something unessential.’ It thus ‘sets aside and supersedes itself (sich . . . aufhebt) as being-for-self, and thereby does (to) itself what the first [consciousness, namely that of the oppressive master] does to it.’ What Hegel has described (in § 187) as a ‘twofold action’ (das gedoppelte Tun) of mutual recognition is here incomplete. Neither consciousness does to itself what it does to the other, and neither does to the other what it does to itself. Thus, the ‘action on the part of the other’ (Tun des Anderen) is not fully the same as the ‘action on its own part’ (Tun durch sich selbst). Consequently, ‘the outcome is a recognition that is one-sided and unequal’. However, in either case, the rise, establishment (bewähren) and preservation (auf-bewahren) of selfconsciousness are ultimately – despite and because of the life-and-death struggle in conflict situations – inevitable. On the one hand, the original relation of two equal self-conscious individuals is determined by an initial life-and-death struggle as the condition of the possibility of the emergence and the continued existence of self-consciousness (§§ 187–189). On the other hand, the inequality between two self-conscious individuals, illustrated by Hegel in the master–slave relationship, will eventually turn itself on its head. It is headed towards a balance of power established on the originating ground of the mutual recognition of two independent self-conscious individuals (§§ 190–196). A more detailed discussion of this revolutionary element of the movement of mutual recognition will follow shortly. At the present stage of the discussion, it is important to have pointed out that Hegel’s notion of the ‘phenomenology of Spirit’ does not exclude Searle’s notion of ‘methodological individualism’, but requires it. The ‘Hegelian world spirit’ is not just some vague ‘collective consciousness, or something equally implausible’, as Searle puts it, but has its reality in the concrete existence of selfconscious individuals that bear essential relations to each other. Cf. John R. Searle (1995), The Construction of Social Reality. New York, London: The Free Press, pp. 23–27, 37ff.

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The paradox of language has many faces. It is couched in the Greek word λογος, which can mean both a speaking in words that comprise a language and the capacity of reason to think in and with concepts. The mutual interdependence between language and thought has puzzled many philosophers throughout the history of philosophy. Thus, in the first part of his Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes from 1755 Rousseau questions the possibility of a purely human invention of language considering the vast amounts of difficulties he sees himself faced with when trying to explain such an event simply by the bare means of human faculties. Based on the assumption that any form of thinking must rely on language (‘Il faut donc parler pour avoir des idées générales; car sitôt que l’imagination s’arrête, l’esprit ne marche plus qu’à l’aide du discours’) the relation between language and thought appears to be paradoxical when examined for the purpose of applying their relation to solve the riddle of language origination; ‘car’, says Rousseau, ‘si les hommes ont eu besoin de la parole pour apprendre à penser, ils ont eu bien plus besoin encore de savoir penser pour trouver l’art de la parole.’ Cf. Jean-Jaques Rousseau [1781] (1990), Essai sur l’origine des langues. Paris: Presses Pocket, pp. 106–111; Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1964] (1970), Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (1755), in: Oeuvres Complètes (Tome III). Dijon: Bibliothèques de la Pléiade, Editions Gallimard, pp. 146–151. Rousseau criticizes that the paradox of reciprocal foundation remained unrecognized by Condillac who simply presupposes along with an already established society the existence of language in his Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines from 1746 without realizing it. Herder who criticizes both Condillac for having presupposed language (‘er hat das ganze Ding der Sprache von der ersten Seite seines Buchs erfunden vorausgesetzt’) and Rousseau for surrendering to the paradox and denying the possibility of human language invention (‘alle menschliche Möglichkeit der Spracherfindung zu leugnen’ – Herder did not know of Rousseau’s Essai sur l’origine des langues which remained unpublished until its posthumous publication in 1781) embraces the paradoxical relation. His essay Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache from 1772 gives a detailed description of the historical-linguistic steps of language evolution. The account is set in the hermeneutic circle of language and reason. One presupposes the other by contributing to the evolution of the other. Herder talks about the hermeneutic circle in terms of ‘the eternal spiral’ (den ewigen Kreisel) of ‘ratio et oratio’. With the presupposition of such an interdependence Herder’s account indeed makes sense (Ursprung der Sprache, pp. 17, 29, 31f., 36f., 122; Felix Meiner, pp. 12, 22ff., 28, 85). It is however surprising that neither Rousseau nor Herder acknowledge that Condillac, too, does indeed operate with a notion of the mutual interdependence between language and thought, an interdependence which is conceived also by Condillac as the catalytic source of the evolution of both language and thought. In Chapter I of Section I in Part II of his Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines Condillac says in § 3: ‘Plus ils [les “deux enfans de l’un et de l’autre sexe” qui ont “été égarés dans des déserts, avant qu’ils connussent l’usage d’aucun signe” (cf. Etienne Bonnot de Condillac [1746] (1970), Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines. In: Oeuvres Complètes (Tome I). Genève: Slatkine Reprints, p. 192)] se familiarisèrent avec ces signes, plus ils furent en état de se les rappeler à leur gré. Leur mémoire commença à avoir quelque exercice;

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ils purent disposer eux-mêmes de leur imagination, et ils parvinrent insensiblement à faire avec réflexion ce qu’ils n’avaient fait que par instinct.’ The 1756 translation by Mr. Nugent reads: ‘The more they [the “two children, one male, and the other female”, who “wandered about in the deserts, before they understood the use of any sign” (cf. Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1974), An Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge. New York: AMS Press, Inc.; reprint of the 1756 ed. printed for J. Nourse, London, p. 169] grew familiar with those signs, the more they were in capacity of reviving them at pleasure. Their memory began to acquire some sort of habit, they were able to command their imagination as they pleased, and insensibly they learned to do by reflexion what they had hitherto done merely by instinct.’ Concillac is more explicit in the following paragraph when he specifically refers to the symbiotic circle of mutual interdependence in which the development of both language and thought takes place together, the evolution of one accompanying and enhancing the development of the other. In § 4 he says: ‘L’usage de ces signes étendit peu à peu l’exercice des opérations de l’âme, et à leur tour celles-ci, ayant plus d’exercice, perfectionnèrent les signes et en rendirent l’usage plus familier. Notre expérience prouve que ces deux choses s’aident mutuellement.’ (‘The use of those signs insensibly enlarged and improved the operations of the mind, and on the other hand these having acquired such improvement, perfected the signs, and rendered the use of them more familiar. Experience shows that these two things assist each other.’) It is, however, Heidegger who, at last, explicitly posits the existence of the hermeneutic circle as something indispensable to the human nature, and who grounds this postulation on an ontological observation in his existential analysis where he distinguishes between language (Sprache) as a prelinguistic existentiale conceived in the forms of discourse (Rede), understanding (Verstehen) and interpretation (Auslegung), on the one hand, and, on the other, the ontical manifestation of language in speech (gesprochene Sprache). It is Heidegger who has made this basic distinction between external and internal language explicit, even though Herder already operates with a similar notion when he speaks of the ‘inner language’ of reason and of the ‘external language’ of speech. Cf. Ursprung der Sprache, p. 41. Unfortunately, this passage is excluded from the Felix Meiner edition. The cut occurs on p. 29. John Searle is the modern example of a philosopher who recognizes the paradox and tries to come to terms with it in his own ways, namely, (a) by distinguishing between ‘languagedependent’ and ‘language-independent facts’, and language-dependent and language-independent (prelinguistic) thoughts’, such as ‘emotions’, ‘perceptions’, ‘beliefs’ and ‘intentional states with full intentional contents’, commonly referred to as ‘propositional attitudes’, and (b) by operating with the notion of a linguistic leap or move which allows prelinguistic objects to acquire a linguistic status when treated ‘as (!) symbolizing something beyond itself’. This ‘capacity to attach a sense, a symbolic function, to an object that does not have that sense intrinsically,’ is the capacity of a ‘linguistic move’, a human faculty which Heidegger has already identified as the as-structure’ in ‘interpretation’ (Auslegung). Cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 148–153, 158; Searle, ibid., pp. 59–63, 67f., 69ff., 72–78. Heidegger is one of the few philosophers to have recognized that the problem of circularity, which confronts any examination of the question of language origins, is not simply an epistemological problem. In his Introduction to Metaphysics he says

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that ‘the origin of language remains a mystery (Geheimnis),’ because it ‘is in essence mysterious.’ The mystery lies in the linguistic-ontological beginning of the human kind. Human history begins with the ontological ‘departure of the human being into being’ (Aufbruch des Menschen in das Sein). The beginning of human history consists of the rise of language from ‘the overwhelming and overpowering, the terrible, the strange and the uncanny (‘dem Überwältigenden und Unheimlichen). Whatever force behind language Heidegger may have in mind, it is the violent experience of this uncanny encounter that triggered ‘the embodiment of being in the words of language’ (die Sprache als Wortwerden des Seins). Cf. Heidegger, EM, p. 131; Heidegger, IM 1961, pp. 144f.; Heidegger, IM 1987, p. 171. John Searle seems to embrace this notion of the linguistic construction of social reality, when he says ‘that language is essentially constitutive of institutional reality’, or put more briefly, ‘that institutional facts are language dependent’. Searle claims ‘that each institution requires linguistic elements of the facts within that very institution.’ Those ‘linguistic elements’ are ‘symbolic devices, such as words, that by convention mean or represent or symbolize something beyond themselves.’ This ‘beyond’ points at the linguistic constitution of the institutional facts of a social reality. Cf. Searle, ibid., pp. 59–61, 64, 72. Cf. G. W. F. Hegel (1977), Phenomenology of Spirit (trans. A. V. Miller, comm. J. N. Findlay). Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 63–66, 509f. Robert Bretall (ed.), A Kierkegaard Anthology, pp. 201ff., 226ff. Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Uncscientific Postscript, pp. 107–113, 284–285. It is worth noting that Edmund Husserl operates with a distinction similar to that of Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard’s notion of the subjective truth of the ethical reality, contrasted to the objective pseudo-truth of the conceived reality, is also at work in Husserl’s concept of the ‘appresentation’ (Appräsentation) of the Other (alter ego) as only ‘co-present’ (Mit-da), but never really present itself (nicht selbst da ist, nie ein Selbst-da werden kann). Cf. Edmund Husserl (1973), Cartesian Meditations (trans. Dorion Cairns). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, § 50, pp. 108-111. Edmund Husserl [1929] (1950), Husserliana (Vol. I). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 138-141. Edmund Husserl [1977] (1995), Cartesianische Meditationen. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, pp. 111–114. In: Ludwig Feuerbach (1975), Frühe Schriften (Theorie-Werkausgabe, Band 1). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag. “[D]ie Sinne [sind] . . . Sein und Setzen der Einzelheit.” I will discuss this in greater detail in the following chapter. See Walter Benjamin, ‘Über die Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen’, ‘Über das mimetische Vermögen’, in: Angelus Novus. The translations can be found in: Walter Benjamin, Reflections. Cf. ‘Lehre vom Ähnlichen’ in: Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. II, Part 1, pp. 204–210. Ludwig Feuerbach [1873] (2004), The Essence of Religion (trans. Alexander Loos). Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, p. 14. Cf. Ludwig Feuerbach [1841] (1989), The Essence of Christianity (trans. George Eliot). Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, pp. xiv, xv. Ludwig Wittgenstein [1958] (1984), Philosophical Investigations (trans. G. E. M. Anscombe). Oxford: Basil Blackwell, §§ 531, 532, 533, pp. 143, 144. Ludwig Wittgenstein [1953] (1968), Philosophical Investigations (German-English edition). New York: The Macmillan Company, pp. 143–144 & 143e–144e.

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Walter Benjamin, ‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’, in: Illuminationen, pp. 54–61. Cf. Hegel’s discussion of ‘the dialectic of sense-certainty’, §§ 90–110 (‘I. SenseCertainty: or the “This” and “Meaning”’). As has been pointed out earlier, Searle operates with a similar notion. Even though he does not identify the as-structure of recognition in the intentional states of language explicitly, he makes practical use of it when he talks about symbolic entities (‘linguistic symbols’, p. 66) ‘that mean something or express something or represent or symbolize something beyond themselves’ (pp. 60f.). ‘Prelinguistic objects’ may assume a ‘symbolic function’ when someone attaches a sense to them which they do not have intrinsically by virtue of their brute physical or prelinguistic nature (pp. 74, 75). It is precisely in a case like this that a person ‘is treating the object as symbolizing something beyond itself; she is treating it as at least partly linguistic in character’ (p. 73). Searle is right when he observes that ‘no words . . . are . . . necessary to treat and use an object as a screwdriver.’ Heidegger says the same in a similar way (Heidegger, SZ, p. 157: ‘Der ursprüngliche Vollzug der Auslegung liegt nicht in einem theoretischen Aussagesatz, sondern im umsichtig-besorgenden Weglegen bzw. Wechseln des ungeeigneten Werkzeuges, “ohne dabei ein Wort zu verlieren”. Aus dem Fehlen der Worte darf nicht auf das Fehlen der Auslegung geschlossen werden.’ Maquarrie’s and Robinson’s translation reads: ‘Interpretation is carried out primordially not in a theoretical statement but in an action of circumspective concern – laying aside the unsuitable tool, or exchanging it, “without wasting words”. From the fact that words are absent, it may not be concluded that interpretation is absent.’). However, from this, it does not follow that no ‘other linguistic devices’ operate in the praxis of this intentional state. The very composition of Searle’s wording contradicts him. The as-structure is a necessary linguistic device that can and does operate non-verbally in the form of Heidegger’s existential-hermeneutical ‘as’. Searle bases his contention on his observation that an object’s ‘ability to so function is a matter of its brute physical structure’ (p. 69). This is only partly true, and in the way Searle puts it, it is inaccurate at best. The usability of an object as a tool is only partly ‘a matter of its brute physical nature’. The object has – also and first – to be identified as an object that can serve a particular purpose. Heidegger calls this form of recognition interpretation (Auslegung). This stands in agreement with Searle’s own concept of intentionality(-with-a-t) which he defines quite generally as a state of mind that is directed at something (pp. 7, 18). Thus, based on his own account, Searle would have to agree that language is not object-independent, and, therefore, never a completely arbitrary system resulting from mere convention. In other words, even though language is not, as Searle says, intrinsic to the ‘brute physical structure’ of ‘prelinguistic objects’ (pp. 69f., 74, 75), it is intrinsic to the intentionality ‘by which [the mind] is directed at objects and states of affairs in the world’ (p. 18). It is the intentional state of this directedness at the world which Hegel has in mind when he discusses the dialectic of sense-certainty, and, which provides the empirical ground for the linguistic leap to take place in acts of physical predication (pointing-out) as perception. In their co-authored paper ‘Gestures become Language’ Sherman Wilcox and Bill Stokoe try to provide evidence for their claim that language is grounded in the body. They begin with a reflection on the concept of ‘visible gestures’ that

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form the basis for language evolution. This concept corresponds to Heidegger’s notion of comportment and Hegel’s notion of predicative perception, which are basic non-verbal, linguistic forms of responding and relating to the human environment. Wilcox and Stokoe distinguish between ‘articulatory’ or ‘meaningless’, that is, more or less reflexive-reactive, and ‘expressive’ or ‘meaningful’ gestures. The problem then remains to explain how the former is transformed into the latter. With Searle, Rousseau, Hegel, Herder and Heidegger, we can state that for this transformation to happen one needs at least two individuals, one who ‘articulates’ the initially ‘meaningless’ gesture, and one who interprets and understands, and thus assigns some meaning to the gesture, which then becomes ‘expressive’ and ‘meaningful’. Cf. W. C. Stokoe and S. E. Wilcox (1998, Feb.), ‘Gestures become Language’ in D. F. Armstrong and S. E. Wilcox (Chairs), Darwinian Perspectives on the Origin of Language (Symposium conducted at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS], Philadelphia, PA). Condillac begins the second part of his Essai with a similar account about two ‘speechless’ children lost in the desert who borrow the unintentional gestures they have observed in the other to express themselves intentionally. The account allows him to explain the origin of language from sensations, which inadvertently bring forth the physical motions of gestures and actions. Those gestures comprise ‘the mode of speaking by action’ (le langage d’action) which is the earliest mode of communication and ‘was’, according to Dr. Warburton whom Condillac cites as his source and evidence for this hypothesis, ‘once the common mode of information’. Condillac then defines the speaking by action as ‘dance’, and distinguishes between ‘the dance of gestures’ (la danse des gestes) and ‘the dance of steps’ (la danse des pas). Oral speech succeeds and imitates this earlier language of action. Cp. Condillac, Essai. . . ., Part II, Section I, Chapter I, §§ 1ff.; see especially § 2 and §§ 9–13. Karin de Boer operates with a similar notion of linguistic-ontological survival through which the individual seeks and achieves self-extension in the continued existence in the collective. She envokes this notion with a different terminology, that of ‘presence’, ‘presentness’ and ‘truly present’. Cf. Karin de Boer (2001), ‘The Infinite Movement of Self-Conception and Its Inconceivable Finitude: Hegel on Logos and Language’. Dialogue, XL (1), 53–97, at 87 and 88. Giorgio Agamben alludes to the notion of immortality through language when he recognizes in the word the spoken unspeakability of the (sensuous) ‘This’. ‘Language’, he says, ‘guards the unspeakable by speaking it, that is, by grasping it in its negativity.’ The ‘unspeakable here is guarded by language’ (my emphasis). Cf. Agamben, Language and Death, pp. 12, 13, 14. Cf. Searle, ibid., p. 2: ‘[T]he [brute] fact stated needs to be distinguished from the statement of it.’ Again this reading of Hegel is strangely in tune with John Searle’s discussion of the ontological foundation of social reality. In his enumeration of the ‘reasons why institutional facts require language’ Searle mentions, at last, the following consideration: For ‘the [institutional] facts [to] persist through time independently of the duration of the urges and inclinations of the participants in the institution[s],’ some system of representation is necessary which can overcome the transient nature of the so-called ‘brute, physical facts’ upon which institutional

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facts of the social reality are based (pp. 1f, 5f., 9f.). ‘[The] continued existence [of institutional facts] requires a means of representation of the facts that is independent of the more primitive prelinguistic psychological states (the physical nature of brute facts) of the participants, and such representations are linguistic.’

Chapter 7 1

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Her introduction ‘Walter Benjamin: 1892–1940’ was first published in The New Yorker. Cf. Walter Benjamin [1968] (1969), Illuminations (ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn). New York: Schocken Books, p. 49. Walter Benjamin (1966), Briefe (Volume I). Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, p. 197. See Martin Heidegger, ‘Die Kategorien und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus’, in Martin Heidegger (1978), Frühe Schriften (GA 1). Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 189–412. Walter Benjamin [1974] (1980), Gesammelte Schriften (Vol. I, Part 1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser). Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, p. 869. Werner Fuld (1981), Zwischen den Stühlen. Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, p. 136. As pointed out in Chapter 1 (‘Introduction’), ‘linguistic ontology’ is my term of choice to refer to what Arion L. Kelkel calls in a less explicit fashion ‘onto-logie’. The hyphenation is his attempt to capture Heidegger’s conception of language as a co-existent to human existence. For Heidegger, human evolution can only have happened as a departure from nothingness into being through the embodiment of being in the word. All things that comprise the human world owe their being to language. ‘It is in the word, in language where things come to be and are.’ Cf. Heidegger, EM, pp. 131, 11. Kelkel, La Légende de l’Être, pp. 163, 172, 199 etc. Similar to Heidegger, Benjamin does not deliver concise, analytical accounts of language. Furthermore, English readers face the additional problem of both translation and the fact that not all the relevant texts are translated. Various fragments, manuscripts and essays are now available in English. In those writings Benjamin demonstrates insight into questions about language, which Heidegger started to ponder some ten to twenty years later. Benjamin’s most revealing essay ‘On Language as Such and on the Language of Man’ (‘Über die Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen’) is a manuscript that can be dated back at least as far as 1916. It is written long before Heidegger started his philosophical work on language. The essay is published in Angelus Novus, pp. 9–26. It appears also in Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. II, Part 1, pp. 140–152. Additional material is found in Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. VII, Part 2, pp. 785–790. An English translation is found in Walter Benjamin (1978), Reflections, pp. 314–332. It is also printed in Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street and Other Writings, pp. 107–123. Another important piece of composition is his fragment ‘On the Mimetic Faculty’ (‘Über das mimetische Vermögen’) written in the months of June to September 1933. The fragment is a concise version of the earlier, more detailed manuscript ‘Lehre vom Ähnlichen’ (‘A Theory of Similarity’), written in January and February of the same year.

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‘Über das mimetische Vermögen’ is published in Angelus Novus, pp. 96–99. An English translation (On the Mimetic Faculty’) is found in Reflections, pp. 333–336. The earlier and more detailed manuscript ‘Lehre vom Ähnlichen’ (‘A Theory of Similarity’) is printed in W. Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. II (1), pp. 204–210. Insightful texts are, moreover, ‘The Storyteller’ (‘Der Erzähler’) written between March and July 1936, ‘The Task of the Translator’ (‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’), written from March to November 1921. Both texts are included in Walter Benjamin (1977), Illuminationen (Ausgewählte Schriften 1). Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, pp. 50–62 (‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’) and pp. 385– 410 (‘Der Erzähler’). The translations by Harry Zohn appear in Illuminations. An important and difficult piece of writing is the foreword ‘Erkenntniskritische Vorrede’ (‘Epistemo-Critical Prologue’) to The Origin of German Tragic Drama (Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels), written during the period of March 1923 to Spring 1925. The initial steps that led to the completion of this work had already been taken in 1916. It is published in Walter Benjamin [1974] (1980), Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. I, Part 1, edited by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt/Main; pp. 203ff. There is a separate publication Walter Benjamin (1963), Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (ed. Rolf Tiedemann). Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. The translation by John Osborne The Origin of German Tragic Drama was published in London by NLB in 1977. Benjamin had originally envisioned this work to be his tenure publication (Habilitationsschrift). Doomed to face an academic rejection, he withdrew his tenure application from May 12, 1925 to the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Frankfurt (probably) on September 21, 1925. Cf. Walter Benjamin [1974] (1980), Gesammelte Schriften (Vol. I, Part 3). Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, pp. 868ff. John Macquarrie [1994] (1999), Heidegger and Christianity. New York: Continuum, p. 11. Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache, p. 96. The Tempest, I, 2, 399–405. Cf. Benjamin, Illuminations, pp. 38, 45, 46, 49. Cf. Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in PLT, pp. 73ff. UKW in Heidegger, Holzwege, pp. 58ff. ‘Language’ in Heidegger, PLT, pp. 198ff. ‘Die Sprache’ in Heidegger, US, pp. 20ff. Heidegger, PGZ, p. 75. Heidegger, HCT, p. 56. I have relied so far exclusively on Benjamin’s essay ‘On Language as Such. . . .’. An error occurs in Edmund Jephcott’s translation on p. 321 in Peter Demetz’s Benjamin edition Reflections. Jephcott translates Benjamin’s phrase ‘desto aussprechlicher und ausgesprochener’ (Angelus Novus, p. 15) as ‘the more it is inexpressible and unexpressed’. It should, of course, read ‘. . . the more it is expressible and expressed’. Benjamin thinks of several if not many hundred languages. Jephcott fails to notice the difference between ‘hundert’ and ‘hunderte’ and translates ‘hunderten’ (Angelus Novus, p. 24) incorrectly with ‘hundred’ (Reflections, p. 330). This little error is, however, not of particular significance for the understanding of the rest of the essay. ‘On the Mimetic Faculty’, Reflections, p. 334; ‘Über das mimetische Vermögen’, Angelus Novus, p. 97. In this paragraph I rely on both this essay and its earlier version ‘Lehre vom Ähnlichen’ (‘A Theory of Similarity’). Cf. Gesammelte Schriften, II (1), p. 206.

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‘On the Mimetic Faculty’, pp. 334, 335; ‘Über das mimetische Vermögen’, pp. 97, 98; ‘Lehre vom Ähnlichen’, pp. 208, 209. Heidegger, EM, p. 131; Heidegger, IM (1961), pp. 143f; Heidegger, IM (1987), pp. 171f. Cf. Martin Heidegger (1976), ‘Nur ein Gott kann uns noch retten’. Der Spiegel, May 31; trans. Maria P. Alter and John D. Caputo, ‘Only a God can save us’ in Richard Wolin (ed.) [1991] (1993), The Heidegger Controversy. Cambridge, MA, London, England: The MIT Press, pp. 91–116; p. 113. ‘Über die Sprache überhaupt . . .’, Angelus Novus, p. 25f; ‘On Language as Such . . .’, Reflections, p. 331. Cf. ‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers (‘The Task of the Translator’), in Illuminationen, p. 60. ‘Über die Sprache überhaupt . . .’, ibid., pp. 15f; ‘On Language as Such . . . ’, pp. 320f. ‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’ (‘The Task of the Translator’), Illuminationen, p. 55. For Benjamin cf. Benjamin, Illuminationen, pp. 54–61. For Heidegger cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 38f., 310ff. This paragraph is based on Benjamin’s essay ‘Der Erzähler’ (‘The Storyteller’). Cf. Benjamin, Illuminationen, esp. pp. 386, 387f., 388, 393f., 402f., 409. Ibid., pp. 385, 388f., 392, 395, 396, 399f., 409. Walter Benjamin, ‘Erkenntniskritische Vorrede’ in Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, Gesammelte Schriften I (1), esp. pp. 211, 214–218. Cf. OWA, in Heidegger, PLT, pp. 17–87, esp. pp. 72–78. UKW in Heidegger, Holzwege, pp. 1–72, esp. pp. 58–64. Cf. Heidegger, SZ, § 44. Martin Heidegger (1962), Being and Time (trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson). San Francisco: Harper & Row. Martin Heidegger (1996), Being and Time (trans. Joan Stambaugh). Albany: State University of New York Press. Heidegger, PGZ, p. 75. Cf. Heidegger, HCT, p. 56. Heidegger, Gelassenheit. Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking. Walter Kaufmann [1954] (1982), The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Penguin Books, pp. 555–556. Friedrich Nietzsche [1955] (1997), Werke II (ed. Karl Schlechta). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, p. 1026.

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Manfred Frings (1988), ‘Parmenides: Heidegger’s 1942–1943 Lecture Held at Freiburg University’. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 19 (1), 15–33, at 15. Manfred Frings (1990), ‘Heraclitus: Heidegger’s 1943 Lecture Held at Freiburg University’. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 21, (3), 250–264, at 250. Manfred Frings (1991), ‘Heraclitus: Heidegger’s 1944 Lecture Held at Freiburg University’. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 22, (2), 65–82, at 65. Heidegger began writing his Beiträge as early as 1936, maybe even earlier. For a discussion of the new kind of thinking Heidegger promotes see his reflections on ‘inceptive thinking’, pp. 55ff. George Kovacs (2003), ‘Being, Truth, and the Political in Heidegger (1933– 1934)’. Heidegger Studies 19, 31–48, at 31f.

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Theodore Kisiel (2001), ‘Heidegger’s Philosophical Geopolitics in the Third Reich’, in Richard Polt and Gregory Fried (eds.), A Companion to Heidegger’s ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, pp. 226–249. Cf. Chapter 1 of Nietzsche’s ‘Versuch einer Selbstkritik’, written in Sils-Maria, Oberengadin in August 1886, and attached to his Birth of Tragedy. Friedrich Nietzsche (1976), Die Geburt der Tragödie. Der Griechische Staat. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, p. 29. To get a taste of Nietzsche’s own struggle for grasping ancient Greek philosophical world views ‘from within’ cf. Iain Thomson’s discussion of: Friedrich Nietzsche (2001), The Pre-Platonic Philosophers (ed., trans. Greg Whitlock). Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Iain Thomson (2003), ‘Interpretation as Self-Creation: Nietzsche on the Pre-Platonics’. Ancient Philosophy, pp. 23, 195–213. Heidegger, Beiträge, pp. 171ff., 176ff. That Einsicht is Aussicht for Heidegger, that ontological insight (Einsicht) consists in the discovery of sights of being (Aussicht) becomes evident from his lecture course on Parmenides. Cf. Martin Heidegger [1982] (1992), Parmenides (GA 54, ed. Manfred Frings). Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, p. 97. References to The Fragments of Parmenides run through the whole body of Heidegger’s work. See Hildegard Feick [1961] (1991), Index zu Heideggers ‘Sein und Zeit’. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, p. 127f. I rely on various editions of the Greek text, notably on the Greek-German edition Heidegger used himself: Hermann Diels [1903] (1906), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Griechisch und Deutsch). (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. Hermann Diels [1952] (1966), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (ed. Walther Kranz). Dublin/Zürich: Weidmann. I also rely on the critical Greek-English edition by Leonardo Tarán (1965), Parmenides (A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Heidegger, WhD, pp. 126, 128, 131, 139, 141, 173f etc. The exact wording of Heidegger’s phrase at p. 141, upon which this last statement is based reads: ‘. . . in jedem Wort, . . . in jedem Wortgefüge und somit gerade in dem, was die Fugen der Sprache ausmacht.’ Glenn Gray’s translation does not render the last portion of this statement, which is unfortunate, since it is here where Heidegger expresses Parmenides’ vision of language as a complementary element of thought, and vice versa, of thought as a complementary element of language, most strongly. Cf. Heidegger, WCT, p. 233. Parmenides, Fragment I, 27; XIX, 3. This is said in contrast to gods (δαιµονος, I, 3), goddesses (θεα, I, 22) and immortals (αθανατησι, I, 24). As Parmenides often refers to humans; see Frg. I, 30; VI, 4; VIII, 39. 51. Heidegger, WhD, p. 164. Ibid., p. 140. Cf. Heidegger’s ‘Preface’ to William J. Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought., pp. VIII–XXIII. Heidegger, EM, pp. 74, 87–8, 96, 104; Heidegger, IM (1961), pp. 83, 97, 106, 115; Heidegger, IM (1987), pp. 97, 114–5, 126, 136. See the discussion by Manfred Frings, ‘Heraclitus: Heidegger’s 1944 Lecture’, pp. 70–78; Martin Heidegger [1979] (1994), Heraklit (GA 55). Frankfurt/ Main: Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 242–330; esp. 243, 249–251, 258–260, 264, 308,

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328–330. See also Martin Heidegger, ‘Logos (Heraklit, Fragment 50)’, in Heidegger, VA, pp. 199–221. Martin Heidegger [1975] (1984), Early Greek Thinking (trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi). New York: Harper & Row, pp. 59–78; henceforth EGT. Cf. Heidegger’s poetical line ‘man is being’s poem just begun.’ Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, p. 7; Heidegger, PLT, p. 4. Cf. ‘Moira (Parmenides, Fragment VIII, 34–41)’, in Heidegger, VA, pp. 223–248; at 234f.; Heidegger, EGT, p. 88. For example, already in the 1935 lecture course ‘Einführung in die Metaphysik’ (‘An Introduction to Metaphysics’). See Heidegger, EM, pp. 23, 53; Heidegger, IM (1961), pp. 25, 57; Heidegger, IM (1987), pp. 31, 69. Heidegger, WhD, pp. 134, 174. Heidegger, VA, p. 232. Heidegger, EGT, p. 86. Martin Buber [1923] (1979), Ich und Du. Heidelberg: Verlag Lambert Schneider, p. 44. Martin Buber [1970] (1996), I and Thou (trans. Walter Kaufmann). New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 85: ‘And in all the seriousness of truth, listen: without It a human being cannot live. But whoever lives only with that is not human.’ On “reception” see Heidegger, WhD, p. 149: ‘in seinen Empfang nehmen,’ literally ‘to receive’. Gray (p. 244) circumvents the term ‘empfangen’ which he translates ‘take into its hand’. On ‘conception’ cf. Heidegger, SZ p. 150f where Heidegger introduces his concept of the ‘fore-structure’, in particular his concept of ‘fore-conception’ (Vorgriff). On ‘the things themselves’ cf. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 27, 34, 95, 127, 153, 166: ‘zu den Sachen selbst’. See Heidegger, SZ, pp. 84–85. Cf. Gelassenheit, p. 23. Discourse on Thinking, p. 54. Martin Heidegger (1998), ‘Traditional Language and Technological Language’ (trans. Wanda Torres Gregory). Journal of Philosophical Research XXIII, 129–145, at 130–131. Cf. Martin Heidegger (1989), Überlieferte Sprache und technische Sprache (ed. Hermann Heidegger). St. Gallen: Erker Verlag, p. 6–8. SZ, pp. 164, 126. Frg. II, 4: Πειθους εστι κελευθος (Αληθειη γαρ οπηδει). Edmund Husserl in his notes to SZ. See Roland Breeur’s introduction to Husserl’s marginal notes to Heidegger’s SZ. Roland Breeur (1994), ‘Randbemerkungen Husserls zu Heideggers Sein und Zeit und Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik’. Husserl Studies 11: 3–63, at 3–8; henceforth ‘Randbemerkungen Husserls’. The French philosopher André Glucksman in a discussion on the merits of Heidegger’s philosophy after the publication of Victor Farías’ book on the perennial theme ‘Heidegger and National Socialism’ on French television in 1988: ‘Heidegger ne pense pas.’ Hans-Georg Gadamer (1993), ‘Die Natur der Sache und die Sprache der Dinge’, in Wahrheit und Methode. Ergänzungen. Register (Gesammelte Werke, Band 2). Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, pp. 66–76. Frg. II, 3: ουκ εστι µη ειναι. Frg. VI, 2: µηδεν δ’ουκ εστιν. Frg. VII, 1: ου γαρ µηποτε τουτο δαµη ειναι µη εοντα. Frg. VIII, 7–9: ουτ’ εκ µη εοντος εασσω ϕασθαι σ’ ουδε νοειν. Ου γαρ ϕατον ουδε νοητον εστιν οπως ουκ εστι. Frg. I, 30; II; VIII, 51: δοξας; VI, 5–9; VIII, 51–54: εν ᾧ πεπλανηµενοι εισιν. Frg. VII, 3. Frg. VIII, 17–18.

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Peter Kingsley (1999), In the Dark Places of Wisdom. Inverness, CA: The Golden Sufi Center. Hegel, PhG, § 4: ‘der Ernst des Begriffs’; § 49: ‘die Notwendigkeit des Begriffs’; ‘die Unmethode des Ahnens und der Begeisterung’. Parmenides, Fragment I, 29; II, 4; VIII, 51. Heidegger, WhD, pp. 172f., 115. Glenn Gray did not capture the implications of the word ‘Witterung’ in the first instance of its appearance in Heidegger’s lecture course ‘Was heißt Denken?’. He translates it first as ‘atmospheric conditions’ (p. 188) and later as ‘scenting’, but omits Heidegger’s not unimportant etymological explications on the preposition ‘an’ (as in ‘etwas kommt mich an’ meaning ‘something comes over me and touches me’), which Heidegger sees related to the term ‘Ahnung’ (p. 207). Fragment VIII, 8f.: ϕατον . . . εστιν; 35: εοντος, εν ᾧ πεϕατισµενον εστιν. Human understanding can reach this divine realm of being even though it can not remain in it. See Parmenides, Fragment IV, 1: λευσσε δ’οµως απεοντα νοω παρεοντα βεβαιως. ‘But take a look at the things that, although absent, are, nevertheless, firmly present to the thoughtful mind.’ In WhD Heidegger provides a discussion of the implications of the Greek term of ειναι (to be), which carries with it the meanings of παρειναι (to be present in its nearing, to be near and thus already here in the anticipation of its coming) and απειναι (to be absent in its presence, to be away). Heidegger applies the German ‘an-wesen’ and ‘abwesen’ to the Greek expressions and includes an etymological explication of the German verb ‘wesen’ and the preposition ‘an’. ‘Wesen’ is the modern German form of the old high German ‘wesan’ which ‘is the same word as “währen” and means to “endure”, “to remain”” in the sense of ‘dwelling’ (wohnen) and ‘abiding’ (weilen). Heidegger sees the occurrence of this active presence also at work in the Greek ειναι, which always, as he says, has to be understood as a struggle between παρειναι (an-wesen) and απειναι (ab-wesen). English readers are deprived of these considerations, since Glenn Gray omits a substantial portion of this part of the text from his translation. See Heidegger, WhD, p. 143; Gray’s translation, p. 236; cf. Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 91–92. ‘Ahnen’ (divining), which Heidegger sees as being derived from the preposition ‘an’, must then be an expression of this struggle. Heidegger, WhD, p. 172f; cf. Gray, who omits Heidegger’s etymological observation, p. 207. Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 6–9; cf. Heidegger, EM, pp. 84f., 86, where Heidegger delivers a translation and brief discussion of the respective passages. ‘[D]er Spruch des Denkers spricht, indem er das Wort dieser Göttin zur Sprache bringt.’ Cf. Heidegger’s specific reference to the opening lines of the poem (I, 22–32), Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 6, 7, 97. Heidegger, EM, p. 131; Heidegger, IM (1961), p. 144; Heidegger, IM (1987), p. 171. Hegel, PhG, § 110. Walter Benjamin, ‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’ (‘The Task of the Translator’), in Illuminationen, pp. 54–61. ‘Traditional Language and Technological Language’, p. 142. Überlieferte Sprache und technische Sprache, p. 27. Cf. Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 90–91. ‘Wesen’, usually rendered in English with Latin expressions like ‘essence’, ‘substance’, ‘nature’, is for Heidegger the

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Germanic derivation from the Greek ουσια. This etymological contention supports his rendition of the Greek ειναι with the German verb ‘wesen’. Heidegger’s transformation of what in current German is commonly known as a noun into a verb puts emphasis on the dynamic aspect of its meaning. Since ουσια is a nominal derivation of the feminine form of the present participle of ειναι, ουσα, it is easy for Heidegger to establish the claim that for Parmenides, too, his variations of ‘to be’ (εον, εµµεναι, πελειν, ειναι) carry the notion and promise of immortality via the life force of a dynamic and presencing occurrence of being which is its incorruptible nature and the unchanging truth of being. Frg. I, 29: αληθειης ευκυκλεος ατρεµες ητορ; VIII, 37–38: επει το γε Μοιρ’ επηδεσεν ουλον ακινητον τ’ εµεναι; 43: ευκυκλου σϕαιρης εναλιγκιον ογκω. Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 132–135. According to Heidegger, the Greek πολις is the historical place (geschichtliche Wesensstätte) of the possibility and the occurrence of the struggle for truth-revelation. He finds confirmation in the philological observation that the term πολις stems directly from the old Greek πελειν (Frg. VI, 8; VIII, 18) which means ‘to be’ in the strong sense of ‘rising into unconcealment’. See UKW in Heidegger, Holzwege, pp. 34ff. See OWA in Heidegger, PLT, pp. 49ff. Heidegger, Parmenides, p. 91. Heidegger, VA, pp. 243–244. For an extensive discussion of ‘Ereignis’ see Heidegger’s Beiträge. Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 96ff.; Heidegger, SZ, pp. 222f. Parmenides, Fragment I, 9–10. 11. Heidegger, WhD, p. 164; Heidegger, EM, p. 131. Heidegger, EM, p. 127; Heidegger, IM (1961), p. 139f.; Heidegger, IM (1987), pp. 166f.; Heidegger, SZ, p. 133. This is Heidegger’s famous use of the common German phrase to point at Dasein’s ontological self-embrace. Dasein’s being ‘is an issue for’ Dasein (John Macquarrie’s and Edward Robinson’s translation of the phrase in BT). Dasein ‘is concerned with’ its own being (Joan Stambaugh’s rendition). I derive additional support for this reading of Parmenides from Heidegger’s 1943 Heraclitus lecture. Manfred Frings, who edited this and the 1944 Heraclitus lecture in Volume 55 of the Gesamtausgabe, has repeatedly pointed out that the three lectures must be read in the context of each other in order to understand how Heidegger can say that the two philosophers basically say the same. ‘Heraclitus: Heidegger’s 1943 Lecture . . .’, pp. 250, 256, 262. ‘Parmenides: Heidegger’s 1942–43 Lecture . . .’, pp. 16, 31. Heidegger points at the essential-ontological closeness (Wesensnähe) of ‘life’ and ‘being’ known to the early Greek thinkers like Parmenides and Heraclitus. Το αειζωον is an expression Heraclitus uses in Fragment 30 where he speaks of (the physical appearance of) being in terms of the uncreated κοσµος (universe), which ‘has always been, always is and always will be’, however, not as a steady state of uneventful, static affairs, but as a dynamic enterprise of the fathomless nature of things. This is why Heraclitus does not just liken the universe to an ‘everlasting fire’ (πυρ αειζωον) that ‘generates itself’ by ‘consuming itself’. He qualifies the κοσµος as such a ‘self-creative’ and ‘self-depleting’ inexhaustible source of being. Αειζωον literally means ‘constant living’ and ‘everlasting’ in the sense of ‘the ever rising’ and ‘always occurring’ event of being. Heidegger, Heraklit, pp. 104–108.

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Care is defined as ‘being-already-ahead-of-itself’ (existence), and as such as ‘beingalready-in-the-world’ (facticity) which translates into a ‘being-alongside-entitieswithin-the-world’ (falling). Care professes the character of an ‘understanding’ (Verstehen) with which it continues to redetermine and reopen its being as a ‘potentiality-for-being’ (Seinkönnen) and a ‘being-possible’ (Möglichsein). This ‘projection’ (Entwurf) into its possibilities is both a factical state of being and an ongoing process of being. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 191–193, 249f, 252, 277, 284, 316f. Heidegger, WM, pp. 31–33ff. ‘What is Metaphysics?’, in Martin Heidegger [1977] (1993), Basic Writings (ed. David Farell Krell). New York: HarperCollins, pp. 100–101ff.; henceforth BW. ‘Postscript’ (‘Nachwort’), in Heidegger, WM, p. 47. Cf. Martin Heidegger (1976), Wegmarken (GA 9). Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, p. 307. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 132, 133ff.; 220f. Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 90ff. Parmenides, Fragment I, 27: τηνδ’ οδον [αληθειης] . . . απ’ ανθρωπων εκτος πατου εστιν. ‘Aber das Sein ist kein Erzeugnis des Denkens. Wohl dagegen ist das wesentliche Denken ein Ereignis des Seins.’ (‘Being, however, is not a production of thought. On the contrary, proper thinking is an event of being.’) Heidegger, WM, p. 49. Heidegger, Wegmarken, p. 308. Parmenides, Fragment I, 29: αληθειης ευκυκλεος ατρεµες ητορ; VIII, 16–18: εστιν η ουκ εστιν . . . πελειν και ετητυµον ειναι; VIII, 38: ουλον ακινητον τ’ εµεναι. Parmenides, Fragment VIII, 8. 35. Cf. Parmenides, pp. 99, 100, 102, 113, 115, 165. Heidegger, SZ, pp. 73, 79, 133, 161, 166, 167. Heidegger, SZ, p. 230. Cf. pp. 212, 213. Cf. Richardson’s ‘Appendix’ of ‘Courses, Seminars and Lectures of Martin Heidegger’ in Heidegger. Through Phenomenology To Thought, pp. 669–679; at 673. Heidegger, PGZ, pp. 65, 75. Heidegger, HCT, p. 48, 56. Heidegger, Parmenides, p. 115: By the ontological force of language Dasein has a closer proximity to being than other beings. Cf. OWA, in Heidegger, PLT, pp. 44, 53, 56. UKW, Heidegger, in Holzwege, pp. 30, 38, 42. Cf. Heidegger, PGZ, pp. 90–93. Heidegger, HCT, pp. 66–68. Heidegger, Heraklit, pp. 191–195, 205–206, 214. ‘Heraclitus: Heidegger’s 1944 Lecture’, p. 68. Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 118–119. Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 118, 119, 124, 125. Heidegger, WhD, pp. 113–114, 164; in Gray’s translation, pp. 186f, 169. Parmenides, Fragment XVI, 4: το γαρ πλεον εστι νοηµα. Heidegger, WhD, p. 114: ‘Denn der Spruch spricht dort, wo keine Wörter stehen . . .’ Gray translates (p. 186): ‘For the saying speaks where there are no words . . .’ Heidegger, Heraklit, p. 180: ‘Das Wahre ist das Ungesagte, das nur im streng und gemäß Gesagten das Ungesagte bleibt, das es ist.’ Cf. p. 174: ‘[D]ie αληθεια [ist] anfänglich noch nicht und noch nie genannt [ . . . ] . . . [sie] [bleibt] das Ungesagte [ . . . ], [ . . . ] sie [ist] im anfänglich Gesagten dasjenige, aus dem her das anfängliche Denken spricht.’ (‘Αληθεια is in the inception [of thought] not yet and never said. Αληθεια remains the unsaid. Αληθεια is in the inceptively said exactly that out of which inceptive thinking speaks.’)

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Heidegger, Heraklit, p. 174. The translation is Manfred Frings’, ‘Heraclitus: Heidegger’s 1943 Lecture . . .’, p. 263. 68 Heidegger, Heraklit, pp. 181, 190, 195. 69 Heidegger, WhD, p. 141: ‘Das εον durchspricht die Sprache und hält sie in der Möglichkeit des Sagens.’ Gray, p. 233. The translation is partly my own. 70 Heidegger, PGZ, p. 75; Heidegger, HCT, p. 56. 71 Hegel, PhG, § 110. 72 On this particular notion of ‘Aufhebung’, which has been translated as sublation (Baillie), supersession (Miller), sublimation (Kaufmann), and can be translated as transcendence, see Hegel, PhG, pp. 82–92. Hegel, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, pp. 58–66 (§§ 90–110). Recall that the linguistic corpo-reality, intrinsic in human actions, has been recognized by Benjamin quite independently of Heidegger. Similar to Heidegger, Benjamin conceives of the comportmental expression of ‘storytelling’ as a vivid example of how humans respond to the persistent experience of forgetfulness, transitoriness and mortality. The custom of storytelling is a more original way of speaking. It portrays the human endeavour to overcome the factical fate of death through the community-founding act of communication. Walter Benjamin, ‘Der Erzähler’ (‘The Storyteller’), in Illuminationen, pp. 385–410. 73 Parmenides, Fragment II, 6. 8; VI, 2; VII, 6; VIII, 8. 35: ϕραζω, ϕρασαις, ϕραζεσθαι, εξ εµεθεν ρηθεντα, ϕασθαι, ϕατον, πεϕατισµενον. 74 In his talk ‘Heidegger, Dewey, and the Primacy of Practice’, Friday, March 26, 2004, Hubert G. Alexander Memorial Library, University of New Mexico. Cf. David Krell (1992), Daimon Life: Heidegger and the Life-Philosophy. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 52–54. Hubert Dreyfus [1991] (1994), Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. Cambridge, MA/London, England: The MIT Press, pp. 41, 137. 75 David Cerbone (2000), ‘Heidegger and Dasein’s “Bodily Nature”: What is the Hidden Problematic?’. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 8, (2), 209–230. 76 τηνδ’ οδον, Parmenides, Fragment I, 27; αιπερ οδοι µουναι διζησιος εισι νοησαι. η µεν . . ., Fragment II, 2ff.; µουνος δ’ ετι µυθος οδοιο λειπεται ως εστιν, Fragment, VIII, 1–2. 77 ες οδον . . . πολυϕηµον . . . δαιµονος, Parmenides, Fragment I, 2–3; και µε θεα προϕρων υπεδεξατο, Parmenides, Fragment I, 22; ὦ κουρ’ αθανατησι συναορος ηνιοχοισιν, Fragment I, 24. 78 αληθειης ευκυκλεος ατρεµες ητορ, Parmenides, Fragment I, 29. 79 πιστις αληθης, Parmenides, Fragment. I, 30; VIII, 28; πιστον λογον ηδε νοηµα αµϕις αληθειης, Parmenides, Fragment VIII, 50–51. 80 διζησιος, Parmenides, Fragment II, 2; VI, 3. 81 νοηµα, Parmenides, Fragment VII, 2; VIII, 34. 50. 82 νοησαι, Parmenides, Fragment II, 2; νοειν, Fragment III; VI, 1; VIII, 8. 34. 36. WhD, p. 164. 83 Heidegger, WhD, p. 164; Heidegger, EM, p. 11: ‘Im Wort, in der Sprache werden und sind erst die Dinge.’ ‘It is in words and language that things first come into being and are.’ Heidegger, IM (1961), p. 11. Heidegger, IM (1987), p. 13. Martin Heidegger [1949] (1981), Über den Humanismus. Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio

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84 85 86

87 88

89 90

91

92 93 94 95

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Klostermann, pp. 10, 11 (henceforth ÜH): The essence (Wesen) of language lies in the fact that ‘it is the house of the truth of being.’ The proximity to being will reconnect language to its source and transform it into ‘a home (Behausung) for dwelling in the truth of being.’ ‘Letter on Humanism’, in Heidegger, BW, p. 223; henceforth LH in BW. Cf. Martin Heidegger, ‘Wozu Dichter?’, in Heidegger, Holzwege, p. 306. ‘What are Poets for?’, in Heidegger, PLT, p. 132. Parmenides, Fragment II, 7f.; VIII, 7–9. 17f. 35. Parmenides, Fragment I, 30; VII, 3–5; VIII, 51–54. Recall again Heidegger’s reflections on language origins in EM. Language originates ‘in the human departure into being. In this departure language was as the word-formation of being: poetry.’ (My translation) Heidegger, EM, p. 131; Heidegger, IM (1961), p. 144. Heidegger, IM (1987), p. 171. Heidegger, PGZ, p. 75; Heidegger, HCT, p. 56. Like Benjamin. Cf. ‘Über die Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen’, in Angelus Novus, p. 15f. ‘On Language as Such and on the Language of Man’, in Reflections, p. 320f. For Heidegger cf. Heidegger, WhD, pp. 110, 114, 119, 140, 143, 149, 168. Heidegger speaks about being also in terms of the ‘nameless’ (Namenlose) and the ‘groundless’ (das Grundlose, Bodenlose). Cf. Heidegger, ÜdH, p. 10. See LH, in Heidegger, BW, p. 223 and Heidegger, Parmenides, p. 223. Cf. Heidegger, Heraklit, pp. 174, 180, where Heidegger speaks about the truth of being as the ‘unsaid’ and ‘unsayable’. In his 1962 lecture ‘Traditional and Technological Language’ Heidegger contends that it is the ‘“natural” language’ still uninfected by technology, namely the ‘traditional language’ of the vernacular that ‘grants the unspoken’ (das Ungesprochene). Cf. Heidegger, ‘Traditional Language . . .’, p. 142; Heidegger, ‘Überlieferte Sprache . . .’, p. 27. In German ‘Ungesprochen’ and ‘Unausgeprochen’ can be used interchangeably, although there is a difference of emphasis. Each refers to the unspoken and unsaid. The focus of meaning of the latter (Unausgesprochen) resides on the lack of phonetic articulation of a word that would make it empirically accessible, that is, perceptible through eyes and ears if pronounced by means of the body’s speech organs (hands, face, mouth, tongue, vocal chords etc.). ‘Ungesprochen’ puts stronger emphasis on the fact that a word and its referent remain unmentioned as long as the referent resides in the realm of inexplicitness and the word remains unexpressed. Heidegger, WhD, pp. 110, 119, 140, 143; Parmenides, Fragment VIII, 35. Denken ist erst Denken, wenn es das εον an-denkt, Jenes, was dieses Wort eigentlich und d.h. ungesprochen nennt.’ Heidegger, WhD, p. 149. Gray (p. 244) translates: ‘Thinking is thinking only when it recalls in thought the εον, That which this word indicates properly and truly, that is, unspoken, tacitly.’ Heidegger, Heraklit, pp. 175, 190, 195. Cf. Heidegger, EM, p. 5; Heidegger, IM (1961), p. 5, Heidegger, IM (1987), pp. 5f. Heidegger, Wegmarken, p. 310 and Heidegger, WM, pp. 49–50. ‘uns über-setzt in’, ‘setzen uns über zu’, ‘Übersetzen unseres ganzen Wesens zu’. ‘Übergang’, ‘hinübergehen’, ‘uns zu dem übersetzen’. Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 16–18, 223. Heidegger, WhD, pp. 107–108, 110, 137–138, 140f, 175; Heidegger, EM, p. 131; See UKW in Heidegger, Holzwege, pp. 33, 59, 60; See OWA, in Heidegger, PLT, pp. 47–48, 73–75; Frings,

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97 98

99 100

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Notes ‘Parmenides: . . .’; pp. 18–19. With respect to ‘discourse’, ‘interpretation’ and ‘communication’ see Heidegger, SZ, pp. 150–155, 160ff.; with respect to ‘Ur-Sprung’, see Beiträge, pp. 227–230. See UKW, in Heidegger, Holzwege, pp. 64. See OWA, in Heidegger, PLT, pp. 77, 78. Benjamin, ‘Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’ (‘The Task of the Translator’), in Illuminationen, pp. 54–61. Heidegger, WhD, pp. 140f. Friedrich Nietzsche [1954] (1982), ‘Twilight of the Idols’ in Walter Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche. New York etc.: Penguin Books, pp. 555f. Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke II, p. 1026. Frings, ‘Heraclitus: Heidegger’s 1944 Lecture . . .’, pp. 81, 82. αλλ’ ην αει και εστιν και εσται πυρ αειζωον. Heidegger, Heraklit, pp. 163–168. Frings, ‘Heraclitus: Heidegger’s 1943 Lecture . . .’, pp. 261–263. Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 151–162. Frings, ‘Parmenides: Heidegger’s 1942–43 Lecture . . .’, pp. 28–29. See also the brief discussion by Véronique Fóti (1998), ‘Heidegger and “The Way of Art”: the empty origin and contemporary abstraction’. Continental Philosophical Review, 31, pp. 337–351, at pp. 344–347. The discussion is set in the context of Heidegger’s involvement with East Asian thought through the literature and art of the Daoist and Zen tradition and through his personal contact with proponents of these traditions. Fóti tries to vindicate the importance of visuality for Heidegger’s philosophy. For this purpose she dwells on the implications of the ‘glance’ for being’s possibility to become visible to humans in the appearance (ϕαινεσθαι) of beings to them through encounters with beings as things themselves. Fóti points out that this understanding of the glance as the meeting place of invisible being and human being comes close to the Zen understanding of ‘the empty origin as indissociable from the proliferation of forms’. That Heidegger’s reflections on the Greek gods as θεαοντες, δαιοντες and δαιµονες, namely as those who reach from their uncanny dwelling place into the familiarity of human everyday life, is not just a reflection on something specifically Greek, Manfred Frings points out at the end of his article on Heidegger’s Parmenides lecture course (p. 32). The relevance of this observation is burning under the nails of humanity everywhere that a globalized economy, based on exploitation for the purpose of consumption and accumulation of monetary wealth, threatens the traditional life of indigenous communities. With the words of Heidegger’s Parmenides we can say that when forests are reduced to timber and land to the minerals in its earth, nothing is sacred to those who operate on the land. The land is no longer a homeland to an ancestral people, because the gods have been expelled from it. This problem has flared up on the ancestral homeland of the Hopi and Dine people, where five elders have been arrested for holding a religious ceremony out of protest against the fact that their land has been designated by the U.S. government to become the next coal mining ground for the mining company Peabody Coal Co. It is noteworthy that the word ‘Dine’ is a self-reference by the native people who have been referred to as ‘Navajo’ by outsiders. ‘Dineh’ simply means ‘people’, namely people who belong to a land that has allowed them to become and be what they are in their symbiotic attachment to this land. Their forced removal from this land, which is sought by the mining companies, is so unthinkable to

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these natives that their language does not even reflect such a fate. There is no word for the impending ‘relocation’ that will throw them out of their traditional existence. See and/or listen to ‘Democracy Now!’, Friday, 13 July 2001 and Tuesday, 17 July 2001: www.democracynow.org. On the problem of the objectification of things to mere items of consumption, for example, of the earth to a coal mining district, the soil to a mineral deposit, agriculture as the peasant’s work on the field to the mechanized food industry, free flowing rivers to dammed up water power suppliers, forests to timber, and human beings to human resources (Menschenmaterial), all processes of disenchantment which Heidegger identifies as the essence of modern technology and the seemingly unstoppable driving force behind it, more specifically as the Gestell (enframing) that reduces everything to a ‘standing-reserve’ (Bestand) and that views nature as the ‘chief storehouse of the standing energy reserve’ (Hauptspeicher des Energiebestandes), see Heidegger’s 1953 lecture ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ in Martin Heidegger (1977), The Question Concerning Technology and other Essays (trans. William Lovitt, Harper Torchbooks TB 1969). New York etc.: Harper & Row. Also in Heidegger, BW, pp. 311–341. Martin Heidegger, ‘Die Frage nach der Technik’, in Heidegger, VA, pp. 9–40. The essential relationship between our relation to the language we speak and our relation to the land and world we live in is discussed in Heidegger’s lecture from 1962 ‘Traditional Language and Technological Language’. In this talk Heidegger addresses the problem of the opposition between the natural, spoken or colloquial language (Umgangssprache), notably the mother tongue (Muttersprache), which he calls ‘die überlieferte Sprache’ (‘the traditional language’ which is ‘handed’ down from mouth to mouth from generation to generation) since it is not yet technologized, and its transformation (Umprägung) into technological language as (a mere provider of) information. Heidegger identifies this problem as the threat of the technologically influenced language to the fundamental way of human living. If language no longer does what it essentially is and has traditionally been doing, namely the ‘preservation of what is original’ (Bewahrung des Anfänglichen), the ‘safeguarding (Verwahrung) of the new possibilities of the already spoken language’ in order to ‘grant the unspoken’ and ‘to bring what is not-yet-seen into appearance’ by ‘saying the world anew from the language that is preserved’, and thus to engage in poetic dwelling, then humanity is threatened in ‘the innermost of its essence – namely in its relation to the whole of what has been, what is arriving, and what is present.’ Humanity then becomes the victim, along with the rest of the world, of the totalizing demand and command of technology to ‘place nature at our disposal’ and to ‘secure it as natural energy’. The ‘saving power’ that can rescue us from this threat must come from within language itself, since language ‘brings us (back) into the nearness of what is unspoken and what is inexpressible’, that is, into a renewed proximity to being by way of ‘reflecting’ on this danger, and this means, by a ‘reflection’ on language itself and on the human relation to language. Such ‘reflection’ (Besinnung), Heidegger says in the beginning of this talk, is a ‘risk’ (Wagnis) insofar as it (re)awakens the ‘sense for the useless’ (‘Besinnung heißt: den Sinn wecken für das Nutzlose’), because ‘to be useless . . . is the sense of things.’ The ‘useless is the sense of things’ because uselessness is the essence of things. The useless is the essence of things, because it is the

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Notes nature of being to be useless in this fundamental way of being in the world as ‘poetic dwelling’. The ‘epistemic’ rediscovery by way of ‘reflection’ happens in Gelassenheit which is the means of transportation that accomplishes this journey to the truth of being and thus provides the salvation of the truth of being from the ‘inexorability of the limitless reign of modern technology’ (das Unaufhaltsame der schrankenlosen Herrschaft der modernen Technik). See Heidegger, Überlieferte Sprache., pp. 6, 7, 8, 15, 17–23, 25, 27, 28. Heidegger, ‘Traditional Language . . .’, pp. 130, 131, 135–139, 141, 142. For the ‘saving power’ of ‘poetic dwelling’ see the final pages of ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, ‘What are Poets for?’. See also Martin Heidegger, ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ in PLT, ‘. . . poetically man dwells . . . in PLT (both German texts in VA). Manfred Frings was so kind to send me these words upon request. He does not know for sure whether he used the words in brackets (‘eine solche’), but he thinks he did, ‘because Heidegger liked the tranquil view from his window in his study.’ In a sense the statement sounds more forceful without those words, since it implies two things: (a) Many people do not live (anymore) on a land in which they are at home. (b) The recognition of this comes with the ‘discovery’ of Heidegger’s ‘home’ at the first glance at the landscape. Frings could have even recognized himself as someone who is in want of a ‘home’. The words imply the recognition that other people, including Frings himself, have a ‘home’ too, but there is a uniqueness attached to this particular native abode that is, if not lost, then at least not so commonly present (anymore) at other places that people call their home. I am aware of the national-socialist feelings some readers see rising from these statements. Critics of Heidegger like Farías will be ready to condemn such considerations as invoking a dangerous ‘blood and earth philosophy’ with which the national-socialist ideology terrorized the world some 65 years ago and which more recently has torn apart the multiethnic state of Yugoslavia. During this secessionist war of conquest and destruction, whose ashes are still smouldering, certain statements of war time leaders have become emblematic for this kind of warfare philosophy, like that of General Mladic who out of a victorious sense of superiority boasted that ‘borders are drawn with blood.’ The unearthing of their own dead and the deliberate destruction of their own property by people who saw themselves forced to leave their homes in the face of an advancing army reflect the same kind of perverse attachment to a homeland: rather have it destroyed than see it occupied by someone else. Hand in hand with this ideology goes the contempt the faction leaders expressed during mediating talks with respect to the particular accents with which the Serbo-Croatian language was spoken by the ethnic adversaries. – The creation of the Department of Homeland Security under the Bush administration must be seen in this context as well, since in its appeal to popular patriotism and aggressive nationalism both by name and substance it is designed to gather a people behind its flag and ‘leader’ and into compliance with democracy-threatening domestic and peace-shattering international policies by continuously entertaining the fear of domestic and international terrorism with the pretext of ‘defending the homeland’, a device employed also by Nazi Germany, notably with its own appeal to ‘Heimatschutz’. This view has also been expressed by a number of well-known American dissidents. Cf. Gore

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Vidal (2003), ‘George W. Bush ist ein Nachfahre von Karl dem Großen’. Süddeutsche Zeitung, 19 July. Note also that in the face of American war crimes in Iraq many Arabs and Muslims, particularly professional translators decided no longer to speak and work in the English language. – Nothing of this kind of hate-provoking attachment to one’s land and language is implied by the suggestion of an essential bond between one’s love for land and language. This love does not have to be defined negatively as something that identifies itself in opposition to (what is then perceived as a threat by) outsiders. It can as easily be defined positively as a love that sees itself enriched by the experience of its ancestral-linguistic culture, part of which consists in the readiness and willingness to share its heritage with others as well as in its openness to the culture of others. What I mean by an ‘intimate attachment to language’ consists for example in the principled refusal of self-denial, that is, the refusal to give in to the social-external and internal-psychological pressures to reject one’s mother tongue in favour of a register of higher reputation, but instead to speak freely without any sense of shame and inferiority the regional vernacular tongue with which one has grown up and which has grown and continues to grow with oneself. See in this context the brief discussion by Nicole Alexander, Nikolaus von Festenberg and Reinhard Mohr (2001), ‘Welcome in Blabylon’. Der Spiegel 29, 160–163, about the emergence of ‘Denglisch’, an anglicized version of German advancing to a kind of lingua franca in Germany triggered by the increasing influence of the internet and a globalized economy. The more typical cases of forced or coerced linguistic self-denial are caused by governmental suppression and social discrimination of ethnic minority languages. The continued extinction of native American languages as well as depriving the younger generation of the native tongue of their parents’ generation in minority communities are direct results of this form of linguistic imperialism. I find it necessary to spell out some of these considerations since many aspects of Heidegger’s philosophy lend themselves to being connected to national-socialist ideology. Such considerations will always (have to) be made explicit given Heidegger’s political past. The connection of Heidegger’s philosophy with National-Socialism has been pointed out again by Vittorio Hösle (2001), ‘Die Irrtümer der Denker’. Der Spiegel 29, 136–139, in which he criticizes Heidegger’s rejection of an objective ethics that results in his lack of insight into an objective difference between good and evil. Hösle holds this basic amoralism in Heidegger’s philosophy responsible for his moral-political mistakes and inability to apologize for them. Buber, Ich und Du, p. 15; Buber, I and Thou, p. 59: ‘And even as prayer is not in time but time in prayer, the sacrifice not in space but space in the sacrifice – and whoever reverses the relation annuls the reality – I do not find the human being to whom I say You in any Sometime and Somewhere. I can place him there and have to do this again and again, but immediately he becomes a He or a She, an It, and no longer remains my You.’ Heidegger, Heraklit, pp. 167f. Frings, ‘Heraclitus: Heidegger’s 1943 lecture . . .’, p. 262.

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Index

affectability (Befindlichkeit) 77, 113 Agamben, G. 11, 15–16, 199 Anstimmung 74 Antwort 167 anxiety 35, 41, 85, 88, 91, 94, 95, 98, 116, 152, 158, 173 Aristotle 15, 76, 79, 84, 147, 160–1, 171, 179, 180, 183, 187 articulation 10, 12, 52, 57, 60, 64, 72, 78, 160, 179, 185, 186, 192, 208 assertion (Aussage, Mitteilung) 12, 55, 57–61, 69, 70, 72, 75, 76, 116, 153, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 187, 192 as-structure 57, 59, 116, 117, 121, 178, 179, 196, 197, 198 Augenblick 26, 36, 164 Auslegung 55–9, 61, 64, 68, 72, 81, 116, 136, 162, 178, 179, 187, 196, 197–8 Aussage 12, 55, 58, 61, 116, 153, 178, 179, 180, 187, 192 Aussagesatz 197 authentic life 33, 34, 36, 37 begreiflich 179, 182 Begriffe 80, 133, 135, 149, 204 Begrifflichkeit 12, 34, 68, 69, 135–6, 179, 182 Benjamin, W. 99, 104, 113, 114, 123–37, 150, 162, 200–1, 207 Besinnung (skreis) 52, 76, 80, 113, 116, 181, 183, 186, 188, 189, 211 Besonnenheit 64, 76, 77, 80, 183 Bestimmen 59 bestimmende 180 Be-Stimmung 10, 167 birth 9, 75f, 80f, 86, 128

birth event 75–6, 81 birth place 43, 72, 84, 194 bodily 15, 158, 170, 208 body 15, 29, 30, 47, 66, 78–80, 86, 108, 123, 128, 132–6, 153–8, 173, 184, 198, 209 Bonhoeffer, D. 20 Buber, M. 145–6, 164, 213 Buckley, R. P. 173, 174 Bultmann, R. 17–47, 51, 176 change-over (Umschlag) 59, 179, 186 Christian experience 29, 33–6, 45, 51, 174 life 28, 29, 30–3, 38, 40 paradox 33 church 31, 40, 43, 51 collective(ly) 21, 42–4, 70, 82, 96, 104, 106–9, 111, 122, 125, 132, 134, 136, 161, 193, 194, 199 collectivity 106, 108, 157, 161 communicable (mitteilbar) 80, 112, 126, 130–1, 134–5, 148 communication (Mitteilung) 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 67, 69, 72, 79, 80, 82, 85, 111, 112, 113, 114, 126, 127, 128, 130, 131, 134, 140, 154, 161, 162, 177, 182, 188, 199, 207, 209 comportment(al/ity) 10, 12, 15, 66, 78–80, 93–6, 98, 113, 130, 133, 135, 136, 140, 145, 153–7, 159, 170, 186, 187, 192, 198, 207 conception (Empfängnis) 113, 190 conceptuality (Begrifflichkeit) 34, 135 conceptualization (Begrifflichkeit) 12, 118, 179, 182

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Condillac, E. Bonnot de 195, 198–9 corpo-real(ity) 132, 133, 156, 207 correspond(ence) (Entsprechen) 13, 52, 58, 64, 72, 86, 95, 104, 135, 142, 146, 148, 161 creation 6, 7, 27, 52, 58, 61, 64, 72, 75, 84, 86, 89, 104, 116, 132, 135, 136, 137, 141, 143, 154, 157, 163, 179, 180, 183, 189 Creed, R. 6–7, 166 decay 9, 10, 81, 87, 88, 132, 168f, 188 deed 4, 5, 7, 39, 46, 88, 108 Denken 9, 13, 14, 44, 66, 82, 104, 138, 143, 147–8, 150, 157, 162, 167–8, 171, 181, 186, 189, 206, 207, 209 denken 186 denkende 9. 18, 186, 189 Derrida, J. 16 diagrammatic 70 diagrammed 70 dialogue (Gespräch) 44, 52, 61, 159, 162 Dichten 9, 14, 66, 104, 143, 148, 150, 181, 189 dichtende 9 Diels, H. 149, 203 discourse (Rede) 10, 15, 52, 55, 57–62, 64, 65, 67, 69, 72, 74–82, 90, 97, 104, 162, 178, 181, 182, 183, 188, 196, 209 disposition(al) (Befindlich(keit)) 10, 24, 26, 33, 35, 39, 40, 45, 53, 60, 61, 63, 64, 67, 74, 75, 77, 80, 81, 85, 95, 112, 113, 116, 136, 152, 158 embodied, embodies, embody 15, 66, 89, 95, 153, 160 embodiment 9, 79, 98, 99, 120, 150, 152, 153, 196, 200 Empfängnis 113, 126, 129, 136, 190 erdenken 81 eschatological event 38, 39, 45 Now 39, 42, 43, 51 process 38 eternal being 140, 145, 146, 163 dwelling 163

life 29, 33, 36, 42, 173 reality 35 salvation 43 spiral 195 truth 137, 148, 150, 162 eternal, the 164 eternal(ly) 166, 173 eternity 27, 30–5, 88, 134, 136, 137, 145, 162, 163, 164 existential imperative 7, 25–8, 31, 34, 35, 37, 92 explicit(ly) (ausdrücklich) 58, 60, 67, 68, 72, 78, 94, 98, 107, 108, 109, 116, 118, 127, 130, 141, 144, 145, 149, 151, 153, 155, 156, 179, 184, 185, 196, 197 explicitness (Ausdrücklichkeit) 57, 127, 130, 155, 156, 179 express(es) (ausspricht) 11, 58, 60, 69, 98, 109, 111, 115, 119, 121, 133, 156, 184, 191, 197, 199 expressed (ausgesprochen) 12, 15, 55, 57–61, 69, 72, 75, 78–80, 114, 127, 128, 181, 185, 186, 187, 192, 201 expressedness (Ausgedrücktheit, Ausgesprochenheit) 94, 127, 128, 130, 135 expressibility 128, 156, 157 expressible (aussprechbar, aussprechlich) 57, 68, 130, 141, 185, 201 expressing 136, 141, 178, 192 expression (Ausdruck, Ausgesprochenheit, Äußerung, Aussprechen) 3, 10, 11, 32, 54, 55, 57, 58, 60, 61, 69, 70, 71, 75, 78, 79, 80, 84, 85, 86, 87, 90, 94, 98, 99, 100, 107, 108, 109, 112, 113, 114, 115, 119, 127, 128, 130, 133, 134, 135, 141, 143, 151, 155, 156, 157, 158, 171, 172, 184, 188, 191, 204f, 205, 206, 207 expressive(ly) 3, 10, 11, 13, 60, 74, 75, 78, 79, 86, 108, 115, 127, 133, 135, 144, 154–7, 168, 169, 184, 185, 198 expressiveness 128 expressivity 169 expressly 127 expressness (Ausdrücklichkeit) 12, 135, 187, 192

Index factical certainty 19, 22, 24, 34, 91, 92 factual uncertainty 19, 22, 24, 34, 44, 91 faith 20–1, 27–30, 33–40, 51, 173 Feuerbach, L. 111–13 finitude 10, 13, 16, 18, 24, 25, 33, 34, 91, 95, 104, 136, 157 Fodor, J. A. 72 fore-structure 20, 65, 66, 68, 69, 73, 135, 155, 170, 179, 204 Frings, M. 138–9, 155, 161–3, 206, 209–11 Gadamer, H.-G. 51, 146, 148, 176 Gelassenheit 30–1, 35, 37, 39–40, 45, 51, 61, 136, 145, 152, 164, 190 grammar 8, 10, 67, 70, 74 grammatical(ly) 71 grammaticalization, grammaticization 169 grammaticize(d) 68 God 20, 25, 27–30, 33–4, 37–40, 51, 63, 73, 88, 96, 103, 132, 138, 173, 175, 176 goddess 138, 146, 148–50, 159, 162, 203 godlikeness 27 Gods, gods 63, 97, 138, 163, 203, 209, 210 hand 12, 74, 133, 155, 209 handing down 134, 149 handling 24 Handlung 155 Handwerk 44, 133, 181, 189 Hegel, G. W. F. 11, 16, 30, 84, 96, 103–22, 123, 146, 150, 157, 174, 193–4, 197–8, 199, 207 Heraussage 59, 69 Herder, J. G. 63–82, 83, 113, 116–17, 182–8, 193, 195–6, 198 iconicity 70 imitation 29, 51, 62, 71, 78, 80–1, 129 imitative 77 immortal 36, 88, 148, 149 immortality 4, 10, 13, 29–31, 34–5, 43, 46, 51–2, 88, 104, 124, 132, 137, 138, 140, 145, 148, 153, 156–7, 159, 162, 164, 199, 205 immortalize(s) 7, 46 immortals 203

225

Inbegriff 128 incommunicable 11, 112 individuality 5, 11, 19, 39, 44, 106, 108, 112, 119, 121, 122, 136, 157, 161, 193f individualization 11, 125, 131, 161 individualize(d/s) 25, 41, 44, 91, 92, 96, 108, 111 individualizing 11, 21, 161–2 individuals 44, 106, 108–15, 118–19, 122, 136, 194, 198 individuation 11, 41, 44 inexplicit(ly) (unausdrücklich) 47, 56, 57, 179, 185 inexplicitness (Unausdrücklichkeit) 179, 209 inexpressible (unaussprechlich) 130, 201, 211 interpretation (Auslegung) 55–9, 61, 64, 68, 72, 81, 116, 162, 178, 179, 196, 197–8 Jaspers, K. 190–1 Jünger, E. 44–5 kairological 36, 43 kairos 36 Kelkel, A. L. 4, 9, 11–12, 165, 170, 200 Kierkegaard, S. 19, 26–7, 42, 46, 70, 99, 110–11, 113–16, 172, 174, 176 Kingsley, P. 146, 148, 152f Kisiel, T. 139 körperlich 78, 184 Körperlichkeit 133 Kovacs, G. 138–9 leiblich 15–16 Leiblichkeit 133, 158 linguistic-ontological(ly) 3, 9, 13, 46–7, 79, 81, 89–90, 93, 94, 95–6, 98, 99, 100, 104, 114, 121, 134, 136, 153, 157, 161, 163, 196, 199 linguistic ontology 8–9, 11, 71, 87, 89, 95, 99, 104–5, 123–4, 132, 136, 157, 200 immortality 13 perpetuation 100 procreation 89 self-extension 96

226

Index

linguistic-ontological(ly) (Cont’d) survival 96, 104, 121, 199 transcendence 136 Löwith, K. 43, 176–7 MacKinnon, C. A. 13 Macquarrie, J. 7, 37, 125, 191, 206 Merkmal 64, 76–80, 183, 185, 187 Merkwort 64, 76–80, 185, 187 mimesis 7, 64, 86, 129 mimetic 113, 129, 133, 187 Mit-denken 111 Mitteilung 10, 55, 59, 61, 69, 72, 112, 126, 131, 140, 161, 162, 180, 190 Mitteilungswort 79, 187 mood 26, 77 moodedness 77 mortal (adj.) 10, 13, 20, 30, 97, 98, 117, 124, 132, 134, 148, 158, 162, 173 mortality 35, 43, 51, 68, 89, 90, 91, 93, 95, 98, 132, 135, 207 mortals 4, 10, 15, 31, 63, 97, 98, 100, 138, 142, 148, 158 new life 29–30, 34–5, 39, 40 Nietzsche, F. 26, 68, 76, 136–7, 139, 162, 172, 183, 202 non-communicable 130f onomatopoeia 70–1, 85, 129, 135 onomatopoetic 62–4, 68, 81, 86, 87, 129, 180, 184 Ott, H. 174 Pauline anthropology 19, 28 perception 12, 80, 108, 110, 115–16, 120, 122, 126–7, 136, 146, 147, 150, 157, 161, 170, 187, 192, 198 permanence 88 permanent 4, 91, 115 perpetuate(s) 51, 94, 96, 119 perpetuation 91, 100 persist(s) 27, 119, 199 persistence 38, 96, 136, 152 persistent 14, 27, 46, 51, 93, 120, 131, 150, 151, 155, 207 Pindar 26, 172 Pinker, S. 72 Plato 70, 85, 187, 188–9

poem 6, 9, 19, 23, 62, 82, 83, 98, 104f, 114, 141–2, 145–6, 148–51, 203 poesy 104 poet(s) 7, 23, 28, 40, 44, 52, 61, 82, 83–4, 87–9, 94, 97–9, 104, 143, 145, 150, 160, 172, 181, 191 po(i)etic(al/ly) 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 14, 40, 51, 61, 62, 67, 69, 78, 82, 87–90, 95, 97, 98, 130–2, 135, 136, 140, 145, 147, 150, 153, 159, 160, 161, 184, 193, 203, 211 poetized 104 poetizing 104 poetry 3, 9–10, 51, 66, 70f, 82, 89–91, 98, 99, 104, 130, 135, 136, 143, 144, 150, 153, 181, 208 Pöggeler, O. 168, 174, 175 poiesis 79, 135 preservation 5–7, 10, 84, 96, 117–22, 124, 132, 134, 136, 157, 162, 194, 210f preserve(d/s) 10, 11, 35, 44, 82, 83, 88, 100, 108, 117–19, 122, 125, 132, 136–7, 150, 154, 157–8, 211 preserving 6, 159 procreation 89, 94 procreative 98 reality conceived 19, 99, 110, 114, 197 ethical 19, 70, 110, 114, 116, 197 reception (Empfängnis) 126, 129, 136, 145, 203 recognition (Anerkenntnis, Anerkennung, Erkennen, Erkenntnis) 64, 70, 76–80, 84, 95–6, 98, 106–10, 115–18, 120, 126–8, 131–2, 145, 148f, 154, 156, 159, 163, 183, 190, 194, 197, 198 recognitional 115, 116f, 128, 154, 159, 181 recognize(d/s) (erkennen) 68, 77, 80, 84, 93, 106, 118, 126–7 recognizing 106, 110 recollect(ed/s) 45, 54, 82, 86, 95, 134, 137, 139, 149 recollection (Wieder[-]holung) 6, 7–8, 10, 38, 44, 51, 87–9, 94–5, 99, 112, 134, 137, 139, 140, 160, 161, 168 recollective(ly) 10, 38, 76, 79, 80, 87, 95, 191

Index re[-]create(s) 94, 110, 134, 162 re[-]creation 81f, 90, 94, 96, 98f, 131, 162, 163f recreative 82, 98, 136, 191 redemption 6, 27, 31, 51, 152 Remarque, E. M. 45 renew(al) 13, 81, 87, 88, 106, 132 renewed 13, 28, 94, 134, 190, 211 repetition (Wiederholung) 7–8, 51, 61, 87, 95, 99, 134, 136, 139, 154, 160, 168, 191 re-poetization (Umdichtung) 99, 115, 131, 150, 162 resurrection 24, 29, 35, 39, 42, 51–2, 88, 163f revival 87, 129, 132 Richardson, W. J. 14, 69, 171 Rousseau, J.-J. 160, 194–5, 198 salvation 20, 27, 30–1, 33–4, 37–9, 42, 43, 45, 51, 88, 151–2, 156f, 173, 211 Searle, J. R. 105, 193–9 self-expression (Sichaussprechen) 60–1, 107–9, 112, 113 self-extension 96, 132, 164, 199 Sheehan, T. 32f, 34, 174 silence 3, 43, 72, 74, 76, 78 silence(d/s) 6, 156 silencing 74 Springsteen, B. 12, 170 Steiner, G. 88–90, 92, 107 Stimme 15, 167, 185 Stimmung 15, 74, 77, 186 survival 7, 46, 56, 93, 96, 104, 109, 117–18, 120–2, 124, 132–4, 136–7, 145, 151–2, 157, 199 switch-over (Umschaltung) 179, 187 Taylor, C. 76, 80, 182 temporal 12, 31–2, 35, 134, 136, 141, 164 temporality 27, 31–9, 43, 141, 157, 164 temporary 110, 134 Thomä, D. 181 Thomson, I. 181, 202 transcendence 5, 31, 35, 73, 108, 122, 136, 141, 149–50, 152, 157, 161–2, 164, 207 translation 3, 36, 79–80, 115, 127–31, 140, 150, 161–2, 190, 193

227

truth existential 25, 87, 116, 136 objective 19, 38, 197 subjective 19, 111, 114, 116, 197 Umgang 24 understand(ing) 10, 33–4, 52, 56–62 (60: Verständnis), 63–4, 65–6, 68–9, 72–3, 75–6, 77–8, 80, 93, 110–16, 135f, 139–40 (επιστημη), 147, 148, 149, 150, 153, 154–5 (επιστημη), 157, 160f, 161, 178, 179, 180, 182–3, 186 (Verständnis), 190, 192 (Verständnis), 196, 204, 206 unexpressed (unausgesprochen) 57, 72, 77, 94, 130, 135, 178, 185, 201, 209 unexpressedness 130 universalization 109–11, 115, 118, 120, 122, 154, 157, 162 universalize(d/s) 78, 109–11, 125 universalizing 115–16, 118, 125, 161–2 unsaid (Ungesagt/e) 140, 150, 156–7, 207, 208–9 unsayable (Unsagbar/e) 15, 140, 150, 156–7, 208 unspoken (Un(aus)gesprochen/e) 11, 77, 150, 159, 189, 208–9, 210–11 unvocalized 184 Urdichtung 9, 89–91 utterance 54–5, 75, 119, 171, 185 verbalize/d 10, 155 Vidal, G. 212 vocal(ly) 54–5, 90, 171, 184, 208–9 vocalization 54, 76, 94, 171 vocalize 10, 77 voice (Stimme) 10, 15, 55, 66, 78, 80, 93, 95, 133, 142, 150, 152, 160, 167–8, 171, 185 voiced 78 voicing 74 White, C. J. 16 Wieder[-]holen 8, 139, 160, 161f, 168 Wieder[-]holung 7, 8, 44, 87, 95, 99, 139, 160, 191 Wittgenstein, L. 113–14 word-creation 58, 61, 64, 72f, 84, 116, 136, 141, 157, 171, 180, 191

228

Index

word-creative 10, 85, 127, 128, 141, 157 word-formation 8f, 12, 58, 62, 63, 66, 72, 75, 85, 88, 90–1, 98, 151, 153, 159, 191, 208 word-formative 10, 154 word-(per)formative 78, 94, 95–8, 150 Wort 11, 42–3, 58, 74, 160, 167f, 177, 182, 185, 188, 190, 198, 203, 205, 208, 209

Worte 8, 10, 13, 58, 74, 159, 167, 169, 178, 182, 185, 186, 198 Wörter 8, 10, 43, 73–4, 159–60, 167, 207 Wörterdinge 8, 182, 188 Wortgefüge 157, 203 Wortwerden 89, 90–1, 98, 120, 152–3, 191, 196 Zimmerman, M. E. 27, 176 zu Denkende 13