*/
On The Way Of Language /*
*/Martin Heidegger/*
Summary By Haukur Amon Thor Thorvardarson.
*/Introduction/*
In his book /Unterwegs zur Sprache /(1959);/ /Martin Heidegger explains his little understood phrase ‘Language is the house of being’.
A DIALOUGE ON LANGUAGE:
The dialogue is between Heidegger and Professor Tezuka. Tezuka mentions the possible danger that the Japanese language will be led astray by the wealth of concepts which the spirit of European languages has in store. Heidegger calls this the Europeanization of man, and of the earth, which attacks everything that is of an essential nature.
Heidegger states that hermeneutics means neither the theory of art of interpretation nor interpretation itself, rather it means to try to define the nature of interpretation on hermeneutic grounds. Knowing is a hermeneutic circle: knowing circles around rather than proceeding linearly; such a circle is not a vicious circle, but rather the fundamental structure of knowing. When one reads a book one cannot fully understand the first page without having read the whole, and yet how can one understand the whole, without having understood the first page? A circular movement occurs: where one understand progressively more and more of each page, each augmenting the other ad infinitum.
THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE:
Heidegger wants the reader to undergo an experience with language. To undergo an experience with a thing, another person, or even god, it means that something befalls, strikes, overcomes, overwhelms and transforms us into itself. This experience is not of ones own making; to undergo means that we endure, suffer and receive it as it strikes us and as we submit to it. Thus to undergo an experience with language means to let ourselves be properly concerned by the claims of language by entering into and submitting to it. And that experience will touch the innermost nexus of our existence and one becomes transformed by such experiences. This experience is the complete opposite of the metalanguage experience that has been created by the metalinguistic discipline of analytical philosophy. The metalinguistic experience is the metaphysics of the technalization of languages into a one globalized information phenomenon.
Stephan’s George’s poem Words, which was included in the collection /Das Neue Reich,/ becomes a way of creating a poetic experience with language for Heidegger.
Wonder or dream from distant land
I carried to my country’s strand
And waited in till the twilight norn
Had found the name within her bourn-
Then I could grasp it close and strong
It blooms and shines now the front along…
Once I return from happy sail,
I had a prize so rich and frail,
She sought for long and tidings told:
“No like of this these depths enfold”.
And straight it vanishes from my hand,
The treasure never graced my land….
So I renounce and sadly see:
Where words break of no thing may be
The last sentence of the poem brings language to language and captures the relation between words and things. No things exist where the word is lacking the word that names the given thing. Therefore the word gives being to the thing. Perhaps the word not only stands in relation to the thing, but maybe it is the word that holds and keeps the thing as a thing. The speaker is thus a relation between a thing and language. In short the being of anything resides in the word, thus language is the house of being.
Nietzsche in /The Will to Power/ writes that it is not the victory of the sciences that distinguishes the 19^th century but the victory of the method over the sciences. In the sciences the theme is well drafted the method lies within the framework of the methods subordinate to it. Science is just swept away by the furious pace of the method, however science does not know if the speed up is because of the method with all its potentiality or by the silicon of technology.
Thinking in contrast has no method or theme; rather it has a realm and free reign. Thinking for Heidegger is not means to gain knowledge, thinking cuts furrows into the soil of being. "Our thinking should have a vigorous fragrance, like a wheat field on a summer's night" Nietzsche (1895). How many of us today have a sense for that fragrance? In order to think we must question, questioning submits to thinking it is submissive to what thinking has to think about. Questioning submits to thinking it is submissive to what thinking has to think about.
The being of language – and the language of being are phrases that guide us on the way of thinking and on the way of poetic experience. What is meant here is that in order to understand the nature of language we need to understand the language of nature. And in order to understand the language of nature we need to question and think. The modern mind has lost its way. The ideas of modern minds are punched out in the modes of technical-scientific calculation, where the object of knowledge is part of the method. And the method is the most degenerate form of a way.
To have an experience with language, we must dwell in the neighborhood of poetry and thinking. A poetic neighborhood where we must look around and in a sense be open to the way shown to us in the poem. We must look around in this neighborhood and may notice something that will transform our relation to language. To be in the neighborhood means to dwell in nearness that brings poetry and thinking together into a neighborhood we call saying. The verb ‘To say’ is in old Norse “segja” which means to say which is derived from the noun “saga” which literally means spoken tradition stories that have been passed down threw history. The saga is in constant mode of revealing and concealing the world. Therefore humans are historical beings, historical beings that belong and are situated within a saga. The purpose of poetry is to reveal a new world to create a new way of speech which sparks thinking of a vigorous fragrance. Its purpose is not that of the method that to entomb us into an ongoing world history. Rather it creates a new saga like an orphic hymn.
THE WAY OF LANGUAGE:
But is there a way of language really needed? Novalis in /The Monologue/: states that language talks to language alone. Language is concerned only with it and is thus not known to anyone. Heidegger objects to this, man is the ancient being that has understanding of having the ability to speak and is the possessor of language. Thus language is known to man. For mans ability to speak is what defines man as man. The language contains the design of mans being. Thus language in turn has granted man his being. The act of speaking must have a speaker. Not in the same as effect has a cause, but in the way of speaking. A speaker is present and with whom is speaking in the neighborhood that is relevant to them at the moment.
The unity of begin of language is design. One must see the proper character or sign of the being of language. The sign of the design is related to the act of cutting a furrow into the soil for seeding. Thus design of language allows it to be in constant growth and constant expansion. The only distinguishing feature of language is its design with is the drawing of its structure. That structure prevails throughout the open and unlocked freedom of language. The design is the drawing of the being of language; it is all that is spoken, all that is un-spoken and all that is given in speaking.
Saying can be described as the act of pointing out something or signaling something or in a sense a spiritual pointer. It points out what is concealed and unconceals it, it uncovers what is covered. The essential being of language is showing, which is accompanied by saying. An essential feature of speaking is also listening. These two acts are not separate acts, they are simultaneous events that when combined create the event of conversation. While an individual is being engaged in conversation he is listening while speaking and speaking while listening.
Language speaks to the individual and shows him whatever is present to appear and before him. When the individual is listening to an act of conversation something is being said to him, something is affecting him and something is transforming him. Showing causes what is absent to appear and what is present to disappear.
The listener appropriates saying and thus the spoken word is the individual’s property. What is meant with appropriation is to take to one self that which is spoken. Appropriation needs the human property of appropriation since it feeds being and is constantly in the process of expanding being. The way of language is through appropriation. Appropriation puts man to use.
In order to be human beings the individual continues to be committed the being of language. The individual can never step out of language and look at the phenomenon of language from another angle. The individual has to accept language as it is the house of our being. For it is the individuals very being that dwells within the house of language. The individual sees language to the extent to which language is revealed to him, the way it is assigned him, the way it has set him apart from language or how it has appropriated itself to him. The fact that the individual can not know the nature of language is not something the individual has to despair over. This is a quality of man for he is favored in the realm of his finitude where the ones that use language are mortals.
*/Discussion/*
Is it possible to describe the relationship between language and with our experience of the world? The relation between our experience of the world and language is that experience in itself can only be experience from human existence. This in turn forces us to realize that the relationship between our experience of the world and language is embedded within the framework of human existence.
The human existence manifests itself in relation to language in the process of continual dialog. This dialog is has been going on since the first being was thrown into this world and is a dialog which is constantly referring to past historical events and is passed on from one generation to another. This is self-knowledge formed within a hermeneutic circle that we call history.
In Heidegger’s book /Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens/ (1964), The author states that the history of philosophy has come to a close, not in the sense that philosophy is now over and done with, but in the sense that it can no longer undergo any further development and still remain philosophy. For in the modern age systematic rationality and positivism has become a dominant factor and have cast philosophy and critical questioning and thinking into the shadows. The positivist method has forced us to non-thinking.
What could replace the method and restore the vigorous thinking of the ancients? The hymn singers that followed the way of Orpheus were poets are the revelers of worlds. While systematic philosophy has tried to bring all language into the open under the rules of a logical method, in order to bring language under its control. The poet as the follower of the way realizes the one can not have control over language for poetry is letting go of language a release for being.
Can a dialog of thinking and poetry teach us what thinking would be like if we would let go off the systematic method for a second? Yes! To form a way of thinking would resemble listening to the language of language. In order to have this experience with language one must let go and forget logical reasoning, one must sit down and listen to the heart of being. For the hymn of poetry is the reveler of worlds found within the house of being.
Therefore it has been made partly evident that the hypotheses that all higher level of thinking is dependent on languages can possible only be answered within the individual framework of finite self-knowledge. The way is ahead of us, we just need to see it, walk it and be prepared to listen.
*/Bibliography: /*
Heidegger, M. _On The Way To Language. _
HarperCollins Publisher, 1982.
Let he who spoke ill of the good name of Heiddegger come forth!
/Amon
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
On The Way Of Language /*
*/Martin Heidegger/*
Summary By Haukur Amon Thor Thorvardarson.
*/Introduction/*
In his book /Unterwegs zur Sprache /(1959);/ /Martin Heidegger explains his little understood phrase ‘Language is the house of being’.
A DIALOUGE ON LANGUAGE:
The dialogue is between Heidegger and Professor Tezuka. Tezuka mentions the possible danger that the Japanese language will be led astray by the wealth of concepts which the spirit of European languages has in store. Heidegger calls this the Europeanization of man, and of the earth, which attacks everything that is of an essential nature.
Heidegger states that hermeneutics means neither the theory of art of interpretation nor interpretation itself, rather it means to try to define the nature of interpretation on hermeneutic grounds. Knowing is a hermeneutic circle: knowing circles around rather than proceeding linearly; such a circle is not a vicious circle, but rather the fundamental structure of knowing. When one reads a book one cannot fully understand the first page without having read the whole, and yet how can one understand the whole, without having understood the first page? A circular movement occurs: where one understand progressively more and more of each page, each augmenting the other ad infinitum.
THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE:
Heidegger wants the reader to undergo an experience with language. To undergo an experience with a thing, another person, or even god, it means that something befalls, strikes, overcomes, overwhelms and transforms us into itself. This experience is not of ones own making; to undergo means that we endure, suffer and receive it as it strikes us and as we submit to it. Thus to undergo an experience with language means to let ourselves be properly concerned by the claims of language by entering into and submitting to it. And that experience will touch the innermost nexus of our existence and one becomes transformed by such experiences. This experience is the complete opposite of the metalanguage experience that has been created by the metalinguistic discipline of analytical philosophy. The metalinguistic experience is the metaphysics of the technalization of languages into a one globalized information phenomenon.
Stephan’s George’s poem Words, which was included in the collection /Das Neue Reich,/ becomes a way of creating a poetic experience with language for Heidegger.
Wonder or dream from distant land
I carried to my country’s strand
And waited in till the twilight norn
Had found the name within her bourn-
Then I could grasp it close and strong
It blooms and shines now the front along…
Once I return from happy sail,
I had a prize so rich and frail,
She sought for long and tidings told:
“No like of this these depths enfold”.
And straight it vanishes from my hand,
The treasure never graced my land….
So I renounce and sadly see:
Where words break of no thing may be
The last sentence of the poem brings language to language and captures the relation between words and things. No things exist where the word is lacking the word that names the given thing. Therefore the word gives being to the thing. Perhaps the word not only stands in relation to the thing, but maybe it is the word that holds and keeps the thing as a thing. The speaker is thus a relation between a thing and language. In short the being of anything resides in the word, thus language is the house of being.
Nietzsche in /The Will to Power/ writes that it is not the victory of the sciences that distinguishes the 19^th century but the victory of the method over the sciences. In the sciences the theme is well drafted the method lies within the framework of the methods subordinate to it. Science is just swept away by the furious pace of the method, however science does not know if the speed up is because of the method with all its potentiality or by the silicon of technology.
Thinking in contrast has no method or theme; rather it has a realm and free reign. Thinking for Heidegger is not means to gain knowledge, thinking cuts furrows into the soil of being. "Our thinking should have a vigorous fragrance, like a wheat field on a summer's night" Nietzsche (1895). How many of us today have a sense for that fragrance? In order to think we must question, questioning submits to thinking it is submissive to what thinking has to think about. Questioning submits to thinking it is submissive to what thinking has to think about.
The being of language – and the language of being are phrases that guide us on the way of thinking and on the way of poetic experience. What is meant here is that in order to understand the nature of language we need to understand the language of nature. And in order to understand the language of nature we need to question and think. The modern mind has lost its way. The ideas of modern minds are punched out in the modes of technical-scientific calculation, where the object of knowledge is part of the method. And the method is the most degenerate form of a way.
To have an experience with language, we must dwell in the neighborhood of poetry and thinking. A poetic neighborhood where we must look around and in a sense be open to the way shown to us in the poem. We must look around in this neighborhood and may notice something that will transform our relation to language. To be in the neighborhood means to dwell in nearness that brings poetry and thinking together into a neighborhood we call saying. The verb ‘To say’ is in old Norse “segja” which means to say which is derived from the noun “saga” which literally means spoken tradition stories that have been passed down threw history. The saga is in constant mode of revealing and concealing the world. Therefore humans are historical beings, historical beings that belong and are situated within a saga. The purpose of poetry is to reveal a new world to create a new way of speech which sparks thinking of a vigorous fragrance. Its purpose is not that of the method that to entomb us into an ongoing world history. Rather it creates a new saga like an orphic hymn.
THE WAY OF LANGUAGE:
But is there a way of language really needed? Novalis in /The Monologue/: states that language talks to language alone. Language is concerned only with it and is thus not known to anyone. Heidegger objects to this, man is the ancient being that has understanding of having the ability to speak and is the possessor of language. Thus language is known to man. For mans ability to speak is what defines man as man. The language contains the design of mans being. Thus language in turn has granted man his being. The act of speaking must have a speaker. Not in the same as effect has a cause, but in the way of speaking. A speaker is present and with whom is speaking in the neighborhood that is relevant to them at the moment.
The unity of begin of language is design. One must see the proper character or sign of the being of language. The sign of the design is related to the act of cutting a furrow into the soil for seeding. Thus design of language allows it to be in constant growth and constant expansion. The only distinguishing feature of language is its design with is the drawing of its structure. That structure prevails throughout the open and unlocked freedom of language. The design is the drawing of the being of language; it is all that is spoken, all that is un-spoken and all that is given in speaking.
Saying can be described as the act of pointing out something or signaling something or in a sense a spiritual pointer. It points out what is concealed and unconceals it, it uncovers what is covered. The essential being of language is showing, which is accompanied by saying. An essential feature of speaking is also listening. These two acts are not separate acts, they are simultaneous events that when combined create the event of conversation. While an individual is being engaged in conversation he is listening while speaking and speaking while listening.
Language speaks to the individual and shows him whatever is present to appear and before him. When the individual is listening to an act of conversation something is being said to him, something is affecting him and something is transforming him. Showing causes what is absent to appear and what is present to disappear.
The listener appropriates saying and thus the spoken word is the individual’s property. What is meant with appropriation is to take to one self that which is spoken. Appropriation needs the human property of appropriation since it feeds being and is constantly in the process of expanding being. The way of language is through appropriation. Appropriation puts man to use.
In order to be human beings the individual continues to be committed the being of language. The individual can never step out of language and look at the phenomenon of language from another angle. The individual has to accept language as it is the house of our being. For it is the individuals very being that dwells within the house of language. The individual sees language to the extent to which language is revealed to him, the way it is assigned him, the way it has set him apart from language or how it has appropriated itself to him. The fact that the individual can not know the nature of language is not something the individual has to despair over. This is a quality of man for he is favored in the realm of his finitude where the ones that use language are mortals.
*/Discussion/*
Is it possible to describe the relationship between language and with our experience of the world? The relation between our experience of the world and language is that experience in itself can only be experience from human existence. This in turn forces us to realize that the relationship between our experience of the world and language is embedded within the framework of human existence.
The human existence manifests itself in relation to language in the process of continual dialog. This dialog is has been going on since the first being was thrown into this world and is a dialog which is constantly referring to past historical events and is passed on from one generation to another. This is self-knowledge formed within a hermeneutic circle that we call history.
In Heidegger’s book /Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens/ (1964), The author states that the history of philosophy has come to a close, not in the sense that philosophy is now over and done with, but in the sense that it can no longer undergo any further development and still remain philosophy. For in the modern age systematic rationality and positivism has become a dominant factor and have cast philosophy and critical questioning and thinking into the shadows. The positivist method has forced us to non-thinking.
What could replace the method and restore the vigorous thinking of the ancients? The hymn singers that followed the way of Orpheus were poets are the revelers of worlds. While systematic philosophy has tried to bring all language into the open under the rules of a logical method, in order to bring language under its control. The poet as the follower of the way realizes the one can not have control over language for poetry is letting go of language a release for being.
Can a dialog of thinking and poetry teach us what thinking would be like if we would let go off the systematic method for a second? Yes! To form a way of thinking would resemble listening to the language of language. In order to have this experience with language one must let go and forget logical reasoning, one must sit down and listen to the heart of being. For the hymn of poetry is the reveler of worlds found within the house of being.
Therefore it has been made partly evident that the hypotheses that all higher level of thinking is dependent on languages can possible only be answered within the individual framework of finite self-knowledge. The way is ahead of us, we just need to see it, walk it and be prepared to listen.
*/Bibliography: /*
Heidegger, M. _On The Way To Language. _
HarperCollins Publisher, 1982.
Let he who spoke ill of the good name of Heiddegger come forth!
/Amon
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---