Heidegger: The Essence of Language
“Language is the House of Being.” With this statement, the impression is given that Heidegger presents language as something more than an instrument of communication. What is it exactly that Heidegger trying to convey?
This paper focuses on language as found in Letter on Humanism. The Letter on Humanism articulates the metaphysical role of language in Heidegger’s thought, but it also displays a use of language in a peculiar way. Concerning Heidegger’s thought, Being is revealed to humans by way of Language. Similarly, for Heidegger to reveal a new way of thinking about being, he had to make use language in a new way. This paper is structured is three parts. I’ll begin with why Heidegger was critical of metaphysics and with what he understood as the ‘technical role’ that language in philosophy. Next I’ll explain Heidegger’s understanding of the primordial role of language. I’ll conclude with a proposal for the best way to share Heidegger’s understanding of Being by way of his wacky use of language.
In the introduction to “Being and Time” Heidegger claims that “on the foundation of the Greek point of departure for the interpretation of Being, a dogmatic attitude has taken shape which not only declares the question of the meaning of Being to be superfluous, but sanctions it’s neglect.” (42) Further, it was “in the form of Occidental ‘logic’ and ‘grammar’” that dogma “seized control of the interpretation of language.” (218) Being was assumed to be universal and indefinable. Heidegger’s retort is that these assumptions are made based on a structure of language inappropriate for metaphysics. It is inappropriate because it privileges the subject and dominates the object, and results in object-directed studies that limits metaphysics to speak only of beings. Yet since Aristotle it has been accepted as dogma.
“Metaphysics does indeed represent beings in their Being, and so it thinks the Being of beings. But it does not think the difference of both. Metaphysics does not ask about the truth of Being itself… the question is inaccessible to metaphysics as such.” (227) Metaphysics notes Being as a quality of beings, but leaves Being unexplored. The “ontological difference[i]”is ignored due to the inability of the language to deal with it as such.
Heidegger claims that the language of science and philosophy, in its institutionalized form, is that of techne[ii]. Caught in the language of techne, philosophy must “justify its existence before the sciences” without any regard for justifying it’s relation to Being. Therefore, “Being, as the element of thinking, is abandoned by the technical interpretation of thinking.” (219) Perhaps it is the following paragraph that best articulates Heidegger’s dissatisfaction:
“Much bemoaned of late, and much too lately, the downfall of language is, however, not the grounds for, but already a consequence of, the state of affairs in which language under the dominance of the modern metaphysics of subjectivity almost irremediably falls out of its element. Language still denies us its essence: that it is the house of the truth of Being.” (222)
While the above paragraph still brings us no closer to understanding how Language is the “House of Being”, we might now be able to understand why Heidegger claims the “modern metaphysics of subjectivity” dominates language in a way that removes it from its element, and implicit is the notion that its return would provide access to its essence. But what is the element of Language? “The element is what properly enables: it is the enabling” (220). Well, this sounds like thinking. And thinking comes only to conscious beings, as, and within, Being.
It was the willingness of Heidegger to move outside the technical interpretation of thinking and to go beyond the “metaphysics of subjectivity” that provided for new discourse on Being. To this end, Heidegger appropriated words and used them in new ways (Dasein[iii]) and coined new words (Ek-sistence[iv]). He also experimented with various aspects of language. Unsatisfied with the descriptive limitations of it’s technical use, Heidegger moved to the unique metaphorical “gesturing” of language. By re-introducing ambiguity, multiple meaning, and precision abstraction, Heidegger works to “point” to an idea beyond our ways of speaking.
By expressing himself in ways so different from his contemporaries, Heidegger distanced his “thinking of Being” from Metaphysics in the traditional sense. To fend criticism, part of the Letter on Humanism assures that he does not reject the accomplishments of Metaphysics, but merely attempts to broaden the area of study to account for Being and the “ontological difference.” Regardless, it is perhaps best not to think of Heidegger’s “Thinking of Being” as Metaphysics (as it still carries its original connotation), but instead as a primordial system which provides a new and powerful way of abstracting the human condition.
The role of language in this primordial arrangement of Dasein is perhaps best articulated in the opening paragraph of the Letter on Humanism:
“Thinking accomplishes the relation of Being to the essence of man. It does not make or cause the relation. Thinking brings this relation to Being solely as something handed over to it from Being. Such offering consists in the fact that in thinking Being comes to language.” (217)
Thinking Being, human being engages with its relation to Being. Thinking asserts the essence of man, separating man from unthinking beings. Language returns to its element, and Being is acknowledged. Thinking is the activity, but language is the way of engagement. As such, it is both the way perceptions of being are received and the way perceptions of being are projected. Since both come to man as language, both are at the mercy of language. “Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.” [v]
Both reception and projection extend to other beings by nature of Dasein. Dasein transcends itself by way of “exploding” outwards, projecting to the world like a flashlight in a dark room. Dasein provides for the entities in the room – the IS-ness of beings. But the particular manifestation of being – the AS-ness of being – is provided by language. In this way we can think of language as the lens we view the world.
Language comes to us through thinking, and provides context for beings to exist in a meaningful way. We exist in language. It is in this sense that “Language is the house of Being.” (217) The context of language expands by way of thinking being: “Thinking builds upon the house of Being.” (259)
Heidegger holds “those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.” (217) Those who are engaged with Being - who are receptive to the language of Being rather than adhere to the techne – protect Being. We can imagine he included himself in this camp. “Thinking… lets itself be claimed by Being so that it can say the truth of Being.” (218)
But if language determines the experience of being, why not only use the most rewarding language? Because man has a duty to protect the destiny of Being:
“Man is rather ‘thrown’ from Being itself into the truth of Being, so that ek-sisting in this fashion he might guard the truth of Being, in order that beings might appear in the light of Being as the beings they are…The advent of beings lies in the destiny of Being. But for man it is ever a question of finding what is fitting in his essence that corresponds to such destiny; for in accord with this destiny man as ek-sisting has to guard the truth of Being. Man is the shepherd of Being.” (234)
If one doesn’t “think Being” for a language that is appropriate for being and instead relies on projections of techne, manifestations will not reveal the “destiny of Being”, but will rather reflect an inauthentic projection of being. Perhaps it was out of the sense of duty to the unfolding of destiny that Heidegger was sympathetic to the Nazi movement. Regardless, from his use of phrases like the ‘guardian of language’ and the ‘shepherd of Being’ – by using language to invoke notions of “care” for Being - we can assume that Heidegger must have believed that acknowledgement of relation to Being was preferable to inauthentic experience.
Language is not merely a medium for duplicating knowledge from one person to another, but also has the capacity to gesture to meaning. The power of language doesn’t come from precise definitions that only work within a context, but from how adaptable language is to providing appropriate context for being. For new perspectives to emerge, new ways of languaging must emerge.
Heidegger faced a situation of restrictive language, and chose to appropriate it in a way that reflected his concern of Being. To share Heideggers “Thinking of Being”, this paper proposes that one is required to eschew a purely “technical interpretation of thinking” and embrace the “gesturing” quality of language. Perhaps the best example of “gesturing” found in the “Letter on Humanism” is the text itself –the constant reading that is required from parts to the whole and back to the parts, with a clearer picture emerging each time – much like the hermeneutic[vi] Dasein itself.
[i] The “ontological difference” is the difference between being, as an entity, or a noun, and Being, active like the verb, as in “to be”. Seeking the “ontological difference” seeks to explain how these two factors come together. Heidegger puts forth that these two factors come together during our “everyday” experience of the world – as the world is revealed in the constant present, by way of Dasein.
[ii] Techne is “a process of reflection in service to doing and making” (218). In regard to language, techne is descriptive and rational serving the subject-object methodology of a science.
[iii] Heidegger uses the German word ‘Dasein’ to describe a particular type of being that provides for the relation of being to Being, which itself is a phenomena of time. Dasein provides a “clearing” in which the human being “stands” and “stands out”. The temporal aspect of Dasein asserts the human being as constantly “thrown” - constantly in relation to Being as predicated and projected by the past, and projecting into the future.
[iv] Ek-sistence describes the activity of being in the structure of Dasein. “Ek-sistence… does not coincide with existentia in either form or content. In terms of content ek-sistence means standing out into the truth of Being” (230). The area in which the standing takes place is the “Da” of Dasein, a “clearing of Being” (231).
[v] This quote comes from the “Building Dwelling Thinking” lecture from August 5th 1951.
[vi] ‘Hermeneutics’ is an approach to interpreting meaning from text by way of reflecting on how the text came to be. Dasein presents the condition of man and his relation to Being as a ‘Hermeneutic circle’.
