This paper was written for a graduate class on Heidegger’s Being and Time taken in fall 2011. A second, revised version of the paper (approx. 3,110 words) was presented at the University of Sussex Graduate Conference in Phenomenology in June 2013.

“How to Include What is Seen with Hearing and

Listening”1:

The Problematic of Language in Being and Time

1 Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1997) vi. This quote can be found in the introduction to Stein’s book, a project dedicated toapproaching the problem of familiarity with language in our everyday use. According to Stein, we become so accustomed to the familiar objects of our experience (language, things, places, etc.) that we take them for granted. Part of what Stein’s work aims to do is reacquaint readers with the power of language and objects to disclose meaning, often by means of poetry or prose that is notoriously difficult to understand. I include Stein in the title of this paper because it is largely to her credit that I understand Heidegger’s view of language in the way that I do; when I examine the possibilities of language breaking in the way that Heidegger’s hammer breaks, it is undoubtedlybecause I have seen it firsthand in Stein’s work. Though contemporaneous with each other, as far as I know there was no correspondence between Stein and Heidegger. However, I imagine they would have very much to say to each other. Were I to extend this paper, I would explicitly develop the connection betweenthe two at the level of poetic language. For now, Stein is the source of inspiration implicit in my contribution to Heideggerian study.

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Katherine KurtzVillanova UniversityWord Count: 6,477

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Introduction

Securing the problematic of language in Martin Heidegger’s

Being and Time is no simple task, as language is something at stake

within the entirety of the text, and not just in the sections

that bear its name.2 While Heidegger states that the task at

hand in Being and Time is a renewal of the question of the meaning

of being, one could also interpret this project as an attempt to

answer the questions of how the meaningful encounter with beings

in the world and with the self is possible, and what is

ontologically at stake within this encountering. My own project

in working with Being and Time is to situate the problematic of

language within these encounters, in other words to investigate

the ways in which language facilitates and hinders or challenges

the interactions of Dasein with its surroundings, in order to see

as clearly as possible the nature of the relationship between

language and being already at play within this foundational text

of Heidegger’s.

2 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, ed. Dennis J. Schmidt, transl. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010). Subsequently references from this text will be denoted by “BT” with page numbers Stambaugh matches to the German edition.

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The impression here is that language is inextricably bound

up with the being of Dasein since the existential-ontological

foundation of language, discourse, is existentially

equiprimordial with attunement and understanding, “the

fundamental existentials which constitute the being of the there,

the disclosedness of being-in-the-world,” as made evident through

a thematic analysis of Dasein.3 Heidegger thus situates language

within the primordial existential structure of the being of

Dasein in a way that grants ontological significance to the ontic

phenomenon of speech as Dasein’s factical possibility for

authentic shared worldly disclosure. What remains undetermined

or unclear for Heidegger, and for this reader of Being and Time, is

the very nature, or being, of this mode of being, language.

On a pre-theoretical level, it is not difficult to see that

language serves to facilitate everyday expression and

communication. We are constantly immersed in language, whether

written, spoken, printed, heard, or thought, and usually without

much reflection on the fact that we are engaging with language as

3 BT, 155.4

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such. This seems to be part of the nature of language itself, to

aid in communication as efficiently and effortlessly as possible

so that the focus in conversation can be on the matter of the

“talk,” and not so much on the processes of word selection,

operation, or comprehensive genealogy of meaning. But

occasionally, one is confronted by haunting experiences with

language; for example: when, despite one’s best efforts, the

“right word” evades one’s grasp, just out of reach; when what

ought to be a familiar word suddenly unravels, appearing strange

and foreign; when in the midst of a dreaded ‘awkward silence.’

These everyday experiences with language for the most part go

unnoticed, but fleeting as they may be, what they have the

possibility to reveal upon reflection about our relationship to

language, and perhaps language’s own power, are tantamount to the

investigation of the being of language.

This inquiry into the being of language, keeping in mind

Heidegger’s emphasis on the importance of the everyday and

factical “encounters” of Dasein with language, will venture forth

from Heidegger’s own question, namely: “Is [language] an

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innerworldly useful thing at hand or does it have the mode of

being of Dasein, or neither of the two”?4 Ultimately, I plan to

navigate this question by distinguishing the way in which

language operates in two particular modes of speech identified by

Heidegger: the everyday phenomenon of discursive speech, and the

more elusive, mysteriously dubbed “poetic.” According to

Heidegger, both discourse and poetic speech are so constituted

for authentic worldly disclosure, but discourse, unlike the

poetic, has the tendency to fall prey to idle talk. I will argue

that it is precisely this tendency of discourse that necessitates

something like the poetic to keep open the possibility for

authentic shared disclosure via language that is not entirely

severed from the everyday. However, before doing so it will be

necessary to situate the problematic of language for Heidegger in

Being and Time. This will involve explicitly laying out the

difficulties inherent in grappling theoretically with the

relationship between being and language when faced with the

question of finding the mode of being that belongs to language in

general.4 BT, 160.

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I. A Preparatory Analysis: Situating the Problematic of Language within the Question of Being

The challenge here is apparent: how can we clarify

conceptually the problematic of language while we are at the same

time bound to language to do so, language which, as Heidegger

describes, is constantly in danger of uprooting itself?5 In

other words, is it even possible to seek the lost origin of being

within the ontological-existential significance of language in

general if we are forced to do so within the parameters of given,

actual language? To borrow from Heidegger’s reading of the poem

Das Wort by Stefan George, what this matter amounts to is the

feeling of groundlessness in experiencing “the lack of the word

for the word,” or the absence of “the name for the being of

language.”6 If our way of speaking has become so far out of

touch with the meaning of being, what hope do we have for

recovering it through a theoretical analysis of language? And if

such recovery is possible, could it have to offer us anything at

5 BT, 161.6 Robert Bernasconi, “‘Where the word is wanting’: George and Heidegger,” The Question of Language in Heidegger’s History of Being (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities, 1985)49-64; 53.

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all concerning the relationship between Dasein and language at

present?

Interconnected with the problem of our having come to forget

being is the fact that we have become distanced from the

ontological significance of the logos. “[I]n the decisive

beginnings of ancient ontology, the [logos] functioned as the

sole guide for the access to beings as they really are and for

the determination of the being of beings.”7 Over the course of

centuries of metaphysical tradition, however, the primordial ‘as’

of interpretation has been displaced by the ‘as’ of statement in

our language and in the way we communicate being-in-the-world

with others. In statement, our mode of communication amounts to

a “pointing out” and defining of what is already disclosed in

understanding, without necessarily approaching what is understood

in its totality of relevance.8 The apotheosis of logic for

Heidegger is testament to this shift. “The [logos] is

experienced as something objectively present and interpreted as

such, and the beings which it points out have the meaning of

7 BT, 149.8 BT, 151.

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objective presence as well.”9 The ball is red. The ‘is’ in any

predicative statement is already understood as objective presence

modifying something objectively present, and there is no longer

any question of being inherent in these kind of statements. The

meaning of being in all its possibilities is lost, collapsing

being into being-something, and the logos becomes primarily a

tool for judgment, a formalized means of relating, coordinating,

and calculating objects in space, as opposed to its more

primordial function as the site of showing, of sharing revealed

being-in-the-world.

This—that is, our way of speaking—is tantamount to our

forgetting the question of being. Language therefore amounts to

both our largest impediment to renewing the question of the

meaning of being, and our only hope for re-accessing it. The

difficulty in situating this mysterious relationship between

language and being—and the precariousness of what is at stake

within the nature of the relationship—is further complicated by

the necessity of figuring Dasein into the equation, for it is

9 BT, 155.9

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impossible to have any relationship between language and being

without Dasein. At the same time, being and language have a

semblance of being in some sense beyond Dasein, meaning that

Dasein cannot entirely appropriate or master either, because she

is constituted by them. Indeed, we can understand the main

difficulty in situating the problematic of language in Being and

Time as stemming from the inability to untangle language from its

triadic intimacy with Dasein and being in order to isolate and

definitively grasp each relationship. This is the difficulty

that resonates in Heidegger’s question.10

However, with any indication that we have somehow wandered

away from our ground, there is nevertheless the possibility that

we can navigate our way back to it; the approach will need to be

modified accordingly. This investigation does not aim to do the

currently impossible, to miraculously recover the word for word,

or find the name for the being of language that is lacking.

Furthermore, in this essay I will not attempt to grasp the

“essence of language,” or try my hand at linguistics. A more

10 “Is [language] an innerworldly useful thing at hand or does it have the mode of being of Dasein, or neither of the two” (BT, 160)?

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fruitful approach would be to phenomenologically trace via

Heidegger’s discussion of language where we seem to get lost with

respect to language due to our own relationship to it, and see what

this can or cannot reveal ontologically about the mode(s) of

being of language in general.

II. Parsing Heidegger’s Question: “Is [language] an innerworldlyuseful thing at hand or does it have the mode of being of Dasein, or neither of the two?”

Our first task in this inquiry consists in figuring out in

what way language can be said to ‘be’ a being in the world at all.

When Heidegger formulates his question, he has already presumed

an understanding of language as a being that exists in the world,

but how this has been worked out is not necessarily clear. First

of all, based on Heidegger’s previous discussion of world and the

type of beings in the world—namely, tools and other Dasein—the

quality that all worldly beings seem to share is objective

presence, or some kind of substantial being. It is not obvious

or apparent that language has this quality or property of beings

that would secure its position as a being in the world.

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However, it is not by chance or by mistake that Heidegger,

in contemplating the nature of the being that belongs to

language, has already made language into a being. An

understanding of language as being as such is dependent upon

Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the-world and language’s position

in relation to discourse as an existential of Dasein. Since

being-in-the-world is an a priori necessary constitution of

Dasein,11 Dasein always already finds herself and other beings

within the referential totality of contextures of significance

that constitute worldliness.12 That is, being-in-the-world, for

Dasein, means always already being immersed in a totality of

references, attuned to meaning understandable and hence able to

be articulated.

If discourse, the articulation of the intelligibility of thethere, is the primordial existential of disclosedness, and ifdisclosedness is primarily constituted by being-in-the-world, discoursemust also essentially have a specifically worldly mode of being.13

Discourse then, as an existential of Dasein, is necessarily

informed by being-in-the-world. The expression of discourse,

however, happens through language. Language here, as defined in 11 BT, 54.12 BT, 63-110.13BT, 155-6.

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relation to discourse, amounts to the totality of intelligible

and articulable significations put into words. “This totality of

words in which discourse has its own ‘worldly’ being [Sein],”

i.e. language, “can thus be found as an innerworldly being

[Seiendes] like something at hand.”14 Thus, the ability, and

indeed necessity, of figuring language as a being-in-the-world is

granted by the understanding of its relation to Dasein via

discourse; one can say accurately that language exists (as a being

in-the-world) because Dasein exists in the way that she does—a

priori thrown, disclosed, being-in-the-world—making something like

language possible as the “worldly” expression through “word-

things” of being-in-the-world.15

In Basic Problems of Phenomenology,16 Heidegger elucidates further

this point of thinking language as existent (although not, like

things, extant) in relation to Dasein’s existence, as well as the

misfortune inherent in missing this crucial conception.

14BT, 156.15 It is important to note that I do not mean the existence of language is secondary to Dasein’s, but rather, language and Dasein must be equiprimordial.16 Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. First Midland Book ed. and trans. Albert Hofstadter. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988).

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Language is not identical with the sum total of all the wordsprinted in a dictionary; instead, because language, so faras it is, is as the Dasein is, because it exists, it ishistorical. In speaking about something, the Dasein speaks itself out,expresses itself, as existent being-in-the-world, dwelling with and occupying itself withbeings. Only a being that exists, that is in the manner of being-in-the-world, understands that which is, beings. Insofar as whatis understood, something of the nature of significance-contexturesis articulated by means of this understanding. These contexturesare potentially expressible in words. It is not the case thatfirst there are the words, which are coined as signs for meanings,but just the reverse—it is from the Dasein which understandsitself and the world, from a significance-contexture alreadyunveiled, that a word accrues to each of these meanings. If wordsare grasped in terms of what they mean by their essential nature,they can never be taken as free-floating things. If we took themas such, we could not ask what connections they might have. 17

The danger in taking words as “free-floating things”—as signs

that are first given empty, so to speak, and then filled with

meaning—is that to do so severs language from the existential

structure that it is, for Heidegger, embedded in. To view words,

and hence language, as abstract, free-floating constructs renders

them arbitrarily derived in terms of contextual significance,

i.e. meaning. This prevents a fruitful, ontologically

meaningful analysis of Dasein’s relationship to language and of

language to being, because there would be no point to it.

Rather, Heidegger maintains that it is possible to find (and

indeed we should investigate) meaningful connections among these

17 Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 208-9.14

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significance-contextures within language because language,

insofar as it exists as Dasein exists, preserves a disclosed

understanding of being-in-the-world.

Through the reading of Heidegger thus far, one is able to

see how he makes the analysis of language as being both possible

and necessary to ground any further nuanced investigation of

Dasein, language, and being. Returning to the question posed in

the beginning of this paper,18 we see that Heidegger provides us

with three options. In the first option, the apparent handiness

of language for Dasein in the mode of discourse indeed suggests

that the being of language has the mode of an innerworldly being

like something at-hand. However, language is also responsible in

part for disclosing being-in-the-world, and, echoing the second

option, shares this mode of being with Dasein. Discourse, the

existential-ontological foundation of language [Sprache], grounds

the worldly character of [Sprache], while [Sprache] fulfills this

mode of being-there, revealing an equiprimordiality of Language

(broadly understood) and Dasein; this makes manifest that

18 “Is [language] an innerworldly useful thing at hand or does it have the mode of being of Dasein, or neither of the two” (BT, 160)?

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language exists as Dasein exists—i.e. a priori thrown, disclosed,

being-in-the-world—making possible the sharing of “worldly”

expression, through “word-things,” of there-being. In this

formulation, language preserves a disclosed understanding of

being-in-the-world while being the very tools of this preserving.

And as for Heidegger’s third option, if language is not

definitively one or the other, is it neither? Can it be both?

Rather than trying to isolate and definitively grasp each

relationship, however, a more fruitful approach would be to

phenomenologically trace via Heidegger’s discussion of language

in the everyday where we seem to get lost with respect to

language due to our own relationship to it, and see what this can

reveal ontologically about the mode(s) of being of language.

III. Language in the Everyday: Discourse and Idle Talk

In Dasein’s circumspective everyday dealings with the world,

language is the means of expression and communication. For

Heidegger, what lies at the existential-ontological root of

language is discourse, in which “The totality of significations

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of intelligibility is put into words [kommt zu Wort].”19 When one

conceives of language in this way, that is, in strict relation to

discourse, these components of language, words, become word-tools

for Dasein insofar as they are at-hand as the means of disclosure

via discourse; words are handy and at-hand for discourse.

Analyzing language in this way, Heidegger draws a parallel with

his previous determination of innerworldly beings as “useful

things” with the kind of Being of handiness.20 However,

something Heidegger does not explore is the possibility for

language, like things, to be un-handy in the modes of

conspicuousness, obstinacy, or obtrusiveness. If Heidegger

begins to draw the parallel between language and innerworldly

beings in terms of their handiness, then we owe it to a possible

disclosure of the Being of language to continue in this current

of thought.

But before we ask whether or not, or how, language can

become conspicuous, we must first see if language is for the most

part inconspicuous, if it has that character of the useful thing

19 BT, 156.20 BT, 66-72.

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to “withdraw, so to speak, in its character of handiness in order

to be really handy.”21 This matter was already addressed in some

detail in the introduction to this paper; the extent to which one

is confronted by language is nearly constant, and even when

engaged in conversation, one is not initially busy with language

itself, but the talk and what is being talked about.22 In our

functioning everydayness, words are meant to be effortlessly

sublimated by our cognitive understanding and not get in the way

of our heedful dealings but facilitate them, dealings which are

usually not about language but about something else. We only pay

attention to language when it somehow becomes problematic for us:

when we are at a loss for words, language having escaped us, or

can’t find the “right” one to say what we mean, or come across a

word we do not understand.23 Language might not necessarily be

able to “break” the way that a hammer might break, but language,

like the useful thing, seems to be able to be discovered in modes

of conspicuousness, obstinacy, and obtrusiveness in this sense.

21 BT, 69.22 “What everyday dealings are initially busy with is not tools themselves, but the work” (BT, 69).23 Or, my personal favorite, when you repeat a word so much that it loses all resemblance to itself and what it signifies.

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Oddly enough however, it can be argued that language is for

the most part obstinate and without our noticing it. This is

best shown in the phenomenon of “idle talk,” a mode of Dasein in

being-with-others to “pass on” talk that is heard without really

“getting to the bottom” of what the talk is about. Idle talk is

indicative of Dasein’s absorption in the world as a tendency to

take a disclosed understanding of things for granted due to her

always already being-with them and situated average

intelligibility of them. This attitude is mirrored in the way

that “language itself already gives a certain explanation of the

world, [and so] it is in itself understandable,” thus enabling a

mode of discursive speech that is limited to an average

understanding of the talk itself, and does not get past the talk

to reach toward the things in a way that might provide the

opportunity for an authentic disclosive relationship to being and

beings.24 In idle talk, language is obstinate because it is “not

missing at all and not unusable, but ‘gets in the way’ of taking

24 Magda King, A Guide to Heidegger's Being and Time. Ed. John Llewelyn (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001) 84.

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care of things.”25 Interestingly enough, language seems to get in

the way of itself in idle talk; language, whose existential-

ontological foundation is disclosedness (via discourse), is

sometimes the very obstacle to authentic disclosure by virtue of

its already equipped meaning.

But the question remains: is this obstinacy of language in

idle talk primarily the fault of language’s own constitution, or

is it perhaps a consequence of a determination of language upon

which discourse rests? That is, is the situated average

understanding of language implicit in discourse as an

innerworldly being in the mode of handiness—handy for discourse—

responsible for creating an impediment for Dasein? What has been

clarified thus far concerning the problematic of language is

this: that language should be thought of as being-in-the-world;

that language can be found as an innerworldly being like

something at hand in relation to discourse; that language, in

idle talk, has the possibility of uprooting itself from its

25 BT, 73. N.B.: Heidegger does not make the claim that language is obstinate. In this case I quoted Heidegger’s definition of obstinacy, inserting it into my own argument about language.

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existential-ontological foundation of disclosedness. While the

particular mode of being that belongs to language remains

unclear, the implication here is that there is a connection

between Dasein treating language as appropriated equipment in

discourse, and discourse’s falling prey to idle talk, a

phenomenon in which an average understanding of the meaning of

words and the being of beings gets in the way of discourse’s aim

of authentic disclosure. However, this observed “failure” of

language─failure in the sense of the sedimentation of language in

idle talk being an obstacle within language for its capacity to

reveal─can actually serve to disclose more about the being of

language and provide the opportunity for a deeper, more profound

revealing.

This ability of language to conceal in idle talk, to veil

completely or disclose inauthentically, is not a deficiency on

the part of language; it must be a direct result of the type of

relation to language inherent in discourse, namely, that of the

close relation of discourse to statement [Aussage] as a

derivative mode of interpretation. In the section on Dasein and

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discourse in Being and Time, Heidegger draws the connections

between discourse, intelligibility, interpretation, and

statement. Constitutive with meaning, “[i]ntelligibility is also

always already articulated before its appropriative

interpretation. Discourse is the articulation of

intelligibility. Thus it already lies at the basis of

interpretation and statement.”26 In other words, discourse is

the mode of appropriative interpretation that always already lies

at the basis of the statement. Statement, for Heidegger, is a

derivative mode of the primordial act of interpretation. Whereas

the primordial, hermeneutic “as” of interpretation involves

heedful circumspection and a discovering kind of seeing, the

apophantic “as” of statement is akin to a determination of

objective presence, since it merely “points” to that which

already has been shown to be in such and such a way.

“Determining does not first discover, but as a mode of pointing

out initially limits seeing precisely to what shows

itself─hammer─as such, in order to manifest explicitly what is

manifest in its determinacy through, the explicit limitation of 26 BT, 155.

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looking.”27 Since discourse is the structure in which

intelligibility has always already been articulated and hence

interpreted, and the mode of this interpretation is an already

established and hence limited seeing, meaning has a tendency to

become fixed and locked in discursive speech, and language

becomes sedimented.

This is the extent of the path from discourse to idle talk,

and it is now clear that idle talk is a combined result of

discourse’s own constitution and the way in which Dasein in

everyday discursive speech appropriates language in an

instrumental way, as a mere tool for communication. Returning to

the primary quote from Heidegger which spurred this

investigation,28 this suggests that there is more to the being of

language than being strictly in the mode of an innerworldly thing

at-hand, since when Dasein treats language solely in this way,

she runs into the problem of becoming bogged down in an

inauthentic relationship to disclosure of being-in-the-world.

27 BT, 150.28 “Is [language] an innerworldly useful thing at hand or does it have the mode of being of Dasein, or neither of the two?” (BT, 160)

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This revelation does more than tell us what the being of language

is not, it indicates the importance of figuring how Dasein’s

relationship to language functions as part and parcel of the being of

language. Although it originally seemed in idle talk—and other

instances of language’s obstinacy—that language was failing with

respect to its capacity to reveal, it is now apparent that it is

Dasein who errs with respect to language. Since it has been

revealed to us how language has its own capacity to reveal or

conceal—in the sense of functioning to aid in Dasein’s discovery

of being-in-the-world and sustain authentic or inauthentic shared

relations toward being-in-the-world—there is a new urgency to

reframe the problematic of the being of language, rendering

language not only as a being in the world, but also as a being-

towards being.29

IV. The Experience of No-thingness: Silence and Reticence

The perceived “failure” of language belongs to its being.

In other words, built into the structure of the being of language

is a profound showing-forth in its “failure.” Heidegger

29 “Even hearsay is a being-in-the-world and a being toward what is heard” (BT,150).

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indicates this opportunity of showing-forth in language’s

“absence” when he elucidates the importance of listening and

silence for authentic and rich disclosedness of being-in-the-

world:

[T]alking at great length about something covers things over andbrings what is understood into an illusory clarity, that is, theunintelligibility of the trivial…Reticence articulates theintelligibility of Dasein so primordially that it gives rise to agenuine potentiality for hearing and to a being-with-one-anotherthat is transparent.30

Reticent silence, then, as a reserved, holding-back from saying,

is also a mode of being of language. Not only this, but at a

certain level it is regarded by Heidegger as more primordial than

speech in the way that it engenders genuine being-with-one-

another such that authentic shared disclosedness of being-in-the-

world is possible. Moreover, reticence has the ability to do so

even when speech fails in this respect. Given this articulation

of reticence, it becomes important to carefully examine the

dynamics of speech and reticence, of the capacity for language to

disclose even when it seems absent, and what this type of

disclosure can reveal about the being of language in general. In

order to do so, we should turn to what is arguably the most 30 BT, 159.

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powerful manifestation of language as reticence, and that is in

the phenomenon of anxiety [Angst] and the silence that

accompanies this unworlding of being-in-the-world.

Silence in anxiety serves as an indication that language can

have the mode of being both of a worldly being and a being-

towards being-in-the-world. Just as dread detaches Dasein from

her immersion in beings in the world to return her to herself, in

the accompanying silence Dasein finds that words fail her. As a

worldly being, the word falls away—like the rest of innerworldly

beings—to silence; there is no thinking, judging, or positing in

Angst. At the same time, this silence holds Dasein in a specific

mode of being-towards being-in-the-world. In this moment, we do

not find Dasein without language, for as part of her constitution,

language can never simply leave Dasein. Rather, silence directs

her away from the chatter of the everyday in which she is

immersed, and subsequently away from the security offered by

language in an inauthentic mode of being-in-the-world.31 31 Language offers security to Dasein in the sense that by having a name for the thing, Dasein feels that she can firmly grasp that thing in understanding.Dasein feels at home in language; language feels even closer to Dasein than the rest of the world. Since given, actual language is already built into a system of contextures of meaning and reference, having the word for a thing

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However, because words fall away, the absence of every-

thing, or the presence of no-thing-ness, has the ability to come

to the fore. Robert Bernasconi’s “Where the Word is Wanting,” a

chapter from his book The Question of Language in Heidegger’s History of Being,

provides this compelling account of nothingness, drawing from

Heidegger’s lecture “What is Metaphysics?” and Heidegger’s

interpretation of Stefan George’s poem Das Wort. Two key points

raised in Bernasconi’s discussion are especially relevant within

the purview of this paper. First, quoting Heidegger: “‘Because

beings as a whole slip away, so that just the nothing crowds

round, in the face of anxiety all utterance of the ‘is’ falls

silent.’… [The] nothing does not arise out of beings as a whole;

it is always already there, though concealed.”32 Considered as

such, nothingness is the inevitable and the inescapable which

compulsive chatter attempts to deny. Second, Bernasconi reminds

us that for Heidegger it is not what can be said about anxiety

that is the purpose of the lecture, but rather how anxiety serves

can come to substitute for understanding the thing in its relation to being-in-the-world. With the uncanniness—unheimlichkeit—of anxiety, however, Dasein loses her ability to maintain this inauthentic relationship to being, confronted by the more primordial source of speaking, silence.32 Bernasconi, 54.

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as a reference to the development of the question of being, and

“only the experience of anxiety allows us to entertain what is said

there.”33 This ability of silence to reveal what words cannot—

i.e. the primordiality of the nothingness that is the source

authentic speech—grounds the necessity of the experience for this

revealing.

The nothingness that comes to the fore in the silence of

anxiety is, for lack of a better word, the experience of being.34 That

this experience is necessarily without words is testament to the

power of reticence for revealing being via language. This seems

to be the most primordial connection that language shares with

being, rendering silence the way that language preserves the

meaning of being for Dasein. Regarded in this way, language in

its own mode(s) of being is that which reveals being. If nothing

else, this knowledge should at least prompt us to consider how

our relationship to language has changed—and must change—in the

course of the investigation.

33 Ibid., 55.34 Ibid., 53.

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While we have been chasing the mode of being that belongs to

language, we have taken a primarily objective, theoretical stance

in order to learn something about language. However, it becomes

clear that only in the experience of language as silence, a

phenomenon in which language literally tells us no-thing, is the

most primordial connection of language to being revealed. In

Bernasconi’s reading, George’s poet undergoes a similar

experience with regard to language; “The renunciation that the

poet learns arises from his entrance into the realm of the

unsayable. The source is silent…He did not learn about language;

the poet is not a philosopher of language. He learns to speak

differently.”35 Thus there is a transformation of our own

relationship to language that must take place in order to touch

upon this deep connection of language to being, a transformation

that is at the same time enabled by a confrontation with our

inadequate, inauthentic stance towards language.

Silence enables Dasein, like George’s poet, to learn the

renunciation of having words under her control.36 In silence, 35 Ibid., 53.36 “The renunciation that the poet learns arises from his entrance into the realm of the unsayable. The source is silent…” (Bernasconi, 53).

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Dasein must listen to the call from being, and in this call, she

is able to hear the language of being in a way that fallenness

prevented. This spurs a turning for Dasein, away from standing

in inauthenticity with language reductively understood in idle

talk, and towards the realization that man is not the shaper and

master of language, but language the master of man. Silence,

therefore, is part of the way that language preserves the meaning

of being for Dasein. This turning, however, does not end with

silence. It continues into the newfound authentic response to the

call from being. This brings us, finally, to a discussion of

what Heidegger means by the “poetic.”

V. The Disclosing of Existence: the “Poetic”

The “poetic” only makes one appearance in Being and Time, when

Heidegger states that: “The communication of the existential

possibilities of attunement, that is, the disclosing of

existence, can become the true aim of ‘poetic’ speech.”37 This

singular mention of the “poetic” is intriguing, coming about

suddenly and then enduring no further elaboration in Being & Time,

37 BT, 157.30

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though it will be a main subject in the later Heidegger. But for

the purposes of this project, I am interested in seeing where the

poetic fits with this cyclical relationship of Dasein, being, and

language that is unfolding before us in Heidegger’s thinking,

before his interest in the poet-ic turns explicitly to poet-ry.

First, Heidegger’s choice of putting quotation marks around

the “poetic” indicates that the poetic is not necessarily equal

or limited to poetry. Rather, the poetic is representative of a

kind of thinking and speaking inherent in poetry that has an

authentic relationship to existential disclosedness. In Inflected

Language: Toward a Hermeneutics of Nearness, Krzysztof Ziarek works

within the context of the full spectrum of Heidegger’s work to

elaborate on the significance of the poetic:

In the context of the procedure Heidegger adapts with respect toother metaphysical concepts, for example, language,interpretation, mood, etc., one can assume that poetry as wellmust be reinterpreted within the perspective of Being, and thatdichtende will mark the ‘esse-ntial’ dimension of language...[T]heessence of language, in the active sense with which Heideggerinvests Wesen, can be disclosed only through and as the poetic.38

38 Krzysztof Ziarek, Inflected Language: Toward A Hermeneutics of Nearness (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994) 24.

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Ziarek’s insight here is invaluable for interpreting what we

might take Heidegger to mean by the poetic as he calls it in

Being and Time. The close connection of the poetic with the

essence of language and unconcealment suggests the importance of

the role that poetic language plays in the being of language; at

the very least, there is the suggestion that the conception of

language employed by discourse—language as an innerworldly thing

like something at-hand—is incomplete because it covers over

language’s own ability to disclose, and instead renders it to

being a mere through-which disclosure happens indirectly (like

the empty word-symbols which are manipulated or filled with

meaning at will).

So, why has the poetic been set apart from discourse by

Heidegger? Discourse is an existential of Dasein, the

ontological foundation of which is Dasein’s possibility for

shared authentic worldly disclosedness. However, when discourse

regresses into idle talk, an authentic connection to being

through language becomes compromised. Because this is

necessarily always already a possibility for Dasein by virtue of

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its fundamental thrownness and falling prey, there must be a way

out that also belongs to Dasein in order to come back to

authentic shared worldly disclosure. We can call poetic Dasein’s

breaking out of an inauthentic relationship to language, and its

witnessing the power of language to disclose being (even in

silence). Poetic is also the name for Dasein’s coming to stand

resolutely in her transformed understanding of language.

Emerging forth from Dasein’s everyday dealings when words fail to

reveal her primordial dwelling with being in language, and the

possibilities for sharing authentic unconcealedness, the poetic

straddles the ontic and ontological. As such, it can be said

that the being of language, and the language of being, can be

disclosed only through and as the poetic.

Conclusion

To summarize, in discourse, Dasein stands in relation to

language as a worker to her tools, manipulating them to suit the

demands of her work. Here, the being of language appears/is

present in handiness. In this relationship, Dasein believes that

she is the primary source for the disclosing of beings in the 33

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world, and in doing so she takes for granted the existential-

ontological structure of language that makes disclosure possible

at all. When Dasein’s disregard for care in speaking runs

parallel to an overestimation of her understanding of beings in

the world, idle talk is inevitable. The only thing that seems to

halt this degeneration is silence, a mode of language that

presents in its “absence” the no-thingness that is the experience

of being. With this un-worlding (and un-wording) comes a

newfound, revitalized understanding of being-in-the-world.

Turning back to Bernasconi, “One might restate the movement of

the poem Das Wort as that of a passage from the paradigm of the

‘right word’ for something toward a deeper understanding of

poetic saying.”39 The “poetic” is what denotes not only the

originary saying that is in response to the call from being heard

in silence, but that which by and through it Dasein returns to

authenticity within discursive speech, until this movement

reaches the point where the break again becomes necessary.

Situated in this way, we should regard the problematic of

language in Being and Time as a whole, as a kind of cycle, and the 39 Bernasconi, 52.

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poetic as the fulcrum. By and through the scope of the poetic,

the being of language and the language of being can be seen as

one.40

40 I have only just skimmed the surface of the poetic in this paper. There are countless other paths that call to be taken to enrich this discussion, forexample, the poetic in connection to witnessing, attestation, repetition, listening, and originary saying. Heidegger does venture down these paths, andmany answers are to be found in his later work. But for the purpose of what Iwish to contribute with this discussion—which is to see how Heidegger has already begun to formulate the importance of the poetic in BT—I find Heidegger’s formulation of reticence compelling.

In discussing the essential possibilities for discourse, Heidegger emphasizes the importance of reticence for authentic and rich disclosedness ofbeing-in-the-world: “Reticence articulates the intelligibility of Dasein so primordially that it gives rise to a genuine potentiality for hearing and to abeing-with-one-another that is transparent” (BT, 159). But the manner in whichreticence articulates is stillness, in Dasein’s holding back from saying while “in command of an authentic and rich disclosedness of itself” (BT, 155). AndI wonder, is it the job of the poet, not just to speak originary saying, but also to know when to speak, and when to hold reticent, steadfast in the language of being? And is this reticence precisely what characterizes Heidegger in his remark about the poetic in BT?

This question unfolds on the horizon of Heidegger’s work and its infamous “turn” (Kehre). By some Heidegger scholars, the turn has been characterized as a shift from “doing” to “dwelling.” But in witnessing this reticence in conjunction with the poetic already in BT, we can perhaps find another path down which the poetic leads, namely, the continuity of dwelling (and doing) in Heidegger’s early and late writings.

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Works Cited

Bernasconi, Robert. “‘Where the word is wanting’: George and Heidegger,” The Question of Language in Heidegger’s History of Being, 49-64. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities, 1985.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, edited by Dennis J. Schmidt, translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: SUNY Press, 2010.

———. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988.

King, Magda. A Guide to Heidegger's Being and Time. Edited by John Llewelyn. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001.

Stein, Gertrude. Tender Buttons. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1997.

Ziarek, Krzysztof. Inflected Language: Toward A Hermeneutics of Nearness. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994.

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