Heidegger and Language

FOUR The Secret Homeland of Speech: Heidegger on Language, 1933–1934

63 four The Secret Homeland of Speech: Heidegger on Language, 1933–1934 Richard Polt I keep silent in my thinking—not just since 1927, since the publication of Being and Time, but in that book itself, and constantly before then.1 In the fall of 1933, Professor and Rector Martin Heidegger announces to his students that he has overturned his former understanding of language and silence. Whereas Being and Time described speaking and keeping silent as two modes of discourse, Heidegger now sees speech and discourse themselves as founded on a deep silence in which the world is disclosed. Heidegger’s next course, his first after stepping down as rector, is explicitly devoted to “logic as the question concerning the essence of language,” which he links to the essence of the Volk. But many issues here remain implicit and unspoken. In particular, Heidegger draws no connections between his reflections on silence in the first lecture-course and his reflections on community in the second. As regards the political dimension of silence, Heidegger keeps silent. Howtellingisthissilence?CanwerevealsomeofwhatHeideggerkeeps concealed?Isitanaccidentthatsilencegainsimportanceforhimjustwhen he is speaking out publicly to support and interpret the Nazi revolution, yet experiencing friction with elements of the new regime? A short piece that Heidegger wrote for an audience beyond the confines of academia can help usgainsomeinsightintotheHeideggerianpoliticsofsilence—which,Iwill argue, suffers from a fatal misunderstanding of the political. Nevertheless, Heidegger’s inquiries into language from this period remain pertinent and provocative, as we can see when we ask his questions in new contexts. 64 · richard polt Discourse, Language, and Silence in Being and Time Being and Time presents discourse (Rede) as a fundamental characteristic of Dasein. Discourse is the tendency of Dasein’s being-in-the-world to get articulated, in the root sense of developing limbs and joints. Our lives and environs emerge as possessing a certain physiognomy: certain features are more rigid than others, certain developments tend to occur along certain lines, and a n etwork of significance and purpose—a world—becomes apparent to us in our operations. As we do things, things become meaningful articles in an articulated whole. Discourse is the basis of language, because “to significations, words accrue” (SZ 161)2 : language as we ordinarily think of it, a vocabulary and a grammar, responds to the exigencies of the articulation of being-in-theworld .If,aswesay,itistheresponsibilityoflanguagetocuttheworldalong its joints, then language is indebted to the jointure or articulation that discourse achieves. The phenomenon of keeping silent interests Heidegger here in part because,likemanynegativeor“deficient”phenomena,itpointstoadeeper structure, serving as an exception that proves the rule. Both language and silence manifest a more fundamental phenomenon: discourse. We ordinarily oppose speech to silence, but Heidegger emphasizes that both can besignificant.Infact,silencecanoftensaymore(SZ164).Thinkofa refusal to answer, a discreet omission, a pregnant pause, a delayed reply. In context ,thesetellingsilencescanbehighlyrevealing—theycanbeappropriate ways to cut a situation along its joints. “Reticence” can be a deep form of communicationwithothers(SZ165)andevenwithoneself—forone’sown conscience addresses one silently (SZ 277). Because Dasein is being-with, discourse and language necessarily have public and communal dimensions. The interpersonal articulation of the world normally takes the form of “idle talk,” the everyday chatter that reinforces truisms (SZ §35). However, Heidegger hints at a deeper political role that language might play: Being and Time’s brief but crucial exploration of the ontological basis of authentic politics, section 74, proposes that the people must discover the destiny of a new generation through “communicating” and “struggling” (SZ 384). Such communication could not be idle talk; it would have to break new ground. The secret homeland of speech · 65 Even though Being and Time has little to say about the political dimension of language, Heidegger had addressed the issue in earlier texts, such as his 1924 lectures on Aristotle.3 When he embarks on his own political venture, Heidegger returns to the relation between language and community with renewed passion. Winter Semester 1933–1934: Silence as the Basis of Language In his lecture-course of winter semester 1933–1934, On the Essence of Truth, Heidegger revisits his 1931–1932 analysis of truth in Plato.4 As a preface to this analysis, he provokes us to inquire into truth and being with an interpretation of Heraclitus’s polemos fragment and a significant reflection on language, whose main points we will now consider. We are open to beings as such and as a whole, Heidegger claims, because we...