Language, Heidegger (14 February 2024; Heidegger)

    In this essay, I will explain Heidegger’s approach to language according to the first of his “The Nature of Language” lectures. To do so, I’ll also draw upon my lecture notes and from “The Way to Language.” First, I’ll explicate key concepts of Heidegger’s that must be understood prior to understanding his concept of language. Then, I’ll explore the intricacies of the account he gives, such as the necessity of his usage of middle voice, the notion of withdrawal, the notion of “the word,” and so on. Finally, I’ll juxtapose Heidegger’s approach to language with traditional metaphysical and metalinguistic approaches in order to develop a more relational understanding of his thinking.

Being is essential to understanding language as Heidegger presents it. Dasein, or being in the world, is what it is to be. Seindes, beings, or what I think of how a thing is, is what we find in Dasein; we find ourselves “being there” with other seindes. Our sense of being emerges as seindes stand in relation to one another, and we understand our position in the world in this relational sense. In “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” Heidegger writes how the banks of a river do not emerge as banks until the bridge which connects them is constructed (Poetry 354). Mechanistic thinkers, such as Descartes who open a dualistic hierarchy of subject-object thinking, are only able to draw that conclusion once they always already are being in the world, in the midst of things.

In the first few sentences of his lecture series, he announces his intent to bring us “face to face with a possibility of undergoing an experience with language… When we talk of undergoing an experience, we mean specifically that the experience is not of our own making… it is something that comes to pass” (On 57). Language is presented as something we must undergo or endure, presenting a certain notion of an involuntary experience with language, something that does not come from us. This “undergoing” makes it clear that, in an experience with language, it is the master of us, rather than the other way around. If Heidegger is successful in bringing us face to face with this experience, then we may find “the proper abode of [our] existence in language,” in which case “an experience we undergo with language will touch the innermost nexus of our existence” (On 57). To successfully undergo this experience is to have an experience with being. The proper abode of our existence is in language; in other words, language is the house of being. Being happens through language, and it has this moment of opening up our world to us. He reinforces this notion later in the first lecture, writing, “Language is the house of Being” (On 63).

As we consider the essence of language, it’s important we avoid thinking of it as we may typically think of the nature of things, as doing so tends to create a subject-object distinction. Instead, Heidegger speaks using middle voice; for example, rather than saying, “Fido threw the ball,” you’d say, “the ball is thrown.” In the text, he says his approach to language has nothing to do with the what of language, as that is a categorically incorrect question, but rather the how or that. Speaking of language with the middle voice enables us to consider it as a happening, the way it comes to pass. Otherwise, we may conceive of language as a tool, something which we may apply predicates to, something to be defined, rather than being with it. When we separate language from being, not in the sense of withdrawal, but in a way of alienation and removal. For Heidegger, the moment you conceive language in this way, you have lost it (On 75).

The undergoing we endure with language sounds like a passive experience, in which we lack any sort of agency. However, our role is not entirely that of a bystander. Language is not just something passive that we must wait for to come to us. We must latch on to the hint, to the attunement that language Says to us, but there is a certain primacy here in the form of language. Saying, or sage, is not saying or speaking in the sense that first comes to mind of verbal or even thought speech. In his lecture “The Way to Language,” Heidegger says, “The essential being of language is Saying as Showing” (On 123). Language comes to us by way of Saying. The old German sagen means to show, to appear, to let be seen and heard. Saying here, a proper noun, is how language reveals being. In speaking, we are inherently performing the act of listening; we hear the words before we say them, and it is from Saying that we know which word is appropriate in a certain situation. In this way, we let language say its Saying to us (On 124), and as we speak, we must also listen. Contained within this act is all the perception and conception of our place in the cosmos, granting us a sense of being. 

We find ourselves always already in a relation with language; for if we find ourselves always already in the world in being, emerging through language, we must also always be in proximity with language. However, the way in which we are with language in everyday life is like a hollow husk of Heidegger’s interpretation of language. We are only able to speak our everyday concerns, considering language as a tool because it doesn’t bring itself to language, and instead holds itself back (On 59). Language “speaks itself as language… when we cannot find the right word for something that concerns us,” and in doing so, “we leave unspoken what we have in mind and… undergo moments in which language itself has distantly and fleetingly touched us with its essential being” (On 59). It is only where the word breaks off that we may be touched by language. When you’re in conversation with someone and you know what you’re trying to say, but the word escapes you, is precisely when language speaks itself as language. We are letting language say its Saying to us, in knowing what we’re trying to say, without being able to put a word to it.

Like many other Heideggarian terms, word or “the word,” has little to do with words. Words in this instance do indeed mean everyday words, such as the ones you’re reading now. Heidegger introduces “the word” using Stephan George’s poem, “The Word.” Poetry is essential to Heidegger’s approach to language; through the poet, we can hear what Saying says of being (On 129). He focuses intently on the poem's last stanza, which reads, “So I renounced and sadly see: Where word breaks off no thing may be” (On 60). From this, he deduces that only “where the word for the thing has been found is the thing a thing…. no thing is where the word, that is, the name is lacking. The word alone gives being to the thing” (On 62). This approach to language is very much counter to traditional approaches, which argue that the thing comes into being before the word; for how could a word bring a thing into being? Heidegger says that if the “hurry,” the drive to create this piece of wordless technology did not first exist and “[bespeak] man and order him at its call… there would be no sputnik” (On 62). The ‘hurry’ that bespoke man is a mode of language. Saying said to man, challenged him, called him even, to create sputnik. And thus, when Sputnik was born, Sputnik was already in language. Not as a word (in the traditional sense) tacked on to the satellite, but as a representation, as an idea, as something already in being that gave itself to us. The word (in the traditional sense) that we then tacked on is a representation of sputniks' distinction from the rest of the world, something distinct in our relational experience of being.

Heidegger then refines his interpretation of ‘the word’, saying that “something is only where the appropriate and therefore competent word names a thing as being, and so establishes the given being as a being” (On 63), leading him to the conclusion that, “The being of anything that is resides in the word” (On 63). So, when you enter into a relationship in conversation where something wants to come up but you cannot find the words, the “renunciation” of the poet is the acceptance of that moment. The experience of language, of coming to word, is clear here; a lack of word indicates an experience with being. 

As with language, “the word” exists in pre-linguistic experiencessocieties. For example, there is a pre-linguistic traveler who is walking through a forest, sees a tree, and then travels to an open desert, where there are no trees. Without words being conceived, the poet is still able to experience being through the tree. They remember the image of the tree, recognize it as a tree, something distinct from the rest of its surroundings; this is what is meant by “the word.” Thus, the word itself is the relation, thatand holds everything forth into being. When speaking,In linguistic society, we do this with words. If I ask you to envision “hand,” language has already happened, and the image is brought to you through language.

Traditional approaches to language take very different approaches to language than Heidegger does. While analytic philosophers and metalinguists explore the etymology of words to learn about us, Heidegger is more interested in the nature of language itself, and more specifically an experience with language. To Heidegger, what traditional approaches do is not necessarily wrong (On 59), but it is an abstraction from language, which always already is. One might ordinarily approach words as the master of them, under the impression that we name things in the world around ourselves; this naming can only take place once language has already said its Saying to us, distinguishing one thing from another, as we always already experience being. Words in this way are an expression of language, rather than words themselves being language. The terms explained in this paper, such as “the word,” the Saying of language, shed light on the essence of language, on the language of essence. He approaches language with poetry to show how we may get closer to having the elusive experience with language, something traditional approaches do not do. His approach is not designed to break down language, but to bring us as close to it as possible.

Works Cited

Heidegger, Martin, and Albert Hofstadter. Poetry, Language, Thought. Harper & Row, 1975.

Heidegger, Martin, et al. On the Way to Language. Harper and Row, 1982.