Heidegger And The Limits Of Language,12.pdf

Articles HEIDEGGER AND THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE

TONY O'CONNOR University College, Cork

Merleau-Ponty defines the philosophical enterprise in terms of the emergence and establishment of critical consciousness. By the term 'critical consciousness' he means not the application of sedimented knowledge in the sense of a particular body of knowledge, but the vigilance which continually attends to the question of the source of all knowledge. 1 This vigilance involves the assertion of a dialectic of reciprocal implication between sedimented knowledge, on the one hand, and the dynamism of the interpreting consciousness, on the other. It breaks with a view of thought that simply follows a pre-established pathway in favour of an approach in which thought discovers itself and its meaning only in terms of an appreciation of the foundation of its temporal emergence. Here we find an operative definition of philosophy as historical enterprise. As critical theory, philosophy has the task of considering history as an encompassing project that arises from attempts by individuals to control their environments, to appropriate that control, and the techniques that lend it assistance. Within this horizon truth is to be viewed as situated event. Hence to assess the truth of statements we must attend to the stage from which they arise, to the express content of what is said, as well as to the place of the statement within the total context that constitutes its latent meaning. On this view man is essentially a questioner, whose problematic situated character he continually seeks to understand. Man, as incarnate appropriating event, is both self-mediative, and constitutive of his environment. Hence the question arises once again: what leads from spontaneous mediation or assertion to philosophic reflection on this spontaneity? For phenomenology, the question of the structure and meaning of language occurs within a context set by this problem. Its elaboration involves a dynamic notion of selfhood as emergent through a living speech which occurs in a conversational context. Man is born into a world of constituted language which is socially transmitted and subjectively learned. Man and World 14:3-14 (1981) 0025-1534/81/0141-0003 $01.80. 9 1981 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers by, The Hague. Printed in the Netherlands.

4 Hence man is never the isolated master of his speaking activity. On the contrary, meaning has a history in the speech of individuals, a meaning which integrates and encompasses the past, yet one which can go beyond the past by making it the express object of critical questions. Now we see that the dialectical interplay between sedimented meaning (tradition) and its representation and extension (speaking), advocated by Merleau-Ponty, is conversational in structure. Interlocutors are situated in a shared activity of which no one in particular is the creator. Language, therefore, is charged with a multiplicity of meanings, and nuances of meaning, which are seized primarily by operating within the context in which meaning has its reference. Following Heidegger the problem of language as the problem of reflection is worked out in the attempt to think the self-disclosure of Being. In other words the problem of language, as indeed any problem if it is to be philosophical, must always include the question of foundation of meaning. Being is the horizon of the intelligibility of the world, insofar as this intelligibility always is already present in the language of a tradition, and is accepted by man in his foundational thinking. This horizon of intelligibility is not something static; rather, it is a historical development as the coming-to-presence of truth, in which Being reveals entities, and simultaneously hides itself in virtue of the very fact that it reveals. Heidegger's treatment of this problem, however, is not completely straightforward. A difficulty with the role of Dasein as self-transcending event, and as elaborated in Being and Time, provides much of the focus for his later endeavours to grapple with a thinking that is truly foundational. From the beginning his problematic concerns the meaning of ground, foundation, or origin of meaning. His attempted break with the metaphysical tradition on this issue initially took the form of the assertion of the reciprocity between the forgotten ground (Being) and the selfretrieving inquirer (Dasein), whose own mode of Being can be revealed in the course of the inquiry into ground. Here we discover the circularity of inquiry and its ground. On the one hand, the question of the meaning of Being involves the question of inquiry as a mode of Being; on the other hand, inquiry as self-referential event occurs only in relation to the question of Being. This effort to break with the representationalism of the metaphysical tradition, and its calculable source, fails. The focus upon the questionanswer structure of the event of inquiry carries the implication that all phenomena are open to understanding. This occurs insofar as Dasein and Being are identified, for ontology concerns the very Being of man. The passage from implicit to explicit understanding both constitutes the drama of human existence, and is ontology. Hence a study of man leads to a discovery of the interior horizon in which the problem of Being is posed.

This attention to the facticity of temporal existence, where the grasp of Being occurs, is such that truth is viewed as the understanding of Being. Here two problems arise. Insofar as it is argued that Dasein is the place where the grasp of Being occurs, and which establishes the self-identity of Dasein, the impression is given that the clearing of Being is somehow produced by the resolute Dasein itself. Further, not only is the question of Being improperly addressed, but also the question of how Dasein belongs to the truth of Being is inadequately posed, because Dasein as timing event is not seen in the light of Being alone. Granted that the horizon-transcendence model used in Being and Time is to be rejected, two questions arise: how to speak of a ground, or horizon, not present in the mode of object? In other words, what lets the horizon be? Secondly, how does this ground, as yet not experienced reflectively, influence the relationship of Being and human existence? Our problem about the limits of language arises within a context delineated by these two problems. An initial clue toward its elaboration comes from Heidegger's early account of temporality as 'primordial time'. 2 Temporality comes to presence as self-giving event. Hence as presencing time is Being. The dimensionality of time is not the extending of an ecstatic horizon by Dasein, but is the very clearing of Being. In his later work Heidegger is not content merely to assert the reciprocal implication of time and Being, for these in their reciprocity need an 'appropriating event' to permit their historical manifestation. He argues in Identity and Difference that such an appropriating event cannot be the selfretrieving Dasein alone; rather, the question of horizon, as the presence of an identity, is to be viewed in terms of a 'belonging together' of man and Being. 3 Now it seems that Heidegger is faced once again with his earlier problem: how to speak about this belonging-together? An adequate answer cannot establish connections in terms of man alone, in terms of Being alone, or in terms of the intertwining of both. For such an answer would still be representationalist, in the sense of offering, even in some primitive way, an axiomatic starting point, which the notion of reason always carries. The articulation of the belonging-together of man and Being, on the contrary, can occur only by means of a non-representationalist discourse: This move is a leap in the sense of a spring. The spring leaps away, away from the habitual idea o f m a n as the rational animal who, in modern times, has become a subject for his object. Simultaneously, the spring also leaps away from Being. 4

Here, then, it seems that we witness Heidegger's major break with the earlier movement of his own thought. There is a movement to the 'beyond Being' as the a-temporal possibility of the reciprocity of human existence and Being. Man and Being, time and Being can come into their own only

6 from a gratuitous, yet fundamental, belonging together. Ground, then, is outside of time and undisclosable and, as such, is urirepresentable, unknown. It is the sheer givenness of the intertwining of man and Being. This shift is important for the question of ground which, hitherto, had been posed as a question of ownness - a bringing of something into its own, of being brought to stand in what is most proper etc. Henceforth it is to be viewed as a question of otherness. The appropriating event, that which regions, although unthinkable, establishes beings rather than nothing, and thereby establishes the possibility of asking questions. It is absolutely other, yet it is present historically in two modes: as the time of Being; and as Dasein (temporality). The question of truth remains, but no longer to be elaborated on the transcendence model, i.e., in terms of the appropriating activity of the being who possesses logos. On the contrary, the historical presence-absence of ground is to be viewed in terms of the staying-presence of the Beinggathered earth and sky, gods and men. The permanent, extra-temporal groufid of all manifestation is given historically in the act of withdrawal. As withdrawing presence, concealment at the core of unconcealment, it draws thought forward. Unconcealment, the clearing of Being, on the other hand, as gift of this ground, permits a new perspective on language. Language is not produced in transcendence, but is granted to those who stand open to their ground, to those 'possessed' by logos. Language, therefore, is "not merely of the making or at the command of our speech activity"5 It occurs primarily in the mode of call, or invocation. It breaks through the subject-object relationship, which is subordinate to the relationship of language with the 'light' that is not an object. Within this context a meaning is established "in which language itself has distantly and fleetingly touched us with its essentia! being". 6 Here Heidegger is not moving deliberately into an obscurantist discourse, but is attempting to offer an inevitably paradoxical account of language in relation to its unsayable source. This had important consequences not only for the notion of language in general, but for the notion o f the word in particular. For Heidegger the word is not a static presence, a mere thing, but a donated sign. Its ground is always other than its own presencing. This ground, as other, grants presence in turn to that which is announced in the word, namely 'owning' and 'othering'. Heidegger's notion of word introduces a separation within language. Because ground, otherness, is revealed there is manifest a dephasing which is language, or time. But language, or the essence of Being, is essentially an event of recovery, a retrieval of truth. Truth is defined in terms of the remission of language and the tension of retrieval. But this means that it is essentially a re-presentation. In other words, truth is the recommencement

of a present which in its 'first time' is for the second time. Now we encounter again two of Heidegger's fundamental problems. On the one hand, the character of the break with the representationalist tradition remains a problem; on the other hand, this means that a difficulty remains regarding the status of his account of ground as other. It might be argued against him that his view of language as retrieval offers no fundamental break with a tradition where to understand the particular is already to be placed beyond the particular. To speak, to understand, therefore, is to be in relation with the particular by virtue of a knowledge which is always knowledge of the universal. The word, the naming of the individual, involves the transcending of the individual into the open of which the individual is an instance. If such is Heidegger's position, then, his specification of the meaning of ground encounters a difficulty in that it seems to be open to the same objection that he himself brings against the metaphysical tradition, namely, that it is to be viewed in terms of the projection of, or abstraction from, the individual. For Heidegger the key question here is whether or not there is a foundational word. He argues that our current distinction of noun and verb was introduced by Plato in The Sophist where they became names for the two main classes of words. Heidegger claims, however, that the participle is a more fundamental linguistic event, because of its dual meaning, and its participation in both nominal and verbal meanings. Hence whether the word is applied in its function of verb or noun, its referent is itself a two-fold. This duality stems from the distinctive duality in eon (being), the fundamental participle. Insofar as Heidegger translates eon to mean both 'a being' (seiendes, a thing) and 'to be' (Sein, Being), we again witness the fundamental circularity of all meaning. 7 He argues that Plato, and consequently the subsequent metaphysical tradition, neglects this primordial realm of meaning, insofar as he identifies logos and predicative judgment. 8 But insofar as language is thought primarily in terms of assertion, or predicative judgment, its ground is neglected. Following Heraclitus he talks about logos as gathering - it gathers together and holds in a balanced tension the conflicting opposites that constitute what is:

Logos characterises being in a new and yet old respect: that which is, which stands straight and distinct in itself is at the same time gathered togetherness in itself and by itself, and maintains itself in such togetherness.9 Such a view of logos presents us with a revised notion of interpretation itself. The break with the model of assertion is simultaneously a break with a view of language as the constituting activity of an isolated or social project. Rather, language 'makes known', 'gives to understand', 'makes appear' the concealing-unconcealment of horizon and project. This leads,

in turn, to central attention being given to the role of tradition, not as something over and done with, but as carrying an unsaid dimension to which a thoughtful return must always be made. Hence Heidegger might reply to our objection that, with his view of language, he is attempting to allow for a notion of ground that is not to be established on the model of linear time, or simple presence of the same. On the contrary, the unsaid is derived from the sheer givenness of ground, i.e., from the donation of the appropriating event. The unsaid, therefore, calls language as the means whereby the concealing-revealing character of ground may be brought to stand in abiding presence. The rupture of synchronisable time that is operative here is the granting of Being to a project through the power of saying. The rupture is indicated in the presence of ground as call, which renders the one who is called 'elected'. As elected, he asserts ground in speech. Speaking, .saying, therefore, has a dual component: it is an event of owning; and simultaneously a recognition that the foundation of saying is outside of saying itself. It lies in a mysterious realm which, nevertheless, lets itself be said in some manner. Now we must face our original problem with the question: what place is left for thematisation or philosophy in such a schema? This is a particularly difficult issue insofar as we think of thematisation as a matter of accounting for the movement from difference to identity, i.e., of rendering the diachronic synchronically. Against this Heidegger argues now that thematisation, as foundational thinking, is the presencing of diachronicsynchrony. In other words, saying (thought) emerges in relationship where the fitness of the terms in relation is made present in a theme. Saying, in turn, assures the co-existence in difference of the relating terms. Such assurance is essentially ambiguous, however, for every incipient and authentic naming utters the unspoken, and indeed in such a manner that it remains unspoken. Ripeness as theme, therefore, is not a simple mediation, but an epochal breakthrough to immediacy. It is that to which one is 'delivered over'. To argue for the priority of immediacy seems to assert a dimension which is at odds with the notion of thematisation which, as we have seen, is literally re-presentation, in the sense of rendering the present anew, of gathering dispersion into presence. It is that which breaks through silence to speech. This leads, in turn, to an ambiguity in the naming event. For naming as categorising event, as event of Being, must do violence to that which it means fundamentally, i,e., ground, the other, the beyond Being. Otherness is reduced to the horizon of Being insofar as it occurs or is named, in the essence revealed in the name, or theme. Given this difficulty we may ask the question: why naming at all? Linguistically, naming for Heidegger depends on what Levinas calls the

'protuberance' of the verb. This is to say that the verb 'to be' both carries the gathering activity and reveals the disruption between the gathering and its concealed ground. From the beginning Being determines all beings.I~ As logos, Being permits true speaking and hearing, for only where logos discloses itself does the phonetic sound become a word. 11Hence thinking is a 'taking to heart' which lets authentic saying occur. Saying, in turn, is a gathering letting-be which takes to heart. The relation of saying (thinking) and Being is one of Being (logos): W h a t relation has Being to existence? Being itself is the relationship, insofar as it retains and reunites existence in its existential (i.e., ecstatic) essence - as the place of the truth o f Being amidst the beings...man as the existing one comes to stand in this relationship which Being itself professes to be. 12

The primacy of Being not only assures a meaning that is truly universal, but without it there would be no language at all. As Derrida indicates, its absence would be not the mere absence of a particular word, determinate semantic content, signified simple, or thing. 13 Without this word: no essent as such could disclose itself in words, it would no longer be possible to invoke it and speak about it in words. For to speak of an essent as such includes: to understand it in advance as an essent, that is to understand its Being. Assuming that we did not understand Being at all; assuming that the word 'being' did not even have its vaporous meaning, there would not be a single word.14

It is in this sense that language announces itself, in that Being names the presencing of what is present. Being, therefore, gives the word its function of sign, and allows for all the possibilities of vocabulary. Levinas argues that this indicates that for Heidegger the essence of Being always appears as said. Words, as part of a historically constituted vocabulary, are treated by Heidegger such that the being "which would appear to be identical in the light of time is its essence in the already said. The essence of Being is spoken", is This means, however, that ground is not completely other, unrepresentable, but maintains a dimension of disclosability. This ambiguity leads Derrida also to indicate an unresolved tension in Heidegger's work: To be is the first or last word to withstand the deconstruction of a language of words. But why does using words get mixed up with the determination of being in general as presence? A n d why is there a privilege attached to the present indicative? W h y is the epoch of the phon~ also the epoch of being in the form of ideality? '~

We have answered Derrida's question implicitly by indicating the Heideggerian interpretation of Iogos as gathering. By according primacy to

10 the gathering event Heidegger is forced to account for saying as lapse of time, i.e., in terms of the recoverable, the representable, that which is not refractory to the simultaneity of the present. Saying includes apprehension and recognition. It is the correlative of the said, and that by which time passes. This means that the task of predication is to make the time of essence be understood. The said as verb is essence, or temporalisation. As logos it permits the ontological difference to be open to understanding and interpretation. On the one hand, the presencing of logos is such that the name can resonate as a verb, and the verbality of apophansis is nominalised. On the other hand, the ambiguity of logos (Being as revealing-concealing) is nominalised in the space of identification. Here Heidegger has not reverted to a simple representationalism, for ground is never completely thematisable. There is a gap between ground and saying that manifests itself continually in withdrawal (diachronic presence). But ground and saying are correlatives nonetheless, insofar as the revealing component of their relationship indicates a synchronic presence. Ground (condition) and saying (conditioned) have a certain although not total contemporaneity. The reciprocity between ground and saying is such that Being, as the field of synchronisable diachrony, is open to thematisation. This means, in turn, that ground, the other, is present as the term of a project. Although Heidegger is prepared to admit that there is a sense in which the ontological difference cannot appear as such, for the early trace of this difference has irrevocably been effaced, nevertheless poets and philosophers force this unsayable essence to presence, even if momentarily, for they name it in terms of images of light and darkness, veiling-unveiling, truth-untruth etc. In other words, ground and thought are appropriate to each other. As an alternative to this relationship as the foundational one Derrida develops the notion of diffdrance, which is neither word nor concept, but what he calls the 'juncture' of what has been most decisively inscribed in the thought of our epoch. 17Diff~rance brings to presence an operation of differing which simultaneously fissures and retards presence. Similarly, Levinas talks about the irreducibility of the trace of the other to indicate the closure of presence. What is effected in the functioning of traces is a sameness as self-relation within self-difference, i.e., sameness as the non-identical.18 He argues that this is a break with the predominance of the notion of vision to which Heidegger remains bound, with its implication of an encompassing understanding. It is this which leaves Heidegger open to the charge that for him ground is in some sense the result of an objectifying act, i.e., the affirmation that the object of saying, while distinct from this saying, is a product of it. But this imputes a dimension of possessiveness to language. Hence it cannot introduce the

11 inexpressible irreversibility of the beyond Being. Now, however, Levinas himself must face the question of whether the beyond Beingcan leave a trace that is not open to saying, to understanding. He responds positively to this question and argues that the trace places us in a lateral relation which is inconvertible to the order of Being and of unveiling. Its introduction of the beyond Being does not occur as the Heideggerian absence of ground (abgrund), or neutrality. We are introduced not to the instrumental order of things, but to persons. The person who is revealed here is not simply a unicity specified in conceptual or cognitional terms. The unicity of the I is extra-categorial, outside the individuation of the concept, and outside of the distinction between individual and general, particular and universal. 19 But this means that it is outside of representation; it is separate: Separation designates the possibility of an existentbeing set up and having its own destiny to itself, that is, being born and dying without the place of this birth and this death in the time of universal history being the measure of its reality.2~ The closest Heidegger gets to this dimension is through his notion of the 'erratic', which effects a rupture of sorts. But the meaning revealed through this non-preordained leap occurs 'within the said', and hence is opposed to the beyond. Insofar as Heidegger argues that language is the 'house of Being' he maintains that it is an event that has Being as its ultimate origin. Being, in turn, is always underway toward language, which means that it always needs a place, a 'there', in order to be itself. Now we m a y repeat that Heidegger's position rests on an ambiguity in the word 'being'. Grammatically, it is a particle which, as such, may be used either as a noun, or as an adjective with a verbal sense. As noun, it means that which is, a being; as verbal adjective, it designates the process by which a being is, namely, its Being. This ambivalence points to a differetice between Being and beings. The ambivalence in Being's self-presencing - it both gives itself and withdraws - means that the realm of original givenness must always be reconstructed. Naming, therefore, involves a retrospective seizure of that which it seizes, namely, the immediate present. But the immediate present always includes a dimension of withdrawal. Hence naming is a constant quest of things past. The immediate in its withdrawal draws thought forward by calling out. The crux of this whole question of the limits of language, then, stems f r o m the fact that the assertion that the ground of language is extracategorial - beyond history, the totally other - leads to the discovery of a paradox in the word itself. As Heidegger argues, the word or name is an identifying event; it is an answer to the implicit or explicit question, ' w h a t is it?' In this sense its activitiy is representational, a conceptual relation in

12 the same. Levinas argues against Heidegger, however, that insofar as the word, or sign, is not totally reducible to the theme, it occurs outside the opposition of universal category and irrational essence. Original language in this sense is the face to face relation. What is introduced here is not otherness as a relation between terms and displayed in a theme, but the neighbour for whom I am responsible. The force of this objection, then, is that Heidegger, however inadvertently, has accepted the classical subordination of language to thought in that he accepts that rational knowledge is the first of words. His account of ground operates in the realm of metaphor which, being but a partial comparison as Plato indicates, always contains an element of distortion. If distortion is to be avoided, or even modified, it must be ruled over by some governing structures, which for Plato are subject to the judgment of the court. This ultimate determination which presides over all expressions of meaning, exemplifies with a completeness that avoids distortion. Being, as foundation of meaning, serves for Heidegger as this presiding judge. On this view Heidegger's major error is that he anticipates that ground as totally other can be brought to presence in the word. He accepts that signs signify by their place in a system, and by their difference from other signs. This formal aspect of language permits the conferring of an identity of meaning to the temporal dispersion of events, synchronising them into simultaneity. A central consequence of this view is that speech and its ground are manifest in a theme. Thematisation, the self-renewing power of the intellect, overcomes relativism, for it is an encompassing ability which can thematise its own failures, even its own relativity. Here the discursive logos is identified with the rational logos, and this assures communication. Within this context the task of language is to achieve continually a greater universality. Hence communication itself is constantly submitted to the ends of truth. Against this Levinas argues that the region behind the sign remains invisible to the word in its epiphany, but this is not to say that it is a nothing. On the contrary, in the face the other is delivered in person as other, i.e., as this which is not revealed, as this which is not permitted to be thematised. Insofar as this counterview wishes to break with the dominance of the images of essence, form, structure, it is close to Derrida's attempted deconstruction of logocentrism, and the elimination of centre. This task of the deconstructi0n of centre will allow us to look once more at our guide question for this topic of the limits of language, namely, the question of experience and its thematisation. This is a question of how presence is present, of the manner in which presence is revealed and becomes represented. But this way of posing the question is to consign experience to

13 the order of images and knowledge, for understanding is the event or structure that mediates between a first level experience and its assertion as truth. Here understanding plays the role of centre. Its function is to direct, balance, organise the structure of knowledge, and simultaneously, as its organising principle, to limit its freeplay. Levinas's position could be seen as one that wishes to reject completely the image of centre. The other in his particularity does not fit the accusative role, in the sense of being able to be specified as object of a transitive verb. Hence I cannot speak of the other, make him a theme, speak of him as an object. He can 'speak to' me, however, call me, which is to accept that he has meaning prior to my donation. This is not a matter of simply substituting one class of speech, or linguistic category, for another, in the sense of the substitution of the vocative case for the accusative.. On the contrary, it is a displacement of language. It is the emergence, or elevation, of speech, and is not a c a s e of speech. In this manner the other is allowed to be present as absence, and to appear as non-phenomenality. 21 The face, then, is not 'of the world'; rather, it is origin. It presents the other beyond Being, outside of essence, witlaout metaphor, without distortion, insofar as he is attained as the inaccessible, the intangible.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. t5. 16.

Merleau-Ponty, M., Signs (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 110. Heidegger, M., Being and Time (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), p. 329. Heidegger, M., Identity and Difference (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 32. Ibid. Heidegger, M., On the Way to Language (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 125. Ibid., p. 159. Heidegger, M., What Is Called Thinking? (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 220-21. Being and Time, p. 203. Heidegger, M., Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), p. 131. What ls Called Thinking? p. 76. Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 111. Heidegger, M., "Letter on Humanism," in Phenomenology and Existentialism (New York), p. 159. Derrida, J., "The Copula Supplement," in Dialogues in Phenomenology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), pp. 7-48. Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 82. Levinas, E., Autrement qu'dtre ou au-dela de t'essence (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), p. 49. Derrida, J., Speech and Phenomena (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 74.

14 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Ibid., p. 130. Ibid., p. 82. Levinas, E., Totality andlnfinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), p. 188. Ibid., p. 55. Derrida, J., L'~criture et la Diff~rance (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1967), p. 152.