Absher-SpeakingBeingLanguage-2016

Speaking of Being: Language, Speech, and Silence in Being and Time
Author(s): Brandon Absher

Source: The Journal of Speculative Philosophy , Vol. 30, No. 2 (2016), pp. 204-231
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jspecphil.30.2.0204
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Speaking of Being: Language, Speech,
and Silence in Being and Time
Brandon Absher
d’ y ouville college
abstract: Much of the English-language reception of Heidegger’s early thinking about

language (Sprache) and speech (Rede) is organized around two interpretive devices. The
first device is a distinction between “instrumental” and “constitutive” conceptions of
language. The second device involves a further distinction between “pragmatic” and “lin-
guistic” readings of Heidegger. In this essay, by contrast, I propose an interpretation of
Heidegger’s early accounts of language and speech that breaks with these frameworks
and that indicates why such readings of Heidegger distort his thinking. Genuine speech,
I argue, designates precisely onto-logy—a speaking grounded in silent listening to the
ab-sent origin. In contrast to common interpretive devices, then, Heidegger understands
language as the expression (Aussprechen) of onto-logy. Unlike the interpretive devices
previously mentioned, this interpretation of Heidegger’s work makes possible a
reading of his account of silence and the call of conscience. Dasein is itself genuinely
discovered only in silence, which is a kind of listening in which one hearkens to the call
of conscience. The reifying tendencies of the “pragmatic” and “linguistic” readings of
Heidegger, however, ultimately conceal these phenomena even though they are central
to Heidegger’s treatment of language and speech in Being and Time.
keywords: Martin Heidegger, language, silence, conscience
journal of speculative philosophy, vol. 30, no. 2, 2016

Copyright © 2016 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

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language, speech, and silence in being and time 205
Much of the English-language reception of Heidegger’s early thinking

about language (Sprache) and speech (Rede)—at least among readers
influenced by the tradition of analytic philosophy—is organized around
two interpretive devices. The first device is a distinction between “instru-
mental” and “constitutive” conceptions of language.1 An instrumental
conception of language treats words as means by which humans repre-
sent fundamentally independent facts. According to this view, individual
speech acts involve the use of conventional signs as tools for representing
the world and expressing mental states. The constitutive conception of
language, by contrast, views language as in some manner conditioning or
determining experience—the very content of one’s experience is somehow
dependent on the language one speaks. Language is not so much a means,
according to this perspective, as it is an all-pervasive medium through
which the world is viewed. The second such device involves a further
distinction between “pragmatic” and “linguistic” readings of Heidegger.2
According to the pragmatic reader, Heidegger’s account of language in
Being and Time shows that individual speech acts are dependent on more
fundamental practical comportments to the world and the practical under-
standing they presuppose, a primitive fount of know-how. Alternatively,
the linguistic reading of Heidegger maintains that one’s understanding
of the world is structured by an inherited symbolic or conceptual frame-
work. Thus understood, language articulates (articulieren) and structures
(gliedern) any relationship to entities, practical or otherwise. Clearly, there
is considerable overlap in these heuristics. For the instrumentalist as for
the pragmatist, words are tools for designating and representing beings
discovered in more primitive comportments to the world. For the defender
of the constitutive view as for the linguistic, language persists within and
structures all such comportments.
Many believe that Heidegger developed some version of the
constitutive/linguistic position in his work of the 1940s and thereafter.
He is, thus, taken to have held something like the following position:
The content of one’s experience is structured by an inherited symbolic or
conceptual framework. Advocating such an interpretation, Christina Lafont
writes that for Heidegger, “what the things are becomes directly dependent
on what is contingently disclosed a priori for a specific linguistic commu-
nity in its language.”3 Such enigmatic proclamations as “Language speaks”
have long been interpreted along these lines in the broader philosophical
community. Indeed, it is almost certainly the case that the development of

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206 brandon a bsher
the “instrumental versus constitutive” and “pragmatic versus linguistic”

frameworks and their application to his earlier thinking was a response to
some of these later statements. The fact that these interpretative devices
originate in readings of Heidegger’s later work, however, should raise
suspicion as to their adequacy. In the first place, there is the matter of
Heidegger’s famous “Turn” (Kehre)—from the analytic of Dasein in Being
and Time to the being-historical-thinking (seynsgeschichtliches Denkens) of
the Contributions to Philosophy and beyond. Heidegger himself identifies
language as a central and perennial theme of his oeuvre as late as his
1953/54 work “A Dialogue on Language.”4 Yet this retrospective statement
does not in itself warrant the conclusion that his later treatment of language
should provide the key to unlock his thinking about language and speech in
Being and Time. Indeed, one is perhaps more likely struck by the apparent
dissimilarities between this early hermeneutic phenomenology and the
later attempts to undergo an experience with language in poetic-meditative
reflection (Besinnung).5 Somewhat more worrisome, however, is a
possibility about which Heidegger constantly warns his readers: namely,
that his thinking may be codified into abstractions that cover over the ver-
tiginous mystery and obscurity of die Sache selbst. We are repeatedly given
to understand that Heidegger’s writings are to be taken as paths of thinking
rather than finished products or doctrine.6 To the degree that our inter-
pretations calcify Heidegger’s thought into tidy oppositions, they perhaps
obscure important aspects as well. What, for instance, are we to make of
Heidegger’s significant discussions of silence, listening, and the call of
conscience once we have adopted either a “linguistic” or a “pragmatic”
reading of Being and Time?
In this article, therefore, I propose an interpretation of Heidegger’s
early accounts of language and speech that breaks with these frameworks
and that indicates why both “linguistic” and “pragmatic” readings of
Heidegger distort his thinking. As I read Heidegger, his early treatment
of language and speech is guided by, even as it informs, his distinctive
development of hermeneutic phenomenology as a method.7 Heidegger
conceives hermeneutic phenomenology as a recovery and repetition
(Wiederholung) of original possibilities and experiences—possibilities
and experiences that have been covered over by hypostatized preconcep-
tions. To clarify, according to Heidegger, words such as Angst and Gewissen
are subject to a fundamental ambiguity: they discover possibilities and

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experiences that they, nonetheless, serve to conceal inasmuch as they are

burdened with the baggage of common sense and traditional concepts.
Thus, for Heidegger, “the ultimate business of philosophy is to preserve
the force of the most elemental words in which Dasein expresses itself,
and to keep the common understanding from leveling them off to that
unintelligibility which functions in turn as a source of pseudo-problems.”8
Within the context of the fundamental ontology of Being and Time, this
insight points the way toward a deconstruction (Destrucktion, Abbau) that
unsettles our preconceptions, allowing for an authentic “onto-logy,” or
speaking of being.9 Genuine speech, I argue, designates precisely this
onto-logy—a speaking grounded in silent listening to the ab-sent origin.
In contrast to common interpretive devices, then, Heidegger understands
language as the expression (Aussprechen) of onto-logy.
I begin with an exposition of Heidegger’s initial treatment of speech
or Rede in the preliminary methodological remarks of Being and Time §7.
Heidegger introduces his conception of speech as part of his interpretation
of the Greek λόγος. For Heidegger, λόγος originally signifies a kind of indi-
cation or pointing out in which entities are allowed to manifest themselves
in public view. Speech is, therefore, a discovery of entities that draws them
out of a primary hiddenness or concealment. Genuine speech is thus under-
stood as a retrieval of experiences and possibilities that have been lost or
forgotten in this primary concealment. This interpretation of λόγος allows
for Heidegger’s deconstruction of the concept of the λόγος αποφαντικός
and its dominance over the traditional philosophical conceptions of lan-
guage and speech. Language, according to Heidegger, is the expression
of speech understood as the discovering articulation of entities within a
surrounding world of public concern. Unlike the interpretive devices pre-
viously mentioned, this interpretation of Heidegger’s work makes possible
a reading of his account of silence and the call of conscience. Dasein is
itself genuinely discovered only in silence, which is a kind of listening in
which one hearkens to the call of conscience. The call of conscience reveals
Dasein to be the open space of possibilities within which any entity makes
sense at all, the ab-sent self ambivalently expressed and concealed in all
ordinary self-conceptions. The reifying tendencies of the “pragmatic” and
“linguistic” readings of Heidegger, however, ultimately conceal these phe-
nomena even though they are central to Heidegger’s treatment of language
and speech in Being and Time.

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208 brandon a bsher
Section 1: Speech and the Methodological Opening
Heidegger’s first treatment of language and speech in Being and Time

occurs in the early pages of the work in his interpretation of the word
phenomenology. It is here that Heidegger initially lays out the method
that will guide his analysis of Dasein—a method that is deeply concerned
with language from the very beginning. For Heidegger, the designation
“phenomenology” explains the manner in which the inquiry is to be con-
ducted rather than its subject matter (SZ, 27). He explains the phenom-
enological manner of inquiry with a discussion of the Greek roots of the
word: φαινόμενον and λόγος. “The Greek expression φαινόμενον,” he
writes, “to which the term ‘phenomenon’ goes back, is derived from the
verb φαίνεσθαι, which signifies ‘to show itself.’ Thus φαινόμενον means
that which shows itself, the manifest” (SZ, 28). As Heidegger reads it, the
phenomenon is that which shines forth, allowing itself to be encountered.
The “phenomenon” in this sense is to be distinguished from the secondary
meaning of the word whereby it signifies a kind of misleading appearance
or disguise—that which shows itself as something it is not. Thus, accord-
ing to Heidegger, in contrast to the empirical sciences, concerned as they
are with particular regions of being, phenomenology is a λόγος concerned
with the self-showing manifestation of entities on the whole and as such.
Heidegger translates the Greek λόγος with the German Rede, meaning
speech or discourse.10 Primarily, he explains, λόγος is a speaking (λέγειν)
that indicates entities or points them out (δηλοΰν) and thereby allows them
to manifest themselves publicly (ἀποφαίνεσθαι), letting them be seen.11
“Thus,” Heidegger writes, “‘phenomenology’ means ἀποφαίνεσθαι τα
φαινόμενα—to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very
way in which it shows itself” (SZ, 34).
So defined, phenomenology would seem an almost superfluous enter-
prise. After all, what need is there to show something that has already
opened itself to view? As is well known, however, beings only ever man-
ifest themselves, according to Heidegger, in the interplay between truth
(ἀλήθεια) and dissemblance (ψεύδεσθαι)—concealment (Verborgenheit) and
unconcealment (Unverborgenheit). Pointing entities out and allowing them
to show themselves, then, is not a matter of adequately representing some-
thing that is already given and fully manifest. Rather, it amounts to a dis-
covery or uncovering (Entdeckung) in which they are drawn into the light of
unconcealment (ἀλήθεια, Unverborgenheit)—the unfolding manifestation

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of heretofore hidden aspects. As Heidegger writes, “The ‘Being-true’ of the

λόγος as ἀλήθεύειν means that in λέγειν as ἀποφαίνεσθαι the entities of which
one is talking must be taken out of their hiddenness; one must let them
be seen as something unhidden (ἀληθές); that is, they must be discovered”
(SZ, 33). For Heidegger, then, entities manifest themselves in such a way
that, at first and in general, they remain hidden or covered over.12 Speech,
therefore, is connected to truth understood as ἀλήθεια or unconcealment
in that it discovers entities, drawing them out of this hiddenness to reveal
what has previously been covered up.
If it is to discover entities in this way, however, speech must counteract
the movement through which entities are initially and generally con-
cealed. Heidegger’s discussion of fallenness is an account of this move-
ment—an attempt to explicate the fundamental tendencies of Dasein
that allow entities (particularly Dasein itself) to conceal themselves and
remain in opaque obscurity (Undurchsichtigkeit) in our everyday dealings
with them. Heidegger analyzes fallenness in terms of three related
possibilities of Dasein: “idle talk” (Gerede), “ambiguity” (Zweideutigkeit),
and “curiosity” (Neugier). Facility with language, Heidegger contends,
involves the possession of an average understanding of beings. Indeed,
it is only because people have such an understanding that communica-
tion is possible at all (SZ, 168). One may thus speak about entities without
any direct acquaintance with them.13 Moreover, according to Heidegger,
Dasein is beset by what he calls “curiosity.” That is, Dasein avidly seeks
to form conceptions, opinions, and beliefs about such things and to pass
these to others. When discovery is perverted in this way, however, speech
becomes mere idle talk, serving to cover entities over rather than to dis-
cover them. Because facility with language is built on this kind of average
understanding and curiosity, idle talk is a possibility in all speech and a part
of most childhood learning. Education in history, for instance, often con-
sists in the memorization and recitation of claims about people and events
without any attempt to verify them or to engage critically with historio-
graphical questions.14 As Heidegger writes, however, “The fact that some-
thing has been said groundlessly, and then gets passed along in further
retelling, amounts to perverting the act of disclosing (Erschliessen) into an
act of closing off (Verschliessen)” (SZ, 169). In idle talk, then, the discovery
through which entities are pointed out and brought into unconcealment
is transformed in such a way that this average interpretation of entities is
allowed to stand in the place of direct acquaintance with die Sache selbst.

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210 brandon a bsher
It seems, therefore, that genuine speech is rooted in a kind of

v erification or proof (Bewährung)—direct acquaintance with the matter
under discussion. Whereas idle talk is oriented by what is commonly said
and passes this along as if its acquaintance with the matter under discussion
were direct, genuine speech is in fact grounded in such acquaintance. As
Heidegger writes, “In speech (ἀπόφανσις) so far as it is genuine, what is said
is drawn from what the talk is about, so that discursive communication, in
what it says, makes manifest what it is talking about, and thus makes this
accessible to the other party” (SZ, 32). In genuine speech, what one says
(das Gesagte) is drawn from the matter referred to (das Besagte) and makes
this manifest, drawing it into the light. To speak genuinely, however, one
must not only be directly present to the object of discussion. Rather, one
must first secure appropriate access to the entity—access that has retrieved
and appropriated the preconceptions carried in common sense and
tradition in an original experience of the matter under discussion. Speech
is verified when the entity discussed is allowed to show itself just as it is in
itself. Thus, as Heidegger explains, “What is to be demonstrated is solely
the Being-uncovered (Entdeckt-sein) of the entity itself—that entity in the
‘how’ of its uncoveredness. This uncoveredness is verified when that which
is put forward in the assertion (namely the entity itself) shows itself as that
very same thing” (SZ, 218).15 Genuine speech is grounded in verification,
then, in the sense that the hiddenness of beings characteristic of the aver-
age understanding is disrupted and they are allowed to manifest them-
selves freed of dissemblance in a kind of acquaintance that has secured
appropriate access. This kind of verification consists less in the safeguard-
ing or possession of “facts” than in the “happening of truth”—the discover-
ing of the things themselves in their original givenness.
It is important to recall here that there are several senses in which an
entity may be covered up or concealed. The first kind of concealment is
when an entity remains, at least in some sense, entirely outside the scope
of one’s direct acquaintance. This is likely the case, for example, with intel-
ligent extraterrestrial life. Though we may idly speak about or otherwise
depict intelligent beings from other planets, it is unlikely that anyone has
direct acquaintance with such beings. There is also the possibility, how-
ever, that an entity once discovered may fall back into concealment as our
acquaintance with it becomes more remote—Heidegger says that such
entities are “buried over” (verschüttet). In this case, one may have previously
encountered the entity in a genuine discovery. Nonetheless, genuine access

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to it is closed off, now covered up by what one “already knows.” This might
happen in the case of oxygen, for example, if the science of chemistry were
lost or forgotten through some disaster. Textbooks, we can imagine, might
remain, but they would no longer express a genuine discovery of oxygen—
those who survived would have only a vague understanding of the subject
matter guided by mere words rather than any direct acquaintance with it.16
In another example, the intensity and vibrancy of the experience of one’s
lover may dim or obscure as it comes to be dominated by routine, habit,
and long familiarity. Finally, entities may be concealed in such a way that
they are allowed to show themselves only in semblance or disguise. This
final form of concealment points to lying and falsehood in the strict sense
but also to idle talk (SZ, 36–37). Idle talk serves to conceal entities in this
third way as it—in an act of vain self-deception—substitutes the average
interpretation of entities implied in the comprehension of words for a
genuine discovery. It is as if the survivors of our imagined disaster were
to continue reading chemistry textbooks under the strange delusion that
they were thereby gaining genuine access to oxygen. Or we can imagine a
relationship in which the partners continue to repeat the word love even in
the midst of cool detachment and growing estrangement. Genuine speech
involves removing such concealments in a direct discovery that draws
entities forth into unconcealment—a lover’s admission, for example, that
her love is fading.
Heidegger’s discussion of idle talk as a way in which entities are cov-
ered up, however, goes beyond the lament that so much of what we say is
not grounded in direct acquaintance with the matters under discussion.
More insidiously, idle talk serves to conceal entities when it becomes a
norm and guide for further speaking. As speech is repeated from one per-
son to another and floats free of verification, it becomes part of common
sense—part of the public interpretation of the world that belongs to das
Man. In such a case, it joins the stock of “self-evident” truisms that charac-
terize a group’s normative self-conception. “Everyone knows” that humans
breathe oxygen, for example. As Heidegger writes, “This everyday way in
which things have been interpreted is one into which Dasein has grown in
the first instance, with never a possibility of extrication. In it, out of it, and
against it, all genuine understanding, interpreting, and communicating, all
re-discovering and appropriating anew, are performed” (SZ, 169).
Although, for example, most children in the United States have no
direct acquaintance with princesses, the story of Cinderella is an important

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212 brandon a bsher
part of their understanding of the world. It provides paradigms for beauty,

love, gender roles, sexual relationships, and heroism and establishes for
them a vague conception of what it means to be a “princess.” Speech of
this kind is fundamental to Dasein, then, because it is the means by which
groups transmit and preserve their common sense and, thus, their shared
identity. Genuine speech, therefore, can only ever be a “rediscovery” of enti-
ties since it must clear away the vague truisms that have been passed along
in this way to discover directly, for example, what love is.
The fact that speech may be transformed into idle talk, however,
means that it is always subject to a peculiar kind of ambiguity. Namely,
a person who lacks direct acquaintance with the matters under discus-
sion will be unable to tell the difference between speech that discovers
and speech that dissimulates. A person who is unacquainted with the
workings of the internal combustion engine, for example, may vaguely
understand his mechanic’s diagnosis even though he is unable to verify
it.17 But without this ability he is of course in no position to evaluate the
mechanic’s skill or honesty. For the uninitiated, then, the mechanic who
speaks genuinely is indistinguishable from the charlatan. In the terms of
ancient philosophy, sophistry and philosophy appear to be identical to one
who is not a philosopher. As Heidegger laments, “Everything looks as if it
were genuinely understood, genuinely taken hold of, genuinely spoken,
though at bottom it is not; or else it does not look so, and yet at bottom it is”
(SZ, 173). Thus, as speech floats free of direct acquaintance and becomes
common sense, a “leveling” process occurs in which genuine speech
becomes indistinguishable from idle talk.
For Heidegger, even the reception and interpretation of historical texts
is mired in this kind of ambiguity. Informed by her common sense and
vast traditions of commentary, the reader possesses a vague interpretation
of the text. However, unless she has the appropriate access and is directly
acquainted with the matters discussed, she will be unable to tell whether
the speaking is a genuine discovery or a mere repetition of what has been
heard. As Heidegger writes, “Tradition takes what has come down to us
and delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our access to those primor-
dial ‘sources’ from which the categories and concepts handed down to us
have been in part quite genuinely drawn” (SZ, 21). Speech, if it is to be
genuine, must then counter one’s enthrallment with common sense and
tradition. This is why Heidegger calls for a deconstruction of the philo-
sophical tradition. That is, traditional philosophical concepts must be

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s ubmitted to critical scrutiny in which their basis in original possibilities

and experiences is displayed—he likens this process to producing their
“birth certificate”—thus loosening the phenomena from the domination
and frozen abstractions of common sense (SZ, 22). Heidegger’s herme-
neutic phenomenology is, therefore, a recovery and repetition of the orig-
inal possibilities and experiences at the heart of traditional onto-logy—it
reopens the Seinsfrage.
Section 2: The Assertion (Aussage) and the Traditional

Conception of Language
Heidegger’s discussion of λόγος in the opening sections of Being and

Time on method is guided by his deconstruction of the traditional Western
philosophical concept of “assertion.” This deconstruction emerges out of his
engagement with Aristotle’s treatment of the λόγος αποφαντικός.18 Heidegger
reads Aristotle’s work in terms of his translation of ἀλήθεια as “unconceal-
ment” (Unverborgenheit) and the consequent rendering of ἀποφαίνεσθαι as
“letting be seen.” Nonetheless, according to Heidegger, Aristotle’s discus-
sion of the λόγος αποφαντικός gave rise to the traditional philosophical con-
ception of the assertion and the privileging of assertoric discourse. That is,
it led to what Austin called the “descriptive” or “constative” fallacy and what
Wittgenstein also criticized as the “Augustinian Picture.”19 For Heidegger,
however, the philosophical consequences of this fallacy extend far beyond the
failure to recognize the performative or practical dimensions of language. As
Aristotle’s conception of the human being as ζῷον λόγον ἔχον was translated
into Latin as animal rationale, the traditional conception of the assertion was
codified both as a normative conception of speech and as a decisive feature
of traditional anthropology and metaphysics (SZ, 48).20
According to Heidegger, the Greeks had no conception of language
as such. Nonetheless, speech was a central feature of Greek existence—
to such an extent that they conceived the discovery of beings in terms of
λόγος. Thus, Dasein was conceived as ζῷον λόγον ἔχον. Heidegger glosses
this as follows: “Man shows himself as the entity which speaks. This does
not signify that the possibility of vocal utterance is peculiar to him, but
rather that he is the entity which is such as to discover the world and Dasein
itself” (SZ, 165). With the Latin translation and interpretation of Aristotle,
however, the λόγος αποφαντικός comes to stand in the place of the λόγος

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214 brandon a bsher
tout court. According to this traditional conception, Aristotle distinguishes

the assertion from other forms of speech in that it is the “primary locus”
of truth. A request may be fulfilled or denied, but unlike the assertion it
cannot be true or false. It cannot say of beings that or how they are. As
I showed in the previous section, Heidegger disputes this traditional inter-
pretation in favor of a reading of λόγος as a pointing out that discovers
beings, drawing them out of concealment. Nonetheless, he shows how the
traditional interpretation is already prefigured in Aristotle’s discussion; he
displays its “birth certificate” as it were (SZ, 226).
For Heidegger, the assertion discovers entities as present-at-hand
(vorhanden) objects of abstract “intuition” or observational seeing
(Anschauung, νοεῖν). This is evident, he suggests, if one considers the var-
ious ways of interpreting a proposition such as “The hammer is heavy.”
He writes,
When we are using a tool circumspectively, we can say, for instance,

that the hammer is too heavy or too light. Even the proposition that
the hammer is heavy can give expression to a concernful delibera-
tion [Überlegung], and signify that the hammer is not an easy one—in
other words, that it takes force to handle it, or that it will be hard to
manipulate. But this proposition can also mean that the entity before
us, which we already know circumspectively as a hammer, has a
weight—that is to say it has the “property” of heaviness: it exerts a
pressure on what lies beneath it, and it falls if this is removed. (SZ,
360–61)
In everyday experience entities are primarily encountered as ready-to-

hand (zuhanden)—they are immediately “seen” in the circumspection
(Umsehen) that views them as belonging to the surrounding world of pub-
lic concern (Umwelt) in which one is engaged in ongoing purposeful deal-
ings (Umgänge). When people make assertions about entities, however,
they sever them from ongoing dealings and view them in terms of their
physical presence (Vorhandenheit, ούσία). For instance, an archaeologist
may encounter an ancient pot as a present-at-hand object, describing and
cataloging its physical properties. Her discovery of the pot thereby differs
markedly from that of the cook who used it in antiquity. Whereas the cook
encountered and described it as belonging to a context of ongoing pur-
poseful dealings, the archaeologist severs it from such activity and simply

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intuits or observes it as a physical object. Heidegger marks the difference

between these two ways of comporting oneself toward entities in his dis-
tinction between the “hermeneutic-” and the “apophantic-as” (SZ, 158).
Obviously, there are many gradations between these extremes.
According to Heidegger, the intuition attained in the assertion comes to
be privileged by the Greeks as the primary and most authentic discovery of
entities. Indeed, in its relationship to sight, he insists, this “pure intuition”
is the basis for the early Greek conception of science already evident in the
work of Parmenides.21 According to this view, Heidegger writes, “Being is
that which shows itself in a pure intuitive perception [reinen anschauen-
den Vernehmen] and only this seeing discovers Being. Original and genu-
ine truth lies in pure intuition” (SZ, 171).22 According to Heidegger, this
privileging of the assertion and the perceptual intuition—the pure see-
ing—associated with it lies at the heart of the Cartesian conception of the
world as a totality of present-at-hand objects extended in objective space—
res extensa. It is also, of course, decisive for Husserl. It is the basis for
his “principle of principles.” As Husserl writes, “Immediate ‘seeing,’ not
merely sensuous, experiential seeing, but seeing in the original sense as an
originally presentive consciousness of any kind whatever, is the ultimate legit-
imizing source of all rational assertions.”23 Heidegger criticizes this view
as an unwarranted assumption: “Under the unbroken ascendance of the
traditional ontology, the way to get a grasp of what really is (des eigentliche
Seienden) has been decided in advance: it lies in νοεῖν—‘intuition’ in the
widest sense (der “Anschauung” im weitesten Sinne); διανοεῖν or ‘thinking’ is
just a more fully achieved form of νοεῖν and is founded upon it” (SZ, 96).
The traditional philosophical privilege of assertoric discourse, then, carries
with it a great deal of ontological baggage.24
Moreover, the ontological framework that arises with the privilege of
assertoric discourse has deep and important consequences for the tradi-
tional Western conception of language. According to Heidegger, words
(Worte) come to be conceived as present-at-hand “terms” (Wörter).25 Thus,
the orientation of subsequent thinking about language is guided by a
“logic” that conceives the assertion as a “proposition” (Satz)—a unity of
terms or “word-things” that affirms or denies something about beings
(SZ, 159). Truth is then conceived as adequatio—that is, a kind of iso-
morphism between the proposition and the entities it purports to rep-
resent (SZ, 224). By contrast, Heidegger’s deconstruction of the λόγος
αποφαντικός allows him to develop a radical reconception of speech as a

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216 brandon a bsher
basic a priori structure of Dasein and to conceive language as founded in

this structure. This is the burden of the woefully condensed §34 of Being
and Time.
In this section, Heidegger follows Wilhelm von Humboldt in conceiv-
ing language first and foremost as an activity and only secondarily as a
product or finished work.26 Thus, in an inversion of Saussure, he claims
that language (Sprache) is founded in speech (Rede) (SZ, 160).27 Thought of
as a product or work, language is a derivative expression or speaking-out
(Aussprechen) of speech conceived as discovery (SZ, 161). Speech, however,
is not only a matter of drawing entities into the light of unconcealment;
it is also an articulation of one’s conception of them. That is, discovery
is always a matter of taking- or seeing-as. In the case of assertion, a pres-
ent-at-hand physical object is pointed out or referred to, and a predicate is
attributed to it. The hammer, for example, is taken or seen as having a par-
ticular property. Even if the proposition “The hammer is heavy” is taken in
its circumspective sense, however, it still expresses an articulation of one’s
conception of the hammer. The hammer is taken or seen, in this case, as
having a particular utility—as belonging and relating to the surrounding
world of public concern in some way. The discursive discovery of beings
is an articulation, therefore, in that it gathers them together and lays them
out in their differentiated unity. Heidegger explains this idea in his reading
of Aristotle’s discussion of the λόγος as σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις—combi-
nation and separation (SZ, 33). If for Saussure speech acts depend on and
reproduce a structured conceptual or symbolic system, for Heidegger our
ongoing discovery of beings in speech gives shape to and articulates our
understanding.
Language conceived as a product or work—an articulated totality of
words—is thus a derivative expression or speaking-out (Aussprechen) of the
discovery of entities in which intelligibility is articulated—the gathering,
differentiating unification—that occurs in speech. The traditional concep-
tion of language, however, fails to appreciate this. In speech, words them-
selves are typically passed over as attention is directed toward the entities
under discussion. However, as Heidegger makes clear, they can be encoun-
tered as entities in their own right. He explains, “Language is a totality of
words—a totality in which discourse has a ‘worldly’ Being of its own; and
as an entity within-the-world, this totality thus becomes something which
we may come across as ready-to-hand. Language can be broken up into

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word-Things which are present-at-hand” (SZ, 161). Although language is

primarily the expression of speech, that is, one may also treat it as a set of
tools with a utility in one’s ongoing purposeful dealings. Words are severed
from their role in expressing a discovery and utilized rather than genu-
inely spoken. Similarly, words may also be encountered as present-at-hand
physical objects—mere sounds or scribbles. With the privilege of assertoric
discourse in the Western philosophical tradition and its accompanying
ontological baggage, this latter experience of words has been dominant.
Thus, for Heidegger, the traditional conception of language as a totality of
word-things that, by convention, are capable of forming propositions and
expressing mental states arises only after language is objectified in asser-
toric discourse.
In sum, according to Heidegger, Dasein primarily encounters entities
as belonging to a surrounding world of public concern. The surrounding
world is disclosed as such through the projection of familiar practical pos-
sibilities as well as through Dasein’s situated affective responsiveness to
things (what he calls Befindlichkeit). The typical encounter with entities is
not a matter of private representation but, instead, an attuned engagement
with them as part of ongoing purposeful dealings. To say, therefore,
that language is an expression of speech is not to suggest that it is the
“external” sign or symbol of “internal” mental states or judgments (SZ,
162). Rather, it is to say that the articulating discovery of entities as part of a
surrounding world of public concern is expressed or spoken-out in words.
As Heidegger writes, “It is not as if there were first verbal sounds which
in time were furnished with meanings. On the contrary, what is primary
is being-in-the-world, that is, concerned understanding and being in the
context of meanings [Bedeutungszusammenhang]. Only then do sounds,
pronunciation, and phonetic communication accrue to [zuwachsen] such
meanings from Dasein itself.”28 With the objectification of language,
however, word-things appear to have “meaning” only in their connec-
tion to internal mental states. Against this tradition, Heidegger claims
that meanings or significances “come to word” as speech gathers entities
into their differentiated unity: “Das Bedeutungsganze der Verständlichkeit
kommt zu wort.”29
Hubert Dreyfus and others influenced by the pragmatic reading of
Heidegger have interpreted this account of language to suggest that asser-
toric discourse is grounded in a more fundamental practical understanding

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218 brandon a bsher
of the world—that Rede in the primary sense is “extralinguistic.”30 After

all, Heidegger claims that entities are primarily experienced as belong-
ing to a functional complex in which they refer to one another in a net-
work of practical relationships. Speech (Rede) is then taken to be the
ability to “tell” the difference between things in our ongoing purposeful
dealings—to discover entities in our everyday navigation of the practi-
cal-social environment within which we find ourselves. From this per-
spective, words and assertions in particular are an almost superfluous
accretion. As Mark Wrathall writes, “Language may, but need not, be
involved in producing a shared being-toward entities as we comport our-
selves in the world. I could existentially communicate simply by setting
to work, for instance, preparing food.”31 Against this pragmatic reading,
however, when we see that language is the expression or spoken-out-ness
(Ausgesprochenheit) of the discovery and articulation of the intelligibility
of entities, it becomes clear that language is not a superfluous addition
to Dasein. It is not a merely handy tool by which one may represent and
communicate about entities discovered in more fundamental practical
comportments. Rather, words express our discovery of entities and pre-
serve entities in unconcealment, maintaining them in their public mani-
festation.32 Pragmatic interpreters commonly cite Heidegger’s dictum “To
significations, words accrue” (SZ, 161).33 The German text, however, reads
as follows: “Den Bedeutungen wachsen Worte zu.”34 Wachsen means not
only “to accumulate” but also “to grow.” The rendering of Zuwachsen as
“accrue,” therefore, conceals the suggestion of organic development con-
tained in Heidegger’s dictum. If words “accrue” significations, then it is
in a manner akin to growth in the organic sense. If speech develops into
language and, thus, emerges into the world, speech and language must
be conceived as inextricably linked.
Importantly, Daniel Dahlstrom has recently presented a three-tiered
schema for interpreting Heidegger’s thinking about language and speech.35
I have represented this schema in the following chart:
Ontological Level Ontology of Language Example

“on-hand” (Vorhanden) Language-as-object Formal analysis of a
poem
“handy” (Zuhanden) Language-in-use Writing/reading a poem
“being-here” (Dasein) Speech/discourse (Rede) Existential structure

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Dahlstrom is at pains to emphasize the distinction between speech

and the “use” of language. Speech (Rede) is an existential structure of
Dasein—namely, the discovery in which entities are gathered into the
light and articulated in a differentiated unity. It is not the use of handy
word-tools. Moreover, as Heidegger makes clear in his discussion of
silence, speech is to be distinguished from vocalization or the produc-
tion of sound—silence may occur as a form of speech, and vocaliza-
tion may in fact say nothing at all (SZ, 164–65). All of this speaks to
Dahlstrom’s point. Nonetheless, if my foregoing interpretation is cor-
rect, we must be clear that the use of language and the “word-objects”
it involves are the expression (Hinausgesprochenheit) of speech. Thus
Heidegger’s examples of speech: he writes, for example, that being-with
“is discursive as assenting or refusing, as demanding or warning, as
pronouncing, consulting, or interceding, as ‘making assertions,’ and as
speech in the manner of ‘giving a speech’” (SZ, 161). Although Dahlstrom
is right to insist that speech be understood as a fundamental existential
structure of Dasein and that it not be reduced to the utilization of handy
word-objects, he is wrong to view what is commonly called the “use”
of words in these terms. Whether the example is ordering a coffee or
writing a poem, the “use” of words is an expression of the articulating
discovery of entities, itself an existential structure. It is only in relatively
rare circumstances that words are treated as useful instruments (e.g.,
propaganda). Indeed, an important accomplishment of Heidegger’s
account of speech is to show that “using” words is not the same thing
as deploying word-instruments and to provide the space for a critique of
the instrumentalist conception of speech. Ultimately, for Heidegger, to
speak in the sense of reden or λέγειν is to draw an entity into the light of
unconcealment under an aspect in a way that is manifest for others, and
this activity is generally expressed in words and language.
Section 3: Silence and Onto-logy
While it is true that, for Heidegger, speech and language come together
as a package, it is no less true that his account of speech privileges silence
(Schweigen) and hearing (Hören). In contrast to the common interpretive
devices with which this essay began, the foregoing analysis of speech
thus allows us to understand Heidegger’s account more fully. To grasp

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220 brandon a bsher
eidegger’s discussion of silence as a mode of speech it is important to

H
see that silence is the manner in which Dasein may genuinely discover
itself. In general, according to Heidegger, the assertion discovers enti-
ties in their physical presence (Vorhandenheit). An assertion points to a
physically present entity and attributes to it some predicate. Speech on the
whole, however, involves a multitude of nonassertoric ways of discovering
entities—however much they may resemble the assertion when consid-
ered as ensembles of word-things or propositions. These modes of speech
orient everyday Dasein, bringing entities to view in their availability for use
(Zuhandenheit) as part of ongoing purposeful dealings. Dasein, however,
is neither a physically present entity nor a handy tool. When we say “I,”
then, we should not, according to Heidegger, be understood as referring to
a physically present (vorhanden) object, a “self-thing.” Rather, he writes, “In
saying ‘I,’ Dasein expresses [aussprechen] itself as Being-in-the-world” (SZ, 321).
Dasein is not an entity within the world to be referred to; instead, according
to Heidegger, it is the thrown projection of possibilities of being (Seinskön-
nen) through which the world is disclosed as such. Any discovery of entities
presupposes this ontologically prior disclosure of the world, which is con-
cealed by words and language even as they express it. In saying “I,” then,
we are not referring to an entity within the world but, rather, expressing
and speaking-out the ab-sence or being-away of this disclosure.
To make sense of this idea, it is useful to consider Heidegger’s account
of meaning or sense (Sinn). For Heidegger, the meaning of an entity is the
background against which it is significant in some way—can be taken as
something or other. As he writes, “Meaning is the ‘upon-which’ of a projection
in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something” (SZ, 151). To be
meaningful, an entity must stand out against some background. In the first
instance, this is a nexus of other practically significant entities. For exam-
ple, a baking pan is only taken as a baking pan within a context such as a
kitchen, where it is useful along with other equipment. But, of course, the
context as a whole only makes sense in relation to possibilities of Dasein,
for example, baking bread. Thus, things are generally meaningful in rela-
tion to possibilities of Dasein. But how does Dasein become meaningful
and intelligible to itself? What is the ultimate background against which
things make sense?
According to Heidegger, Dasein primarily understands itself in relation
to public possibilities that articulate a normative self-conception—what he
calls “the one” (das Man). “When saying ‘I,’” Heidegger writes, “Dasein has

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in view [meinen] the entity which, in every case, it is itself. The everyday
interpretation of the Self, however, has a tendency to understand itself in
terms of the ‘world’ with which it is concerned” (SZ, 321). Just as a person
receives an interpretation of other entities via the commonsense narratives
and conceptions deposited in the sediment of language and transmitted in
idle talk, so too, she receives an interpretation of herself. Dasein thereby
relates to itself via the normative conceptions of self and world carried in
common sense—that is, as a one-self (Man-selbst). To return to a previous
example, a child does not initially learn what a “princess” is through direct
acquaintance; rather, he learns through traditional narratives and images.
It is through these narratives that even princesses first learn what it is to be
a princess and thereby how and what it is to be who they are. Of course, one
may also refer to oneself as a physically present object. Indeed, as Heidegger
emphasizes, Dasein has the tendency to conceive itself as a thing in this
sense (SZ, 114–15). Each such self-conception, however, must be understood
as a flight—an active covering over and forgetting in which Dasein abandons
itself to concealment and self-obscurity. Dasein is not an entity within the
world to be understood in relation to determinate possibilities handed down
to it by common sense and tradition; rather, Dasein is itself the open space
of possibilities (the Da or t/here) within such entities make sense at all.
Neither everyday speech—inasmuch as it is a kind of degraded idle
talk—nor assertoric discourse, then, is able to properly discover Dasein.
For Heidegger, it is only silence (Schweigen) that discovers Dasein prop-
erly. To remain silent (verschweigen), as he sees it, is not the same thing
as to be mute, just as to speak is not the same thing as to produce sound.
Rather, Heidegger writes, “Keeping silent authentically is possible only in
genuine speech” (SZ, 165). That is, remaining silent involves a genuine
discovery—of Dasein itself. To understand this fully, however, it is import-
ant to see that hearing (Hören) is a constitutive feature of speech. Because
speech is oriented toward a public manifestation of entities and is thus
fundamentally communicative, it also involves hearing and listening to
others. Listening and hearing are not only or primarily a matter of receiv-
ing tone data, however; they involve, rather, a concerned responsiveness
and attunement to the self-showing of entities.36 Heidegger refers to the
sound of the “column on the march,” but one might also think of the open-
ing of a car door, the banging of a jackhammer, or the splashing of fish
in a pond. In each case, Dasein is immediately responsive and attuned to
these sounds as significant, as having a role within a shared context of

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222 brandon a bsher
ngoing purposeful dealings. It is only hearing in this sense that enables us

o
to “hearken” (Hörchen)—to pay heed to something in an attentive listening.
But, since listening to (zuhören) things often involves losing ourselves
in idle talk to such a degree that we belong to (zu-ge-hören) the world, lis-
tening is often a matter of “listening-away” (Hinhören), as Heidegger puts
it. This listening-away is, again, a kind of absorption into the world—a lis-
tening in which Dasein fails to hearken to itself (SZ, 163). At first and in
general, that is, hearing is oriented toward present-at-hand objects and the
everyday possibilities of being that belong to das Man. “This listening-away,”
Heidegger writes, “must get broken off; in other words, the possibility of
another kind of hearing which will interrupt it, must be given by Dasein
itself” (SZ, 271). Genuine silence, then, is a mode of speaking/listening in
which one hearkens to what Heidegger calls the “call of conscience”—the
disruptive address in which Dasein summons itself to itself. Heidegger is
explicit that the call of conscience is a kind of speech (Rede) and that this
speech calls from authentic Dasein to inauthentic Dasein. As such, con-
science discovers the ab-sent self that remains covered over, unsaid, and
thus unexpressed in idle talk and the listening-away that is characteristic of
everyday hearing and traditional philosophy. Thus Heidegger writes, “The
Self which the reticence [Verschweigenheit] of resolute existence unveils is
the primordial phenomenal basis for the question as to the ‘I’” (SZ, 323).
In silence one heeds the call of conscience, in the sense and to the degree
that one hearkens to this ab-sent original self and to everyday existence as
a kind of ab-sence—a presencing (an-wesen) or being-forth that can only be
experienced as being-away from oneself.
For Heidegger, the silent listening that hearkens to the ab-sent self is
onto-logy—a speaking of being. Indeed, in later marginal notes to Being
and Time he writes that what is said in the silence (das Zu-sagende) is being
(Seyn) (SZ, 165).37 The ab-sent self to which one is summoned in the call of
conscience is therefore not an entity within the world but the open space of
possibilities within which any entity may be intelligible at all, the basic back-
ground in which any entity is intelligible as such. Put another way, speech
about Dasein in which it is discovered as a physically present object or
handy tool is false, but not because it incorrectly attributes predicates. The
falsification in question is more akin to a category mistake into which one
is ineluctably drawn by the very structure of speech. Thus, Dasein can only
genuinely discover/show itself by announcing its ab-sence—silently open-
ing itself to itself in anxious anticipation of death. The silent speech that
announces and hearkens to this summons “says being.” However, to say

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being in this sense is neither to assert something about a present-at-hand

entity nor to deliberate about how an entity may be useful for some project.
Rather, it is a discovery of no-thing in which one hearkens to the ab-sent
self and is thereby opened to the Seinsfrage—to the question of being, to
being as a question.
From this standpoint, everyday discourse and the words that develop
from it bear within themselves an ambivalence with respect to genuine
silence—they are precisely a listening-away from silence. This is why
Heidegger’s deconstructions of traditional philosophical concepts are
so deeply concerned with words and their etymologies. Language is the
expression of this listening-away and, therefore, points toward the very pos-
sibilities and experiences it simultaneously covers over. Heidegger’s nearly
obsessive clustering, concatenation, hyphenation, and dissection of words
is intended to reveal this hidden bidirectionality.38 Indeed, early in Being
and Time, Heidegger issues an apology for his way with language: “With
regard to the awkwardness and ‘inelegance’ of expression in the analyses to
come, we may remark that it is one thing to give a report about entities, but
another to grasp entities in their Being. For the latter task, we lack not only
most of the words but, above all, the ‘grammar’” (SZ, 38–39). That is, not
only are the words of the Western philosophical tradition burdened with
ontological preconceptions, but worse yet, the privilege of assertion has rei-
fied the very “form” of speech such that it always surreptitiously expresses
and reproduces these very presuppositions.39 Heidegger’s linguistic inter-
ventions, then, are attempts to unearth and unsettle these presuppositions.
We are thus now in a position to understand Heidegger’s idea that phi-
losophy must “preserve the force of the most elemental words in which
Dasein expresses itself” (SZ, 220). The preservation of words consists in
the recovery and repetition of the possibilities and experiences pointed to
and simultaneously concealed in their utterance. This preservation is car-
ried through by a listening that has been called back into itself—a listen-
ing that hears in words their valence as ab-sence or being-away. Words are
“elemental” or “basic” inasmuch as they are central to Dasein’s normative
conception of self and world.40 The possibilities that are given in everyday
life and through which the world is disclosed are simultaneously expressed
in and constellated around such basic words.
Heidegger understands his hermeneutic phenomenology, as I have said,
as a λόγος that allows entities to show themselves in their self-showing man-
ifestation. Its work is to uncover that which is given in the manifestation of
entities and yet recedes from view. It does this, according to Heidegger, by

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224 brandon a bsher
recovering and repeating possibilities and experiences that are indicated and
yet concealed in words. Its work, therefore, is to preserve the basic words
around which our normative self-conceptions are constellated in a question-
ing after their origins—a deconstructive retrieval of their “birth certificate.”
However, that which is necessarily concealed in all speaking about entities
is none other than the ab-sent self, which grants the space for any discovery
of entities at all. And this self is only discovered in the reticence of anxious
being-toward-death. Indeed, as early as his 1923/24 lecture course Introduc-
tion to Phenomenological Research, Heidegger connects what he there calls the
Urbedeutungen—the original meanings—of language to the experience of the
uncanny (unheimlich) in anxiety. He writes,
From this fundamental phenomenon of uncanniness we must thus

explicate that which we designate as “language.” Language: a specific
manner of being of humanity, of being-in-the-world. “Language” says,
when viewed primarily (interpretively) as speaking in uncanniness: to
express oneself [sich aussprechen], to raise one’s voice [lautwerden] in the
uncanniness. (It is a well-known phenomenon that one who begins to
feel uncanny speaks loudly.) This expressing oneself [Sich-Aussprechen]
is not a matter of wanting to tell someone else about some random
sense [Sinn]—it says: to announce the world with which one is concerned
[besorgte Welt] in the manner of the self-expression of Dasein. . . . All the
original meanings [Urbedeutungen] of language are therefore her-
meneutic in their fundamental character—not the object-meanings
[Sachbedeutungen] of a “thing,” but pertaining to Dasein itself.41
Speech is thus very clearly understood as the expression of a flight from

anxiety that conceals—even as it expresses—Dasein. Heidegger’s herme-
neutic phenomenology, then, is an explicit or thematic recovery of this
silence, which is already vaguely understood—inasmuch as it is avoided—
in everyday discourse.
Conclusion
As I noted previously, it is widely believed that Heidegger held something

like the following position after the 1940s: the content of one’s experience
is structured by an inherited symbolic or conceptual framework. Much of

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the scholarly discussion—at least that influenced by analytic philosophy—

of Heidegger’s thinking about speech and language in Being and Time has
been determined by this reception of his later thought. Thus, it is asked
whether he held a “pragmatic” or “linguistic” conception of speech: Does
Heidegger think of speech in Being and Time as a conceptual framework
or as a primitive fount of know-how? Or it is asked whether he held an
“instrumental” or “constitutive” conception of language: Does Heidegger
conceive language in Being and Time as a mere tool for the representation
of fundamentally distinct entities or facts, or is language in some manner
conceived as conditioning the content of our experience? These reifying
frameworks are inadequate to and in fact obstruct what Heidegger has to
say about speech (Rede) and language (Sprache) in Being and Time.
For Heidegger, speech is the discovery of entities in which they are
brought publicly to view as something or other—a dynamic event in which
one’s conception of things is actively articulated. It is genuine when this
discovery arises out of a kind of direct acquaintance with the matters under
discussion. Such a discovery involves securing appropriate access to what
one is talking about. Language is the expression of this active articulation
and discovery of entities. Our ordinary facility with language, therefore,
presupposes a shared “average” interpretation of the world. This common
sense is expressed and reproduced in idle talk—speech that substitutes the
average understanding implied in the use of words for direct acquaintance
with die Sache selbst. Genuine speech must, therefore, counter idle talk
through a process of verification in which the matter under discussion is
exhibited and allowed to show itself from itself. Hermeneutic phenomenol-
ogy is thus a deconstruction that retrieves and repeats the experiences and
possibilities named and simultaneously concealed by elemental or basic
words.
The priority given to the assertion in the Western tradition has
obscured all this. In the first place, it has treated the discovery of enti-
ties characteristic of assertion and the correlated intuition as primary and
most important. From this standpoint, beings are merely present-at-hand
objects severed of any relation to the practical contexts within which peo-
ple live and act. Accordingly, the assertion is itself understood in terms
of the proposition—a unity of terms or word-objects susceptible to truth
and falsehood understood in terms of adequatio. By contrast, Heidegger
reveals that the assertion is founded in more original modes of discovery,
expressed, for example, in the exclamation, “Too heavy!” These original

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226 brandon a bsher
modes of discovery, however, cannot be treated as extralinguistic—the

fact that a mode of discovery is nonassertoric does not mean that it is not
generally expressed in language. Rather, language (Sprache) is the expres-
sion or spoken-out-ness (Ausgesprochenheit) of the articulating discovery
of the world. It is not an optional or unnecessary accretion but the “flower
of the mouth”42—an organic development out of Dasein’s shared being-
in-the-world.
For Heidegger, then, words themselves bear an ambivalence or bidi-
rectionality. In its most common form, speech is a kind of speaking/
listening-away from the open space of possibilities within which everyday
affairs “take place.” At its root, then, genuine speech about the self involves
a kind of silence in which one hearkens to the call of conscience, a call
that reveals the ab-sent self—the open space of possibilities (the Da or
t/here) through which the world is disclosed as such. Far from abandon-
ing this conception of language in his later thought, Heidegger appears
to develop its consequences, calling in the Contributions for a “sigetic”
philosophy. The saying of such a philosophy originates and is grounded
in silence: “Saying grounds as silencing. Its word is not somehow a sign
for something completely different. What it names, it means. However,
‘meaning’ is appropriated only as Da-sein, and this means in thoughtful
questioning.”43 At its root, then, Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenol-
ogy in Being and Time is fundamental onto-logy—a speaking, grounded in
silence, claimed by and oriented toward being: a λόγος that discovers the
ab-sent origin in silent listening.
notes
I would like to thank David Leichter for reading and commenting on earlier drafts,
and Shane Dyer and Jörg Volber for helpful discussions regarding translations
from the German.
1. See Charles B. Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1983), 115–32. Barbara Fultner has recently aimed to reconcile the
two interpretations in her essay “Heidegger’s Pragmatic-Existential Theory of
Language and Assertion,” in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger’s “Being and
Time,” ed. Mark Wrathall (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 201–22.
This essay is insightful for a number of reasons but fails to consider important
aspects of Heidegger’s thought: for example, the connection between silence and
speech. As will become clear, this oversight is perhaps largely due to the influence
of the interpretive devices I criticize here.

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2. See Taylor Carman, Heidegger’s Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse, and

Authenticity in “Being and Time” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003),
220–32.
3. Christina Lafont, Heidegger, Language, and World Disclosure (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000), 112–13.
4. Martin Heidegger, “A Dialogue on Language,” in On the Way to Language,
trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 6.
5. This is not to suggest that there is actually a radical break in Heidegger’s
thinking at some point. As will become clear, I believe that there are significant
continuities. Moreover, I would argue in line with his own later self-interpretation
that significant aspects of Heidegger’s development are rooted in his attempt to
understand language as a basic existential structure of Dasein.
6. “Ways—not works.” (“Wege, nicht Werke.”) See Martin Heidegger, Frühe
Schriften. Gesamtausgabe Band 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann,
1976). Cited in Stuart Elden, “Rethinking the Polis: Implications of Heidegger’s
Questioning the Political,” Political Geography 19, no. 4 (2000): 411.
7. As becomes clear below, the word methodology—though used by Heidegger—
may be misleading in this context. For Heidegger, methodology must not be
understood as the application of a technique. Instead, it should be conceived in its
etymological sense of following a path of thought guided by die Sache selbst.
8. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson (San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, 1962), 220; hereafter cited
parenthetically in the text as SZ. All translations are drawn from this text; the
translations have been altered where this was appropriate. See also Martin
Heidegger, Sein und Zeit. Gesamtausgabe Band 2 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann, 1977).
9. This of should be read as both objective and subjective genitive.
10. I have chosen to translate Rede as “speech” throughout. It is commonly
translated as “discourse.” It is my sense that this translation unduly diminishes
the connection between Rede and what is commonly called speech. Speech, in
this sense, however, must be distinguished from speech in the sense of vocal
utterance. Vocal utterance, Sprechen in the German, is one way in which speech, in
the sense of Rede, is ontically expressed.
11. Heidegger relies on the etymology of the word ἀποφαίνεσθαι to suggest
that saying draws things into the light of day or what he also calls the “clearing”
(Lichtung). This account of speech presages Heidegger’s later account of saying
(Sagen) as a kind of showing or indicating (Zeigen). Heidegger writes, for example,
“Poetry and thinking are modes of saying. The nearness that brings poetry and
thinking together into neighborhood we call Saying. Here, we assume, is the
essential nature of language. ‘To say,’ related to the Old Norse ‘saga,’ means to
show: to make appear, set free, that is, to offer and extend what we call World,
lighting and concealing it.” Martin Heidegger, “The Nature of Language,” in On
the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 93.

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228 brandon a bsher
12. This is the reason for Heidegger’s claim that nonhuman animals are “poor
in world” (Weltarm). Properly speaking, at least for Heidegger, only entities
with speech can be in a world since it is only through speech that entities are
discovered. This is not to say that entities are not manifest for animals lacking
speech—they are not completely “worldless.” Rather, according to Heidegger,
such animals are unable to develop the articulated experience of entities as what
they are. See Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World,
Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1995), 176–78. Of course, whether this is an adequate
way of thinking about the experience of nonhuman animals is a different story.
13. Bertrand Russell distinguishes between knowledge based on acquaintance
and knowledge based on description. According to Russell, knowledge based
on acquaintance is derived from the direct presentation of an object—sensation
being the paradigm case. See Bertrand Russell, “Knowledge by Acquaintance and
Knowledge by Description,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 11 (1910): 108–28.
Heidegger’s discussion points the way toward a more robust conception since
our encounters with entities are guided and mediated by our preconceptions. The
mere “direct” presentation of an entity in sensation does not, then, constitute in
itself a genuine discovery.
14. See James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American
History Book Got Wrong (New York: New Press, 1995), for a discussion of the
harmful effects of this way of teaching history. Heidegger also uses mass media
as an example. Even though this fact has been offered as an indication of his
conservatism (and this is likely true), it is worth keeping in mind the role of the
U.S. media in perpetuating proven falsehoods and distortions in the lead-up to the
war in Iraq and other wars. For a useful discussion of Heidegger’s conservatism,
see Johannes Fritsches, Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger’s
“Being and Time” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
15. I have altered the translation such that Bewährung, “confirmation,” is here
translated as “verification” in order to preserve the connection to the concept of
truth.
16. The example of oxygen points to the complexity of questions of acquaintance
and access. Though it is constantly present, one does not have constant sensory
access to oxygen—except perhaps in breathing. To access oxygen as an object
of scientific research therefore requires the development of various technical
apparatuses and a host of background assumptions.
17. Here again, we see the inadequacy of the Russellian account of knowledge
by acquaintance as direct presentation. Before those lacking in mechanical
know-how, the bare sensory presentation of their engine will be of little use in
determining their mechanic’s claims. Rather, in order to verify the claims, they
must cultivate within themselves the abilities, techniques, and concepts that
provide the necessary kind of access to the engine.

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18. For Aristotle’s discussion, see Aristotle, De Interpretatione, in Selections, trans.

Terence Irwin and Gail Fine (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995), 17a1–5.
19. See J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, Second Edition, ed. J. O.
Urmson and Marina Sbisà (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 3; and
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3rd ed., trans. and ed. G. E. M.
Anscombe (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2001), §1.
20. For Heidegger’s full elaboration of this point, see Martin Heidegger, “Letter
on Humanism,” in Basic Writings, Revised and Expanded Edition, ed. David Farrell
Krell (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 213–67.
21. This is the ancient source, we might say, of Russell’s conception of
“knowledge by acquaintance” as the direct presentation of an object.
22. My translation here is quite different from that offered by Macquarrie and
Robinson, who have the following: “Being is that which shows itself in the pure
perception which belongs to beholding, and only by such seeing does Being get
discovered. Primordial and genuine truth lies in pure beholding” (SZ, 171).
23. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a
Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, trans. F. Kersten (Boston: Kluwer
Academic, 1998), 36; original German pagination.
24. “Λέγειν itself—or rather νοεῖν, that simple awareness of something
present-at-hand in its sheer presence-at-hand, which Parmenides had already
taken to guide him in his own interpretations of Being—has the Temporal
character of a pure ‘making-present’ of something. Those entities which show
themselves in this and for it, and which are understood as entities in the most
authentic sense, thus get interpreted with regard to the Present; that is, they are
conceived as presence (ούσια)” (SZ, 25–26).
25. For a helpful discussion of the distinction between Worte and Wörter in
Heidegger’s work following the Contributions, see Krzysztof Ziarek, Language After
Heidegger (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 78–129.
26. See Wilhelm von Humboldt, On Language: On the Diversity of Human
Language-Structure and Its Influence on the Mental Development of Mankind, trans.
Peter Heath (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 48.
27. See Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. Charles Bally
and Albert Reidlinger, trans. Wade Baskin (New York: Philosophical Library,
1959). I do not mean to suggest that Heidegger’s privileging of Rede over Sprache
is an exact reversal of Saussure’s privileging of langue over parole. Rather,
Heidegger’s reinterpretation of speech and language undermines the very
dichotomy.
28. Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans.
Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 219. At first blush,
this passage appears to be a vindication of pragmatic interpreters of Heidegger
who view language as a secondary appendage built on top of a primitive fount
of (nondiscursive) know-how. Indeed, the shorter revision of this passage that

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230 brandon a bsher
appears in Being and Time is commonly cited as evidence in favor of their

interpretation: “To significations, words accrue. But word-Things do not get
supplied with significations” (SZ, 161).
29. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 161. Macquarrie and Robinson translate this
sentence as “The totality of significations is put into words” (SZ, 161). This is
misleading in that Heidegger clearly means to suggest that words emerge
naturally, as it were, from Dasein’s articulating discovery of entities.
30. This group of interpreters commonly and mistakenly assimilates language on
the whole to assertion.
31. Mark Wrathall, “Social Constraints on Conversational Content: Heidegger on
Rede and Gerede,” in Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language, and History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 111.
32. This is why Heidegger’s deconstructions so frequently begin with
etymological considerations and why they are also oriented to the “unsaid” in
speech. To find the birth certificate of some phenomenon involves a kind of
“genealogy” in which one retrieves the original discovery preserved in words.
33. Clearly, this sentence is a condensed form of the passage from History of the
Concept of Time cited above.
34. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 161.
35. Daniel Dahlstrom, “Heidegger’s Ontological Analysis of Language,” in
Heidegger and Language, ed. Jeffrey Powell (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2013), 13–31.
36. Here again, the pragmatic interpretation of speech as “conversance” or
“‘telling’ the difference” becomes suspect. Why should “speech” taken in this
pragmatic sense involve hearing or listening at all?
37. Marginal notes are included in Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan
Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
38. Ziarek’s Language After Heidegger is committed to thinking through
Heidegger’s use of language in connection to his poetics. I agree with Ziarek’s
general point that Heidegger’s later thinking involves a transformed “relation”
to language. Nonetheless, I find that the emphasis on the “graphic” elements of
Heidegger’s poetic philosophy tends to overlook their foundation in a kind of
listening. This listening hears words as the ambivalent expression of Dasein as
being-away.
39. It is also useful to recall here Nietzsche’s repeated remarks on the influence
of “grammar” on philosophical thought. For example, “In its origin, language
belongs to the most rudimentary type of psychology: we encounter a crude set
of fetishes when we become conscious of the basic presuppositions of the
metaphysics of language—or, to put it plainly, reason. Reason sees actors and
actions everywhere: it believes in the will as an absolute cause; it believes in the ‘I,’
in the I as being, in the I as a substance, and projects its belief in the I-substance

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onto all things—that’s how it first creates the concept ‘thing.’” Friedrich Nietzsche,
Twilight of the Idols, trans. Richard Polt (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 20.
40. For more on “basic words,” see Ralph Shain, “Language and Later Heidegger:
What Is Being?” Philosophical Forum 40, no. 4 (2009): 489–99.
41. Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Phänomenologische Forschung.
Gesamtausgabe Band 17 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994),
Ergänzung 30, 317–18. I have referred to but substantially departed from
Dahlstrom’s translation in Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Phenomenological
Research, trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2005), Supplement 30, 240.
42. See Heidegger, “Nature of Language,” 99–101.
43. Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans.
Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999);
and Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). Gesamtausgabe
Band 65 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), §38. I have altered
the translation of Emad and Maly. The German reads as follows: “Das Sagen als
Erschweigen gründet. Nicht etwa ist sein Wort nur ein Zeichen für ganz Anderes.
Was es nennt, ist gemeint. Aber das ‘Meinen’ eignet nur zu als Da-sein und d.h.
denkerisch im Fragen.”

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Speaking of Being: Language, Speech, and Silence in Being and Time

Author(s): Brandon Absher

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abstract: Much of the English-language reception of Heidegger’s early thinking about

keywords: Martin Heidegger, language, silence, conscience

journal of speculative philosophy, vol. 30, no. 2, 2016

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Much of the English-language reception of Heidegger’s early thinking

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the “­instrumental versus constitutive” and “pragmatic versus linguistic”

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experiences that they, nonetheless, serve to conceal inasmuch as they are

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Section 1: Speech and the Methodological Opening

Heidegger’s first treatment of language and speech in Being and Time

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of heretofore hidden aspects. As Heidegger writes, “The ‘­Being-true’ of the

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It seems, therefore, that genuine speech is rooted in a kind of

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part of their understanding of the world. It provides paradigms for beauty,

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s­ ubmitted to critical scrutiny in which their basis in original possibilities

Section 2: The Assertion (Aussage) and the Traditional

Heidegger’s discussion of λόγος in the opening sections of Being and

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tout court. According to this traditional conception, Aristotle distinguishes

When we are using a tool circumspectively, we can say, for instance,

In everyday experience entities are primarily encountered as ready-to-

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intuits or observes it as a physical object. Heidegger marks the difference

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basic a priori structure of Dasein and to conceive language as founded in

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word-Things which are present-at-hand” (SZ, 161). Although language is

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of the world—that Rede in the primary sense is “­extralinguistic.”30 After

Ontological Level Ontology of Language Example

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Dahlstrom is at pains to emphasize the distinction between speech

Section 3: Silence and Onto-logy

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­ eidegger’s ­discussion of silence as a mode of speech it is important to

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­ ngoing ­purposeful dealings. It is only hearing in this sense that enables us

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being in this sense is neither to assert something about a present-­at-hand

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From this fundamental phenomenon of uncanniness we must thus

Speech is thus very clearly understood as the expression of a flight from

As I noted previously, it is widely believed that Heidegger held something

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the scholarly discussion—at least that influenced by analytic philosophy—

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modes of discovery, however, cannot be treated as extralinguistic—the

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2. See Taylor Carman, Heidegger’s Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse, and

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18. For Aristotle’s discussion, see Aristotle, De Interpretatione, in Selections, trans.

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appears in Being and Time is commonly cited as evidence in favor of their

the “instrumental versus constitutive” and “pragmatic versus linguistic”

of heretofore hidden aspects. As Heidegger writes, “The ‘Being-true’ of the

s ubmitted to critical scrutiny in which their basis in original possibilities

of the world—that Rede in the primary sense is “extralinguistic.”30 After

eidegger’s discussion of silence as a mode of speech it is important to

ngoing purposeful dealings. It is only hearing in this sense that enables us

being in this sense is neither to assert something about a present-at-hand