Heidegger's experience with language

George Kovacs

pp. 95-109

in: Frank Schalow (ed), Heidegger, translation, and the task of thinking, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

This study explores the following dimensions of Heidegger's hermeneutics of language: the uniqueness and significance of his lifelong concern with the nature, origin, and "place" of language in human destiny and culture (1); his sustained experience with language as the discernment of what is ownmost (Wesen) to language, of "what" and "how" language really is or can be (2); the transition from metaphysical, representational, and instrumentalized (objectified) view of language to the be-ing-historical understanding of language as the coming of be-ing, of the phenomenon and essential sway of "to be," into the word (3); the hermeneutic lessons entailed in his experience with (rediscovery and liberation of) language, that is, its contribution to the recognition of the disclosive power of language, to the understanding of the interplay between language (speaking) and thought (thinking), between ratio and oratio, to the interpretation of texts, to the openness of attunement to the spoken and written word (4).

Cited authors

Heidegger Martin