The STYLE of Being and Time (Joan Stambaugh's translation)

There was a moment for me (second and only full read-through) when the style 'clicked' and it was (relatively) smooth sailing from there. It's strange. He's often talking about things on a very basic level. The weird phrasing kind of jumbles up the default, sedimented, non-basic way of thinking about things and makes the basic ideas accesible again. That seems like a convenient apology but I certainly don't feel the same way about Hegel, or Husserl or Derrida or Lacan. Heidegger actually flows for me.

Yeah, I hate Heidegger's style, but the 'continental' way of writing is ultimately Hegel's fault. It just becomes ubiquitous following Heidegger.

One of the second-generation continentals, I forget who it was, had this great quote about being proud of mastering Heidegger's jargon, as if it gave he and his friends some sort of intellectual hermetic power, and that that feeling dissipated with time.

Reply to csalisbury Same. There's something about Heidegger's writing which I found particularly lucid and brilliant - though it takes sometime to get used to. I don't feel the same way about Husserl, early Merleau-Ponty, late Levinas, and especially Hegel and Derrida, though.

I think most of the claims against Heidegger are over-exaggerated. I'm glad there's more interest now-a-days in Continental Philosophy than there was twenty years ago from the AP tradition.

Reply to The Great Whatever Do you have any sense of where Hegel's style came from? It's baffling to me. I haven't read Fichte. Is it Fichte?

Reply to csalisbury No. Fichte is the clearest German Idealist.

Reply to Marty Then where?? It's such a strange phenomenon.

Reply to csalisbury No. People point to Kant, but Kant to me is like Husserl – overly academic and self-conscious about rigor. To read Kant and Husserl, you just need to sit down and go through word by word with patience. That does not work with Hegel, to put it simply.

In the Phenomenology, Hegel has a brief defense of his own writing style at some point during the Preface. I don't think it's convincing. You can have the cynical Schopenhauer view...but I think it's more likely he felt unable to express his own depth. The continental-philosopher-as-prophet predates Hegel, but Hegel develops the appropriate linguistic flair for it.

Heidegger is odd. When he wants to, he can be masterfully clear, and then, just as you think you've got a handle on things, he completely switches it up. His Introduction To Metaphysics is one of the best examples of this I think: the first 3 or 4 chapters are lovely to read, and then all of a sudden he starts taking about Antigone and it all goes to hell. Same with his essay on 'What Is A Thing?'. First half of the essay is admirably clear, then he starts talking about the Earth and the Sky and again, the whole thing just goes tits up, stylistically. B&T is both at turns.

Reply to csalisbury I'm not sure. Late and middle Schelling also gets very mystical, so I'm not sure if we can blame it entirely on Hegel. Holderlin, Hegel, and Schelling must've had a conversation one day back in their university to make their philosophy impenetrable. Plus they were all into mysticism.

I never thought about this before, but it may be a bleeding of the style of German theology into mainstream philosophy. I haven't read enough of it to make the connection, though it seems like a plausible avenue.

Reply to The Great Whatever That's an interesting angle -and would make total sense, but I don't have the background to verify it either.

Reply to csalisbury As long as it contributes to the grand theory that Protestants ruined everything.

To be honest, and I don't think it's the greatest defense there is, but I do think that obviously what Heidegger had to overcome required a completely different framework of thinking, and a new vocabulary. It's the only way of getting past the older substance ontology of the ancients, the absolute subjectivity of the German Idealists (and the world as being a projection of the subject), and the older conceptions of time as a spatalized continuum of 'nows'.

The problem is he refuses to use too many examples in B&T to illustrate his points. I think it might be partially due him denying easy access into his own philosophy for others to give easy criticism of his work. That and sense his project is largely hermeneutical, he obviously wants his readers to have a good understanding of the history of philosophy before unraveling his work. The best way to do this is to force readers to read slowly, and meticulously - to pay attention to why he's using different words.

Reply to The Great Whatever I was raised half-protestant, half-catholic (we switched churches once a year as part of a very strange marital compromise) The protestant families were more attractive but the catholics put on a better show.

Reply to csalisbury And if there's a teen pregnancy mishap, the Protestant girl is already halfway to aborting it. *thumbs up*

Reply to The Great Whatever I was at a high school party and the almost archetypally beautiful daughter of the most prominent protestant family was there and she said "ok hot people get the good beer." and then decided who was hot. It was v moving.

Reply to csalisbury Not gonna lie, got an erection just reading that.

I haven't read the Stambaugh translation, but the Macquarie/Robinson instead. I found it to be fine, very lucid in fact, once you get used to the neologistic expressions and forms of expression (which I think are also very necessary to Heidegger's thought). A fairly great work in my view.

I also don't have a problem with Hegel, but his work is infinitely denser and more allusive than Heidegger's, and commensurately even more rewarding, more comprehensive and just greater. Don't know about Husserl, but I agree with csalisbury about Derrida and Lacan; I'm not confident they are profound enough to be worth the effort. Not so sure about Deleuze, either.

Reply to John I have a real soft spot for Deleuze. I will admit that I got into Deleuze when I used to smoke a lot of weed. I can't defend his prose - which is as dense, allusive, and elliptical as the best of the french thinkers - but he's so much more fun! He's also got some geuinely interesting ideas buried under the unfortunate style. He seems like he just doesn't give a shit though (he doesnt take the philosopher thing too seriously I mean) which endears him to me way more than Hegel or Derrida

THOUGH, I will say his "Kant's critical philosophy' is the best, most lucid introduction to Kant out there. No bullshit, super readable, incredibly insightful.

Reply to Marty

G A Magee ( in Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition) writes that scholars generally agree that Hegel was exposed to the kind of mysticism inherent in Swabiam Pietism. According to Magee "Robert Scneider writes that Hegel and Schelling inhabited an entirely different " conceptual world" ( Begriffswelt) from that of Enlightenment rationalism and mechanism. Theirs was that of the " ancient categories of chemical ( i.e., alchemical)-biological philosophy of nature", stemming from "Oetinger, Böhme, van Helmont, Boyle, Fludd, Paracelsus, Agrippa von Nettesheim, Telesio and others...This philosophy of nature was still alive in Würtemburg during Hegel and Schelling's youth"....There was certainly easy access in Würtemburg to theosophic literature. Important works by Oetinger and P.M. Hahn were still being brought out in the 1708s and 1790s. Schneider notes that the works of Paracelsus and Bohme, as well as numerous alchemical works, were plentiful in Old Würtemburg".

The thesis of Magee's book is that Hegel began as and remained to the end very much a hermetic thinker. So far his arguments have been convincing.

Reply to The Great Whatever

I think this is just about right. Think theosophy, though, as well as theology.

Reply to csalisbury

I've been meaning to give Difference and Repetition another go (my previous attempt was half-hearted at best) because, according to some accounts I have come across, it is very much related to themes found in Hegel (although probably more by way of exploring very different orientations than of any similarity between the trajectories of the two thinkers).

For my perception, Hegel and Derrida took philosophy seriously in very different ways. Hegel, for me, is the genuine article; Derrida seems to be more of a 'celebrity philosopher'.

Reply to John I think Derrida had a single genuine insight and then made a career of playing with that insight in the silliest ways. Difference and Repetition, I think, has many profound things to say about individuation. Deleuze was a great synthesizier of other's ideas. But he got trapped in the parisian bullshit. I wish wish wish he had come of age in a different milieu.

Reply to csalisbury

I suspect you got that right. 8-)

Reply to John Oh yeah, Hegel and Schelling liked their Jacob Boehme and Meister Eckhart. Probably have to read both of those thinkers to understand them.

Quoting John

For my perception, Hegel and Derrida took philosophy seriously in very different ways. Hegel, for me, is the genuine article; Derrida seems to be more of a 'celebrity philosopher'.

I like Derrida's face. I like his vibe in interviews. I really like The White Mythology, too. (If metaphysics is metaphorical, then metaphor is metaphysical. That's my take-home.) But his ideas seem far less ambitious and essential than Hegel's. Really, Kojeve had me feeling like a rational mystic. It lit up my world. It was a beautiful translation and type-setting too.

I haven't read The White Mythology. I'm not sure what it could mean to say metaphysics is metaphorical or the converse. I have long thought of metaphysics as the pure logic of possibility. I don't doubt that Derrida is somehow brilliant, but I've tried, oh how I've tried, and I just cannot seem to penetrate the thicket. If I had more time at the moment I'd be tempted to join the Derrida reading group; because from what I do know, his early works (such as the one on Husserl's phenomenology they will be reading and discussing) are far more accessible than the later.

I read Introduction to the Reading of Hegel a few years ago, and I remember enjoying it, in particular the discussion of the master/slave dialectic. I have heard Kojeve was very influential: apparently Hyppolite (himself very influential on the postmoderns), Sartre and some of the postmoderns themselves attended his lectures. Perhaps he is largely responsible for the predominately materialist interpretations of Hegel that are almost universally orthodoxical in l'academie, and which I have long been somewhat skeptical about. The Magee book I am presently reading is convincing so far, and is reinforcing my skepticism.

Reply to John
Quoting John

I'm not sure what it could mean to say metaphysics is metaphorical or the converse.

There's a tradition of thinking "analogy as the core of cognition." Lakoff, Norman O. Brown, Vico, and Rorty come to mind. Derrida quotes Anatole France in the essay. Look to the etymology of abstract terms. I used to do this, very taken with metaphor as a central function. Where Mathematics Comes From was especially relevant and convincing to me. Here's this, just in case it tickles your mind:
[quote=IEP]
Derrida's White Mythology offers a penetrating critique of the common paradigm involving the nature of concepts, posing the following questions: “Is there metaphor in the text of philosophy, and if so, how?” Here, the history of philosophy is characterized as an economy, a kind of "usury" where meaning and valuation are understood as metaphorical processes involving “gain and loss.” ...
The “usury” of the sign (the coin) signifies the passage from the physical to the metaphysical. Abstractions now become “worn out” metaphors; they seem like defaced coins, their original, finite values now replaced by a vague or rough idea of the meaning-images that may have been present in the originals.
Such is the movement which simultaneously creates and masks the construction of concepts. Concepts, whose real origins have been forgotten, now only yield an empty sort of philosophical promise – that of “the absolute”, the universalized, unlimited “surplus value” achieved by the eradication of the sensory or momentarily given. Derrida reads this process along a negative Hegelian line: the metaphysicians are most attracted to “concepts in the negative, ab-solute, in-finite, non-Being” (WM 121). That is, their love of the most abstract concept, made that way “by long and universal use”, reveals a preference for the construction of a metaphysics of Being.
[/quote]
But he makes a case that metaphor usurps a "metaphysical" role as a master/explanatory/reducing concept.
Quoting John

I read Introduction to the Reading of Hegel a few years ago, and I remember enjoying it, in particular the discussion of the master/slave dialectic....Perhaps he is largely responsible for the predominately materialist interpretations of Hegel that are almost universally orthodoxical in l'academie, and which I have long been somewhat skeptical about.

I think he did forge a new, French Hegel. In any case, I still think Kojeve is gold. But then I really liked Solomon's From Hegel to Existentialism, too.

Quoting The Great Whatever

You can have the cynical Schopenhauer view...but I think it's more likely he felt unable to express his own depth.

I think you're right. The Phen. was rushed, too, if memory serves. I've read his early theological writings. They are quite clear, quite enjoyable. He also gave stirring and clear speeches, recorded in Wiedmann, if I'm spelling that right. But maybe Phen. was raw Hegel just giving birth to ideas he hadn't organized yet under a time constraint.

Quoting StreetlightX

His Introduction To Metaphysics is one of the best examples of this I think: the first 3 or 4 chapters are lovely to read, and then all of a sudden he starts taking about Antigone and it all goes to hell.

Thanks for the tip. I'll check that one out.

Reply to Hoo One of the most interesting gossipy tidbits about Kojeve is that he had an intimate friendship with Leo Strauss (the godfather of American neoconservatism.) I've read almost nothing by Kojeve (except a short, insightful piece about the master/slave relationship in Hegel) & I'm definitely not trying to poison the Kojeve-well by association - it's just a surreal, fascinating historical intersection.

OK, I think I get it a bit more now. I tend to think of metaphor in terms of poetry; although I am also mindful that everyday language, and even scientific language, is permeated with it. So, I don't think Derrida's question is really a question, because the language of philosophy must also of course permeated with metaphor.

Now, you mentioned analogy as being the core of cognition, and as I understand it analogy, although not the same thing as metaphor has similarities with it. Analogy is thus analogous to metaphor but is not a metaphor for it. A metaphor can stand on the merest association, however tenuous; whereas analogy requires that the logic of one thing be like the logic of another. To put it another way, I see metaphor as imagistically or eidos-based, whereas analogy is logos based. I can see where analogy is intrinsic to metaphysics; but metaphor not so much.

So, thinking along that line I would say abstractions, if they are worn out anythings, are worn out analogies, not metaphors. I can see how 'ab-solute' might mean 'away from the solute' or 'the in-finite' might mean 'the not finite', there is a plain logic of analogy there it seems; in one case of movement and in the other of negation or 'taking away a known quality'.

Reply to csalisbury
I knew they were friends, but when you say 'intimate'...that would be interesting. There's also the rumor that he was a spy.

Reply to John
One example of metaphor would be the "mirror of nature." We can think of the philosopher as a sort of mirror or lens through which to see objective reality. But there's also metaphor as disclosure. This is the paradigm of reality made as much as it is found. So maybe a chisel works here. "God is love." Or "love is the only law." For Rorty, these statements are like "nonsense" that gets wedged in to common sense, irruptions that are gradually literalized, potentially for the community's benefit. So the philosopher is an inventor or poet, not just an undistorted mirror.

Reply to Hoo

This relates in an interesting way to Hegel's discussion of sense perception in the PoS. He exposes the presumptions of critical philosophy that understand perception as being analogous to a glass or medium which distorts what is seen or an instrument that cannot but change what is seen when it operates upon it. And again I think 'perception as a mirror' and, by extention, 'philosophy as the mirror of nature' is more properly thought of as an analogy than a metaphor, but its not that important, anyway.

For me, "God is love" and "love is the only law" are anything but nonsense; rather they are profound truths, which only begin to appear as nonsense when analysis gets it sharp little ratty ontic teeth into them. It's true they are non-sense, in the sense of not being empirical statements, but the sense they have is that of a higher spiritual intuition, not that of the physical senses.

Reply to John
Quoting John

This relates in an interesting way to Hegel's discussion of sense perception in the PoS. He exposes the presumptions of critical philosophy that understand perception as being analogous to a glass or medium which distorts what is seen or an instrument that cannot but change what is seen when it operates upon it.

Yes. Rorty got me interested in Hegel. As you may know, he wanted to abandon the mirror or lens paradigm.
Quoting John

For me, "God is love" and "love is the only law" are anything but nonsense; rather they are profound truths, which only begin to appear as nonsense when analysis gets it sharp little ratty ontic teeth into them. It's true they are non-sense, in the sense of not being empirical statements, but the sense they have is that of a higher spiritual intuition, not that of the physical senses.

I agree. They are profound truths. They are radical, if taken in their full force. Not "God loves," but rather God is love or love is God. And love as the only law sounds like anarchy. So a feeling is God is the only law. Far from empirical, far from non-controversial. God lives in our guts, not even in our brain, because we ate his flesh and drank his blood. Deep stuff. Love's Body by Norman O. Brown looks into this.

Quoting Hoo

God lives in our guts, not even in our brain, because we ate his flesh and drank his blood. Deep stuff. Love's Body by Norman O. Brown looks into this.

Yes, I would even say that we are God's flesh and blood, and that the Eucharist and the Incarnation and Resurrection are all symbolic of that Holy Union. For me these are not empirical propositions at all, but profound truths in a kind of (here good) pragmatic sense in that they stir the embers and stoke the fires of transformation which may lead to the utmost reverence for life. I can't see how that can be a bad thing, provided the dogma is kept in his kennel in the howling blizzard, not out of cruelty, but out of compassion, giving rein to imagination, and a rising ecstasy over dogma. (I wish there were an 'insane person' emoticon; I feel so much like using one right now).

I haven't heard of the Norman Brown book, but I'll check it out.

Quoting John

So, thinking along that line I would say abstractions, if they are worn out anythings, are worn out analogies, not metaphors

I like the provocations of Derrida. Limited Inc is great fun at the expense of Austin/Searle that goes, I was going to say 'too far' but I don't mean that...I just feel Derrida always takes an idea to an extreme where few others would go. I like 'White Mythology' but that's partly because I find the idea of 'literal' meaning mostly baffling, and the coin imagery is very evocative. Even 'literal' in 'literal meaning' is a near-dead metaphor after all :)

As for Heidegger and B & T, I was guided to the other translation, McQuarrie and Thingy. First time around I found it impenetrable, second time - alongside a lecture course by Tom Baldwin - I found it almost lucid. Sometimes I just need a teacher to get me on track. I also came to accept, on second reading, that conventional language wouldn't cut it for what Heidegger had to say, that he had to break away from it to refurnish the whole house of philosophy, as it were. Mind you Hannah Arendt suggested that this portentous style of his became atrophied, a way of sounding important even when having nothing to say. (I think novelists who get outsize reputations end up like that, all style and no content)

Reply to John Quoting John

Yes, I would even say that we are God's flesh and blood, and that the Eucharist and the Incarnation and Resurrection are all symbolic of that Holy Union.

Yes, I agree. I experience the "mystic" power of these myths which are therefore "true." Because it's trans-rational or sub-rational, I abandon any sort of empirical claim. Even a metaphysical claim would feel like idolatry, or the spirit dying into letter. Quoting John

For me these are not empirical propositions at all, but profound truths in a kind of (here good) pragmatic sense in that they stir the embers and stoke the fires of transformation which may lead to the utmost reverence for life. I can't see how that can be a bad thing, provided the dogma is kept in his kennel in the howling blizzard, not out of cruelty, but out of compassion, giving rein to imagination, and a rising ecstasy over dogma. (I wish there were an 'insane person' emoticon; I feel so much like using one right now).

I totally agree. And perhaps you can see the possibility of a more "spiritual" or "complete" pragmatism, here. One could argue that it's always our hearts and guts that finally believe. If we can meet the world more joyfully and successfully with help from (reductively, 'defensively') a "string of marks and noises," then there's some kind of "truth" in such a string. I love "rising ecstasy over dogma." In contrast, I remember hearing arguments about whether to baptize in the name of JC or in the name of the F, S,& HG. It's hard for humans to live without their legalism and formalism, but this too me just buries everything valuable. Atheism is therefore valuable, perhaps, as a cleansing fire.

Quoting John

I haven't heard of the Norman Brown book, but I'll check it out.

It's very Freudian. He looks at (or dreams up )the tangled depths of religion, sex, and politics.

Quoting csalisbury

Heidegger actually flows for me.

I'm starting to feel my way in. I was reading last night well into the dawn, after hours spent here. I had to slow down. He's very thorough, very patient. I think I'm going to love this book.

Quoting Hoo

[Does anyone] else find this style repulsive?

Yes. I hate continentalism. Not so much because of the views--I don't agree with analytic philosophers' views any more or less than continental philosophers' views, but because of the style of the writing, and I couldn't agree more with "they're just terrible at presenting their own ideas." In my opinion, they may as well be illiterate at times. Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, etc. even going all the way back to Kant, just can't write worth a crap.

Reply to Terrapin Station
I can say that I'm thankful for secondary sources. What others have made of Hegel or found in him has been (for me) as good as it gets. The secondary sources on Heidegger are fascinating too. Sartre was strange, because he could write enjoyable novels and plays. It's as if he became uptight or pretentious when "getting (all too) serious." My gripe with all of them is a sort of "scientism" in their style. It's depersonalized. I guess that's the physics haunting metaphysics. We must ignore the metaphorical and analogical and ambiguous. Derrida escapes this maybe, but he can be long-winded and "cute."
I don't follow Rorty all the way, but he is a stylish,radical fusion of some continental and AP philosophy.

Reply to Hoo Yeah, I like Rorty's writing a lot. Re Sartre, I can't stand Nausea, either, but I'm not much on realist fiction/"drama" in general outside of a handful of authors, and most of that handful is pre-20th century. I like a lot of 19th and 18th century literature in general, but outside of that, I gravitate towards "genre fiction." Philosophy I want to be written as if someone is writing science, though I do appreciate a sense of humor and a bit of personality in general in philosophical writing (as I do in science writing). But I want it to primarily be in a "clinical" vein.

Reply to Terrapin Station
It was Being and Nothingness that disappointed me in terms of style, though I love the ideas and themes. I actually think Nausea is occasionally truly great. That vision of the roots of the chestnut tree is something I had experienced myself (though not with nausea, just wonder).
[quote=Sartre]
A movement, an event in the tiny colored world of men is only relatively absurd — in relation to the accompanying circumstances. A madman's ravings, for example, are absurd in relation to the situation in which he is, but not in relation to his own delirium. But a little while ago I made an experiment with the absolute or the absurd. This root — there was nothing in relation to which it was absurd. How can I pin it down with words? Absurd: in relation to the stones, the tufts of yellow grass, the dry mud, the tree, the sky, the green benches. Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound, secret delirium of nature could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of the segment of a straight line around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, in contrast, existed in such a way that I could not explain it. Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes, brought me back unceasingly to its own existence. In vain I repeated, "This is a root" — it didn't take hold any more. I saw clearly that you could not pass from its function as a root, as a suction pump, to that, to that hard and thick skin of a sea lion, to this oily, callous; stubborn look. The function explained nothing: it allowed you to understand in general what a root was, but not at all that one there. That root with its color, shape, its congealed movement, was beneath all explanation.
[/quote]
This "surplus" of the function or the concept or the explanation is one of my favorite themes in philosophy. And this is hilarious with an edge.
[quote=Sartre]
My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think… and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.
[/quote]
Did Sartre mean to be funny? I hope he sometimes laughed as he wrote Nausea.

Some philosophers and texts can be read outside a classroom. Perhaps all can - I imagine most, if not all can - but some a classroom/teacher(s) is/are helpful - or necessary. I think Hegel and Heidegger - and Kant - are best broached for the first time in a classroom setting. Also - In or out of a classroom - I think it's worth noting that even "philosophers" are just people - sometimes writing extraordinary things and sometimes in extraordinary circumstances. Read enough Anglo-American philosophy of mind and you won't get that vibe but the two figures you mentioned - Hegel and Heidegger - I'd say those would be the embodiment of such circumstances. Just people - but tackling extraordinary things and writing under extraordinary circumstances. And trying to fill big shoes - same as everyone else. So give them a break would be my second suggestion (first was reading in classroom setting if possible). As for his style - it's deliberate. If you think it's "unusual" or "atypical" - yes. Tough shit.

Reply to Kevin
Well, that's pretty macho, Kevin (your "tough shit"). Sometimes, yes, it's worth the hassle. But the problem is always the opportunity cost of other books we could be reading, including secondary sources that aren't necessarily less valuable --unless one is invested in one of these asshole word-mongers as more than just another dude with a mind-blowing story that finally is the real Secret of man and the universe. I'm too old to play the fan-boy, so these famous f*ckers are going to justify themselves to me and not the other way around. That said, there's always some humility and suspension of disbelief and curiosity in opening one's self to a thinker. This humility only has real weight if one goes in with a sense of self-possession and of knowing the "essential" already. The other kind of "humility" is, in my mind, a juvenile quest for some master whose glamour one can buy in on. For instance, by tossing off keywords without being able to lucidly paraphrase a single thought of relevance to those not under the spell of the Name (I'm not aiming this at anyone in particular, just at ubiquitous intellectual vanity, which I sure as hell don't pretend to be free of). Ah, but maybe we can use some badly written book to enlarge the self more, learn a new poem, weave a more complex and beautiful synthesis. But, Jesus F. Christ, style matters.

Good points. In Heidegger's case, however, I just get the sense that yes, style matters so much so that for Heidegger's thought and project in Being and Time, it was crucial for him to write in such a way such that even his language and writing style themselves reflected what he was getting at - or to put it another way - it was crucial for him that the "form" and "content" of his style were as much as possible at one with one another lest his major points be lost on readers. Secondary readings and commentaries are definitely helpful, and from that point of view, one might be lead to suggest that he could have written that way himself to begin with - but then again we didn't get those secondary readings until later, and historically, it strikes me as a pointless argument. In particular, his style seems to me to be in line with his aim of overturning such things as "objective presence" in metaphysics, for example. Whether he could have written in another style while preserving this sense in his writing - well, maybe. But my point is I think he would agree that "style matters," and I think he had his own very much in mind as he was grappling with the ideas he was trying to articulate at the time. Also, for Heidegger, the relationship between being and language is far more intimate than say the relationship between a technical report and the stylistic concerns of lucidly transmitting and relating data or something like that. I think, too, that this aspect of his thought is a part of both his style in Being and Time and changes in his style in later writings.