Heidegger and Language
The place of language within Being and Time is misunderstood and that is mostly Heidegger's fault and I suspect he would agree. That having been said, the misunderstanding itself is rooted in Heidegger's failure to clearly distinguish between language and what he calls discourse. Many walk away from Being and Time mistakenly believing Heidegger considers language and discourse to be generally synonymous. He does not. Instead and for Heidegger, discourse is comprised of anything and everything that we do, think, and say that is intended to render explicit our understanding of being-in-the-world. Further and for Heidegger, most of what does comprise discourse is what we do and not what we think or say. Simply put and for Heidegger, language is not front and center when it comes to rendering explicit our understanding of being-in-the-world.
Comments (87)
It seems to play a pivotal role in reflection though. Thematisation without writing is empty, indication without words is blind.
2. There is the intelligibility of being-in-the-world.
3. There is an understanding rooted in the intelligibility of being-in-the-world.
4. There is an interpretation of an understanding rooted in the intelligibility of being-in-the-world.
5. There is a rendering explicit of an interpretation of an understanding rooted in the intelligibility of being-in-the-world.
6. There is language as a method (one of several) for rendering explicit an interpretation of an understanding rooted in the intelligibility of being-in-the-world.
Language does not make an appearance in the primordial order of being-in-the-world until level six and even then it is just one of several methods for doing what it does.
What would be an example of discourse that's not what we think or say?
Discourse is the articulation of intelligibility. (161)
The attuned intelligibility of being-in-the-world is expressed as discourse. (161)
The way in which discourse gets expressed is language. (161)
Its constitutive factors are: what discourse is about (what is discussed), what is said as such, communication, and making known. These are not properties that can be just empirically snatched from language, but are existential characteristics rooted in the constitution of being of Dasein which first make something like language ontologically possible. (162-163)
Hearing is constitutive for discourse. (163)
On the basis of this existentially primary potentiality for hearing, something like hearkening becomes possible. (163)
It requires a very artificial and complicated attitude in order to "hear" a "pure noise". The fact that we initially hear motorcycles and wagons is, however, the phenomenal proof that Dasein, as being in the world, always already maintains itself together with innerworldly things at hand and initially not at all with "sensations" whose chaos would first have to be formed to provide the springboard from which the subject jumps off finally to land in a "world". Essentially understanding, Dasein is initially together with what is understood. (164)
Another essential possibility of discourse has the same existential foundation, keeping silent. (164)
In that context, I say:
"Discourse" is the process whereby one expresses an interpretation of an understanding rooted in the intelligibility of being-in-the-world.
And language is just one of the many ways for engaging in that process.
For those who are unable to conceive of "Discourse" in non-verbal/non-linguistic terms, then I simply say:
"X" is the process whereby one expresses an interpretation of an understanding rooted in the intelligibility of being-in-the-world.
And language is just on of the many ways for engaging in that process.
Had you actually replied directly to me, I would have responded days ago.
Oh well.
What does Heidegger mean when he says, as quoted above: "Discourse is the articulation of intelligibility."? To articulate is to separate or distinguish. It is not simply something we do in language, it is a necessary condition for language. Thus: "Hearing is constitutive for discourse". We do not hear pure noise but, as in the example above, a motorcycle or wagon.
He says:
Why are you asking me? :smile:
My interpretation of Heidegger suggests:
Discourse is the process of expressing (articulating?) an interpretation of an understanding rooted in the intelligibility of being-in-the-world.
So yes, discourse is ultimately rooted in the intelligibility of being-in-the-world.
And therefore? Are you asking me whether I agree or what I think that means?
I suspect any understanding of discourse as equiprimordial with state-of-mind and understanding is rooted in thrownness and falling. And thrownness and falling together are such that we have to keep moving forward in the world and we do so by our actions. And discourse is the process whereby our state-of-mind and our understanding are transformed into actions.
It was a rhetorical question. I asked in order to provide the answer I gave. But also, such questions should be asked by anyone who is interested in interpreting the thought of others. I am writing on the assumption that I am not just addressing you but possibly others.
Discourse [Rede] is existentially equiprimordial with state-of-mind and understanding
— Fooloso4
And therefore? Are you asking me whether I agree or what I think that means?
It helps orient anyone reading Being and Time with regard to language and discourse. It is not readily apparent what it means though, so any comments you have might be helpful. Again, I am writing on the assumption that I am not just addressing you but possibly others.
Quoting Arne
How do you think hearing relates to this process of transformation into actions? Is hearkening to the call of conscience an action or does the action follow from hearing the call? How do you think this process relates to Heidegger's claim that keeping silent is an essential possibility of discourse, that silence has the same existential foundation?
I only have a general understanding of Heidegger, so bear with me.
I would have interpreted the action of turning the oven to 425 degrees as a transparent aspect of your experience in order to bake a potato for the sake of providing food, rather than an expression of understanding that enables one to share the world with others: which is more what I understand discourse to be. You’re assuming that I’m meant to interpret your expression by this action, but is this the reason you turn the oven to 425 degrees?
While I agree that discourse is not just language or talking, it’s not just an act that demonstrates understanding, either. Discourse is tied to being-with: it includes listening or being silent as well as verbal, written or body language, facial expressions and other performative aspects of communication.
How would you say that the action relates to being-with, such that it is performed for the sake of ‘the one’ in terms of expressing an understanding of the appropriate temperature at which to bake a potato? I don’t quite follow.
If indeed every act is an expression of understanding and therefore a discourse, then how does this relate to reflexes or subconscious/animal behaviour? I ask this because I (perhaps mistakenly) understood activity occurring at the level of understanding (skilled activity in the domain of ready-to-hand) and perhaps even intelligibility, not only beyond interpretation in explicitly taking something as something.
I’d appreciate some help with the confusion.
First, I do believe my opening remark for the thread was to the effect that Heidegger’s position on language is a bit confusing and that one of the ways to untangle it is to accept that he does not consider “discourse” and “language” to be synonymous.
Second, I too write for the “ear” of all those who may choose to read (and perhaps engage in) the ongoing discussion. And to be above board in that regard, my understanding and interpretation of being is obviously Heideggerian. But Heidegger is difficult to understand, leaves much room for interpretation, and leaves significant gaps in his overall ontological thrust. As a result, much of what I say includes my own interpretations of being and I do not in any form or fashion claim that Heidegger or anyone else for that matter would necessarily agree with them.
But this forum is not formal to the degree that I am going to write footnotes or necessarily delineate clearly between my interpretations of Heidegger per se and my own interpretations of being in light of the deficiencies in Heidegger’s work.
All of that having been said, I am not so certain that “silence” as a form of discourse is as complex as your questions suggest. When my wife and I had disagreements (I am a widower) and she went silent, it spoke volumes. Similarly and while I was growing up, my father spoke very little. But many is the person who would say to the effect, "your father does not speak much; but when he does, you are well advised to listen." And I do think those are the type of situations to which Heidegger refers.
And in that regard, one of the things I see in Heidegger is a continual refusal to frame issues in terms of opposites. Intentional silence is not the opposite of discourse (it is a comportment toward discourse), intentional solitude is not the opposite of daseining-with (it is a comportment toward daseining-with), and a lack of solicitude is not the opposite of care (it is a comportment toward care).
And finally, I recently read Heidegger's Analytic by Taylor Carmen. Chapter 5 is an excellent take on discourse and does push the envelope, though perhaps not as far as I. For those serious about Heidegger, the entire book is a must read. I suspect I will read it many times.
To clarify, I interpret discourse as the process of expressing an interpretation of an understanding rooted in the intelligibility of being-in-the-world. As you can see, the definition does not require that an expression be either public or communicative in any form, including verbal/linguistic forms (though it can be.).
And for those who are uncomfortable with the notion of a private discourse divorced from the verbal and/or linguistic, I am happy to interpret "[X} as the process of expressing an interpretation of an understanding rooted in the intelligibility of being-in-the-world".
If we had no understanding of the world, we would have no basis upon with to choose one act over another or several others. But we do have an understanding of the world and in order to act with purpose there are times we must render "explicit" our understanding. For example and if one wants a good potato, it is not enough to understand that heat is useful for baking potatoes. One must understand how much heat and for how long, i.e., one's understanding must be more explicit than heat is useful.
And the process of rendering explicit our understanding is what Heidegger calls interpretation. In turn, discourse is an expression of our interpretation. And I express my interpretation of my understanding of what is necessary to bake a good potato by turning the oven to 425 degrees and setting the timer to 30 minutes at which point I would turn the potato and reset the timer for another 30 minutes.
And none of that would be possible absent a general understanding of cooking and a more explicit understanding of cooking a potato and the ability to put that understanding in to actions both verbal and non-verbal and both private and public.
Keep in mind, Heidegger is attempting to describe our regular and ongoing involvement in the world in our average every dayness, i.e,, walking the dogs, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, baking potatoes. And very little of our average everyday involvement in the world is intended to be publicly communicative.
Discourse is not exclusively tied to being-with.
Discourse is equiprimordial with both disposition (mood, state-of-mind) and understanding.
As such and by definition Discourse is tied to being-in-the-world in general and that would not change even if you were the only remaining Dasein.
Every being-in-the-world has 1) a disposition toward the world, 2) an understanding of the world, and 3) is in Discourse with the world.
And when it comes to our average everydayness, most of our Discourse with the world is neither verbal/linguistic nor intended to be publicly communicative.
Simply put and to put it another way, Discourse is the process whereby we render our disposition and our understanding in to active involvement in the world.
If you are unable to think of Discourse in non-verbal/non-linguistic terms, then [X] is the process whereby we render our disposition and our understanding in to active involvement in the world.
However and whatever term you find helpful, please keep in mind that it must also carry the burden of being equiprimordial with disposition and understanding. And that is no small task for any word.
I hear this quite often. While I do not think there is anything wrong with going beyond what a particular philosopher says, it leads to all kinds of confusion when the distinction is not made. Making the distinction does not require footnotes. Your opening post was about how Being and Time is misunderstood. If the text is to be understood we must attend to it. That is what I have been doing. It is what I thought you were doing. It is only by attending to the work that we can judge whether it is the work that is deficient or our understanding of the work.
Quoting Arne
I will let Heidegger speak. First, with regard to the examples you gave:
And with regard to genuine or authentic discoursing:
Dasein is disclosed through our keeping silent. It is only when we, men, keep silent that we can hear what Dasein has to say.
The thread is entitled Heidegger and Language and though I refer specifically toBeing and Time in the original post, there is nothing in the original post to suggest that I or anyone else must limit our discussion of Heidegger and Language to only Being and Time. If you would like to do that, I am fine limiting my discussions with you to only Being and Time.
And I see no inconsistencies between my comments and examples regarding silence and your subsequent comments. Returning to the example of my father, his own tendencies to silence had the effect of amplifying his words on the occasions when he did choose to speak.
Though Heidegger did indeed consider language to be the house of being, it is important to keep in mind that in Being and Time he is attempting to describe being-in-the-world in terms of the average everydayness of our involvement in the world. And most of the average everydayness of our involvement has little to do with expressions intended for the appreciation of others.
Most of our day is spent expressing our interpretation of our understanding of the world by taking the dogs for a walk, mowing the lawn, baking a potato, doing the dishes and so on. And such mundane involvements in the world take up far more time than the amount of time the average person spends upon expressions intended for consumption by others.
Though language might well be "front, center, and all around" when dealing with expressions intended for public consumption and evaluation, such expressions account for an extremely small amount of the daily involvement in the world of the average person.
And again and in Being and Time, Heidegger is in pursuit of the nature of being in our average everydayness.
Woke up
Fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Went downstairs and drank a cup. . .
A Day in Life is not a day in which "language is exactly front, center, and all around." In fact, it is quite the opposite.
It is not a question of limiting the discussion but of identifying whether you are interpreting BT, introducing other works by H., or addressing something that is not in the text.
Quoting Arne
The examples you gave are what H. describes in the first paragraph I quoted. He contrasts this with genuine or authentic silence.
Quoting Arne
As I understand it, the effect of amplifying his words is not what genuine silence is about. It is about the hearing, about the disclosure of Dasein.
I am addressing Heidegger and Language. Confusion also results when people presume their projects are the same as the projects of other people. My primary project is to raise interest in Heidegger. You seem to suggest that my project has something to do with judging whether Heidegger lacks clarity regarding language. I have already made that judgment and it is clearly stated in the first sentence of the original post.
It is clear that Heidegger says all sorts of things about discourse, language and silence. It strikes me as a fool's errand to reduce what Heidegger has to say about each to a single statement he may have said about each.
As for my father's tendency to silence, I was merely commenting upon its effect in regard to those occasions when he chose not to be silent. And in that sense, I was using the example of his silence to highlight Heidegger's distinction between those who are silent because they have nothing to say and those for whom silence is what they have to say.
As for "genuine" silence being about the disclosure of Dasein, that is true of all forms of disclosure. There is nothing else for Dasein to disclose but Dasein. Dasein is the disclosure of Dasein.
Carry on.
I would make the following modifications: Understanding is equi-primordial with being-in -the -world and thus with intelligibility. Interpetation of understanding is always a making explicit.
"Interpretation is existentially based in understanding, and not the other way around. Interpretation is not the acknowledgment of what has been understood, but rather the development of possibilities
projected in understanding. Circumspection discovers, that is, the world which has already been understood is interpreted. What is at hand comes explicitly before sight that understands."
I wouldn't say that language in its broadest sense for Heidegger is merely one of several methods of rendering explicit an interpretation of understanding. Rather , language as signification is interpretation itself in all its guises.
"For the most part, discourse expresses itself and has always already expressed itself. It is language. But then understanding and interpretation are always already contained in what is expressed. As
expression, language harbors in itself an interpretedness of the understanding of Da-sein. This interpretedness is no more merely objectively present than language is, but rather its being is itself of the character of Da-sein."
When we are involved in any activity, such as what is described above in McCartney's lyric, we are involved in significations. These activities only exist for us because they have relevance for us. They are meaningful in their significance, and in signifying, they are language.
What Heidegger says is that the intelligibility of our being-in-the-world is expressed in discourse and the way in which discourse gets expressed is language(161).
So what is the difference between language and discourse? Arne thinks that Heidegger failed to clearly distinguish them. I think the failure is more likely to be on the part of the reader. It is not clear to me whether Arne is explicating or going beyond Heidegger in saying:
Quoting Arne
What Heidegger says is:
Quoting Fooloso4 [Stambaugh translation]
[Macquarrie and Robinson translation]
He says nothing here about discourse being about anything other than what is said, what is talked about.
In their translation Macquarrie and Robinson note:
I wonder. My sense is that , as equi-primoridial with temporality, understanding, Care and attunement,
discourse is indeed a primordial pre-condition for all of Dasein's experiencing. How so? Dasein implies the unconcealing disclosing of a world. For a world to be disclosed for Dasein, it must be articulated as totality of relevance. In its having significance for Dasein, the world signifies as discourse.
I am not sure if you are taking issue with the claim that discourse is not about what we do, that it is not, for example, as Arne would have it, turning on the oven to bake a potato. One might, however, say that talking is a kind of doing, but hearing and being silence are not a kind of doing. There is something active in disclosure but also something passive or receptive.
As I understand Heidegger, Dasein is always a doing, but doing for Heidegger means a meaningful involvement with others in the world.which is at the same time a praxis, an understanding, an attunement and a discoursing. Discourse serves the same purpose for Heidegger that language does for Derrida and other post-structuralists. Rather than being a secondary phenomenon in relation to perception, it is intrinsic to all forms of experiencing.
This is a point that should be taken into consideration during any discourse if we hope to gain something of substance from the exchange. The number of times I see the misapplication of antonyms in discussions makes me cringe. That is not to say a binary delineation is useless, only that it is a tool that can be blindly clumsily applied if we’re not careful.
You will never be able to capture the average everydayness of our involvement in the world without accounting for all expressed interpretations. Either Discourse will include non-verbal expressions of interpretations or it will be defined in such a way as to claim that it does not include non-verbal expressions of interpretations but will capture them nonetheless. Philosophers are good at that. And the post-structuralists are especially good at that.
[X] is the expressing of interpretations. If your term for X does not capture all expressions of interpretations, then it is useless.
If we account for those actions (in which language is inherent) that are verbal and call them Discourse, then we still must account for those actions (in which language is inherent) that are non-verbal (which for Heidegger will constitute most of our average everyday involvement in the world).
And if we call the latter something other than Discourse, then Disposition, Understanding and Discourse as comprehensively constitutive of being-in-the-world will not capture the non-verbal acts that make up the greater portion of our average everyday involvement in the world. And that would be a strange interpretation of Heidegger indeed.
So even conceding that language is inherent in everything we do changes nothing so long as we cling to the notion that Discourse includes only verbal acts.
Simply put, whatever term one uses for that which is equiprimordial with disposition and understanding, it must capture all expressions of interpretations or it will not capture our average every day involvement in the world. And if you are a Bavarian peasant, it will not even come close.
AND
IF much (perhaps most) of the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-world is comprised of what would be typically described as non-verbal acts (mowing the lawn, driving to the store, baking a potato);
AND
IF State-of-Mind, Understanding, and Discourse are equiprimordial and comprehensively constitutive of being-in-the-world;
THEN: Discourse must include those acts typically described as non-verbal OR Heidegger fails (MISERABLY) at capturing the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-world.
Or put another way, you cannot capture the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-world without accounting for those acts typically described as non-verbal.
The primary purpose is to once again ask the question of the meaning of being. The everyday mode of existence is the starting point for his explication of Dasein. The everyday is not Dasein's mode of being for in everyday existence our concern is not the question of the meaning of being, that is, what it is for us to be. Dasein is:
Quoting Arne
This is what Heidegger calls involvement with equipment, the 'ready to hand'. We can talk about ovens and baking potatoes, but that does not mean that talking about ovens and baking potatoes and lawn mowers and mowing the lawn are a priori conditions for using ovens and lawn mowers or that the activities are discursive.
Quoting Arne
It does not follow from the equiprimordiality of state-of-mind, understanding, and discourse that discourse must include such things as mowing the lawn and baking potatoes. Their equiprimordiality means that none of them is primary, that they do not derive one from another. Our active involvement in the world is not reducible to discourse.
i disagree with this. Equi-primordiality means that all of them are equally primary, and all of them are implied in all experience. Experience is reducible to all of them. Thus, discourse must include such things as mowing the lawn and baking potatoes. These activities are experienced, and as experiences they are signifiications. They matter to us in a heedfully circumspective way, and thus are discursive.
"The loveliness of the valley and the menace of the mountain and of
the raging sea, the sublimity of the stars, the absorption of the plant and
the ensnaremcnt of the animal, the calculated speed of machines and the
severity of the historical action, the harnessed frenzy of the created work,
the cold boldness of the questioning that knows, the hardened sobriety of
labor and the discretion of the heart-all that is language; wins or loses
being only in the event of language. Language is the ruling of the world-forming
and preserving center of the historical Dasein of the Volk. Only
where temporality tcmporalizes itself, does language happen; only where
language happens, docs temporality temporalize itself." Logic as the Question of Being, sec. 29
I agree with this. The languaged basis of non-verbal experience is a well-developed idea not only in post-structuralist philosophy but also within cognitive science, incorporating such sources as Gibsonian perception. Perceiving organisms are languaging beings prior to the capacity for formal language in that perception is an interpretive act involving a relatiing of signs.
What I said was:
Quoting Fooloso4
The second clause qualifies the first. If they are equally primary it means that no one of them is primary or before the others.
Quoting Joshs
That is not quite the same as saying baking a potato or mowing the lawn is a mode of discourse. It is not the act of mowing or baking that is a signification:
Discourse is the articulation of meaning . The meaning of the activity of mowing the lawn or baking a potato is what is articulated in discourse. The activity of mowing or baking is not discourse, but is taken up in discourse as part of the totality of involvement and totality of signification.
We need to dissect this a little. A person is performing an activity alone. Where does discourse, in your view, come into play here? Do other people have to be involved in a communication for discourse to take place, or does the person performing the activity have to undergo a modification , translation, elaboration, articulation of the experience to themselves in a second step? "The activity of mowing or baking is not discourse, but is taken up in discourse as part of the totality of involvement and totality of signification." If the activity of mowing or baking is not discourse , is it something else? Does it have a meaningful existential status or is it a meaningless notion without discourse? If mowing and baking have a status without discourse, describe what this status is.
lets also examine the idea of something being 'taken up in' discourse: If it is equi-primordial with attunement , care ,understanding and temporality, then there could be no status or sense to that which which is outside of, separate or independent from the discourse in which it is being 'taken up'. Being taken up in discourse would have to be primary, just as being affected by mood, or taken into understanding . So if mowing or baking are 'taken into' discourse, this cannot be a second step or development in relation to some supposed prior being of these activities. Articulation as discourse could not 'come after' an initial experience of mowing or baking but be simultaneous with it.
It matters not whether your purpose is 1) to tell us the meaning of A by fully explicating B or 2) to fully explicate B in order to tell us the meaning of A. Heidegger has tied a full explication of Dasein to explaining the meaning of being in such a way that the two are inseparable to his purpose. And you already know this. If all he wanted to do was tell us the meaning of being, he could have stopped after page 26 of the M&R translation of B&T.
Quoting Fooloso4
Seriously? I know what Heidegger calls involvement with equipment and at no point did I suggest that talking about anything is an a prior condition for using anything. (and by the way, the ready to hand and equipment are not synonymous). I did suggest that one cannot possibly render explicit their understanding of how to mow a lawn if they did not already have a general understanding of how to mow a lawn. The point being is that interpretations (the rendering explicit of understanding) are done for the purpose of acting upon the interpretation. And rendering explicit (interpreting) my understanding of the proper heat at which to bake a potato is done for the purpose of setting the oven to the appropriate temperature. And the act of setting the oven to the appropriate temperature is a non-verbal expression of my interpretation (explicit understanding) of how to bake a potato.
Quoting Fooloso4
Seriously again? The primary issue is not the definition of equiprimordial. You may rest assured I know what it means. Instead, the issue is whether when taken together these primoridials constitute the existential whole of Dasein. And they do. Please see B&T (M&R) at page 224 (German at 180).
It would be strange indeed if Heidegger laid out the “existential whole of Dasein” and it accounted for the expressions of interpretations made by Dasein except for the expressions of interpretations at the very heart of Heidegger’s originality, i.e., non-verbal acts expressing our interpretations (explicit understandings) of how to use (not talk about) equipment (such as ovens and lawn mowers). And if you think that is what Heidegger has done, then you are wrong. And I can live with that.
It may not come in at all. That it does not come into play is not the result of being alone but of performing the activity
Quoting Joshs
Heidegger says:
The activity that Heidegger is calling our attention to is not whatever we do, but the doing of something specific that is, if not unique, essential to Dasein. This is why he goes through the history of logos. He wants to get back behind that development already under way in which Aristotle's claim that man alone of the animals has logos, is understood to as man is the rational animal. Man talks. This essential feature of our being is lost when every activity of thought to be discourse.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, it is mowing or baking - "stop talking and get back to work".
Quoting Joshs
Mowing the lawn or baking a potato are not "notions", they are activities. There are a variety of ways in which they may be meaningful - they may serve some purpose or get taken up in discourse and shown to play a role in a totality of significations. The activities are not, however, the articulation of meaning, their meaning must be brought to light in discourse.
Quoting Joshs
Discourse is primary, what is taken up in discourse is not.
Quoting Joshs
Again, discourse or talk is always about something. In this case talk about mowing or baking. It is not a second step or development.
The meaning of being is not something he or anyone else can tell us. What it is to be is not a matter of definition. It is the question that guides Dasein's authentic being. Essential to this is an openness to possibilities for what one is to be. That is something each of us must determine for him or her self.
Quoting Arne
On that we agree, but:
Quoting Arne
You did not, but:
Quoting Arne
But your interpretation is not discourse. Discourse is what make interpretation possible:
Quoting Arne
The issue under discussion is whether acts such as baking a potato are examples of or expressions of non-verbal discourse. Our disagreement has nothing to do with the definition of equiprimordial.
Quoting Arne
Finally, an actual reference to the text! But it is not a point in contention.
Quoting Arne
You have moved away from the claim that discourse (talk) is not about what we say but about what we do. Interpretation is addressed, as I quoted above, in the section on understanding. Discourse is not interpretation or the expression of an interpretation, it is what makes both interpretation and its expression possible.
Quoting Fooloso4
There are many readings of Heidegger and I respect that yours is different than mine.
I will not claim that one is correct and the other incorrect, only that there is a loose consensus around the interpretation I've been trying to elaborate that I share with readers of Heidegger like Derrida and Hubert Drefyus. According to this reading, all of the equi-primordial dimensions that Heidegger mentions, including discourse, always come into play in every experience.
What is essential to Dasein is temporality. Temporalilty is the tripartite unity of three ecstacies: the having been ,present and future. Dasein is not a subject that experiences objects, but an in-between, a becoming. There is no subject and no object that exist in themselves first and then relate to each other. Relational involvement is primary, and this is what a self is for Heidegger. As this in-between, Dasein is alwasy already in the midst of involvement in a world that matters to it and has significance for it. Whatever we do has this character of mattering to us. The reason that man talks is that man has temporality. Temporalization means that whatever we experience is relevant for us in relation to some purpose. There is never any experience that is without relevance or outside of some purpose in relation to which it has meaning for us. Discourse for Heidegger is nothing other than the way that our having been, our present and the future all 'communicate' with each other in each temporalizing moment. This is the origin of language. In the later pages of Being and Time Heidegger show s how authentic Dasein calls us out of everydayness. He says this call, this summons is a mode of discourse. How can that be? Because discourse has to do with the way every experience communicates to us, calls us out of the previous. "The human being shows himself as a being who speaks. This does not mean that the possibility of vocal utterance belongs to him, but that this being is in the mode of discovering world and Da-sein itself."(Being and Time 166)
Quoting Fooloso4
Im referring to your notion of activity, which seems to lack Heidegger's structure of temporality.
All activities for Heidegger are part of a purposive context, and all activities play a role in a totality of significations. There is no such thing for Heidegger as an activity that is not itself part of a larger totality of significance. IT would not be an activity in the first place if it did not emerge as a relevant elaboration and articulation of such a context . That is the essential being of an activity. Note that in the section of Being and Time on handiness, all of this is delineated without mention of the role of discourse. But the in-order-to and the for-the-sake-of-which that organizes our heedful involvement with things is a form of talking for Heidegger, but not as a secondary function in relation to passively perceiving the world or being involved in an activity.
Quoting Fooloso4.
All experience for Heidegger is always about something, whether we 'talk' about it or not. To experience something AS something , whether it is a memory, thought, activity, perception, is a "confrontation that understands, interprets, and articulates, and at the same time takes apart what has been put together."
This act of experiencing something as something is always affectively attuned and always discursive, not in the conventional way in which you understand it but in Heidegger's sense of a being called beyond itself. "The structure of care as being-ahead-of-itself-already-being-in-a world-as being together with innerworldly beings contains the disclosedness of Da-sein. " Dasein is discovery and disclosure.
If the relations among the primordials 1) State-of-Mind, 2) Understanding, and 3) Discourse (which together constitute the existential whole of Dasien) do not account for the non-verbal expressions of interpretation, then they cannot account for either our involvement in the equipmental whole (such involvements generally being non-verbal expressions of interpretations) or the ultimate for the sake of which (from which involvements draw their purpose).
There is our State-of Mind, there is our Understanding, and there is what we do.
Discourse is what we do!
I agree with that, but it does not follow that mowing the lawn is discourse. There may be all kinds of things that come into play with any activity but that does not mean that the activity is those things that come into play.
Quoting Joshs
I was with you up until this point.
Quoting Joshs
Yes. I made this point in one of my first posts.
Quoting Joshs
It is because of:
Quoting Joshs
Discourse as part of the basic a priori structure of Dasein is a condition for the possibility of our being in the world. Heedful involvement with things is not possible without discourse. It is, however, through the expression of discourse in language that this is brought to light.
I take this to mean that the a priori structure of discourse articulates in the sense of things being phenomenally distinct, that is, particular. There can be no intelligibility without things being distinct one from the other. Thus, he says, we do not hear pure noise but a wagon or motorcycle (164).
State of mind, understanding, and discourse make possible what we do. They are together the a priori conditions for all that we do.
I think it evident that I am not going to change your mind about this. While it is possible that you might change my mind, it would only happen as a result of providing textual support. If discourse is what we do then it makes not sense to call it Rede instead of action or behavior or what we do.
So, instead of providing textual support for the claim that discourse is whatever we do you provide excuses for why you cannot provide it.
I am willing to leave it there.
The point Heidegger is trying to make here is that in the classic understanding of perception, we experience raw stimuli, the data of sensation, and then we construct from this chaos our concepts. So in understanding language, we are presumed, according this model, to first take in bits of uninterpreted sensory information, which we then process and interpret. For Heidegger, however, Dasein never encounters a raw world of sensory data, but via projecting, fore-having understanding already sees the particulars of the world as meaningfully relevant and significant in relation to its purposes. There is no such thing for Heidegger as a pre-interpreted, pre-lingustic world.
Quoting Fooloso4
It 's interesting that you used the word 'is'. You said "That does not mean that the activity IS those things."
Heidegger has a lot to say about the 'is', the copula. For him , the 'is' does not act as a secondary glue sticking subject and object together. Instead, the 'is' rests at the center of his project. I talked about how temporality is key to understanding Being (and the 'is') for Heidegger. For Heidegger, any experience conforms to the structure of temporality. An event is at once a having been, a presencing and a not yet or beyond itself. The equi-primoridial modes of attunement, understanding and discourse
belong to and are always implied by this structural unity.
"Every understanding has its mood. Every attunement understands. Attuned understanding
has the characteristic of entanglement. Entangled, attuned understanding articulates itself with regard to its intelligibility in discourse. The actual temporal constitution of these phenomena always leads back to that one temporality that holds within itself the possible structural unity of understanding, attunement, entanglement, and discourse."
So lets bring this back to the activity of mowing the lawn. First, it should be pointed out that taking any concept primordially means that mowing , or any activity, is not understood in the abstract, but always my use of this word here , right now, in this context, in relation to my purposes . Given that, what is it that mowing 'is'? Its isness is its temporalizing out of a having been that presences and at the same time points beyond itself. Its 'isness' , its essence, its being, is that in my sense of its meaning for me right now, it affects me in a particular way, That is, I am attuned to it affectiively. Also, my sense of mowing the lawn right now projectively understands this concept . And finally, I articulate the intelligibility of what is disclosed to me as this mowing in discourse. Put differently, what ever sense of .mowing' I experience right now is interpreted , signified, conceptualized, This is a discursive move. Actually, the discursive move comes prior to my interpretatively signifying it as a word. So , like any and all experences, mowing IS a temporalizing . It IS an understanding. It IS attuned. It IS an entanglement and a falling prey. And it IS discourse(an articulation of intelligibility).
In an earlier post you wrote " Man talks. This essential feature of our being is lost when every activity of thought to be discourse." Does this mean you distinguish Heidegger from writers like Derrida, who says there is nothing outside the text(what he meant wasn't that there is nothing outside formal language , but that all meaning emerges within a differential, and endless relation of signs without signifieds.)?
Is man's essential feature talking or is it creating meaning out of a totality of relevance? Doesnt the latter already imply the former?
But it has been a while since I've been through B&T.
I agree that this is a point that he makes but I think there is more to it. We might say, for example, that a hand is one thing but that the palm and fingers are two things and that each finger is several things. How we divide the world is both determined by and determines what we say.
Quoting Joshs
It was Arne who said this:
Quoting Arne
Quoting Joshs
This discursive move will not get the grass cut. The lawnmower has to move. I can talk about it, but talking about it, disclosing its significance is not mowing the lawn.
Quoting Joshs
I meant to say when every activity is thought to be discourse. I am not prepared to discuss Derrida. Compounding the problem of interpreting by introducing the problem of interpreting Derrida is problematic. What I meant simply is that there is something distinctive about talk or Rede. That is lost if everything we do is said to be talk.
Is there for you any sense of the meaning of or existence of a lawnmower, grass and cutting apart from how they are interpreted in the context of your actual involvement at a particular point in time in the world ? Are you arguing for an Independence of things from our concepts of them? Is there a reality independent of our relevant circumspective contextual dealing in the world? Heidegger was not a realist. every place in Being and Time he mentions reality he puts it in scare quotes and explains how problematic the concept is.
How about Rorty or any of those who say language is prior to perception?
I think the idea is that our whole range of abilities to deal with the "equipment" of everyday life is itself a linguistically based discourse in the sense that we know and can say what the equipment is for (the "in-order-to") and what the roles and importance of its various functions in our lives is (the "for-the-sake-of-which").
So, to use your particular example, the oven is in order to cook food, which obviously is for the sake of nutrition.
My point once again is simply that saying that mowing the lawn is discourse is a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what I take Heidegger to mean by discourse. Mowing the lawn can be interpreted within the totality of our involvement with the world but that does not reduce mowing the lawn to discourse.
As I read him, reality is phenomenal:
The question of what there was prior to or what there is without Dasein is a question that Dasein asks, and so, cannot be asked or thought or known independent of Dasein.
"The close connection between Articulacy and Language ... is such that the full range of functions Heidegger attributes to Articulacy can be realized in language use but not in intelligent nonlinguistic behaviors, so that the former but not the latter provides an adequate model for defining Articulacy. ... Language serves as a model for the various functions of Articulacy, defining a field of possibilities for Articulate activity, some—but not all—of which can also be realized in intelligent nonlinguistic behaviors.
In this light, the relation of intelligent nonlinguistic behaviors to the notion of Articulacy modeled on language use is like that of inauthentic to authentic Dasein: the former is in both cases a limited realization—albeit an indispensable, foundational one—of the available possibilities. There is also no problem in explaining Heidegger’s emphasis on intelligent nonlinguistic behaviors. He does this not because he wants to suggest it is more properly human to wield hammers than to wield propositions, but because focusing on purposive understanding serves as a corrective to traditional misrepresentations of the human-world relation" (Inkpin, [i]Disclosing the World: On the Phenomenology of Language).
i don't know what you mean by reducing mowing the lawn to discourse. What is it you want mowing the lawn to be besides a significant meaning within a totality of relevance? How else can mowing the lawn be interpreted? Are you arguing that when we articulate the meaning of mowing the lawn as ready to hand, this interpretation of the activity is a discursive treatment added onto beings which we initially encounter ? In other words, that an initially objectively present world-stuff were "subjectively colored" in this way by discursive articulation of it? If that is your position then I can understand your objection to the idea that discursive articulation entirely captures the meaning of mowing the lawn.
Let me go back a step. I asked myself why it was necessary for Heidegger to add the mode of discourse to the equiprimordial modes of attunement and understanding. I would have initially thought the mode of understanding would allow one to have the meanings of ready to hand beings that one is involved with(like lawn mowers, grass and cutting).
But this paragraph made it clear that understanding does not serve this purpose for Heidegger.
"When with the being of Da-sein innerworldly beings are discovered, that is, have come to be understood, we say that they have meaning. But strictly speaking, what is understood is not the meaning, but beings, or being. Meaning is that wherein the intelligibility of something maintains itself. What can be articulated in disclosure that understands we call meaning. The concept of meaning includes the formal framework of what necessarily belongs to what interpretation that understands articulates. Meaning, structured by fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception, is the upon which of the project in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something"(151)
So it was necessary for Heidegger to conceive of discourse (and its derivative mode of language) as that aspect of disclosure that gives meaning to the world (attunement and understanding do not achieve this). If Dasein is being-in-the-world, it is discourse that allows the world to appear in its meaningfulness for Dasein, Without discourse, mowing the lawn has no meaning. That is to say, it has no content, only an attuned mood and a projectively understood familiarity.
Quoting Fooloso4 The traditional concept of reality for Heidegger (being in the sense of the pure, objective presence of things) is ontologically inadequate. So is the phenomenal concept of reality that Husserl advances, since it distinguishes indication from expression and posits a pure living present.
The argument put forward by Arne, if I understand him correctly, is that this activity must be understood as standing under state of mind, understanding, or discourse. He puts it under discourse.
Quoting Joshs
Is a totality of relevance discourse?
Quoting Joshs
Beings which we initially encounter? Encounters of the third kind?
Talking about mowing the lawn is discourse:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Joshs
You are stuffing straw, man.
Quoting Joshs
Once again, it is through discourse that the meaning of mowing the lawn is disclosed. That does not mean that mowing the lawn is discourse.
How do you know that someone is mowing the lawn? Describe the ways of knowing that a lawn is being mowed(by someone else or by you), that don't involve taikng about it.
Quoting Fooloso4
The articulation of a totality of relevance is discourse. "What is articulated in discoursing articulation as such, we call the totality of significations.(161)" Since all experiences are articulated in this way, all experiences are discursive(if discursive means articulating a totality of significations). If you prefer this to 'all experiences are discourse', then I'm fine with that.
Speaking on behalf of Husserl - if not Heidegger; but likely so - the point of phenomenology was to explore the subjective matter NOT to postulate objective claims of reality (that is the domain of the natural sciences). Husserl was attempting to give science a firming grounding against metaphysical ideas that bled into mystical mumbo jumbo.
@Fooloso4
Heidegger is slippery to say the least. Given that he hasn’t completely abandoned the founding premise of the phenomenological pursuit this cannot be true. It gets tricky if people start talking about different kinds of ‘reality’ - I’ve fallen foul of this easy cop-out too often myself! (Shame on me!)
I’d say both Husserl and Heidegger fall prey to the pursuit of some ‘pure’ beingness ... if you know what I mean. I’d say the big difference is that Husserl was trying to establish a scientific perspective of subjectivity whilst Heidegger was focused in one a particular aspect of said subjectivity - the interpretive lingual aspects of how we frame ‘being’ and trying to capture what isn’t ‘thought’ in words in words; an obvious contradiction akin to the misconception of saying ‘I understand my unconscious content’ which is impossible as we’re not ‘conscious’ of the ‘unconscious’ yet have some appreciation of how such content presents itself ambiguously through conscious experience and analysis by way of hindsight and foresight.
I’d have to agree with @Fooloso4, though - I don’t see this as necessarily discourse. It is entirely possible to succeed in baking the potato without being able to know or say what an oven is or what it’s for, let alone to know or say anything about nutrition. You could teach a chimpanzee to bake a potato or mow the lawn, for instance, and he could then carry out the exact same actions without too much trouble - would that be discourse?
While I understand that the actions of turning the oven to 425 degrees and mowing the lawn could be discursive, I would think that in most situations they are not: one is not often explicitly articulating their understanding of either the in-order-to or the for-the-sake-of in performing these actions, unless they were doing so expressly for-the-sake-of being helpful, for instance.
Perhaps, at best, they may be considered ‘idle talk’. This is Dasein’s everyday mode of being. Discourse, on the other hand, is a more authentic mode of being and involves interpretation - ‘taking something as’ - and then explicitly articulating that interpretation as a way of relating to others. This is not happening in these actions.
Discourse doesn’t really come into the picture until the second part of B&T. @Arne’s explanation that Heidegger was talking about the ‘average everydayness’ refers to the first part, to readiness-at-hand for instance and other inauthentic modes of being - not to discourse.
Okay, I am going to end this talk about mowing the lawn, but the lawn will still get mowed, if not by me then by someone else.
Quoting Joshs
A totality of relevance and the articulation a totality of relevance are not the same. I do not see how it makes sense to say that mowing the lawn is the articulation of a totality of relevance when that articulation is about the totality. Mowing the lawn is something that occurs within that totality, not the articulation of that totality.
Quoting Possibility
Chimpanzees don't have "being-with" (which makes the activity or behavior to discourse, i think). So, other chimpanzees moving around the chimpanzee taught to bake don't have an understanding that there is a "baking" going on. That is, there is no effective discourse existing in that situation. Humans are in a world where there is "mowing the lawn" over there, "baking" over there, "nothing happens" over there, "something strange" over there etc etc. Every one basically "knows" what is happening. Every one is i n discourse. Chimpanzees are basically just feeling pleasure-unpleasure with regard to sensations. There is no "pleasurable b a k i n g", "unpleasurable m o w i n g the lawn". There is no such basic units of meaning in chimpanzees "world". It could be said that chimpanzees are governed by causality, not by discourse/sense. (Through the expression "causality" we try to give a certain sense to chimpanzees' nonsense random activity.)
I think that what Heidegger is getting at is that reality is not an ontological category. It is phenomenal not in the sense of as opposed to the noumenal, but that it is part of rather than independent of the ontological structure of Dasein.
I
Good point. It is here we find the call of conscience.
It comes into the picture in an important way a quarter of the way through the book as an introduction to being-with-others in average everydayness and modes of language such as idle talk. In this first part of the book , discourse is fleshed out in relation to inauthentic modes of being. In second part it is connected with authentic being and temporality.
No, they are not the same thing. And attunement and understanding are not the same thing. They are equiprimordial, though. As is discourse. IF mowing the lawn occurs within that totality it is a signification, and thus it is language, which implies and is a derived mode of discourse. So mowing the lawn is discusive by virtue the fact that it is a symbolizing. There is no such thing as a doing that is not a symbolizing, to Heidegger. You believe differently . Youre clearly more of a traditionalist about the relation between language and perception. That why you can say Quoting Fooloso4and not treat it as an incoherent statement. For Heidegger , it would be incorrent to distinguish an activity or experience from a system of differential signs. It's not that it would be false to say that the lawn will get cut. It would be neither true nor false until there is a Dasein to symbolize it as an assertion.
"Before there was any Da-sein, there was no truth; nor will there be any after Da-sein is no more. For in such a case truth as disclosedness, discovering, and discoveredness cannot be. Before Newton's laws were discovered, they were not "true." From this it does not follow that they were false or even that they would become false if ontically no discoveredness were possible any longer."(227)
Where there is anything for Dasein, there is a system of differential signs composing its structure, as attuned, discursive understanding. This is what Dasein IS as being in the world in involvement with things and other Daseins.
I don't see how it follows from being within a totality of signification that mowing the lawn is language. But we can go back and forth claiming it is and is not. I am open to amending my position but only if you can point to something substantive in Heidegger that identifies such activities as language.
Quoting Joshs
What does it mean to say that mowing the lawn is symbolizing?
Quoting Joshs
Point to something substantive in the text. It is not a matter of what I believe but of my trying to understand Heidegger.
Quoting Joshs
Do you not understand what I said?
Quoting Joshs
Are you not able to distinguish between mowing the lawn and baking a potato? Would it be all the same if you put the lawnmower in the oven?
In dong so, what I am distinguishing are 2 patterns of significations, bound up within a larger totality of significations.
Quoting Fooloso4
The Heidegger scholar Daniel Dahlstrom wrote an interesting short piece on the relation between discourse and language in Being and Time. This may be helpful.
https://www.bu.edu/philo/files/2013/09/d-powell-book.pdf
This does not explain why you think my statement is incoherent.
From Dahlstrom's article:
So, tell me where you find in this or elsewhere in the article or anywhere in Being and Time the idea that mowing the lawn or baking a potato is discourse.
This is where we tend to get confused about the role of language. The suggestion in the OP is that discourse “is intended to render explicit our understanding of being in the world”, but when we’re referring to average everydayness, idle talk and other inauthentic modes of being, then we’re not talking about everything we do as intended discourse.
There is a difference between intentionally rendering explicit our understanding, and making it explicit by idly ‘doing what one does’. The difference is in hearing the call of conscience, in articulating our own understanding of being the world.
I think as long as it’s clear that we’re talking about unintentional discourse and inauthentic modes of being, then I’m with you. But I’m not sure it’s possible to discuss the relationship between language and discourse in this way across both authentic and inauthentic modes of being.
That’s my view, FWIW.
Using the word "intended' is a bit confusing in relation to Heidegger's use of the word. Heidegger explains that included in Dasein's inauthentic involvement in the world is the use of tools and being-with-others. These are for him intentional modes in the sense that in the average everyday interpretive mode of handiness, which inclues language and being-with -others, one interprets the meaning of things in a relevant way in relation to one's purposes.
Heidegger says, for instance:
"The handy presence of signs in everyday associations and the conspicuousness
which belongs to signs and can be produced with varying intentions." (81)
"Letting something be relevant lies in the simplest handling of a useful thing. Relevance has an intentional character with reference to which the thing is useable or in use. Understanding the intention and context of relevance has the temporal structure of awaiting. Awaiting the intention,
taking care can at the same time come back to something like relevance" (353)
Idle talk can include scientific discourse , which is certainly intentional in a broad sense.
What distinguishes the authentic from the inauthentic mode of being is not intentionality, but a kind of intentionality that doesnt stop at the usefulness of things for our purposes in the world conventionality given to us alongside others, but always brings our purposes in the world back to a kind of meta-intentionailty, not just a conventional normative goal-orentiedness , but a disclosing one's ownmost possiblities, apart from and beyond their socially normative senses .
“The issue under discussion is whether acts such as baking a potato are examples of or expressions of non-verbal discourse.”
“Discourse does not come into play in the performing of an activity.”
“It is not the act of mowing or baking that is a signification. The meaning of the activity of mowing the lawn or baking a potato is what is articulated in discourse. The activity of mowing or baking is not discourse, but is taken up in discourse as part of the totality of involvement and totality of signification.”
We can talk about ovens and baking potatoes, but that does not mean that talking about ovens and baking potatoes and lawn mowers and mowing the lawn are a priori conditions for using ovens and lawn mowers or that the activities are discursive.”
Tell me if i am getting anywhere near to your position on the relation between what you are understanding as Heidegger's notion of discourse , and the performance of an activity.
It seem to me that you are making a distinction between experiences as they are in themselves and our representations of experiences. So you read Heidegger as saying that discourse and language have to do with subjective representation of reality, as opposed to the things or activities in themselves. We can understand the idea of things as they are in themselves apart from how we articulate them in discourse. Would it be fair to assume that your thinking on language and reality is consistent with Kant's on the relationship between intuition and conceptualization?
If this is the case, it would be necessary for me to show how Heidegger's use of such terms as articulation, intelligibility , discourse and language are intended in a radically different way than what is implied by representation.
It would be necessary to present a Heideger for whom there is no reality outside of a process of the endless self-unfolding of a chain of differential signs. These signs don't represent anything outside of themselves, they transform the signs they refer back to, and this transforming-referring(disclosure) is what they are, is what Heidgerrian BEING is.. Disclosure is ta moving beyond itself, not a representing. A world is not a present reality that is represented by language, it is enacted,
Forgive me for quoting Derrida here, but this is the direction that I (and Derrida) believe Heideger was headed in:
“Henceforth, it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no center, that the center
could not be thought in the form of a present-being, that the center had no natural site, that
it was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of non-locus in which an infinite number of
sign-substitutions came into play. This was the moment when language invaded the
universal problematic, the moment when, in the absence of a center or origin, everything
became discourse-provided we can agree on this word-that is to say, a system in which the
central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside
a system of differences.”
This would be a Heidegger who is offering a postmodern construction-ism, where it becomes incoherent to talk about what anything is outside of how it is constructed and reconstructed in language in relation to our purposes. .langue is no longer a linking of a stable thing with a sign for it,or the use of a sign as a tool, but signs without signifieds as the only reality.
I don't know what you mean "in themselves". I am simply saying that what we do and talking about what we do are not the same.
Quoting Joshs
The only way in which representation comes into our discussion here is your misrepresentation of what I have actually said.
Quoting Joshs
I am not interested in discussing what direction you or Derrida believe Heidegger was headed in. But by all means introduce the work of another philosopher so that those who might be interested can argue about the interpretation of not one or two or more philosophers, but I am not going to join in.
I'll note once again, that you have not been able to provide any evidence from Being and Time that activities such as mowing the lawn or baking a potato are considered by Heidegger to be forms or examples of discourse.
You repeat the same sentence over and over again, disagreeing with me without offering any detailed definitions of your terms, quote Heidegger at length but never reveal how YOU understand him to mean what he says in your own words (please define discourse and activity, and how they differ from each other, without quoting Heidegger). I have no idea what you stand for philosophically unless you tell me.
Quoting Fooloso4
You've barely joined in in arguing for your interpretation of Heidegger, so I can see why you'd be reluctant to add another thinker into the discussion.
Quoting Fooloso4
Please elaborate on this. Ideally in more than one sentence. I'd be thrilled if you'd bring in support from your favorite philosophers so I can get a better sense of where youre coming from.
Quoting Fooloso4
You havent said a hell of a lot. It's almost all Heidegger without any translation into your terms.
in what way is Heideggerian discourse different from representation , in you own words? .
I like Husserl a lot , and think that he was enormously important to the advent of Heideggerian thinking, and through Heidegger, to Derrida's project. Husserl’s Transcendental Subjectivity seems to have provided the structural basis for Heidegger’s Dasein (and Derrida’s differance) . With Husserl, we Here we see Intentionality as the primary basis of empirical science, logic and mathematics.One could say that what Heidegger did was to take Husserl’s separate but mutually implied aspects of temporalization(retention-recollection, presencing, protention) and intentionality(ego pole, subjectively appearing entity, objectively meant object) and make them inseparable, equiprimordial modes of a single, transcendental experiential moment.
Joshs, I am done. If you go back over what I have said I think I have made clear what I think Heidegger means by discourse ... or don't.
But I’ve always understood discourse as rather obviously encompassing more than language or words, so I have no argument here. We do communicate more in what we do than what we say, and the lack of subject-object awareness in much of this inauthentic behaviour begs comparison with that of self-aware yet non-linguistic animals such as chimpanzees, as I suggested before.
Quoting waarala
Their discourse, of course, is quite different to that of humans, but I don’t think we can assume they don’t have ‘being-with’, or that some of their intelligibility of being in the world cannot overlap with our own. The problem is that we only have our own discourse with which to make sense of it, and we necessarily prioritise language in that process, where anthropomorphism looms large. But we can and do put language aside, nevertheless, to actively explore those elements of discourse we have in common - discovering elements of being-with that we may share, rather than intellectually avoiding the space in order to maintain some sense of superiority.
1) You give up really easily.
2)if you go back over this thread and consolidate every positive statement you have made delineating in your own words, not Heidegger's, discourse, activity, language and their relationship as it pertains to our discussion, you'll find no more than a small handful of scattered sentences.
Heidegger has been interpreted in a thousand different ways. Simply quoting him at length is profoundly inadequate at giving me a sense of how you understand him. Which of the many Heidegger is yours? You've been little more than a ghost in this discussion up till now, being very good at articulating disagreement but not presenting your own thinking in a positive vein. I dont need for us to come to agreement on Heidegger. My only goal in this discussion is being able to adequately summarize your thinking on Heideggerian discourse and 'activty', so that I can read it back to you in a way you will recognize.
Here ya go: "Da-sein is a being that does not simply occur among other beings. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that in its being this being is concerned about its very being. Thus it is constitutive of the being of Da-sein to have, in its very being, a relation of being to this being. And
this in tum means that Da-sein understands itself in its being in some way and with some explicitness."(12). Think of it this way. Dasein defines man in terms of his framing of the world as meaningful relative to his purposes and values.
Heidegger took the entirety of phenomenology and reinvented it as existential phenomenology. Not everyone finds Heidegger or Derrida obtuse. I suspect it has as much to do with the reader's diffilculty in absorbing complex new ideas(there likely isn't a single major philosopher who hasn't been accused of being obtuse) as it does the writer's style of exposition.
I tend to view Derrida as a kind of “conceptual artist”.
Quoting Fooloso4
Activity "mowing the law" has certain form or grammar which gives it certain limits within which it is understandable as "mowing the law". So, in this sense it is discourse. In B&T, this grammar is formally presented as references, spatiality etc i.e. as the worldliness of the world. Constitutive elements of the worldliness applies to all innerwordly beings as their (ontological) grammar. And B&T is of course about significations as such and not their particular instances. Specific (ontical) grammar of the signification "mowing the law" determines all the specific references involved there. There is many different "languages" out there. Heidegger's ontology could be an application of Husserl's idea of the "universal grammar of meanings" (in Logical Investigations).
Discourse articulates, distinguishes, brings forth, and gathers together (the Greek ‘leg’ is the root of logos, meaning to collect or gather together).
Discourse is communicated, makes known, conveyed, transmitted - stories, mythologies, revelations, narratives, accounts, explanations.
Discourse calls - to make a call or determine, to call someone out, summons, to be called, to have a calling.
Edited to add: Dialogue - dialectic, argument, response to what earlier philosophers have said