Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Being here and being there

Heidegger makes clear in his third lecture that he is not doing linguistics, but rather philosophy of language. The difference is that linguistics attempts to find the order, the code, the patterns in language, while philosophy searches for something deeper - the essence of language, the way in which words give rise to experiences, move us, allow us to face our limitations and possibilities, and discover that self which we truly are in our experiences through language with the Other. This is "the way". Not a way from here to there, in the realm of "scientific" conceptions of space and time, but a way to be in the world and to discover where we are in the world as it relates to Being. We discover this through Saying, the essence of language. Thus language is a part of Being insofar as it persists, it "moves and makes a way for all things" (95). For Heidegger "nearness" and "neighborhoodness" are not determined by space and time, at least not in a physical sense; in fact language itself, hence existence itself, Being itself, cannot be experienced in a physical sense, thus, Language is metaphysical in the sense that it is how we experience Being through Being. So poetry and thinking are in the same neighborhood by some metaphysical connection... a necessary connection, as way to understand Being, language and the world.

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