(Un-numbered Introduction) p.397-99:

Novalis: Monologue:  “Precisely what is peculiar to language—that it concerns itself purely with itself alone—no one knows” (397).

“Novalis” was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (understandable why he would adopt such a short pen name!), the German Romantic author, poet, and (“magical idealist”) philosopher (1772-1801).  Notable for his allusion by Heidegger—beyond the title of the worked quoted being Monologue (collected in The Philosophical and Theoretical Works)—is Novalis’ insistence on the intimate connection between philosophy and poetry, as well as his undertakings throughout his extensive writings linking poetry and science.  Many of his writings took the form of intentional fragments—though his Notes for a Romantic Encyclopedia include longer essay-style reflections on art, religion, and science—and intended themselves as a mystical form appropriate for the commanded mission of education in the connections between sensible and intelligible experience that reveal truths about Nature (Urwelt) by serving as prompts the audience must bring to activity and self-discovery (ideally culminating in a new golden age, a familiar mission and theme in the German Romantics).

A selection from Monologue:

“Matters concerning speech and writing are genuinely strange; proper conversation is a mere play of words.  We can only marvel at the laughable error people make—believing that they speak about things.  No one know precisely what is peculiar to language: that it concerns itself merely with itself. … if one wishes to speak of something determinate, then temperamental language gas them say the most laughable and perverse things.  That is the reason too for the hatred that so many earnest people have toward language.  They recognize their own willfulness, but do not observe that contemptible chatter is the infinitely earnest side of language.  … whoever has a subtle sense of its [language’s] application, its cadence, its musical spirit, whoever perceives in oneself the delicate effects of its inner nature, and moves one’s tongue and hand in accordance with it will be a prophet; in contrast, whoever knows it but does not have sufficient ear and sensibility for language … will be held hostage by language itself …” (The Philosophical and Theoretical Works, trans. Ferit Güven, 438-9).

Heidegger begins with the invocation of Novalis and shares with him the similar premises about claims can only point into the mystery that must be taken up and experienced—precisely, experience what transpires with the way when we are on our way to language, underway in out way-making—and felt something that awakens a “surmise” that would then strike us “as exceedingly strange” (397).  NOTE the insistence on the affective, experiential dimension.

But, what does this mean, to be underway on a way to language?  His Being and Time already taught us, in the very beginning and again in the Being-in structure, that Da-sien is the zoon logon echon, that creature whose being is essentially determined by its ability to speak (more commonly, man is the ‘rational animal’) (B&T, H.p.25)—so, do we need a way to language?  The essence of human being consists in language.  We are at home within language prior to everything else.  A way is superfluous—but … are we really there?  Are we in language in such a way that we experience its essence?  Namely, its peculiar nature that “it concerns itself purely with itself alone” (397)?  Does the way to language really, instead, constitute the furthest grasp of our thought? 

Our TASK is:  “To bring language as language to language” (p.398).  This task is like a formula.  The word “language” is used three times—yet always differently (cf., p.418)—but what coheres these three usages into one is the self same that conjoins that which is held apart: “the formula directs us to a weft of relations in which we ourselves are already interwoven.  Our proposed way to language is woven into a speaking that would like to liberate it in order to present it, giving utterance to it as something represented—which straightaway testifies to the fact that language itself has woven us into its speaking.” (398). 

WEFT:  (pl. woof) the horizontal threads interlaced through vertical ones (warp) in cloth.  “Warp and woof” designates the foundation upon which things are build—woven. 

(I) p.400-5:

Language and Speech:  Language is speech—OUR activity—our OWN—but, it is NOT a secure possession.  (We can be speechless—silence is, of course, different than being mute, cf., B&T, H.p.165, 273, 277, 296, etc.; “TWtL,” 420, 424; “WiM?,” 101; “BDT,” 350, etc.).  Because we can speak, we can be silent.  Language is tongue (400).

For Aristotle—language is the creation of sound to express the affectations of the soul.  Writing is showing the sounds.  Writing and the sound of speech can be different from person to person, but the affectations of the soul, that which is expressed, is universal for people.  “Showing” is “letting appear,” which depends upon the “ruling sway of revealing” (Aletheia) (400-1).

That is the classic construction of how language is speech—the showing of the affectations of the soul.  Later, the sign becomes an instrument for designating—a representing of one object to another, no longer a showing that is a letting appear—now a sort of forcing coordination.  (Sign as that which shows transformed to a sign as that which designates X).

Beings experienced as a coming to presence, as that which presences.  Language as language is a coming to presence (402).

This view of language keeps developing to the current, for Heidegger, which is Wilhelm von Humboldt’s thesis of language as information and information as language. 

Wilhelm von Humboldt: (1767-1835) like Novalis, he was friends with Goethe and Schiller (though Novalis was closer to Schegel) and as much concerned with literature, philosophy, and education, etc.   We predominately read him now for his contributions to semiotics, hermeneutics, and linguistics.  A few basics concerning his theories on language include the ideas that human language and speech are generative, that language is perpetually transitory, it only exists in spoken discourse, and its preservation in writing is as a mummification.  Language is not work, it is an activity: a labor of spirit to make sound into expression of thought.  Thinking’s nature is to be found only in reflecting (the differentiation of the thinking subject from his or her thought).

Heidegger vs. Humboldt:  Humboldt defines language’s essence as a labor of spirit—yet spirit’s activities are beyond language alone.  Thus, speech is not experienced on its own—he further defines language as reproducing; that language is more than mere conveyance, a medium of exchange for the sake of mutual understanding—instead it is a world the spirit posits between itself and the object.  Heidegger explains that Humboldt’s labor of spirit is positing—spirit as subject who posits the synthesis between subject and object.  The posited “in-between” of subject and object is the world, the view of which is human’s bringing itself to expression.  [Language as that which expresses the subjectivity of the person and of humanity].  BUT—this does not express language as language—instead, it is a (Hegelian style) totalization of history and historical-spiritual development of humankind.  Humboldt’s essence of language is energeia—yet in a non-Greek understanding, instead as an activity of a subject.  Humanity passing through language on the way to something else (404-5).

(II) p.406-12:

Subsuming language under a universal like “energy,” “activity,” “labor,” etc. is a way to flee from language, instead of this feeling, we want to see language as language.  We cannot just add up all the elements of language either, instead, we need to focus our gaze on what unites language.  This union of language granting language its essence is the way to language—to that which is peculiar in language (406). 

Speech belongs to speakers, but not as cause to effect.  We must listen to what speaks along with us in speech.  In speech, the speakers have their presencing.  We speak of that which matters to us.  What is spoken derives from the unspoken.  This unspoken may be merely the not-yet spoken or that which must remain unspoken (i.e. denied speech) (406-7). 

The essence of language has a manifold of elements and relations, and with recognizing these be begin to be aware of the inability of our thought to experience the unifying unity in the essence of language.  This is part of the reason why we have never given a name or sufficient thought to the essence of language.  We now call the unity in the essence of language that we are seeking the RIFT-DESIGN [Der Aufriss; Riss, ritzen—rift, to notch, to carve] (407).

We can think of the Rift-Design in the dialectic of the farmers Heidegger mentions, who, in plowing their fields, aufreissen or umreissen, they tear it up, rend it, and turn it over.  They open the field so that growth can come forth.  “The rift-design is the totality of traits in the kind of drawing that permeates what is opened up and set free in language.  The rift-design is the drawing of the essence of language, the well-joined structure of a showing in which what is addresses enjoins the speakers and their speech, enjoins the spoken and its unspoken” (408).

Cf.: “Truth establishes itself as a strife within a being that is to be brought forth only in such a way that the strife opens up in this being; that is, this being is itself brought into the rift” (188).

The rift-design remains hidden, however, when we pay no attention to the essence of language.

Speech and speaking show themselves as that which thought which and in which something comes to language.  Something comes forward as something is said. 

Saying and speaking are different.  Speaking can be done endlessly and say nothing.  Silence can say more than speaking.  Saying [sagen] means to show, to let something appear, let it be seen and heard.  To speak to another is to say something to another; a mutual showing, a devotion. 

The unspoken is not merely a deprivation of sound.  The unspoken is the unsaid, the not yet shown.  The unsaid lingers in what is concealed as the unshowable: a mystery.  Speech need not make a sound (408-9).

Speech (as saying) belongs to the rift-design in the essence of language.  “Various modes of saying and the said permeate the rift-design, modes in which what is present or absent says something about itself, affirms or denies itself—shows itself or withdraws.  What pervades the rift-design in the essence of language is a richly configured saying, from various provenances.  With a view to the concatenations of saying, we shall call the essence of language as a whole the saying [die Sage]” (409).

To understand how we are using the “saying,” we must not think of a saying as a cliché, a slogan, a sound bite, or the like; instead, we must think of the saying as a pointing.  “What unfolds essentially in language is saying as pointing” (410).

[[[Recall “Being” as a sign—from What Calls for Thinking?, where we are drawn into the withdrawal of thinking and always point to the withdrawing.  We are this pointing (375, WcfT?).  By our Being we are pointing, the pointer, a sign. Heidegger expressed this through the poem/hymn from Hölderlin: “We are a sign that is not read / We feel no pain, we almost have / Lost our tongue in foreign lands.”]]]

The showing does not show a culmination of signs; instead, all signs are due to a showing. 

[[[Recall how he makes this move often—the reassignment of what is the grounding idea.  Recall Being and Time’s Introduction, where history is grounded on historicity—the latter makes the former possible.  Then, how building is grounded on dwelling—again, the latter making the former possible.  We can also think of information as only possible by language, seeing things only possible because we dwell in language, etc.  Here, we see that without the showing that is saying that is a pointing as not primarily signs, but signs are only possible because of the former.]]]

The oddity here, however, is that this saying/showing/pointing is not exclusively a human activity.  Everything present has a self-showing—the presencing or withdrawing of itself.  Even when a showing is initiated by our saying, the thing would not be shown without it letting itself be shown.

When we think hard about this—we realize that which unfolds essentially in speech.  Speech is simultaneously hearing.  Do not think of this as Person A speaks and Person B hears—speaking and hearing are always simultaneously joined.  Speech is hearing.  Speaking is hearing in advance.  This hearing in advance is a listening to language.  We speak language and we speak out of language.  We can do this because we have already listened to language: we have listened to language speak.

Language initially and properly pursues the essential unfolding of speech, of saying.

(III) p.413-26:

In language as the saying something like a way unfolds, this way derives from a letting-belong [[recall building as a letting-dwell in BDT]] to the saying (413).  Saying joins and pervades the open space of the clearing.  Saying is a gathering that unites its aspects.  What shows itself?  “…we can never try to know it, much less cognize it in the appropriate way” (414).  Saying/showing presences and withdraws.  Can name it, not talk about it, it is “the place that encompasses all locales and time-play-spaces…[we will name it] Owning” (414).

Owning:  “conducts” what presences and absences in the saying/showing. 

Propriating:

--The German Ereignis, normally translated as “event,” but, for Heidegger (emphasized by his use of a hyphen after the “Er”), we have to maintain a sense of “ownness” in the word, think more of the French propre, to own in the sense of belonging to.  This owning, however, is not subject to human calculation; it is “sent” or “given” as the historical destiny of mortals, an owning that is not properly ours, but nonetheless, something we inherit, perpetuate, and pass on.  Also has an archaic relation of I to eye—a bringing or showing of something before the eyes, an “enownment.”

--What we will call the owning that bestirs the saying, that points to the showing. 

--Opens the open space of the clearing so what is spoken can appear and what is withdrawing can depart from (think about a spotlight shining on an object and its shadows allowing other objects to “vanish,” but of course it is still there). 

--This propriating can only be experienced, cannot be named as a thing or an event. 

--It gathers the rift-design of the saying and unfolds it into the structure of a saying.  It is a very simple concept that is so simple we cannot really name it—it happens all the time, everywhere (414-5). 

--It gives us who we are—gathers us—in the sense that it gives us the capability to speak, thus be the animals who can speak (Logos plus Ratio) (416). 

Note (p.416-7) the confluence of themes from all the essays we have read tying in to the concept of propriation: 

1. “Propriation bestows on mortals residence in their essence [dwelling, recall BDT where a person’s relations reside in dwelling], such that they can be the ones who speak [Logos, Mythos, Ratio]…  Propriation is the law [but not a norm], inasmuch as it gathers mortals [Recall “gathering” from BDT, where the bridge “gathers” things near-by together—“Gathering” is called a “thing,” which connects together the four-fold—think of gathering as essentially related to the rift-design] in such a way that they own up to their own essence [the ontological Being].  It gathers them and holds them there.  Because the showing of the saying is an owning, our being able to hear the saying, our belonging to it, also depends on propriation.  In order to catch a glimpse of this state of affairs in its full enormity, we would have to think the essence of mortals [which was the purpose of Da-sein in B&T], in all its sundry connections [all its ontic relations, existentielly], in a sufficiently comprehensive way [as related, in a rift-design, as gathered].  And of course, above all else, we would have to think propriation as such [the task of thinking, we must THINK it, not philosophize it, as philosophy as metaphysics as cybernetics would do]…  Propriation propriates the mortals by envisaging the essence of man [somehow it allows Being to speak, to be thought or pictured].  It does so by remanding mortals to that which in the saying advances from all sides in order to converge on the concealed [this is like what anxiety does to the person to bring him/her to face nothing that is something; it is the presencing of that which always recedes from us, like in WCfT?], which thus becomes telling for man [note that concealment here becomes telling; this both strengthens and negates the owning-eyeing, in saying, things are owned/eyed (said to) one as not entirely his/her own, as concealed—presenced and concealed]” (416-7).
   

In this remandment, propriation lets the saying arrive at speech.  On this way to language, which involves the saying as determined by propriation, that which is peculiar to language (Novalis), its essence, conceals itself.  Heidegger says this way is propriating. 

So how is the way both determined by and is propriation?  Well, Heidegger takes us through the etymology of wëgen, “waying” which is a shaping, or giving form to a way and preserving this form.  This is connected to Be-wëgen (Be-wëgung), which is to move or motion, and indicates that this “waying” we are doing to get to language is no longer a mere transporting something known further—like tracing back a family genealogy, tracing what is known—instead, it is more of a “rendering” which requires that our rendering, how we are waying, is also the way itself.  Out experience of thinking is the way as is the “goal” we are trying to get to.  This is clearer if you think of Lao Tzu’s Tao, it is both our aim/goal and that which already is.

“Propriation propriates human beings for itself, propriates them into usage.  Propriating showing as owning, propriation is thus the saying’s way-making toward language” (418). 

“Such way-making brings language (the essence of language) as language (the saying) to language (to the resounding word)” (418).

Our Thinking vs. Representation Thinking on Language:

While on out path toward language, language has transformed itself—it is no longer something we do—speak/cause—it is now shown its own essence.  This essence is always already in language—we just cannot see it when we try to represent language—do metaphysics in the sense of naming language as something it is not (418-9).

THINKING language as its essence is a process of unbinding the saying so that it can be speech.  It allows speech to happen, this speech that is hearing the saying of language.  Freed to the open space, presenced, language can concern itself with itself (recall the Novalis quote) (419).

“Language, which speaks by saying, is concerned that our speech, heeding the unspoken, corresponds to what language says.  Hence silence too, which one would dearly like to subtend to speech as its origin is already a corresponding.  Silence corresponds to the noiseless ringing of stillness, the stillness of the saying that propriates and shows…Propriation is telling” (420).

Now we move to the often-theme of modern technology—by the discussion of Ge-Stell, “enframing.”  Essentially, Heidegger is saying that enframing, the essence of technology that itself is not technology, is what happens if we try to understand language by merely tracing back what we know; precisely what we are not supposed to do in waying or thinking.  While technology is one way to reveal things, its danger is that it eclipses all other revelations; yet, technology as well as propriation are both destinies of humanity, which adds to the urgency of thinking the essence of language and all other fundamental questions.  This technological thinking/enframing leads us to a concept of language like the one you would reach if we were to systematize the aspects of language—add up the components.  It is enframing to the extent that it literally is a framing of thoughts into a structure, an ordering, or inventory of attributes of language.  The point here is that language in the sense Heidegger is thinking it actually more easily corresponds to things than this enframing, or calculative thinking (i.e. water as wetness more descriptive than water as H2O).  Speech, when enframed, becomes information—recall The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking. 

Heidegger then expands upon this by saying that enframing as giving us a technical model of language is designated as yielding a “formalized” language and the essence of language as saying yields a “natural” language.  Information has to continually revert its formalized language back to natural language to really given meaning—to make the correspondence between its words and things.  This view from enframing views “natural” language as a stage en route to the goal of ordering everything—so that which is natural is just not-yet-formalized. 

Heidegger says even if we prove that natural language cannot be formalized, we still will define this natural language as a privation of ordering, or as defined negatively with the view of its possibility or impossibility of formalization.  This reveals how pervasive the technological tendency is—the tendency to formalize. 

Instead of succumbing to this destiny of technology, what if we think of natural language as drawing its essence from the essential unfolding of the essence of language—i.e. the saying?  The saying as more than an obstacle to formalization, but rather as that which is already beyond the formalized language.  What if propriation were the penetrating gaze [Ein-Blick, a view] “whose clearing lightning strikes what is and what the being is held to be?  What if propriation by its entry withdrew every present being that is subject to sheer orderability and brought that being back into its own?” (421-2).  Essentially, what if our recognition of propriation, that which bestows on us our essence by making us really the animals that speak, as both that which determines the way to language and is the way itself, prevented a purely ontic or existentiell analysis of Being, and, thus, revealed us in our true nature?  Revealed us as Being?  (Note: “clearing” and “lightning” recalls Lichtung, “clearing” as the space unconcealed wherein concealing and unconcealing happen.)

“Every proper language, because it is allotted to human beings through the way-making movement of the saying, is sent, hence fateful” (422).  Language is our fate.  Language is our destiny (see analysis of this as destiny above).

There is no “natural” language, he says, every language is tied to our history—it cannot be without reference to our destiny.  Language as information is also historical—its limits are set by us in our modern age.

The “peculiar” in language (recall Novalis quote) is provenance tied to propriation, the provenance of human speech from the saying.  The peculiar is the owning and propriation.  We can see the absurdity here by looking at “knowing,” which is having seen the entirety of something in its essence—but the essence of language does not permit us to have it, to fully see it, to rationalize it.  Likewise, we can only say because we belong to the saying—it does not belong to us, despite the “owning.”  [[Recall how we are not the masters of language; it is the master of us (BDT, 348)]].

But, if we do not OWN language—that language is destiny in a shared way—then how can we have the monologue [[recall the beginning of the essay, Novalis’ ‘poem’ entitled Monologue]]?  The monological character of language is valid—it has its structure in the rift-design of the saying.  Language IS monologue—1) language alone properly speaks, not us; 2) it speaks in solitude.  But only by being with others can one be solitary.  It is in the solitary—abstracted from the everydayness, yet not destructive of that everydayness (“ensnarement” p.65, B&T)—is where the lack of commonality is unfolded as the commonality.  This is the unification of the multiplicity of language.  The saying that can open this Being, show the unity in diversity must resound in the word—must be spoken.  To speak we must hear, must listen to language to be able to reiterate it.  We will always remain within language, can never step outside of it and conduct a meta-discourse about language itself as technology would attempt.  Thus, we will only and ever merely catch a glimpse of the essence of language.  Precisely because we are remanded to it, we can have this glimpse.  [[just as we are beings, we can have a glimpse of Being; just as we point to thinking the most thought provoking thought, it withdraws from us]].

Not being able to see the full essence of language is not a defect—it is precisely that which grants us the possibility of being morals, of dwelling (423). 

Saying cannot be captured by an assertion; it is just the mode through which the propriation speaks—“mode” not as modus, kind, but as the melos from music, “the song that says by singing.”  Think about where the power of music comes from—is it the words, the rhythm, the drums, the aesthetics of the performers, the idea of the song?  Or is it rather the “event” of song, the owning of the song that is not personal ownership?  The totality of what the song is and means; what it brings out, what is presences?  What it presences, is it us, our Being or our collective, our history, our history-not-yet, destiny?  Fate?  (424)?

Thinking of saying as the singing by the song we see it as something that wraps around us—language as the “House of Being,” that which guards presencing.  It is how propriation propriates.

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But how do we get to this saying like singing by the song, the saying as the essence of language?  How do we get there to the house of being without going technical on it?  How can we have it reiterate its ownness to us?  “… we need a transformation of language …” (424).  [[Recall thinking the unthought—delineating the limits—speaking the silence]]

We CANNOT transform language by word play—by novel phrases—the transformation has to do with our RELATION to language—the way that it embraces us—the relation is our BEING HELD that is no more a mere relation.  Language needs us and uses us just as we need it and use it.  It is mutuality.  So how do we TRANSFORM this?  MAYBE…maybe we can by a poeticization.  [[Recall: in p.376-7, WCfT? Philosophy is poeticized into thinking in response to the enigma of Being.  The contrast of poetic thinking versus logical thinking (emotive/passion versus reason) to find a way of thought that tracks in thought what is the Most-Though-Provoking-Thought]].  “Every thinking that is on the trail of something is a poeticizing, and all poetry a thinking.  Each coheres with the other on the basis of the saying that has already pledged itself to the unsaid, the saying whose thinking is a thanking” (425). 

Heidegger concludes on two quotes by Humboldt—both written near and close to his death—about the possibility of a new language as a variant of language nestled within the husk of existing language.  A stuttering, so to speak, in the current language to disrupt its order.