Logic As the Question Concerning the Essence of Language

by Heidegger, Martin; Gregory, Wanda Torres; Unna, Yvonne

• ISBN13: 9781438426730
• ISBN10: 1438426739
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-08-06
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

This first English translation of Logik als die Frage nach dem Wesen der Sprache, volume 38 of Martin Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe, contains novel ideas on logic and language that are important for anyone wishing to think beyond traditional views of language and logic. Based on student transcripts of Heidegger's lectures and manuscripts for a 1934 summer course, the work contains his first public reflection on the nature of language itself. Given shortly after Heidegger's resignation to the rectorship of the University of Freiburg, the course also opens up fresh perspectives into his controversial involvement with the Nazi regime. Heidegger's critical probing of logic involves metaphysics and poetry and intertwines essential questions concerning language as a world-forming power, the human being, history, and time. This work marks a milestone in Heidegger's path of thinking as his first meditation on language as a primal event of being.

Author Biography

Wanda Torres Gregory is Professor of Philosophy at Simmons College and the coeditor (with Donna Giancola) of World Ethics. Yvonne Unna is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Seton Hall University. Together, they translated Heidegger's On the Essence of Language: The Metaphysics of Language and the Essencing of the Word Concerning Herder's Treatise On the Origin of Language also published by Suny Press.

Table of Contents

Translators' Foreword	p. xi
Introduction: Structure, Origin, Meaning and Necessary Shaking Up of Logic	p. 1
The inner Structure of logic	p. 2
Analysis	p. 2
Assembly	p. 2
Regulation	p. 3
¿ The self-sameness of what is represented	p. 3
ß Non-contradiction	p. 3
¿ The ordering of reason and consequence	p. 3
Form consideration	p. 4
Logic as preparatory school for all thinking. Grammar and logic. Logic history	p. 4
The three common standpoints of the judgment about meaning, usefulness, and value of logic	p. 5
The necessary task of a shaking up of logic	p. 6
Recapitulation	p. 8
The Question Concerning the Essence of Language as Fundamental and Guiding Question of All Logic
Objections against the procedure of taking the questions concerning the essence of language as directive and guiding principle for the question concerning logic	p. 12
Language as object of the philosophy of language	p. 12
Narrowing of logic through language	p. 13
The secondary ranking of language: Language as means	p. 14
The grasping of language-performed through logic	p. 14
The two manners of questioning. The character of the question of the essence as fore-question and the three respects of the question of the essence	p. 15
Recapitulation	p. 17
The Question Concerning the Essence of Language	p. 21
Language-preserved in the dictionary	p. 21
Language as event in the dialogue	p. 22
Language-determined from the kind of being of the human being. The answer of metaphysics	p. 23
The Question Concerning the Essence of the Human Being	p. 27
Recapitulation	p. 28
The right lanuching of the fore-question. What-and who-question	p. 30
The human being as a self	p. 32
The I-determined through the self, not conversely	p. 34
Recapitulation	p. 35
The [plural] You and We-determined through the self, not through the mere plurality	p. 36
Is the self the species of the I, You, We, [plural] You?	p. 39
Recapitulation	p. 42
The self and self-forlornness	p. 43
The mis-questioning-conditioned by the self-forlornness of the human being	p. 43
Does a preeminence of the We lie in the question ""Who are we ourselves?""	p. 45
Outer and inner identification of the We	p. 47
Recapitulation	p. 48
""'We' are the Volk"" by virtue of decision	p. 49
Reply to the first interposed question: What is that, a Volk?	p. 53
Recapitulation	p. 55
Volk as body	p. 56
Volk as soul	p. 57
Volk as spirit	p. 58
Reply to the second interposed question: What does decision mean?	p. 61
Decision and decisiveness	p. 62
Resoluteness as engagedness of the human being in the happening that is forthcoming	p. 65
The Question Concerning the Essence of History	p. 67
The determination of the essence of history is grounded in the character of history of the respective era. The essence of truth-determined by the historical Dasein	p. 67
The ambiguity of the word ""history""	p. 69
""History"" as entering into the past. Natural history	p. 70
""History"" as entering into the future	p. 71
Human happening as carrying itself out and remaining in knowing and willing: lore	p. 73
Recapitulation	p. 74
The relationship of history, lore of history (historiography) and science of history	p. 76
Recapitulation	p. 81
History in its relationship with time	p. 84
History as that which is bygone and as that which has been	p. 86
The preeminence of the characterization of history as past	p. 87
¿ Christian world-conception and Aristotelian time-analysis	p. 87
ß That which is bygone as that which is completed, ascertainable, causally explicable	p. 88
The objectification of history by the science of history. Time as present-at-hand framework	p. 89
The being of the human being as historical	p. 91
""Are"" we historical?	p. 91
The worthiness of question of the being of the human being. Becoming and being	p. 92
Being-historical as a deciding that is continually renewing	p. 94
Recapitulation	p. 95
That which has been is as future of our own being	p. 97
The Original Time as the Ground of All Questions Hitherto and the Resumption of the Question-Sequence in Reversed Direction
The transformation of our being in its relation to the power of time. Responsibility	p. 99
Rejection of two misunderstandings	p. 101
No politics of the day position, but awakening of an original knowing	p. 101
That which is to be found out by questioning does not let itself be settled immediately	p. 102
Recapitulation	p. 103
The Historicity of the Human Being is Experienced from a Transformed Relationship with Time	p. 105
The experience of time through the experience of our determination	p. 105
Mandate and mission	p. 106
Labor	p. 106
The being-attuned-through by the mood	p. 107
Original and dervied experience of being and of time. Temporality and within-timeness	p. 109
Recapitulation	p. 111
Discussion of the concern that time becomes something Subjective through the newly won determination	p. 114
Do animals have a sense of time?	p. 114
The question concerning the subject-character of the human being	p. 116
¿ The modern change of meaning of ""subject"" and ""object.""	p. 117
The threefold detachment of the human being	p. 119
Recapitulation	p. 121
ß The new metaphysical fundamental position of the human being in Descartes' prima philosophia	p. 121
The modern determination of the human being as being-thing in the sense of the mere being-present-at-hand	p. 122
The experience of the essence of the human being from his determination	p. 125
The in-one-another of mood, labor, mission, and mandate	p. 125
Mood. The relationship of mood and body	p. 125
Labor	p. 127
Mission and Mandate	p. 128
The blasting of the being-subject through the determination of the Volk	p. 129
Original manifestness of beings and scientific objectification. Contrasting of the animal life with the historical Dasein	p. 130
The happening of history is in itself lore of the disclosedness of beings. Historiographical knowledge as degradation of the great moments that are disclosive	p. 131
The historical Dasein of the human being as the resolutness toward the moment	p. 132
Human being as care: Exposedness in beings and delivery over to being: Rejection of the misinterpretation of care: Care as freedom of the historical self-being	p. 133
The State as the historical being of a Volk	p. 136
Being-human and language	p. 139
Language as the ruling of the world-forming and preserving center of the historical Dasein of the Volk
Logic as still not comprehended mandate of the human-historical Dasein: care about the ruling of the world in the event of language
Poetry as original language
Editor's Epilogue	p. 143
Lexicon	p. 147
Notes	p. 165
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