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in
Phenomenology
Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71 brill.nl/rp

Heidegger and the Communicative World

Jeffrey L. Powell
Marshall University

Abstract
The treatment of communication (Mitteilung) in Heidegger has often been relegated to a second-
ary status. In this essay, I attempt to remedy this tendency. In my attempt, I first focus on the
role of language in Being and Time through focusing on Heidegger’s treatment of λόγος in
the introduction, followed by the role of language in the constitution of the being of the da. The
latter takes into account the special status of language in relation to the other two constituent
moments of the being of the da, i.e., understanding and attunement or moodedness. In Being
and Time, understanding and attunement become factically disclosed as projection and thrown-
ness. However, this disclosure occurs through language as communication. The nature of this
disclosure as communication is the holding open of the da, a holding open of the da for the
other, the keeping open of world through communication for community. Finally, consistent
with Aristotle, community is thought as the basis of the political.

Key Words
Heidegger, communication, language, world phenomenology

Introduction
In the discipline of philosophy, a great deal of attention has been devoted to
the role of language in the thought of Martin Heidegger. Language has, seem-
ingly, served a fundamental and critical function in the very early, pre-Being
and Time lecture-courses and seminars. That function continued through the
texts associated with Being and Time, most notably the 1923 Ontology—The
Hermeneutics of Facticity, the famous course concerning Plato’s Sophist (1924–
25), and of course the 1925 History of the Concept of Time. The seminal role of
language continued after Being and Time, as well, into the prolific years of
1935–40, even serving as bookends for what is now considered by many the
equal to Being and Time, i.e., Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). Finally,
in the 1950s, language is loosened from its status as role-player, albeit a role
roughly equivalent to the great character actors of the cinema, to being the
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/008555510X12626616014628
56 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71

focus of investigation, a transition that, in my opinion, serves to give birth to

a thinker like Jacques Derrida.
Interestingly enough, the secondary literature on Heidegger has mirrored
his own treatment of language. That is, the overwhelming majority of the
secondary literature gives a nod to the role of language, but very little of it
treats the question of language with the same earnestness and endurance for
which that literature obviously sees a need. The few exceptions are Robert
Bernasconi’s The Question of Language in Heidegger’s History of Being, the sec-
ond edition of Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann’s Subjekt und Dasein, Derri-
da’s wonderful little essay “Le retrait de la métaphore,” and the smattering of
essays from the most rigorous interpreters of Heidegger, for example, John
Sallis, David Krell, again Bernasconi, and a few selected others.1
If that were not enough to draw attention to a need for addressing the ques-
tion of language, that need is exponentially raised with regard to the question
of communication, Mitteilung. That is, especially in the period leading up to
and including Being and Time, communication, or at least one aspect of it, is
fundamental for the thinking of language. Although communication is left
largely unexplored by the Heidegger of Being and Time, all the pieces are nev-
ertheless in place for what such an exploration might look like. Furthermore,
the secondary literature seems to have virtually systematically ignored either a
thinking of communication or even recognized its importance. Von Her-
rmann is an exception to this rule, in that he views communication in Being
and Time as overcoming solipsism, especially that of the Husserlian type, in
that communication discloses Dasein as a being-in-the-world as a being-with
others, as a coming to mineness through the other. Whereas Husserl comes to
the other only through an analogy based on the unity of the transcendental I,
Heidegger comes to mineness through the fundamental being-with disclosed
through being-in-the-world.2 Walter Biemel makes brief reference to commu-
nication as a positive phenomenon founded on being with others in his
“Poetry and Language in Heidegger.”3 In any case, communication is central
to an understanding of what Heidegger means by language. The present effort,

1)
It should also be noted that, for the most part, when Heidegger is discussed with regard to
language by most, but certainly not all, working in communication studies, the interest is typi-
cally in Heidegger’s writings on technology and the language essays of the 1950s.
2)
Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Subjekt und Dasein: Interpretationen zu “Sein und Zeit,”
zweite, stark erweiterte Auflage (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1985), see especially
157–62. Hereafter cited as SD, followed by page number(s).
3)
Walter Biemel, “Poetry and Language in Heidegger,” in On Heidegger and Language, trans.
Joseph J. Kockelmans (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), 71.
 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71 57

then, is an attempt to think through what Heidegger understood by commu-

nication in Being and Time, followed by the consequences such an under-
standing might hold in store for an understanding of Being and Time, which
should then provide us with a number of guideposts for understanding our-
selves as communicative, political beings, beings in a communicative world.

Phenomenology
The way to Heidegger’s thinking of communication in Being and Time is long
and circuitous and is embedded within a discussion of language that is itself a
fundamental component in an exceedingly complex ontology. Nevertheless,
let us begin with a few basic presuppositions. First, Heidegger’s discussion of
language and communication is concerned with the being of language; it is an
ontology of language. Second, this ontology of language is bound to the his-
tory of ontology in general and is intelligible within that history, which is to
say that the being of language is itself bound to the thought of being (which
becomes more pronounced in the work of the thirties, especially the Beiträge).
Third, insofar as language concerns the being of some particular being, i.e.,
language, it—the being of language—cannot be employed in the thinking of
language. Rather, the thinking of beings, in this case language, may be thought
as a means for distinguishing it from being for the purpose of thinking being.
Heidegger refers to this as “the formal structure of the question of being” in
the first introduction to Being and Time. This same formal structure is given
voice in History of the Concept of Time, chapter 2, “Elaboration of the Ques-
tion of Being in Terms of an Initial Explication of Dasein,” sections 15–17.
Consistent with what precedes chapter 2, which is a fascinating discussion of
the “assumption of the tradition as a genuine repetition,”4 Heidegger, earlier,
in his Sophist course, attributed this very same structure to Plato. Thus, the
formal structure of the question of being is a kind of repetition, even a genuine
repetition, of the tradition that is first exhibited in Plato. It is no coincidence
that what makes this a “genuine repetition,” that is, a repetition of the tradition
in its sameness that also introduces difference into sameness, which is what
Heidegger calls ecstatic temporality, is formally consistent with Foucault’s own

4)
Martin Heidegger, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, ed. Petra Jaeger vol. 20 of Gesam-
tausgabe, (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1979), 187–88; translated by Theodore
Kisiel as History of the Concept of Time: A Prolegomena (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1985), 138. Hereafter cited by GA 20, followed by German then English pagination.
58 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71

genealogical practice in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s.5 Fourth, the method of
investigation, of which the formal structure of the question of being is its
realization, is phenomenology.
With regard to the formal structure of the question of being, it is because of
tradition that we lack the tools necessary for raising the question of being in
an appropriate manner. Another way of saying this is that metaphysics has
been erected upon a foundation made possible by the forgetting of being.
Stated more simply, metaphysics, as ontology, has been historically consti-
tuted in the thinking of being as a being, and beings have been thought with
regard to a specific mode of time, the present. As such, it is impossible for us
to think being in any straightforward fashion without resorting to a thinking
of beings or remaining within the language of beings. This seemingly critical
feature has its positive side in that it also exhibits the need for examining a
being for the purpose of eventually thinking being, which would then be
folded back to again think beings in their relation to being, which would be
nothing short of the second repetition called for by Being and Time, but never
completed, at least not in the form initially proposed. It should be noted that
this folding back, yet again, repetition, is necessary for the establishing of any
possible relation between being and beings, and it is this repetition or folding
back that Heideggerian deconstruction offers over a simple repetition of the
tradition. That this is absent in the tradition is isomorphic with metaphysics
as the forgetting of being, i.e., what Heidegger in the 1930s called Machen-
schaft. In any case, on the way to being, a being must be questioned, and that
being is Dasein, the human being, albeit a different kind of human being than
the one provided by historical consciousness. What is important for our pur-
poses, is that Dasein is chosen as the being to be examined on the way to being
because it is Dasein and Dasein alone whose being is such that being is an
issue for it. Incidentally, it is also this that characterizes the difference between
the philosopher and the sophist or rhetorician in Heidegger’s reading of Plato’s
Sophist. Now, this is where the issue of language wins its crucial designation in
the Heidegger of this period. That is, now that Dasein in its being has been
delimited as the being to be investigated in its being for the eventual purpose
of thinking being, the being of Dasein is disclosed as being-in-the-world.
More precisely, the da or “there” of Dasein, the “there” toward which Dasein

5)
For a more extended discussion of the Heideggerian repetition, especially as it relates to
Nietzsche, see my “Die Nietzsche-Vorlesungen im Rahmen des Denkweges Martin Heideggers,”
in Heidegger und Nietzsche, ed. Alfred Denker, et al., Heidegger-Jahrbuch 2, (Freiburg: Verlag
Karl Alber, 2005), 117–31.
 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71 59

is directed, is discovered to be constituted by three moments, which are under-

standing (Verstehen), disposition (Befindlichkeit), and Rede or discourse, which
is to say, language.
Rede, discourse, is Heidegger’s translation of the Greek, λόγος. Heidegger’s
discussion of λόγος begins in the second introduction to Being and Time, in
which case it should be assumed that Rede must be in play in all that is said
prior to its formal analysis in section 34. Indeed, Heidegger himself attested to
this when he wrote that “[t]his phenomenon is one of which we have been
making constant use already in the foregoing interpretation of disposition
[Befindlichkeit], understanding, and assertion; but we have, as it were, kept it
suppressed in the thematic analysis.”6 While it is true that the History of the
Concept of Time offers a brief elaboration of Heidegger’s sense of logos, as well
as a first offering of paragraph 34 of Being and Time, the latter text is the focal
point of the most intense early analysis. However, that analysis is somewhat
misleading, for Rede as the German translation of the Greek λόγος is certainly
justified, but it is not the primary meaning. This is partially due to Heidegger’s
understanding of the Greek λόγος, which would seem to defy translation, but
it is also due to the impossibility of translating such a multifaceted Greek term
into any other language. In fact, it is quite possible, even probable beyond any
doubt, that such a term operated within a multiplicity of idiomatic usages for
the Greeks themselves. How is one to understand the Greek λόγος when it is
colored by at least eighty-seven different meanings, or so says classical scholar-
ship? We can hear Heidegger say, already in 1927, “Λόγος gets ‘translated’ (and
this means that it is always getting interpreted)” (SZ 32/55). We might easily
turn toward context in determining a given particular usage of the word, but
how, we must still ask, does that usage get colored in the particular instance?
In short, when a Greek heard λόγος, as when Xenophon writes a sentence as
simple as “In other conversations [καὶ τοιαῦτα λέγειν] I thought that he
exhorted his companions to practice self-control [ασκεῖν ἐγκράτειαν] in the
matter of eating and drinking, and sexual indulgence, and sleeping, and endur-
ance of cold and heat and toil,”7 the appeal to “conversation” would appear to
be entirely appropriate and consistent with the German Rede. But, might one
also hear Xenophon say: “In other judgments . . .,” or “Viewed in other
6)
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 15th ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1979), 160–61; trans-
lated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson as Being and Time (New York: Harper & Row,
1962), 203. Hereafter referred to in the text by SZ, followed by the German then English
pagination.
7)
Xenophon, Memorabilia, Book II.1.1., trans. E. C. Marchant, Loeb Classical Library (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1923).
60 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71

ways . . .,” etc.? Such a simple saying could be easily problematized. Given the
problematization of what appears to be a casual way of speaking, could not
this be even more problematic when reading a sentence by Plato in which
some version of λόγος gets translated/interpreted as “rational account”?
Notwithstanding the difficulty in determining a prevailing meaning for
λόγος, Heidegger does argue that a particular meaning should be attributed to
λόγος and thus to Rede. That is, “Λόγος as ‘discourse’ [Rede] means rather the
same as δηλοῦν: to make manifest what one is ‘talking about’ [die Rede] in
one’s discourse [Rede]” (SZ 32/56). Heidegger goes to great pains in his attempt
to make manifest the meaning of making manifest. Here, he speaks repeatedly,
during the period leading up to Sein und Zeit, of what one might call the
structural elements of speech, the said or what is said in speech, what is talked
about in speaking, the communication of the said and what is talked about,
and the manifestation of the said, what is talked about, and what is commu-
nicated. The latter, manifestation, becomes translated in the 1950s by what
Heidegger then calls “showing.” In History of the Concept of Time, Heidegger
simply but emphatically says, “Language makes manifest” (GA 20:362/262).
Heidegger emphasizes the point by underlining the phrase in its entirety.
What is emphatic in the emphasis? World. That is, the making manifest of
language is a situating of language back into its proper domain, which is the
situating of language within the worldly domain in all its manners of manifes-
tation. Language is not a thing separable from world and the totality of
involvements characteristic of world, which is indeed a revolution within the
study of language. Even structuralism, which seemed at one time to possess
such high hopes, still viewed language as a static structure subject to indepen-
dent analysis. As a worldly phenomenon, language as Rede, as the Greek λόγος,
is charged with the power to make manifest a world and its various constitu-
ents, and as such a phenomenon it is no longer restricted to propositions and
logical operations. Much to the contrary, language as Rede now is the opera-
tion of worldly manifestation, a manifestation that might indeed occur
through utterance, but utterance only insofar as it makes manifest a world. In
the words of Heidegger, “making manifest through discourse first and fore-
most has the sense of interpretive appresentation of the environment under
concern” (GA 20:362/262). Thus, it can also be said that the language of
propositions and the like operate counter to the making manifest as the dis-
closure of a world, that they might just as easily cover up and prevent the
upsurgence (Aufgehen) of world as world, favoring instead making manifest
just such operations and not what they themselves claim in the form of
propositional truth.
 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71 61

In Being and Time, the early focus on the Greek λόγος is only one aspect of
the methodology guiding the formal structure of the question of being. The
other aspect, which actually comes before the analysis of λόγος, concerns the
Greek origins of phenomenon—the two together forming, of course, phe-
nomenology as the method according to which the question of being will be
examined. While both of these discussions, i.e., λόγος and phenomenon,
comprise the majority of section 7 of the second introduction, the analysis
actually begins toward the end of section 6, immediately following some brief,
preliminary remarks concerning time and world, where Heidegger addresses
the Greek definition of the human being as ζῷον λόγον ἔχον. What is of con-
cern to Heidegger in this brief discussion is simply the drawing of attention
to λέγειν and the role played by λέγειν in the “‘hermeneutic’ of the λόγος”
(SZ 25/47). This is one of those moments in Being and Time where the brief
reference to the λέγειν is really for the initiates only, for only those who were
present during the Marburger Vorlesung in the summer semester of 1924. A
quick scanning of this recently published volume of Heidegger’s Gesamtaus-
gabe (2002) shows the most sustained treatment of λέγειν from throughout
Heidegger’s career.8 All that aside, what is crucial for us is the work performed
on the Greek language, work that would presumably help us gain further
access to the Greek “birth certificate.”9
The notion of phenomenon concerns the self-showing of beings. After
arguing that all showing, be it as semblance or appearance in their manifold
ways of being, is reducible to the self-showing phenomena, which is the decon-
structive hermeneutical determination of the Greek φαίνεσθαι, we find the
previously mentioned sense of λόγος as δηλοῦν. Here, it means the making
manifest of what is talked about in language or speaking. In the 1924 Aristotle
course, δηλοῦν is employed in a different context, albeit a context that seems
especially illuminating with regard to the determination of language as

8)
Martin Heidegger, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, ed. Mark Michalski, vol. 18 of
Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2002), see especially §§ 5–7, 9,
13–14, 19, 21g, and the associated Handschriften. Hereafter referred to in the text by GA 18,
followed by the page number.
9)
This is a reference to Heidegger’s comment concerning his deconstruction of Western ontol-
ogy. Heidegger writes: “In thus demonstrating the origin of our basic ontological concepts by an
investigation in which their ‘birth certificate’ is displayed, we have nothing to do with a vicious
relativizing of ontological standpoints. But this deconstruction is just as far from having the
negative sense of shaking off the ontological tradition . . . The deconstruction of the history of
ontology is essentially bound up with the way the question of being is formulated, and it is pos-
sible only within such a formulation” (SZ 22–23/44).
62 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71

discourse (Rede) in Being and Time. In 1924 we find the following: “The func-
tion of the ἀπορεῖν is the δηλοῦν [making manifest] in such way that one
points to what is ‘knotted together’ [Verknotungen] in the πρᾶγμα” (GA
18:160). That is, there is a pointing to, as a disclosure, of what is bound
together in the things that concern us, which is to say a communication of
world.
The making manifest (offenbar machen) denoted by the Greek δηλοῦν is
intimately woven together with the Greek φαίνεσθαι. While φαίνεσθαι is the,
so to speak, self-manifestation of what shows itself, the making manifest of the
λόγος is one through which something shows itself from itself—i.e., as
φαινόμενον—in the talking about what shows itself. That is, the talking about
something is one way in which the something talked about comes to show
itself as itself, as self-showing. Thus, Heidegger draws on Aristotle to indicate
this way of talking as one in which the λόγος is directed toward ἀποφαίνεσθαι.
However, much more should be provided here, even given the broad brush
with which introductions are often painted. For example, what evidence is
really given for viewing this as a particularly privileged form of discourse? Or,
given the fact, noted by Heidegger, that “λόγος has many competing significa-
tions” (SZ 32/55), why the privileged appeal to ἀποθαίνεσθαι, except for its
relation to φαίνεσθαι, φαίνο (light), φαίνομνα, etc.? Furthermore, upon what
basis should we believe that our talk is anything but talk about objects, the
foisting of our own ideas upon representations that objects and worldly mat-
ters are only the occasion for, but to which they do not necessarily correspond?
Heidegger’s response to this set of problems is as equally terse as his justifi-
cation for taking φαίνεσθαι in the manner asserted. What Heidegger most
forcefully argues is that all showing, or every manner in which phenomena
come to show themselves, is reducible to self-showing, a showing of the phe-
nomena from themselves, a version of the Husserlian call to the things them-
selves. All subsequent forms of showing, what Heidegger refers to as semblance
(Schein), appearance (Erscheinung), or mere appearance (bloßer Erscheinung),
are first founded on the self-showing phenomenon. If this were not the case,
then semblance, appearance, and mere appearance would have no referent of
which they would be the semblance or appearance. This works similarly to the
indications of Nietzsche before him, the Nietzsche of “How the True World
Finally Became a Fable,” in which the self-destruction of the true world results
in an equal and necessary destruction of its appearance. The support for this
argument is ultimately through an appeal to Heidegger’s thinking of truth and
the hermeneutical “as.”
 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71 63

Dasein, World, Language

To briefly retrace our steps, it is held that phenomena are brought to light by
means of self-showing, a self-showing that has its origin for those of us in the
West in the Greek ἀποφαίνεσθαι. Discourse, Rede, the Greek λόγος, makes
manifest what shows itself in that it lets it be seen. Ideally, according to Hei-
degger, “Discourse ‘lets something be seen’ ἀπό . . .: that is, it lets us see some-
thing from the very thing which the discourse is about” (SZ 32/56). Now, it is
obviously the case that we are not the thing in its self-showing. This does not
mean, however, that the self-showing of what shows itself is to be abandoned,
either. That is, the self-showing is not to be abandoned in the form of repre-
sentation, as simply a subjective representation of what shows itself. Rather, in
letting something show itself, in the talking about something as it shows itself,
from self-showing, there is a lacing together of self-showing with what makes
the self-showing manifest, i.e., discourse. This lacing together is performed
through being bound to what shows itself through self-showing showing itself
as something, through what Heidegger calls the hermeneutical “as.” The her-
meneutical “as” is contrasted by Heidegger to the apophantical “as” that he
associates with assertions. Apophantical assertions—rather than being drawn
from the manner in which things show themselves as something associated
with a world, to which we will turn momentarily—are propositional state-
ments made about things. Such statements nevertheless depend on the things
having shown themselves from out of themselves, which is to say that such
statements depend on things first being phenomena, as we just noted. How-
ever, apophantical assertions are propositions about objects that have been cut
off from their own self-showing. That is, the objects of assertions are objects in
isolation, objects that have been cut off from their respective worldly relations,
more often than not in that they have become objects as representations, and
as representations, subject to an orderability universal for all representation.
This latter item, i.e., orderability, Heidegger addresses in his now famous
Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) under the name of Machenschaft.10
Once again, the apophantical “as” of the assertion is sharply distinguished
from the hermeneutical “as,” which is also called the existential-hermeneutical
“as.” Although Heidegger does not address the existential-hermeneutical “as”

10)
Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Her-
rmann, vol. 65 of Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), see espe-
cially II. Anklang ; translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly as Contributions to Philosophy
(From Enowning) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).
64 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71

at length in Being and Time, he says enough to permit us to confidently assert

that it is the foundation for assertion. What is more, since the assertion con-
cerns the things of the world in their being cut off from their phenomenality—
i.e., cut off from the manner in which they show themselves from themselves,
which is to say cut off from their existence as φαίνεσθαι—we can at least pro-
visionally say that the existential-hermeneutical “as” will preserve the self-
showing of things, assuring that the something according to which things are
discovered remains bound up with self-showing.
Things of the world do not first show themselves as objects of knowledge.
Rather, things are first and foremost worldly things, things that are situated in
a world through reference to other things. The one thing in the midst of this
reference to other things, the one thing as it disappears into this referential
function, is the referential totality called world. World is not the construction
of the referential totality from out of the singular things, but rather the oppo-
site. That is, the thing comes to stand out as the thing; it is only from out of
this referential totality. Stated differently, when the thing is taken in isolation,
for example, as an object of knowledge, it has been taken as such only on the
condition that it has been cut off from the referential totality. Furthermore,
when taken in such manner, i.e., as cut off from the referential totality, it has
been equally cut off from the manner in which the thing shows itself. In short,
it is no longer a phenomenon, but rather a representation for the purpose of a
kind of subjective knowledge. It is in this sense that the thing, now an object
of knowledge, becomes the object “talked about” through a language con-
cerned only with the forms of assertions, i.e., propositions, forms that dictate
the truth value of what is stated therein. Not only that, but the very language
through which the object is now “talked about” has now itself become an
object distinctly cut off from its own worldly relations.11 That is, it becomes a
language in search of a world, so to speak, in that it has become a language
attempting to somehow correspond to what are taken to be internal represen-
tations that are themselves thought to be representations of something lying
outside the production of representations.

11)
This is one aspect of Foucault’s genealogical critique, which is especially apparent in his early
Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique. What one finds here is a very specific instance
in which science, even in its apophantical glory, is unable to completely disentangle itself from
world, in that it creates a new worldly phenomenon known as “madness,” a scientific epistemo-
logical object that at once comes to show itself in a worldly manner and in a manner withdrawn
from world. I have addressed this in Hegel in an essay that appears under the title, “The Ency-
clopædia of Madness,” in International Studies in Philosophy 30, no. 2 (1998): 93–108.
 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71 65

In contrast to the apophantical “as” that predominates in the assertion

thought along the lines of predication, the hermeneutical “as” preserves the
worldly relation from out of which the thing is viewed as a something. Rather
than being guided by the theoretical attitude emblematic of a scientific knowl-
edge called ἐπιστήμη by Aristotle, the hermeneutical “as” is more characteristic
of the Aristotelian φρόνησις, a kind of practical judgment that is always already
situated in a world with which it is familiar. In its familiarity with world, Das-
ein is a being-in-the-world, and its being is such that it cares for the world.
That is, Dasein’s way of being is to be oriented in the world in such manner
that the things of world to which it is related are revealed by a kind of service-
ability, by an in-order-to. Here, the primary worldly relation is that revealed
by phenomenology, by a discourse that preserves a world through which
worldly things reveal themselves as precisely that, worldly things. Thus, the
hermeneutical “as” is not an objective determination of world versus the apo-
phantical “as” of the proposition, but its determination arises from the thing
in its worldly relation, rather than a determination that might, for example,
arise from the application of a concept to the thing, from bringing the thing
under concepts. The hermeneutical “as” is to preserve the world as open for
interpretation, for an interpretation through which is revealed, from out of
world, the things of world in their worldly relations. This preservation and
holding open of world is the preservation and holding open of the “there” (da)
of Dasein.
The constitution of the being of the “there” is attributed to the three
moments already mentioned, that is, understanding, disposition/attunement,
and language or discourse. That is to say, the “there” toward which Dasein is
oriented as being-in-the-world is constituted by understanding, disposition/
attunement, and language. As understanding, Dasein always already exists in
an understanding of the being of the “there.” What permits such an investiga-
tion as Heidegger’s in the first place is that we always already have an under-
standing of being, even if that understanding is inadequate or, at the very least,
not thematized. Of course, its possible thematization is another matter entirely.
But, whether thematized or not, the understanding in which Dasein finds
itself is no form of knowledge in the traditional sense. Dasein does not under-
stand its own being, or the being of the there toward which it is oriented, as if
it were simply some intellectual problem to be solved. Rather, its understanding
of the being of the there toward which it is directed is a matter of its existence;
its understanding is a kind of self-understanding, but a self-understanding
that is revealed in existence, revealed in the manner in which such understand-
ing directs Dasein in its world.
66 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71

As a matter of existence, the understanding associated with the being of the

there is such that the understanding is a projection. Understanding, as exis-
tence, is not some passive state that is adopted by Dasein in order that the
world may do its work upon Dasein. On the contrary, the understanding of
the there is a projective understanding, in that the being of the there is filled
with possibility, filled with possibilities of existence as existence. That is, the
projecting of possibility is the manner in which Dasein exists as understand-
ing. In short, Dasein as being-in-the-world ex-ists in the world in being
directed through the projecting of possibility, a projection of possibility that is
through and through finite, insofar as the projection of possibility is made
possible by the limit case of possibility, which is death.
Dasein not only discovers itself in an understanding of its there through the
projection of possibility into the there, but it equally discovers itself within a
disposition or mood. Stated differently, understanding is always already
mooded, always already discovered as having been thrown into a mood or
disposition, discovers itself as always already attuned. This is because disposi-
tion, attunement, mood, is one of the existential constituents of the being of
the “there,” of the da in Dasein (SZ 134/173). Disposition or moodedness,
says Heidegger, is disclosed through three constituent existentiales: thrown-
ness, being-in-the-world as a whole, and circumspection. With regard to
thrownness, Dasein discovers itself in the “there” and does so as mooded or
attuned. Dasein always already finds itself in a mood in the “there” of factical
existence, in its having to be. However, in the sheer facticity of its existence,
Dasein turns away from the being of the “there,” turns elsewhere, turns toward
something else. That is, with regard to mood or disposition, Dasein turns
away from the being of the “there” and the mood in which it finds itself in its
thereness, and turns toward the something else and the many moods in which
it might “there” find itself. One way of understanding this is to say that Dasein
is always fleeing or turning away from the mood in which it finds itself, but
that this very turning away from is always the turning toward some other
mood. But that is not all. Heiddegger writes: “it is just everyday a matter for
Dasein not to ‘give in’ [nachgibt] to such moods—in other words, not to fol-
low up their disclosure and allow itself to be brought before what is disclosed”
(SZ 135–36/173). This is why Heidegger goes on to say that Dasein finds
itself delivered over to the being of the “there” in thrownness mostly in the
form of fleeing. Thus, he says, “Disposition discloses, not in the manner of
looking at thrownness, but as a turn toward and a turn away” (SZ 135/174).
Immediately following this, however, Heidegger very subtly introduces a dis-
tinction within the cataloging of moods that more properly accounts for this
 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71 67

turning away and fleeing from mood in its everydayness. He writes: “For the
most part, mood is not turned toward the burdensome character of Dasein
which is manifest in it” (SZ ibid.).
Now, the question is: why is this character of Dasein so heavy and burden-
some? At this point in the text, we might say it is because Dasein is potentially
face to face, for the first time, with its factical existence. That is, if Dasein is
always fleeing the being of the “there,” always turning away, then the turning
toward would be a turning toward Dasein’s own “that it is.” And further, as
factical existence, all turning toward would be a singular event and as if for the
first time. But, that is not all, for the being of the “there,” in which Dasein’s
singular existence is at stake, would ultimately take the form of the “there”
under the sign of mortality, in Hölderlin’s words, “as a sign to be read.” Not
only would this carry the weight of the burden of existence, but just like
Hölderlin’s sign, it would also result in the following: “mood brings Dasein
before the ‘that-it-is’ of its ‘there’, which, as such, stares it in the face with the
inexorability of an enigma” (SZ 136/175).

Communication

It is at this point that the question of language and, along with it, communica-
tion becomes crucial. We should recall that the existential constitution of the
being of the “there,” of the da in Dasein, is comprised of three moments. Two
of those moments we have briefly discussed, that is, understanding and dispo-
sition. The third moment is, of course, language, Rede, discourse. This third
moment, however, while equally important in the existential constitution of
the “there,” of the clearing in which world happens, is structurally different
from the other two moments, a difference that has resulted in a certain amount
of controversy. In the previously mentioned 1924 lecture-course concerning
Aristotelian philosophy, discourse, language—in this case, speaking—is
addressed in the following manner, all of which is underlined by Heidegger:
“The being-in-the-world of human beings is, in its ground, determined through
speaking” (GA 24:18). Three years later, in Being and Time, the constitution of
the “there” of Dasein’s being-in-the-world is addressed with regard to all three
moments in the following form: “Disposition and understanding are deter-
mined equiprimordially by discourse” (SZ 133/172). Heidegger is not now
saying that the existential constitution of the “there” is comprised of three
moments, but that two of those moments are themselves determined by the
third, by discourse, by Rede. Is this to say that the original status of the three
68 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71

moments has been compromised? Not entirely, but they have certainly become
problematized.
This problematization was the focus of a debate a number of years ago
between Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann and Otto Pöggeler. Without going
into the confrontation, let us at least recall a certain line of thinking by von
Herrmann that attempts to account for this irregularity. Von Herrmann first
draws attention to the difference to be made between discourse on the one
hand, and disposition and understanding, on the other hand. Von Herrmann
writes that, compared to disposition and understanding, “the existential of
discourse is equiprimordial with disposition and understanding in an other
manner.”12 Von Herrmann further emphasizes: “Discourse ‘determines equi-
primordially’ disposition and understanding,” (SD 202–3). Initially, this
other manner would appear to be that discourse supplies a factical expression,
so to speak, to disposition and understanding. But, this cannot really appear
to be the case, for disposition itself is to stand in for facticity. At the very least,
what discourse provides is the disclosive dimension through which disposition
and understanding operate in the constitution of the “there.” As such, dis-
course is not an equally constitutive existential in the constitution of the
“there,” says von Herrmann. “The Da is primarily constituted in disposition
and understanding” (SD 203). That is, the “there” is constituted through dis-
position as a being-thrown, for Dasein always already finds itself in disposi-
tion, as we have already noted. With regard to understanding, the “there” is
equally constituted (along with disposition) in projection, in the projection of
possibilities, ultimately in the projection of the “there,” which is also the pro-
jection of what will become the clearing.13 As such, according to von Her-
rmann, discourse is constitutive of the “there” with regard to neither thrownness
nor projection, which are preserved solely for disposition and understanding.
However, “the dispositional and understandable disclosures are equiprimordi-
ally determined through discourse” (SD 203). That is to say, “to the disposi-
tional disclosure belongs a factical discourse, and to the understandable
disclosure belongs a projective discourse” (SD 203). In the end, the disclosive
existentials of disposition and understanding are determined through dis-
course insofar as it is through discourse that they are articulated. Again, von
Herrmann: “Discourse is equiprimordial with disposition and understanding,
because it determines these equiprimordially, and it determines these equipri-

12)
von Herrmann, SD 202.
13)
See here John Sallis’s wonderful essay, “Into the Clearing,” in Delimitations: Phenomenology
and the End of Metaphysics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 119–27.
 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71 69

mordially insofar as the discoursive [redende] articulation happens in the facti-

cal projective disclosure” (SD, 203).
The question now becomes: how does discourse, as factical projective dis-
closure, get expressed? In the simplest of terms, it gets expressed through com-
munication. That is, it is through communication that the world is held open
for the factical projective disclosure of the “there.” As such a holding open,
communication is a holding open of world, a holding open of the “there” for
the factical discourse of the other. That is, communication is a holding open
for communication and community. Such a “[c]ommunication is never any-
thing like a conveying of experiences, such as opinions or wishes, from the
interior of one subject into the interior of another . . . In discourse, being-with
becomes ‘explicitly’ shared ” (SZ 162/205).
Once again, discourse—only this time as communication—is not reducible
to the assertion of thought in the form of propositions. It is not exhausted in
what the talk is about nor in what is pointed out as what shows itself. In fact,
communication that is focused on what the talk is about is distinguished as
what breaks communication, as what severs communication. The talk that is
concerned first and foremost with what is being said is only secondarily con-
cerned with communication and the sharing of what is in common. Rather,
discourse is the keeping open of the “there,” the keeping open of world, for the
very sharing of world and what is addressed in the communication. In the
keeping open of communication, in the maintaining of the openness of world
is maintained the site or space of the openness toward the other with whom
one speaks, and in speaking, one shares a world. Furthermore, in maintaining
the open of world, the “there,” what is also kept open is the possibility of a
relation to what emerges in world, things. Thus, in communication as the
keeping open of the “there,” there is also a communication with worldly
things, in that the worldly things communicate the world. Such a communi-
cation as holding open is founded for Heidegger on hearing, a hearing first of
language, but a language of worldly things, worldly things that can be shared
only inasmuch as they are brought into the open for sharing. Further, the shar-
ing is isomorphic with the things shared being situated in a world, that is,
through their being shared as worldly things. This leads Heidegger to say in
1924: “In speaking about something I recall it, I bring it into the there (Da),
into the as such and such, into the character of the as” (GA 18:60).
According to Aristotle, the πόλις is by nature, in φύσει, prior to or more
fundamental than the individual human being. Not only that, but it is also
prior to or more fundamental than the family. The various senses of priority
are discussed by Aristotle in the Categories, 14a26–b23. The first sense would
70 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71

reverse the relation of priority between the πόλις and the family (γένος) for
this sense indicates a temporal priority. The Nicomachean Ethics claims the
earlier association or friendship (φιλία) to be that between husband and wife,
rather than the association between members of the πόλις. This follows when
“we call a thing ‘older’, ‘more ancient’, than some other thing, signifying that
its time has been longer,” says Aristotle.14 The second sense of prior is relative
to “the order of being,” which is to say when the being of one item is depen-
dent on the being of another. This is one of the senses of prior that Aristotle
attributes to the πόλις over the family; in this instance “a state [πόλις] is prior
by nature to a household or each man, since the whole is of necessity prior to
each of its parts.”15 The third sense of priority concerns a simple ordering of
parts to whole where the parts are said to be prior to the whole inasmuch as
the whole is composed of the parts. In this sense, each individual is prior to
the πόλις, for it is composed of the individuals. But, again, this is a simple
ordering, having nothing to do with the order of being. Finally, the fourth
sense of prior concerns the order of honor, where the more honorable is by
nature prior. Contrary to the manner in which it is expressed in the Categories
(where the order of time is given a certain priority—κυριώτατα, rightfully or
fittingly), it is clearly the case, supported by the Metaphysics, that the second
sense must carry the day. At the very least, in the order of metaphysics, the
order of being prevails. In the order of being, the association of human beings
comprising the πόλις is prior to that of the individual and the family. Further,
the type of λόγος that is of concern within the order of being, i.e., the πόλις,
is communication.
However, we should not jump too quickly upon the opportunity to inject
some familiar notion of the political into the concern for communication. If
we identify the political with what Aristotle calls the πόλις, we should hesitate
in attributing to it a fundamental order of being. While it is true that the πόλις
is more fundamental within the order of being than either the family or the
individual, this is not to say it is the most fundamental within the order of
the being of humankind, not even with regard to what concerns Aristotle in
the Politics. Rather, prior to the πόλις is what Aristotle calls an association of men,
a κοινωνία: “it is an association of beings with this sense which makes possible
a household and a state” (Pol. 1253a19). What sense is that? The communicative

14)
Aristotle, Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, trans. H. P. Cooke & H. Tredennick
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938), Cat. 14a29–30.
15)
Aristotle, Aristotle’s Politics, trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle & Lloyd P. Gerson (Grinnell, Iowa:
The Peripatetic Press, 1986), Cat. 1253a19–20.
 J. L. Powell / Research in Phenomenology 40 (2010) 55–71 71

sense that some beings have for making manifest what is beneficial or expedi-
ent for mankind. To be capable of this making manifest is to be engaged in
communication, to be capable of talking things over, discussing them thor-
oughly. But, this communicating is prior to the πόλις and the family, as it is
grounded in the association that is κοινωνία. All of which leads Heidegger to
say: “Speaking in itself is communicating and as communication nothing other
than κοινωνία” (GA 18:61). Communication, of course, is inseparable from
hearing, and “hearing constitutes the primary and proper openness of Dasein
for its ownmost potentiality-for-being—as in hearing the voice of the friend
whom every Dasein carries with it (bei sich trägt)” (SZ 163/206).16
While communication is occasionally granted a role in the thinking of lan-
guage in Heidegger, rarely has it been properly situated. More often than not,
it is attributed with a merely supplementary role to being-with. Biemel
expresses this role quite succinctly as follows: “The presupposition of commu-
nication is Being-with.”17 Might it not be, rather, that communication is
another word for discourse, another word for Rede, and what would by now
seem even more transparent, another word for the Greek λόγος? If so, then
κοινωνία is revealed as communication, as the revealing of a world in the lis-
tening—hearkening, Heidegger calls it—to the other, to the friend, through
whom Dasein discovers itself, but only discovers itself transformed through a
hearing that calls for a worldly response. This call of the friend, of the friend
that is always already carried along, would seemingly also carry me along,
communicate, and carry me into the open. This carrying into the open is the
opening up of the open, the opening of world. This is communication.

16)
See here Jacques Derrida’s extensive meditation concerning Heidegger’s appeal to the friend
and such a transport in his “Heidegger’s Ear: Philopolemology (Geschlecht IV),” trans. John P.
Leavey, Jr. in Reading Heidegger: Commemorations, ed. John Sallis, (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1993), 163–218.
17)
“Poetry and Language in Heidegger,” 71.