SCIENTIFIC SERIES
“COGNITIVE STUDIES OF LANGUAGE”
Author: G.G. Silnitsky
Abstract:
The notions of speech and language are not treated by Heidegger from a lin-guistic point of view, but on the basis of his philosophical system and undergo radical transformations in accordance with the consecutive stages of the latter’s evolution. Thus, in Being and Time (1927), the most representative work of Heidegger’s earlier period, speech plays a dominant (constitutive) role as a semiotic expression of the disjunctive structure of Dasein in the ‘clearance’ of its Being-in- the-world, characterized by the moods of anxiety and care, whereas the subsidiary function of language is relegated to a specification of various external modes of speech (intonation, modulation, tempo). On the other hand, in the postwar period, beginning with On humanism (1946), the relation between speech and language undergoes a radical reversal. Language, as the ‘abode of Being’, becomes the selfsufficient source of ul-timate wisdom accessible to man, whose authentic function is to serve a mouthpiece for Being’s selfawareness. The main task of speech is now defined as a heedful ‘lis-tening’ to language in order to catch and explicate its hidden meaning. This is achieved most directly not by means of the conceptual apparatus of positive science, distorted by metaphysics, but through poetical speech. The essence of genuinely authentic thinking, as exemplified by presocratic Greek philosophers, is akin to poetry. Heidegger’s views played a crucial role in the formation of the postmodernist ideal of ‘destructuralization’.
Keywords: Being-in-the-world, Dasein, existence, throwness, mood, anxiety, authenticity, clearing, unconcealment, presence, speech, language