Marianna's PHIL204 assignments

In the preface of Heidegger's Language and Thinking, Mugerauer says that part of the thesis of his book is to prove that “Heidegger both says and shows that thinking and saying (language) themselves are the same” His reasons for making this claim are based on the way that both thinking and saying "gather together what belongs together" and the fact that Heidegger connects both thinking and saying to “thanking” and “graciousness.” After examining Mugerauer argument, I don't think that language and thinking in Heidegger can be equated, or that thinking and saying can be called the same thing based on the reasons he proposes.

My paper will argue that if language, thinking and saying are treated as the same thing in Heidegger’s thought, the complex distinctions between those terms and the more complex understanding of language is lost. Although in Heidegger language, saying, and thinking are unmistakably bound up with one another, the terms do not all refer to the same thing and therefore cannot be equated. (I didn't get a chance yet to fix some of the ambiguous wording about thinking and saying being "the same thing" )

The way I will defend this thesis is first by analyzing the text in Heidegger’s Language and Thinking to prove that the book itself points more to a certain union between thinking and saying than to the possibility of equating the two terms. For example on page fifty-nine, while analyzing "A Dialogue on Language" to prove the three-part thesis of the book, Mugerauer comments that saying "brings the thinkers together with language where their thoughts already belong within language's saying." In order for this sentence to have meaning, thought, language and saying cannot all be the same thing. Otherwise, there would be no way for this complex relationship of thought belonging to language's saying to exist. For thought to belong within language's saying, thought, language, and saying need to be different enough from each other so that one category (thought) can be within another (saying), which can be meaningfully described as belonging to a third (language). Otherwise, thought is language, is saying, and there is no room for a more complex relationship of one term being within or belonging to another.

Another source that I will use to defend my thesis is Heidegger's essay "The Way to Language." In this essay, Heidegger treats language as a separate concept from both thinking and saying. I will argue from the text to show that Heidegger does not use the terms thinking, saying, or language interchangeably and that there are important differences between the terms that should be acknowledged.

The third source I will use to prove my thesis is Sean J. McGrath's article "Heidegger and Duns Scotus on Truth and Language" which also analyzes Heidegger's understanding of language and its relationship to thought. This discussion of truth in language demonstrates that thought and language are indeed inextricably bound up with each other in Heidegger’s thinking, but provides evidence that they should not be understood as designating the same thing as Mugerauer suggests.

In other essays that we've read, Merleau-Ponty has talked about perception as somehow enabling us to inhabit the object we perceive. This way of thinking of perception is also present in "Eye and the Mind" in reference to painting. I find this point about being able to inhabit an object through sight a little confusing. How can we "inhabit" something just by looking at it. Isn't inhabiting something a physical act, not just a mental one--which inhabiting through seeing seems to suggest? For example, when in The Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty states that "to look at an object is to inhabit it, and from this habitation to grasp all things in terms of the aspect which they present to it" what does he mean by "inhabit"?
Inhabit usually means to dwell or live in as in a house. A more figurative understanding is also possible-- "strange notions inhabited his mind"-- but this example talks about "a notion" and "the mind" both of which are abstract ideas. What I find interesting about Merleau-Ponty's use of the word "inhabit" is that it suggests that a human being can somehow be transferred into, an for a time "live inside" a physical object. That Merleau-Ponty would present this idea is especially interesting because he puts so much emphasis on the body and the subject's inseparability from it. How, then, can this emphasis on the body be reconciled with an ability of the mind to leave the body to inhabit an object.
The essay "Eye and the Mind" elaborates on this position of the capability to "inhabiting" an object when Merleau-Ponty talks about painting. I believe this essay holds some clues to what he might mean by this term and how inhabiting a painting or scene (something accessible through sight) might be accomplished. On page 299, Merleau -Ponty says that "invariably the roles between [the painter] and the visible are reversed. That is why so many painters have said that things look at them." "Things" or "inanimate objects" are here given the capacity to look. They exchange places with the painter so that it is the inanimate objects that are now capable of communicating we are therefore given the impression that they are somehow sentient. This is not unlike when Merleau-Ponty in The Phenomenology of Perception talks about us interrogating objects and the objects answering.
Objects such as a painting, or even something less visually complicated such as a desk or the projector we talked about in class, are no longer purely objects but have qualities traditionally associated with the subject (ability to look, respond). Inhabiting an object might then be possible because the subject/object dichotomy has been called into question. If there is no clear division between consciousness and the physical, perhaps consciousness can then somehow place itself within the vantage point of an object and see things from its point of view. However, I still cannot find a way to resolve Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on the body's role in perception with this apparent ability of consciousness to leave the body to perceive from the different vantage point of an object.

"Knowledge or science, as a work of art, like any other work of art, confers upon things traits and potentialities which did not previously belong to them" (p.381).

For this blog post I wanted to explore how it is that not only science, but also knowledge becomes a work of art according to Dewey. From the beginning of the chapter "Experience, Nature and Art," Dewey insists that art and knowledge are similar and knowledge should not be understood as completely separate from art as has been the case in the past: "Knowledge is still regarded by most thinkers as direct grasp of ultimate reality, although the practice of knowing has been assimilated to the procedure of the useful arts;--involving, that is to say, doing that manipulates and arranges natural energies" (p. 357) Here the distinction between knowledge and art is blurred. If knowledge can no longer be a grasping of truth and reality, where does that leave knowledge? And what is this procedure of the useful arts that Dewey mentions?
It seems like the key to figuring out these questions lies in the statement "Knowledge or science, as a work of art, like any other work of art, confers upon things traits and potentialities which did not previously belong to them" (p.381). If knowledge no longer grasps the truth, what it does instead, according to Dewey, is impinge upon objects meaning that was not there before. Knowledge then becomes more artistic and perhaps even subjective, then in the traditional understanding of knowledge as the understanding of, and gathering information about, the true and objective world. Knowledge becomes art because knowledge as well as art "manipulates and arranges natural energies" to form a something different that with what we started. A passage that illustrates this point well has to do with the building of a house. (p.374) Building a house is a "practical art" but "the end-in-view is present at each stage of the process" The end-in-view is the knowledge possessed by the builder. At every stage it gives meaning to the materials that are used and the arrangement in which they are place. This meaning is not somehow intrinsic to the material, i.e., it was not there all along. The builder's knowledge gives the material and arrangement meaning, thereby conferring on the materials something that was not there before. On page 381 Dewey clarifies that "knowledge is not a distortion or perversion which confers upon its subject-matter traits which do not belong to it, but it is an act that confers upon non-cognitive material traits which did not belong to it." I think this statement and the example of building a house answer the question "what is this procedure of the useful arts that Dewey mentions?" The procedure of the useful arts is at least in part "confer[ing] upon non-cognitive material trait which did not belong to it." Both art and knowledge confer meaning upon non-cognitive material--in this case, building materials--and neither knowledge nor art are possible without conferring upon this subject matter traits that do not belong to it.

I still haven't figured out how to make the blog indent.

My first source is:

Mugerauer, Robert. Heidegger’s Language and Thinking. Atlantic
Highlands: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1988.

Mugerauer states in his preface that his book will prove that Heidegger “both says and shows that thinking and saying (or language) themselves are the same” After examining his argument, I don't think that this can be proved based on the reasons he proposes. One of the sources that I can use to prove that in Heidegger's work language, saying and thinking all refer to distinct ideas is:

Heidegger, Martin. "The Way to Language." In Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings. edited by David Farrell Krell, 397-426. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.

I will use specifically "The Way to language" to prove that Heidegger indeed differentiates between language, saying, and thinking.

Another source that will be useful in proving that language cannot be equated to thinking is:

McGrath, Sean J. “Heidegger and Duns Scotus on Truth and Language.”
The Review of Metaphysics 57, no. 2 (Dec. 2003): 340-358.

This article demonstrates that while thinking and language are certainly intimately connected in Heidegger's work, there are also important distinctions between the two terms so that thinking cannot be equated to language.

"Religion, law, and economy make up a single history because any fact in any one of the three orders arises, in a sense, from the other two. This is due to the fact that they are all embedded in the unitary web of human choices" (p. 335).

In this blog I want to trace the importance of human choice to the interpretation of history that Merleau-Ponty advocates.
Merleau-Ponty argues that connections can be made between historical events and movements because every event, past or present, begins with a human choice. This presence of a human choice at the center of all historical events, is in fact what gives people living in the present moment access to an understanding of history and the ability to interpret its meaning: "Because a given economy, a given type of knowledge, a given law, and a given religion all arise from the same fundamental choice and are historical accomplices, we can expect, circumstances permitting, that the facts will allow themselves to be ordered. Their development will manifest the logic of an initial choice and history will become an experience of mankind"
(p. 338). What Merleau-Ponty means by "ordered" seems to be "interpreted by historians" or at least, "assigned meaning" by those who live after the events have taken place and now try to reconstruct those events and perhaps assign significance with the goal of explaining how the past might affect the present. What gives people in the present the "authority," so to speak, to interpret and assign meaning to the past is the common human experience. "The dramas which have been lived inevitably remind us of our own, and of ourselves; we must view them from a single perspective, either because our own acts present us with the same problems in a clearer manner or, on the contrary, because our own difficulties have been more accurately defined in the past. We have just as much right to judge the past as the present" (p. 336). Our access to history, and our potential ability to judge historical events correctly is then guaranteed by this common human experience. This access is possible in part because events as Merleau-Ponty understands them have no "objective" reality (objective in the traditional sense): "we cannot decipher the meaning of world events, regardless of how completely we may study them. We must, rather, be prepared to create them ourselves and to know that world views can never be the product of factual knowledge" (Weber, qtd. on p. 342).

There seems to at first be a contradiction in what Merleau-Ponty is saying about meaning in history. On the one hand, the meaning and significance of historical events is something we can decipher and understand because of the common human experience. On the other, events have no meaning to be deciphered and this meaning must be created instead of uncovered or understood. The way I would resolve this is through granting that the only meaning history has (and the only meaning we therefore can have access to) is a meaning embedded in the human context. In this sense, one can say that a meaning is also "created" through human relations and then ascribed to the events. Outside of human interaction, those events have no meanings, they are just something that happens. But since history deals with the impact of human events on future human interactions, a constructed or created meaning becomes valid. Therefore, a "created" meaning becomes worthy of study and attention.

Mugerauer, Robert. Heidegger's Language and Thinking. Atlantic Highlands:
Humanities Press International, 1988.

(I couldn't figure out how to make the second line indent in the blog)

In his preface to Heidegger's Language and Thinking, Robert Mugerauer emphasize the connection between thinking and language in Heidegger's thought. Mugerauer states that Heidegger thought that all philosophical thinking is in a way poetic ( he gets this interpretation from On the Way to Language: " All reflective thinking is poetic, and all poetry in turn is a kind of thinking"), and argues that thinking, therefore, "belongs inseparably to the language in which it occurs."

Mugerauer claims that others before him have called for a recognition of "the bond between thinking and language" that he emphasis in his book. As an example he quotes J.L. Mehta and Albert Hofstadter. Mugerauer uses Mehta's work because it points to the manner Heidegger uses language and argues that his way of using language is "inseparably bound up with what he has to say." He uses Hofstadter because Hofstadter believes that in the the way Heidegger uses language "the style is the thinking itself." Mugerauer uses quotes from both Mehta and Hofstadtler as evidence that others have recognized the connection between thinking and language in Heidegger's writing and to clarify what he means by the connection between thought and language.

Mugerauer believes that while others have recognized this connection between thought and language, no one has yet provided concrete evidence in its support, which is what he says is the aim of his book. He wants to provide this support by analyzing three of Heidegger's works as they pertain to thinking and language: Discourse on thinking, "A Dialogue on Language" and What Is Called Thinking.

His thesis, as he states it, is that Heidegger's thinking and the language of his thinking belong together. He goes as far as to say that the aim of his book is to prove that Heidegger's thinking and language are the same. Although Mugerauer says that he does not mean that language and thought in Heidegger are identical and that the unity between them is "figural"-- that what he means by the language and thought being the same in Heidegger is that Heidegger make analogous or "homologizes" "what his works accomplish and what they tell." Mugerauer's goal for the book, however, remains to be "to demonstrate that Heidegger both says and shows that thinking and saying (or language) themselves are the same."

I find the stance of this evaluation of Heidegger interesting, but I don't think it takes into account Heidegger's own discourse of language in "The Way to Language." Although "The Way to Language" demonstrates the same use of language that is "bound up with what [Heidegger] has to say" since the way the essay is organized enacts it's own thesis, first clearing a way to language of the misunderstandings of the essence of language in western thought and then allowing a new understanding of language to be uncovered, this essay seems like a good example of the way Heidegger uses language as inextricably bound up with what he has to say. In addition, "The Way to Language" explains Heidegger's own conception of language, which is key in understanding how his language connects to his thought because in this essay Heidegger himself explains how he views language.

I find it hard to agree with the claim that in Heidegger language and thinking are the same. In "The Way to Language" Heidegger talks about language as speech. Although he ultimately rejects the understanding of language as speech as too simplistic, he never goes so far as to suggest that speech is not a part of language. If language and thought in Heidegger were the same, speech would not need to be a part of language since it is not a part of thought.

Heidegger does say that what is spoken derives in many ways from the unspoken (which can be equated with thought). But in his discussion of language Heidegger states that the rift-design, which is part of the essence of language "remains hidden even in it's most approximate adumbration as long as we fail to pay explicit attention to the sense in which we have been speaking all along of speech and the spoken" (p. 408). In other words, the essence of language remains hidden if language as speech is not carefully considered; therefore I don't think that Heidegger's language and thinking can be the same thing.

In the beginning of Historical Patterns in Philosophical Traditions, Randall states that intellectual growth and change happens through "confrontation of the novel, assimilation, adjustment, and subsequent reconstruction" (p.31). I wanted to explore what he means by this to better understand his argument.

Randal uses the ideas of Marx to illustrate the point that new ideas that contribute to the growth of philosophy emerge through confrontation with the novel and adjustment to incorporate it. Marx's philosophy, in fact, seems to serve as a model for Randall's historical conception of history. According to Marx, revolutions occur when economic organizations of society have outgrown the political organizations that are supposed to control them. Randall suggests that the way economic organizations outgrow political ones in Marx's philosophy is through new technology. Therefore, the way Marx's philosophy presents social change or "revolution" is very similar to the way Randall presents philosophical change and the emergence of new ideas. First people confront something novel, perhaps a novel idea, that changes the way they think (much like in Marx they encounter new technology.)The encounter with the novel makes older systems of thinking look incomplete and inadequate (much like the old political organizations that controlled economic production are no longer adequate with the new advancements in technology.) Then a change in thinking must take place in order to incorporate the new idea and bring philosophy into harmony with the novel idea (much like a revolution or at least some form of social change needs to take place in Marx's philosophy in order to incorporate the new means of production into a more adequate political system.) Thus, in both Randall and Marx, (or at least Marx according to Randall) there is a confrontation of the novel, assimilation, adjustment, and subsequent reconstruction.

But what does Randal mean by "the novel" and how does the novel enter philosophy. On page thirty-five, Randall clarifies the novel as "new ideas that provoke philosophy" and suggests that these new ideas come "not from philosophy itself" but "from philosophic reflection on a changing intellectual and social change." "The novel," then, seems to be not new philosophical ideas, but new ideas in the social and physical sciences to which philosophers feel they need to respond.
Moreover, Randal seems to understand philosophy as something linked to and arising from direct experience. For example, on page forty-four he states that "the ultimately intelligible values we are seeking, the standards by which we verify, are themselves the deposit of a long experience with the world." Both our values and standards depend at least in some ways on philosophy. In Randall's thought, then, philosophy and "the novel" which it confronts both come from experience. Philosophy seems to go in a circle starting with experience, moving on to forming "intelligible values" and "standards by which we verify" and must ultimately return back to experience to be challenged and improved.

In Heidegger's "The Way to Language" both the rift-design and propriation are key terms in understanding what Heidegger means by a way to language. In this entry I want to explore what those terms mean, how they are related, and how they help us on our "way to language"

Propriation caries with it the idea of belonging and owning, whether in the way someone owns a property of land or the way property "belongs" to a physical object (ex. "this chair has the property of being blue.") What Heidegger means by propriation seems more complicated. On page 413 he associates it with the "letting-belong" which in turn puts us on the way to language:

"The way to language in the sense of speech is language as the saying. What is peculiar to language thus conceals itself on the way, the way by which the saying lets those who listen to it get to language. We can be those listeners only if we belong to the saying. The way to speech, which lets us arrive, itself derives from the letting-belong to the saying."

While the term propriation is not explicitly used, the "letting-belong to the saying" points to the idea of propriation. On page 414 Heidegger again connects the way to language and owning: "What bestirs in the showing of saying is owning. Owning conducts what comes to presence and withdraws into absence in each case into its own. On the basis of owning, these things show themselves, each on its own terms, and linger, each in its own manner."
Here propriation or "owning" seems to be that which dictates what can be "shown" in saying. In other words, whatever belongs to something as it's properties can be revealed through "saying," or the use of language.

Propriation or owning is also what allows something to reveal itself as itself: "Propriation dispenses the open space of the clearing into which what is present can enter for a while..."(p 415). It is not "an event or a happening" but "can only be experienced in the showing of the saying as that which grants (415). Therefore, propriation "as that which grants" is what allows something to appear on its own terms and reveal its properties or characteristics, that is, show itself as itself.

Heidegger also connects propriation to the rift-design: "Propriation gathers the rift-design of the saying and unfolds it in such a way that it becomes the well-joined structure or a manifold showing. What Heidegger means by the rift design can be found on pages 407-408. The first time it is mentioned it is defined as "the unity of the essence of language" (p.407) On page 408 it is defined as "the totality of traits in the kind of drawing that permeates what is opened up and set free in language." The rift design on it's own however, even without propriation is already a well joined structure: "The rift-design is the drawing of the essence of language, the well joined structure of a showing in which what is addressed enjoins the speakers and their speech, enjoins the spoken and the unspoken" (p.408). What role propriation has in gathering the rift-design then seems to be to make the rift-design a structure of "manifold showing."

Propriation and the rift-design are both connected to the "essence of language." The way to language seems to be trying to get at the essence of language. Therefore, both propriation and the rift-design are way of getting at this essence. Rift-design is explicitly stated to be "the drawing of the essence of language," while propriation is what "gathers the rift design" to allow a manifold showing. This leads me to believe that Heidegger is proposing the essence of language as that which allows things or phenomena to appear as themselves or as they are. The rift-design seem to open the space where something can appear and propriation determines what will appear in this space.

In "The Way to Language" Heidegger talks about "speech" and "language" as two different concepts. Heidegger first points out the traditional way of understanding language (tracing it back to Aristotle and his essay "On Utterance"), and then rejects this view in favor of a more complex relationship between speech and language than the synonymous relationship offered by tradition. However, exactly what Heidegger's definition of this relationship is, and how this relationship functions on "the way to language" that Heidegger proposes, is not extremely clear--not least of all because his exploration of this relationship is spread out over quite a few pages.
In part one of the essay, Heidegger presents the traditional understanding of language as speech. He points to the words we use to designate language as proof of the connection between speech and language: "That language has since ancient times has been immediately represented in terms of [the creation of articulated sounds by the voice] is evident in the very names Western languages have bestowed on language: glossa, lingua, langue, language. Language is tongue, and it works by word of mouth" (p.400).
As the essay progresses, Heidegger begins to problematize this understanding of language when he says on page 406 "It is a matter of getting closer to what is peculiar to language. Here too language initially shows itself as our speech." That language "initially" shows itself as our speech already suggests that this is not an altogether satisfying definition for Heidegger. What seems to be part of the problem in defining language as speech is that "What is spoken derives in many ways from the unspoken" (p. 407) Thus, there is meaning operating before any sounds are formed and much of this meaning remains unspoken as "denied speech." Because of this, Heidegger proposes that a "bizarre impression arises that what in manifold ways is spoken is cut off from speech and from speakers" (p.407). It seems that according to Heidegger, language cannot be equated with speech. Speech may be a manifestation of language, but it is not all there is to language. "We not only speak language," Heidegger assets, "we speak from out of it" (p. 411)
However, although Heidegger tells us what language is not ("Language needs human speech and is nonetheless not the mere contrivance of our speech activities"), he never defines language in a positive sense: he never tell us what language is. In fact, he seems to in some ways deny the possibility of such a definition: "On what does the essence of language rest; in what is it grounded? Perhaps when we search for grounds we pass on by the essence of language" (p.112). Heidegger ends part two of his essay without answering the question of what language is or giving any clear and cohesive idea of how it is related to speech. But as we mentioned in class, giving a new clear and cohesive understanding is not necessarily what Heidegger sets out to do.

The first part of Dennis Schmidt's paper consisted of a brief summary of Schürmann's Broken Hegemonies. The purpose of this summary serves in part to bring up the possibility of Schürmann's missing something in his reading of Heidegger, specifically in his move from Heidegger's "machinations" (machenschaften) to his own conceptualization of the singular.
Schmidt proposed that Schürmann moved from Heidegger's language of "the incalculable" to his formulation of "the singular." That is, instead of attempting to recover the incalculable, Schürmann wanted to recover the singular, but both actions have a similar task: the task of opening thinking. However, there is a difference between singularization and recovering the incalculable that Schmidt argued Schürmann missed. Mainly, that recovering the incalculable is wider than just singularization, that in his move from Heidegger's incalculable to his own singular, Schürmann narrowed the idea that Heidegger proposed.
Another point Schmidt made about the similarities in Heidegger and Schürmann is that death functions the same way. For both Schürmann and Heidegger, death singularizes each individual.
Schmidt also brought up the point that Schürmann was more Hegelian than he liked to admit. The reason Schmidt saw Schürmann as Hegelian was that he proposed the idea that history is made of epochs, each defined by the dominance of a hegemonic fantasm. One question that came up during the discussion after the paper was "How how Hegelian is Schürmann?" The difference between Hegel's and Schürmann's conception of history was said to be the breaks between the hegemonic fantasms: one hegemony does not transform into the other, when one is broken, another takes its place, but there is a break, not just a transformation. However, the previous hegemony explains the one to come as the withering of one form explains the next in Hegel. Schmidt's conclusion was that Schürmann's "effort to speak of the breaks has more suturing involved than he would want to admit."
The Schürmann reading for class focused on the same book as Schmidt's paper. Our discussion of the singular in Schürmann's work brought us to the "double bind" or the tragic condition of human life. Human life is tragic because in order to establish laws, we need to deny something. In the past we have relied on hegemonic fantasms to dictate what should be denied and what should be asserted. I think that what Schmidt described as Heidegger's machinations fits the description of Schurmann's hegemonic fantasms and might be one more way that Heidegger influenced Schürmann’s work.
According to Schmidt, Machenschaften is what happens when our understanding of making things comes to dominate the understanding of all appearances to the point that anything that cannot be calculated, measured, or will not "submit to the laws of our making" is denied its reality. Here, "the incalculable" is sacrificed in order to establish the hegemonic fantasm and Machenschaften "justifies all that may become a phenomenon..."( Schürmann, General Introduction Broken Hegemonies p.7 ) Machenschaften dictates what can be considered a phenomenon, denies the reality of anything that opposes it, and functions in a certain time period. Thus machenschaften fits Schurmann's definition of a hegemonic fantasm.