Language of Being in Heidegger’s “Turn” (Kehre)

Jacek Surzyn
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7959-243X

Abstract

In this article, I attempt to analyze some of the contexts of the language of being after Heidegger’s “turn” (Kehre), a clearly discernible change in his philosophy in the second half of the 1930s. Heidegger proposed a new concept to revealing being itself, namely its “event‑enowning” (Ereignis). The key to this understanding of being is that now language becomes “the house” of being. Heidegger combined this with the “joint” (fugue) function. Language as a fugue joins with being itself, and therefore constantly follows and touches upon the boundary of silence. Silence is the ultimate complement of language and constantly limits it, because what is said only reveals a part of being, while the rest remains hidden and “expresses” silence, as it is in the case of a fugue, where the main motif of the theme “escapes” into silence. In the text, I first consider the fugue of being, then the language of being as its expression, in order to consider the problem of saying further, and finally analyze the limit of language, i.e. the way to silence.


Keywords

language; being; turn; enowning; silence; saying

Dastur F.: Heidegger. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 2007.

Harman G.: Heidegger Explained. From Phenomenon to Thing. Open Court, Chicago 2007.

Heidegger M.: Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). Ed. F. W. von Herrmann. [Gesamtausgabe. Band 65]. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1994.

Heidegger M.: Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning). Trans. P. Emad, K. Maly. Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis 1999.

Heidegger M.: Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event). Trans. R. Rojcewicz, D. Vallega‑Neu. Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis 2012.

Heidegger M.: Language. In: What is Literature? A Critical Anthology. Ed. M. Robson, Wiley Blackwell, Hoboken 2020, pp. 349–362.

Heidegger M.: Unterwegs zur Sprache. Ed. F. W. von Herrmann. [Gesamtausgabe. Band 12]. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1985. [The collection of followings texts: Die Sprache; Die Sprache im Gedicht; Aus einem Gespräch von der Sprache; Das Wesen der Sprache; Das Wort; Der Weg zur Sprache.]

Herrmann F. W. von: “Contributions to Philosophy” and Enowning‑Historical Thinking. Trans. P. Emad. In: Companion to Heidegger’s “Contributions to Philosophy.” Eds. Ch. E. Scott et al. Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis 2001, pp. 105–126.

Inwood M.: A Heidegger Dictionary. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford–Maiden, Massachusetts 1999.

Lysaker J. T.: Language and Poetry. In: Martin Heidegger. Key Concepts. Ed. B. W. Davis. Durham, Acumen Publishing 2010, pp. 195–207. https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844654475.015.

Maly K.: Turnings in Essential Swaying and the Leap. In: Companion to Heidegger’s “Contributions to Philosophy.” Ed. Ch. E. Scott et al. Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis 2001, pp. 150–170.

Meschonnic H.: La Langage Heidegger. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1990.

Philipse H.: Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being. A Critical Interpretation. Princeton University Press, New Jersey 1998.

Polt R.: The Event of Enthinking the Event. In: Companion to Heidegger’s “Contributions to Philosophy.” Eds. Ch. E. Scott et al. Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis 2001, pp. 81–104.

Pӧggeler O.: Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers. Neske, Pfullingen, 1963.

Ruin H.: Contributions to Philosophy. In: A Companion to Heidegger. Eds. H. L. Dreyfus and M. A. Wrathall. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford 2010, pp. 358–374.

Schmidt D. J.: Strategies for a Possible Reading. In: Companion to Heidegger’s “Contributions to Philosophy.” Eds. Ch. E. Scott et al. Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis 2001, pp. 32–47.

Schoenbohm S. M.: Reading Heidegger’s “Contributions to Philosophy”: An Orientation. In: Companion to Heidegger’s “Contributions to Philosophy.” Eds. Ch. E. Scott et al. Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis 2001, pp. 15–31.

Scott Ch. E.: Introduction: Approaching Heidegger’s “Contributions to Philosophy” and Its Companion. In: Companion to Heidegger’s “Contributions to Philosophy.” Eds. Ch. E. Scott et al. Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis 2001, pp. 1–12.

Trawny P.: Adyton. Heideggers esoterische Philosophie. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2010.

Trawny P.: Martin Heidegger. Verlag Karl Albert, Freiburg/München 2003.

Vallega A.: “Beyng‑Historical Thinking” in Heidegger’s “Contributions to Philosophy.” In: Companion to Heidegger’s “Contributions to Philosophy.” Eds. Ch. E. Scott et al. Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis 2001, pp. 48–65.

Vallega‑Neu D.: Poetic Saying. In: Companion to Heidegger’s “Contributions to Philosophy.” Eds. Ch. E. Scott et al. Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis 2001, pp. 66–80.

Download

Published : 2021-12-29


SurzynJ. (2021). Language of Being in Heidegger’s “Turn” (Kehre). Folia Philosophica, 46, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.31261/fp.11376

Jacek Surzyn 
Jesuit University Ignatianum in Kraków  Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7959-243X




Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.

1. License

The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

2. Author’s Warranties

The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.

If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".

ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).

3. User Rights

Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

4. Co-Authorship

If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.

I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.