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Saying is Showing

15/01/2011 By Kelly Cooper

“…if there is some sense in speaking of a hermeneutics of the sacred, it lies in the degree to which the double meaning of a text which, for example, in telling me about the Exodus, opens onto a certain state of wandering which is lived existentially as a movement from captivity to deliverance. Under the summons of a word which gives what it ordains, the double meaning aims here at deciphering an existential movement, a certain ontological condition of man, by means of the surplus of meaning attached to the event which, in its literalness, is situated in the observable historical world. Here, double meaning is the means of detecting a condition of being.

In this way, symbolism, taken at the level of manifestation in texts, marks the breakthrough of language toward something other than itself-what I call its opening. This breakthrough is saying; and saying is showing. This is the strength and the weakness of hermeneutics; its weakness because, taking language at the moment when it escapes from its enclosure, it takes it at the moment when it also escapes a scientific treatment, which can begin only by postulating the closed system of the signifying universe. All other weaknesses flow from this one, and first and foremost the conspicuous weakness of delivering hermeneutics over to the warfare of rival philosophical projects. But this weakness is also its strength, because the place where language escapes from itself and escapes us is also the place where language comes to itself, the place where language is saying. Whether I understand the relation of showing-hiding as a psychoanalyst or as a phenomenologist of religion (and I think that today these two possibilities must be assumed together), the understanding is in each case like a force which discovers, which manifests which brings to light, a force which language utilizes and becomes itself. Then language becomes silent before what it says.

I will venture to summarize this in a few words: the sole philosophical interest in symbolism is that it reveals, by its structure of double meaning, the equivocalness of being: ‘Being speaks in many ways.’ Symbolism’s raison d’être is to open the multiplicity of meaning to the unequivocalness of being” (Ricoeur 1974:66-67).

Ricoeur, Paul
1974[1969] The Conflict of Interpretations. Don Ihde, ed. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

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“Language is the House of Being because Language, as Saying, is the Mode of Appropriation” (Heidegger 1971:135)

06/01/2011 By Kelly Cooper

“In order to be who we are, we human beings remain committed to and within the being of language, and can never step out of it and look at it from somewhere else. Thus we always see the nature of language only to the extent to which language itself has us in view, has appropriated us to itself. That we cannot know the nature of language-know it according to the traditional concept of knowledge defined in terms of cognition as representation-is not a defect, however, but rather an advantage by which we are favored with a special realm, that realm where we, who are needed and used to speak language, dwell as mortals.

Saying will not let itself be captured in any statement. It demands of us that we achieve by silence the appropriating, initiating movement within the being of language-and do so without talking about silence.

Saying, which resides in Appropriation, is qua showing the most appropriate moment of appropriating. This sounds like a statement. If we only hear this statement it does not say to us what is to be thought out. Saying is the mode in which Appropriation speaks: mode not so much in the sense of modus or fashion, but as the melodic mode, the song which says something in its singing. For appropriating Saying brings to light all present beings in terms of their properties-it lauds, that is, allows them into their own, their nature. Hölderlin sings these words in the beginning of the eighth stanza of ‘Celebration of Peace’:

Much, from the morning onwards,
Since we have been a discourse and have heard from one another
Has human kind learnt; but soon we shall be song.

Language has been called ‘the house of Being.’ It is the keeper of being present, in that its coming to light remains entrusted to the appropriating showing of Saying. Language is the house of being because language, as Saying, is the mode of Appropriation.

In order to pursue in thought the being of language and to say of it what is its own, a transformation of language is needed which we can neither compel nor invent. This transformation does not result from the procurement of newly formed words and phrases. It touches our relation to language, which is determined by destiny: whether and in what way the nature of language, as the arch-tidings of Appropriation, will retain us in Appropriation. For that appropriating, holding, self-retaining is the relation of all relations. Thus our saying-always an answering-remains forever relational. Relation is thought of here always in terms of the appropriation, and no longer conceived in the form of mere reference. Our relation to language defines itself in terms of the mode in which we, who are needed in the usage of language, belong to the Appropriation” (Heidegger 1971:134-136).

Heidegger, Martin
1971[1959] On the Way to Language. Peter D. Hertz, trans. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.

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