203 I. 5
Being and Time

encounter again this peculiar phenomenon of Being which we meet within the λόγος.

By demonstrating that assertion is derived from interpretation and understanding, we have made it plain that the 'logic' of the λόγος is rooted in the existential analytic of Dasein; and provisionally this has been sufficient. At the same time, by knowing that the λόγος has been Interpreted in a way which is ontologically inadequate, we have gained a sharper insight into the fact that the methodological basis on which ancient ontology arose was not a primordial one. The λόγος gets experienced as something present-at-hand and Interpreted as such, while at the same time the entities which it points out have the meaning of presence-at-hand. This meaning of Being is left undifferentiated and uncontrasted with other possibilities of Being, so that Being in the sense of a formal Being-something becomes fused with it simultaneously, and we are unable even to obtain a clear-cut division between these two realms.


34. Being-there and Discourse. Language

The fundamental existentialia which constitute the Being of the "there", the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world, are states-of-mind and understanding. In understanding, there lurks the possibility of interpretation—that is, of appropriating what is understood. In so far as a state-of-mind is equiprimordial with an act of understanding, it maintains itself in a certain understanding. Thus there corresponds to it a certain capacity for getting interpreted. We have seen that assertion is derived from interpretation, and is an extreme case of it. In clarifying the third signification of assertion as communication (speaking forth), we were led to the concepts of "saying" and "speaking", to which we had purposely given no attention up to that point. The fact that language now becomes our theme for the first time will indicate that this phenomenon has its roots in the existential constitution of Dasein's disclosedness. The existential-ontological foundation of language is discourse or talk .1 This phenomenon is [161] one of which we have been making constant use already in our foregoing Interpretation of state-of-mind, understanding, interpretation, and assertion; but we have, as it were, kept it suppressed in our thematic analysis.

Discourse is existentially equiprimordial with state-of-mind and understanding. The intelligibility of something has always been articulated, even before there is any appropriative interpretation of it. Discourse is the Articulation

1 'Rede'. As we have pointed out earlier (see our note 3, p. 47, H. 25 above), we have translated this word either as 'discourse' or 'talk', as the context seems to demand, sometimes compromising with the hendiadys 'discourse or talk'. But in some contexts 'discourse' is too formal while 'talk' is too colloquial; the reader must remember that there is no good English equivalent for 'Rede'. For a previous discussion see Section 7 B above (H. 32-34).


Being and Time (M&R) by Martin Heidegger