But in what sense is language "the most dangerous good"? It is the danger of all dangers because it first creates the possibility of a danger. Danger is the threat that beings pose to being itself. But it is only by virtue of language at all that man is exposed to something manifest: beings which press {GA 4: 37} upon him and inflame him in his existence, or nonbeings which deceive and disappoint him. Language first creates the manifest place of this threat to being, and the confusion and thus the possibility even of the loss of being, that is—danger. But language is not only the danger of dangers; rather, it necessarily shelters within itself a continual danger to itself. Language is charged with the task of making beings manifest and preserving them as such—in the linguistic work. Language gives expression to what is most pure and most concealed, as well as to what is confused and common. Indeed, even the essential word, if it is to be understood and so become the common possession of all, must make itself common. Accordingly, it is said in another of Hölderlin's fragments: "You spoke to the divinity, but this you have all forgotten, that the first-fruits are not for mortals, that they belong to the gods. The fruit must first become more common, more everyday, then it will be the mortals' own" (IV, 238). The pure and the common are both equally something said. The word as word never offers any immediate guarantee as to whether it is an essential word or a deception. On the contrary—an essential word, in its simplicity, often looks like an inessential one. And on the other hand, what shows itself in its finery in the appearance of the essential is often merely something recited and repeated by rote. Thus language must constantly place itself into the illusion which it engenders by itself, and so endanger what is most its own, genuine utterance.
Now in what sense is this most dangerous thing a "good" for man? Language is his property. He has charge over it for the purpose of communicating his experiences, resolutions, and moods. Language serves to facilitate understanding. As an appropriate tool for this purpose, it is a "good." And yet being a means of making oneself understood does not constitute the essence of language. Such an account does not touch its actual essence, but rather only points to a consequence of the essence. Language is not merely a tool which man possesses alongside many