to its firsthand lived world,82 we mostly do not have things present “bodily” (in the sense we defined), [104] not even—and especially not—when we are involved with these things. In the precise moment that I write on the chalkboard something I am saying, I certainly do sense the resistance of the board, and the board is bodily given to me. However, in a strict sense, the board is not bodily present to me as I write. Rather, I am present to the words I am writing and their meaning. On the other hand, of course, (and I just throw this out in passing without going into it) someone could say that in (another) sense the chalkboard most certainly is bodily present, precisely in fact when I do not see it, when I just stand here and occasionally during the lecture write on it. At that moment, someone might say, the chalkboard is bodily present in a real and proper sense, in fact in its most proper actuality, when it is used for what it is. In this way, the chalkboard is disclosed in its proper sense, whereas when someone who has absolutely nothing to do with the room walks in and sees it there, the board is not present to him as what it is. I mention this distinction so as to indicate that the concept of the bodily present is geared to theoretical apprehension and knowledge. We are speaking exclusively about the theoretical in the present context.
It is not only our firsthand lived world that is by and large not given bodily, directly, and explicitly. Even less so is the world that lies just beyond the firsthand world. We have some understanding and some knowledge of it. We can speak of it and communicate something about it to others by way of reports and instructions, but only within certain limits. The limits are not those of memory, which does not apprehend and hold on to everything. Rather, this knowledge and understanding of . . . , this ability to speak about . . . , has a limit in itself, even if everything experienced remains stored up in it in the form of a memory. The limits of knowledge and speech come to light when they have to prove themselves as the “knowledge of . . .” and “speech about . . .” that they claim to be in their very being as knowledge and speech. We see their limits when they have to show themselves for what [105] they are instead of being taken simply as something that might occasionally be of value to others, such as a normative opinion, or an authority figure’s judgment and pronouncement, or the dictum of an expert.
Thus, although knowledge and speaking communicate something, or mean something without communicating it, nonetheless they are what they properly are only because of that whereby they show and prove their legitimacy: the fact that what they say, they say legitimately—i.e., when they say just how things are. However, the subject
82. [“Seine nächste Umwelt,” where the noun Umwelt does not mean the world that is physically around one, but rather the lived world of one’s interests and concerns.]