PHENOMENOLOGY AND THEOLOGY
not necessarily a representing of something as an object. Only the thinking and speaking of the natural sciences is objectifying. If all thinking as such were objectifying, then it would be meaningless to fashion works of art, for they could never show themselves to anyone: one would immediately make an object of that which appears and thus would prevent the artwork from appearing.
The assertion that all thinking as thinking is objectifying is without foundation. It rests on a disregard of phenomena and belies a lack of critique.
(c) 'What does it mean to speak? Does language consist only in converting what is thought into vocables, which one then perceives only as tones and sounds that can be identified objectively? Or is the vocalization of speech (in a dialogue) something entirely different from a series of acoustically objectifiable sounds furnished with a signification by means of which objects are spoken about? Is not speaking, in what is most proper to it, a saying, a manifold showing of that which hearing, i.e., an obedient heeding of what appears, lets be said? Can one, if we keep only this carefully in view, still assert uncritically that speaking, as speaking, is always already objectifying? When we speak condolence to a sick person and speak to him bean to heart, do we make an object of this person? Is language only an instrument that we employ to manipulate objects? Is language at all within the human being's power of disposal? Is language only a work of humans? Is the human being that being that has language in its possession? Or is it language that "has" human beings, insofar as they belong to, pay heed to language, which first opens up the world to them and at the same time thereby their dwelling in the world?
(d) Is all thinking a form of speaking and all speaking a form of thinking?
The questions placed in discussion up to now direct us to surmise that thinking and speaking belong together (form an identity). This identity was testified to long ago, insofar as λόγος and λέγειν simultaneously signify talking and thinking. But this identity has still not been adequately placed in discussion and commensurately experienced. One principal hindrance is concealed in the fact that the Greek explication of language, that is to say the grammatical interpretation, is oriented to stating something about things. Later, modem metaphysics reinterpreted things to mean objects. This suggested the erroneous opinion that thinking and speaking refer to objects and only to objects.
If, on the other hand, we keep in view the decisive matter at stake, namely, that thinking is in each case a letting be said of what shows itself,
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