Much have humans experienced.

Named many of the heavenly,

Since we are a dialogue

And can hear from one another.

(Holderlin)

We noted last time that we operate in and out of contexts, e.g., the spirit of the age or the human condition, noting that the dog, for all its cleverness, knows nothing of a doggy zeitgeist.  The example we gave last time is death, and so we live “as though” we won’t be denied the next moment in death, though this is a dark possibility.  Similarly, we encounter the world “as though” my friend experiences the world as I do, though this is only known through analogy. The question is how are we a dialogue? 

From all that has been cited thus far, it must become clear that language is not something that the human being has among other faculties and tools. Rather, language is that which has the human being, that which configures and determines his Dasein as such in this way or that, and from the ground up… Poetizing is itself only that distinctive occurrence within the event of language in whose power the human being stands as historical. Poetizing configures the ground of historical Dasein: Language as such constitutes the originary essence of the historical being of humans.  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 105-6). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

There is going to be something related to beings that will indicate historical dialogue.  Heidegger comments:

We are a dialogue. What can this mean? It means that language constitutes and determines our being… If we do wish to look for a so-called ‘definition’ of the human being here, then it is a historical one, relating to time, and—following what was said earlier (p. 47ff.)—evidently to the time of the peoples, which no one knows… In the dialogue, language occurs, and this occurrence is properly its beyng.  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 108). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

This originary historical dialogue is covered up by idle talk.

But it also means that our beyng occurs in discourse concerning beings and non-beings, so that we become enslaved to talking away about things without thinking. We are then a kind of idle talk, for the latter is the corrupted essence that necessarily belongs to the essence of the dialogue.  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 109). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

Dialogue occurs in that humans encounter beings in the same way as one another, beings in their Being.  And so, if I hear a living thing at my feet in the forest just to look down and see I mist-took rustling dead leaves in the wind “as” a living thing, this show our inconspicuous stance toward beings is determined by language/Logos = e.g., taking something “as” a living thing.

Yet this, the fact that beings are manifest in advance for each of us in their being, is the precondition for someone being able to hear something—that is, something about beings, from another, whether these beings are those that we are not (nature) or that we ourselves are (history)…  Rather, community is through each individual’s being bound in advance to something that binds and determines every individual in exceeding them.  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 111). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

Language thus determines us in our stance toward the world and puts us in community that allows for historical contexts to be understood and lived out of.  For example we encounter beings “as” inherently questionable, and so if you and I disagree about whether the book is green, we appeal to the book “at hand.”  Shared presence at hand thus belongs to the being of the book.  Why is this historical?

Being able to hear from one another is possible only if each individual is exposed in advance to the nearness and distance of the essence of things…Poetizing founds beyng. Poetizing is the primordial language of a people. Within such language, there occurs a being exposed to beings as they thereby open themselves up. As the accomplishment of such exposure, the human being is historical. The human being ‘has’ a history only because and to the extent that he is historical. Language is the ground of the possibility of history, but language is not something like an invention that is first made within the course of the historical creation of culture. (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 112; 114). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

Our conceptual toolbox and the ontological difference follows from the Greeks and, for example, the difference between Being and beings reflects that history.  This was not a creation by the Greeks but a poetizing bringing to word of their stance toward the world in the context of them seeing the fire of youth destined to fade in old age according to a general principle of restlessness – as we see in Holderlin’s “Hyperion’s Song of Fate/Destiny” and elsewhere like Apollo’s take on humanity in Homer. 

We say, for example, the mansion is houseness incarnate (Now that’s a house!), while houseness is merely “present” in the average house, and is deficient in the dilapidated shack.  Similarly, someone else may experience the mansion to be gawdy or the shack quaint.  This structure of movement/appearing follows from the Greek experience of the world, and so Homer says the gods don’t appear to everyone in their fulness.  This implicates us, such as when we lose ourselves in the palm tree swaying in the wind or feeling small in front of a great ocean.  The most real beings for the Greeks are the ones that are not changeable but simply are, because these are the ones, when we attune to them, they calm our restless soul.  For example, when I learn about justice, justice isn’t invented by me but I learn what justice is and always has been.