Coexistence is Communication: Heidegger’s Rhetorical View of Community
Coexistência é comunicação: a visão retórica de Heidegger sobre a comunidade
Roberto Wu
UFSC – Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
Recebido: 17/12/2024
Received: 17/12/2024
Aprovado:29/12/2024
Approved: 29/12/2024
Publicado: 31/12/2024
Published: 31/12/2024
RESUMO
Os Conceitos Fundamentais da Filosofia Aristotélica, escrito em 1924, é o único texto de Heidegger inteiramente dedicado à Retórica. Por esse motivo, ele se mostra como sendo um documento exemplar que exprime o entrelaçamento entre linguagem e comunidade no período da hermenêutica da facticidade. Aproximações e diferenciações em relação às concepções apresentadas na ontologia fundamental de Ser e tempo tornam possível compreender a singularidade desses conceitos em 1924. O artigo explora sobretudo a implicação dos modos discursivos do falar e do ouvir na formação de um elo comunitário.
Palavras-chave: retórica; comunidade; ouvir; logos; práxis.
ABSTRACT
Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, written in 1924, is Heidegger’s only text entirely devoted to rhetoric. Therefore, it reveals to be a main source that express the link between language and community at the time of his project of hermeneutics of facticity. Similarities and differences concerning Being and Time conceptions make possible understanding the singularity of those concepts in his earlier work. The article especially explores the implication of the discursive modes of speaking and hearing in the formation of a communitarian bond.
Keywords: rhetoric; community; hearing; logos; praxis.
Basic Concepts of Aristotelian philosophy (Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie) is the title of the summer semester lecture course that Martin Heidegger gave in 1924. Because it is the only text he has entirely dedicated to rhetoric, it contains valuable hints about his early conception of language and its connection with themes such as being-with-one-another and disposition[1]. Being and Time treatment of these themes are comparatively brief in contrast to his approach in 1924. The reason is that in the Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy they are not subjects for the sake of something else, but rather, the main themes of this lecture course. A number of consequences become evident when contrasting both texts. Although they do not necessarily collide one with another, they do not present the very same conceptions. While writing Being and Time, Heidegger had to select concepts and discussions he understood were conducive for the sake of the question of being. Accordingly, his presentation of these concepts in Being and Time cannot match the length and scope of Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy. This selection entails simultaneously a modification of his philosophy, as many discussions of 1924 would be replaced by others topics in place and importance. The phenomenological approach suggested by this lecture course is distinctive and indicates alternative paths to those of Being and Time. In a sense, the 1924 text is the completion of a project centered on hermeneutics of facticity, as Heidegger takes Aristotle as the guiding principle of his investigation of how life interprets itself.
Fundamental Rhetoric?
Heidegger shares with classical rhetorical a distinct feature when it comes to discuss language. They never take language as a separate issue standing in its own. Certainly, language is a central feature in classic rhetoric, but only to the extent that it contributes and makes possible our life with others. While living in community, we perform certain actions and want to be understood, as we want to understand what others mean by their actions[2]. Therefore, for rhetoric, language is conceived as communication, as something able to move others as well as that which allows one to be moved by the speech of others. This feature is indicated by a number of scholars that stress a pragmatic relation with language (Cassin, 2009; Serafim, 2017; Taplin, 2009), while defending that language should not considered independently from their contexts of use. Every communication is motivated and directed to some aim. For this reason, persuasion should not be taken as secondary aspect of language, inasmuch as every act of communication intends to show something to someone.
Particularly, Barbara Cassin, who remarkedly states her debt to Heidegger (Cassin, 2000; 2009) has shown the connection between saying and doing in ancient rhetoric, especially regarding sophistics. In a paper that compares Austin’s speech acts and sophistics, Cassin advocates that is impossible to understand Gorgias’ On Nature if one is not able to see the connection between speech and action. Because Gorgias shows how “the presence of Being, the immediacy of Nature” are an effect of speech, he replaces physics for politics (Cassin, 2009, p. 352). For Cassin, Gorgias’ On Nature should be understood “as a speech act” (2009, p. 352), as “one effectively attains here the dimension of politics, as an agora for an agôn: the city is an ongoing creation of language (2009, p. 353). Cassin remarks the centrality of the word epideixeis, which means a “lecture” or “performance”, that is, an art of showing “before” and “more”. In the first sense, “it is to show, publicly, ‘before,’ in everyone’s eyes: an epideixis may thus be a demonstration of force (…), an exhibition” (Cassin, 2009, p. 353). In the second sense, it means “to show ‘more’ on the occasion of this public demonstration: by putting an object on display, one makes use of it as an example or a paradigm” (Cassin, 2009, p. 353-4). At least but not last, speech does not only show more vividly a thing before the audience’s eyes, but it also shows who the orator is. “And one thus shows oneself ‘as well’, as a talented orator, capable of contraries, or as a real ‘poet’, a fabricator. It is a matter, then, in the broad sense, of a performance; it may be improvised or planned, written or spoken, but it is always related to the show, the public”, says Cassin (2009, p. 354). Gorgias’ view of the connection between language and action should not be seen as an exception, but the very offspring of a process in which language is ontologically investigated.
Hence, for ancient rhetoric, language should be seen in its repercussion to coexistence. In a famous observation in Being and Time, Heidegger writes that Aristotle’s Rhetoric “must be taken as the first systematic hermeneutic of the everydayness of Being with one another” (Heidegger, 2001, p. 178; GA 02: 138). This remark appears in §29 of Being and Time, in the context of a discussion of disposition and moods, which Heidegger connects to Aristotle’s analysis of pathē. As one of the means of persuasion (pisteis) (alongside with ēthos and logos), pathos contributes to the cultivation of a view – it persuades. Nevertheless, a similar statement appears in the 1924 lecture course, but in a slightly different situation. From the context of Being and Time, the reference to the hermeneutic of everydayness of being-with-one-another sounds a little bit off, for the discussion of being-with-one-another has already took place in §§26-27, while the analysis of everydayness is deepened only in §§34-38, relying such a mention in a link with pathos. In 1924 lecture course, this statement appears in relation to speaking, so that Heidegger’s understanding of rhetorical everydayness appears more clearly:
Rhetoric is nothing other than the interpretation of concrete being-there, the hermeneutic of being-there itself. That is the intended sense of Aristotle’s rhetoric. Speaking in the mode of speaking-in-discourse – in public meetings, before the court, at celebratory occasions – these possibilities of speaking are definitely expounded instances of customary speaking, of how being-there itself speaks. With the interpretation of the Rhetoric, one aims at how basic possibilities of the speaking of being-there are already explicated therein (Heidegger, 2009, p. 75-6; GA 18: 110).
This passage suggests an interchange between terms such as “everydayness” and “concreteness”. To certain extent, one may correlate them, as in Being and Time everydayness is the generalization by means of the discourse (idle talk) of the dominion of the “they”. However, in the context of his interpretation of Aristotle, Heidegger offers much more “positive” examples than he would in 1927, as he explores the main stages in which ancient rhetoric took place: public meetings, the court, and celebratory occasions. What he interprets to be “concrete” refers to a particular “everydayness” in this lecture course, a Greek world centered in speaking.
After a series of conceptual clarifications, Heidegger presents in §5 a discussion of logos, translated as speaking (Sprechen), a slightly different translation in comparison to that of Being and Time, as in Basic Concepts, logos appears in the context of being-with-others. An important detail may clarify this approach: while in Being and time Heidegger analyzes logos in the context of an elucidation of the term phenomenology, in 1924 he examines logos from a Greek background, as the leitmotiv of the lecture course is Aristotle’s rhetoric. Therefore, it is not surprising that he states that “every speaking is, above all for the Greeks, a speaking to someone or with others, with oneself of to oneself” (Heidegger, 2009, p. 14; GA 18: 18). Hence, a speaking is directed to someone, being he or she another person or oneself. Yet why Heidegger mentions that this is case “above all for the Greeks”? Although he proceeds to an examination of logos in the phrase zōon logon echon, which he translates as “a living thing that (as living) has language” (Heidegger, 2009, p. 14; GA 18: 18), it is only later, in my view, that a categorical answer is provided. In §9, in the context of the analysis of the meaning of logon echon, Heidegger distinguishes two ways of understanding the notion of being-with-one-another. The first one is merely “being-situated-alongside-one-another” (Nebeneinandergestelltseins) (Heidegger, 2009, p. 33; GA 18: 47), that is, an ontic view of our being, in which we merely stand alongside with other persons. In this situation, our relation with another person is based on spatial coordinates, an ontic perspective that ignores existential traits. Opposed to this, Heidegger states that being-with-one-another implies “being-as-speaking-with-one-another through communicating, refuting, confronting” (Heidegger, 2009, p. 33; GA 18: 47). This conception is based on language, particularly in the sense that it provides a connection with the other which is not accidental and external, but based on practices. According to this, the word communication (Mitteilung) must be seen from its basic meaning – a “sharing with,” as Hans-Georg Gadamer reminds us (1998, p. 6), which is achieved by means of the speech. Therefore, one should avoid understanding speech as an additional characteristic of our being, as being-with-one-another would be a situation achievable without communication. Rather, there is a circularity between being-with-one-another and communication: the latter implies the former, the former is unthinkable without the latter. This reciprocity is the basis of the notion of koinōnia, usually translated by community, but which Heidegger renders straightforwardly as being-with-one-another (Heidegger, 2009, p. 33; GA 18: 46). This is not a minor detail, due to the exceptionality in which Heidegger translates koinōnia so directly to one of the main concepts of fundamental ontology. In fact, in §§26-27 of Being and Time, the main chapters related to being-with-one-another, he never mentions the Greek word.
Logos differentiates itself from phonē, as the latter, rendered as “vocal announcing” (stimmliche Verlautbarung) (Heidegger, 2009, p. 33; GA 18: 46), is a general possibility shared with other beings as animals, while the former is not just a vocal announcing that indicates what is distressing or pleasing, but rather, an articulated speech that brings a matter to sight, in the sense of apophainesthai. Logos not only allows the understanding that someone is pleased or rather distressed by something, but convey a more complex meaning, as it discloses a significance in which a whole situation is grasped. It is this particular feature of logos, its ability in revealing a context of significance, that enables a shared world, an existential whole distinct of a collection of beings that stand alongside one another. When that which is disclosed by one speech is understood by another person, there is not a simple exchange of vocal announcements, but a sharing of the world in a particular aspect enacting consequently a bond between the interlocutors. A community based on the common ground of shared meanings and practices sets a bond in a pre-predicative, pre-reflective, and pre-thematic level. Despite any discordance one may have with the other, they are already sharing a world that founds the possibility of that discordance. More importantly, what they share exceeds the particular disagreement in their contention. In a sense, one may recognize a similar gesture few decades later in Gadamer’s interpretation of Giambattista Vico. In his analysis of the concept of sensus communis in Vico, Gadamer stresses the relevance of prudentia and eloquentia for the Napolitan rhetorician. Because these concepts operate in a practical level and encompass a series of phenomena that modern science ignores, they indicate the limitation of latter. Gadamer states:
But the most important thing in education is still something else – the training in the sensus communis, which is not nourished on the true but on the probable, the verisimilar. The main thing for our purposes is that here sensus communis obviously does not mean only that general faculty in all men but the sense that founds community. According to Vico, what gives the human will its direction is not the abstract universality of reason but the concrete universality represented by the community of a group, a people, a nation, or the whole human race (Gadamer, 1993, p. 20-21).
In this passage, it is noteworthy that collectives (group, people, nation, humanity) are considered by Gadamer as a result of a sensus communis, the “sense that founds community”. It is a sense of foundation entirely different from that which relies on theoretical reason, as it unfolds from concrete ties that are historically attached by members of a community, instead of being abstractly set. Foundation should be placed in an ontological level, according to the movement of factic life[3]. This passage is relevant to our purposes because Gadamer proposes that the core of a community is constituted by an understanding, a shared view of the world relying in practices hermeneutically mediated. Similarly, Heidegger declares in 1924 that a community exists because we are able to use the logos in a way that it makes something visible (dēloun) or brings a matter to sight (apophainesthai) while speaking about something, or hearing a speech. The circularity of something becoming visible by means of speech and its understanding by means of hearing is the basic bond that allows the life of a community. It is upon this basic feature that other complex possibilities of the speech arise, such as “communicating, refuting, and confronting”. Speech possibilities such as these are well acquainted by theorists of classic rhetoric, for they assume that every speech may not only transmit some meaning, but also that it may be contested, corrected, or rejected. For rhetoric, language is unthinkable without distinct perspectives that may collide, but this does not necessarily mean, at least for many rhetoricians, that any speech is equally legitimate as any other. Multiple perspectives do not imply, at least for Aristotle or Quintilian, that a speech cannot be more interesting than other, as it may reveal itself as more probable or verisimilar. However, this is not established theoretically and beforehand, but through a process of communication, refutation, and confrontation.
Therefore, koinōnia, which is the foundation of the notion of polis (the city), relies upon the speech. Accordingly, polis is “a characteristic way of being-together” (ein Zusammensein charakteristischer Art), “a being-possibility of human life” (eine Seinsmöglichkeit des menschlischen Lebens) (Heidegger, 2009, p. 35, p. 33; GA 18: 49, 47) that the making manifest character of logos makes possible. To put it another way, polis is a possibility based on logos, more particularly, in the kind of commonality that the speech establishes, while linking people in a more concrete and meaningful way than merely “being-situated-alongside-one-another”.
The role of hearing
Being-together by means of logos is a process of speaking and hearing centered on a subject matter. Hearing does not mean simply a physiological phenomenon in which sounds are apprehended, but rather, understanding. Heidegger interprets akouein as “genuine aisthēsis” (eigentlich aisthēsis) (Heidegger, 2009, p. 72; GA 18: 104), that is, originary perception. This implies that hearing and understanding cannot be conceived by Heidegger as two moments of a process. Hearing is a genuine aisthēsis in the sense that it perceives the circumstances of a situation in pre-thematic, pre-predicative, and pre-reflexive ways, and this means that one also should avoid considering speaking the active part of a speech and hearing the passive one. Because hearing is understanding, an originary one, it relates to “Being-towards-possibilities”, as one reads in Being and Time (Heidegger, 2001, p. 188; GA 02: 148). Hearing has an existential character and for this reason related to the projective character of being-there. There is no more expressive example of this statement than its role in Heidegger’s analysis of the authentic potentiality-for-being-a-whole of being-there. The tendency to idle talk – to a speech that has not any direct reference to a being, but only to other discourses – shows the uniqueness of hearing. What is disclosed by keeping silent is entirely distinct from the contents of the idle talk, which only replicates speeches. In this sense, “Keeping silent authentically is possible only in genuine discoursing” (Heidegger, 2001, p. 208; GA 02: 165), but this also means that a genuine discourse is only perceived by a genuine perception, a hearing. It is only later, as for instance in §55 of Being and Time, that the existential meaning of hearing reveals its full potential. While discussing the ontological foundations of conscience, particularly, the calling of conscience, Heidegger explains that one is guided in everydayness by the idle talk of the “they” (Das Man). Due to its volume, this idle talk hides the possibilities of any being, including the one that I am (being-there). To apprehend authentically one’s own being, it is necessary some silence in order to hear that which is existentially named as the “voice of conscience” (Heidegger, 2001, p. 316; GA 02: 271). The existential range of hearing, and the possibility of its connection with discourse by means of the silence, can be read in the following passage:
In this way Dasein ‘knows’ what it is itself capable of, inasmuch as it has either projected itself upon possibilities of its own or has been so absorbed in the “they” that it has let such possibilities be presented to it by the way in which the “they” has publicly interpreted things. The presenting of these possibilities, however, is made possible existentially through the fact that Dasein, as a Being-with which understands, can listen to Others. Losing itself in the publicness and the idle talk of the “they”, it fails to hear its own Self in listening to the they-self. If Dasein is to be able to get brought back from this lostness of failing to hear itself, and if this is to be done through itself, then it must first be able to find itself-to find itself as something which has failed to hear itself, and which fails to hear in that it listens away to the “they”. (…) Dasein fails to hear itself, and listens away to the “they”; and this listening-away gets broken by the call if that call, in accordance with its character as such, arouses another kind of hearing, which, in relationship to the hearing that is lost, has a character in every way opposite. If in this lost hearing, one has been fascinated with the 'hubbub' of the manifold ambiguity which idle talk possesses in its everyday 'newness', then the call must do its calling without any hubbub and unambiguously, leaving no foothold for curiosity (2001, p. 315-6; GA 02: 271).
The presentation of the existential implications of hearing in this mature version shows its discursive character and its connection with being-with others. It implies an understanding, although guided by the they in everyday concerns, but which may assume an existential prominence as that which is able to correspond to the silent call of conscience.
Nevertheless, in 1924’s lecture course, Heidegger does not stress so much the possibility of keeping silent as he assumes that hearing is the very basis of speaking. “In hearing, I am in communication with other human beings insofar as being-human means speaking”, says Heidegger (2009, p. 32; GA 18: 44). Therefore, Heidegger expands the meaning of zōon logon echon, while stating that besides being a speaker and a hearer, the human being also hears itself and speaks to itself (Heidegger, 2009, p. 72; GA 18: 105). The connection between these possibilities is the very core of logos to the extent that Heidegger declares that a genuine speaking “is only speaking insofar as it listens to the speaking” (Heidegger, 2009, p. 73; GA 18: 105). In other words, a logos is a speaking that the speaker also hears, in the sense of understanding it and releasing implications of what is expressed while they are expressed. In a sense, this is an actualization of the difference between logos and phone: the former implies a complex elaboration of meaning that assumes a hearing and an understanding; the latter, a mere expression of a vocal utterance.
This assumes that letting-something-be-said-by-others (sich-etwas-sagen-Lassen-von-anderen) is a mode of hearing that is of import to discourse, as one would not be able to communicate if one does not share a common horizon with the other. In analogy with the speech of the other, a human being can say something to himself and consequently has the possibility of letting-something-be-said-by-himself (Sich-von-sich-selbst-etwas-sagen-Lassen) (Heidegger, 2009, p. 76; GA 18: 111).
Therefore, hearing lies on the basis of a series of discursive possibilities, such as “incitement”, “making notable”, “reproach”, “speaking-against-one-another”, that is, concrete modes of corresponding to a situation of communication (Heidegger, 2009, p. 72, 94; GA 18: 105, 138). They may take part in a conversation insofar as they assume the speech of the other and, moreover, the activity of deliberating (symbouleuesthai). The concrete modes of communication imply that something is discussed with the other. What is discussed is the sympheron, that is, that which is proper to a thing. However, as long as we live with others, this sympheron does not concern solely to one, but to the others. Therefore, a range of different modes of discourse in which one relate to the others is brought to the fore. As mentioned before, communication, refutation, and confrontation are modes of discourse, but this means that they are modes of being-with-one-another, of koinōnia. In 1924, hearing does not lead so much to an existential dilemma concerning one’s authentic being, as to the complexity of sharing the world with others by means of language. From this perspective, Heidegger’s interpretation uses Aristotle’s works, such as Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, Metaphysics, or De Anima, in order to characterize an ambience of speech. Aristotle’s Rhetoric is the work that provides the juncture of these other works, as it presents a conception of speech that reveals to be indissociable of factic life.
Deliberation as communication
In factic life, one is always deliberating about something, for the contexts of meaning change according to circumstances and human action. However, deliberating is nothing that occurs apart from language; rather, it is itself a “bringing to language with itself” (Heidegger, 2009, p. 43; GA 18: 60). Inasmuch as a deliberation concerns not only to the deliberating one, but also to the others which may benefit or harm themselves from one’s decision, it is a form of communication. Deliberation is some kind of taking “counsel about something”, which Heidegger explicitly considers as a derivative phenomenon, whereas “that is merely an altogether definite possibility of something much more originary – counseling with others” (Heidegger, 2009, p. 43; GA 18: 60). Yet counseling with others does not mean standing passive to their speeches. It is in process of communication, or more properly, of debating or talking-through (durchsprechen), in which one has not only a view of something, but is confronted with different perspectives that one should consider. To Heidegger, this means discussing (besprechen) the sympheron, that is, what is proper to some situation. Deliberating, although it seems to be a solitary process, is rather language and consequently being-with-one-another. From this perspective, it is not hard to anticipate Heidegger’s conclusion: “I communicate with others; I have the world there with the other and the other has the world with me, insofar as we talk something through – koinōnia of the world. Speaking is, in itself, communicating; and, as communication, it is nothing than koinōnia” (Heidegger, 2009, p. 43; GA 18: 61). One clearly sees in this passage the link between communication and sharing a world that Gadamer has mentioned above, as Heidegger expressly relates talking-through to sharing a world. The expression “koinōnia of the world”, that is, community of world, refers to a process of sharing the world insofar as one discusses with the other about a given subject matter. They share a world by means of language, not only agreeing on something, but also refuting or confronting.
The stress on the necessary connection between “speaking” and “speaking-with-others” markedly suggests that Heidegger’s conception of language is transcendent from the scratch, while binding primordially the one and the other in the discourse. Heidegger even states that “the Greeks saw logos in an original way”, namely, in the mode of communication, and accordingly “the entire Rhetoric” should be considered the “concrete document for the originality of the Greek view” (Heidegger, 2009, p. 43; GA 18: 61). Therefore, amidst all the documents in the classical Greece, Heidegger picks up Aristotle’s Rhetoric as the most representative of the Greek view of language. More than a historical interest in Aristotle, this gesture reveals Heidegger’s own conception of language in 1924.
Between concern and solicitude
The subject matter of communication is in Basic Concepts directly connected to concern and, consequently, this suggests that Heidegger understands language in the realm of a limited notion of praxis[4]. Moreover, Heidegger seems to disregard the following distinction Aristotle makes in Politics (I.4.1254a7): “life is action and not production” (ho de bios praxis, ou poiēsis). Worthy of notice is that this means a wavering regarding the internal boundaries and phenomenological concepts of his ontological pluralism.
Heidegger looks hesitant on the distinction between concern and solicitude, as one may notice in the Natorp Report (Heidegger, 2010b), written in 1922, in which dealing (Umgang) is the preferential term to designate the many activities of factic life. Later, in Being and Time, dealing would be circumscribed to the realm of concern. In the 1927 book, Heidegger even describes praxis as “concernful dealings” (bersorgenden Umgang) (Heidegger, 2001, 96; GA 02: 68). This notion of praxis is consistent with that of Basic Concepts: “praxis is ‘concern’ [Besorgen], and as such it means nothing other than bringing-something-to-its-end” (Heidegger, 2009, p. 41; GA 18: 58). This means that in that lecture course, language does not belong to an autonomous realm; it is defined as concern, even if it entails a relation with the other. “Logos belongs to concern; concern is in itself a speaking, a discussing” (Heidegger, 2009, p. 43; GA 18: 61).
From the rhetorical perspective, as above discussed, deliberating is properly language, a speaking-with-others, but this also means that it entails a doing in the world, a concern. “This koinōnia is not only determined through logos itself, but also through the fact that the logos is a deliberating within the surveying look of concern” (Heidegger, 2009, p. 43; GA 18: 61). The koinōnia of the world, the world that becomes a community as it is established by the commonality of language, conveys a connection between logos and concern. Deliberating is a logos that unfolds itself within a concrete world, which is set up by means of concern. Any concern interprets the world in such a definite way, according to a chain of for-the-sake-of-which. Completely different from a sheer sum of beings, the world is conceived by Heidegger as a complex of significance, in which a being stands in relation with others according to the projective movement of one’s existence.
Although Heidegger’s conception of praxis remains translated as concern, in later writings, as in Being and Time, he introduces an important distinction regarding language and communication. In 1924, the triad of care (Sorge), concern (Besorgen), and solicitude (Fürsorge) is not yet fully developed. According to Kisiel (1995, p. 385), Heidegger only replaces the triad of worlds (around-world, with-world, and self-world), which has been presented by Heidegger since 1919-20, with a triad of cares in the winter semester of 1925-26, in the lecture course named Logic: The Question of Truth. In this text, Heidegger strongly rejects any confusion between concern and solicitude:
You the listeners are not objects of a concern-about [Be-sorgtes]. As a form of communicating [Mitteilung] the subject matter and helping people see it in a lecture, care [Sorge] is never being concerned-about [Besorgen], because the lecture cannot really produce in you the vision of the subject matter but can only awaken it or arouse it. Therefore, that which care qua communication wants to communicate cannot, in its most proper essence, be an object of concern in that care [in der Sorge besorgbar wird]. Instead, another existence, as care, takes it into its care [anderen Dasein als Sorge ge-sorgt ist]. Accordingly the kind of being that the communicating existence has in relation to the listeners is not a being-familiar-with [kein Sein-bei], and it is not a being concerned-about [kein Besorgen]. Rather it is a being-with (Sein mit), it is a mutual-care, or better: being concerned-for [Mitsorge, genauer: Fürsorge] (Heidegger, 2010a, p. 187; GA 21: 222-3).
The passage is remarkable not only because Heidegger clearly states the difference between care, concern, and solicitude, but mainly because he defines communication not as a concern (kein Besorgen), but rather, as solicitude (Mitsein, Fürsorge). In a sense, this philosophical gesture releases the full meaning of Heidegger’s rhetorical understanding of community, as it presents a notion of language that is related, but not confined to concern.
Final Remarks
A conjoined reading of Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy and Being and Time contributes to a clarification of the role of language and coexistence in Heidegger’s philosophy in the 1920’s. Not only it reveals to be useful in order to identify continuities between these two works, but also to identify modifications and discontinuities regarding them. As a result, it provides more elements to understand Heidegger’s own position concerning language and coexistence than those presented in Being and Time, which are generally taken as standard conceptions of his fundamental ontology.
As we have seen, the link between language and coexistence is much more developed in Basic Concepts, as his analysis of koinōnia provides a unique perspective. The status of Aristotle’s Rhetoric also changes when one compares these two works: in 1924, alongside other Aristotelian titles, it works as a model for developing a bond between language, community, and disposition (logos, koinōnia, pathos), setting a structural basis for fundamental ontology. Differently, in Being and Time, the quick reference to Aristotle’s Rhetoric only plays a role of indicating a historical background of disposition (Befindlichkeit).
Finally, in 1924, Heidegger expresses a more complex conception of coexistence, whose basis is communication. This sets a link between being-with-one-another, language, and concern, which situates communication in everydayness. Although Heidegger reformulates this connection a few years later, as he improves the distinction of modes of being and, consequently, explicitly counterpoints concern and solicitude, it shows in 1924 a manifold of ways in which communication straightens bonds between one and the other, allowing them to share a world.
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Roberto Wu
Professor e pesquisador do Departamento de Filosofia na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina desde 2009. Mestre em Filosofia pela UFPR (2002), doutor pela Puc-Rio (2006), com pós-doutorado no Boston College (2014) e na UFMG (2021-22). Foi coordenador do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia da UFSC (2016-19) e presidente da Sociedade Brasileira de Retórica (SBR) (2021-23). Atualmente é coordenador do GT Filosofia Hermenêutica da ANPOF (2025-26).
Os textos deste artigo foram revisados por terceiros e submetidos para validação do(s) autor(es) antes da publicação
[1] Although crucial for rhetoric, it is impossible to properly discuss disposition in the context of this paper.
[2] Due to the scope of this article, I leave aside on purpose the subject matter of agathon, usually rendered as the good, but which Heidegger translates as “the genuine being-character of human beings” (2009, p. 46: GA 18: 65), as well as other ethical concepts that have suffered from his hermeneutical violence. For a critique of Heidegger’s “purification” of Aristotelian Ethics, that is, the deflation of the ethical significance of concepts as agathon, praxis, prohairesis, and aretē (traditionally translated as good, action, deliberation, and virtue), see Gonzalez (2006).
[3] Heidegger distinguishes Bewegtheit, as the activity proper to human being, from Bewegung, as simple movement. See Peraita (2002, p. 150-4).
[4] A reading such as Franco Volpi’s, which sees correspondence between Aristotle’s division of “the three fundamental uncovering attitudes of the soul”, namely, theoria, poiēsis, and praxis (whose respective knowledges are sophia, technē, and phronēsis), and Heidegger’s distinction between Vorhandenheit, Zuhandenheit, and Dasein, is undermined by statements such as we have just read above. “My hypothesis is that the uncovering attitude of praxis is the attitude on which Heidegger bases his analyses, with a view to attaining the fundamental thematic determinations with which he designates the ontological structure of human existence, of Dasein”, says Volpi (1992, p. 104). Although Volpi’s correspondence can be read in Heidegger’s “hermeneutics of facticity” and “fundamental ontology”, as a model of understanding conceptual distinctions, it is not so helpful when one analyzes Heidegger’s own statements regarding praxis or phronēsis. Not only praxis is much more associated by Heidegger with what Volpi would name as the realm of poiēsis, but there is also no clear separation of the poietical conceptuality to that which properly belongs to praxis-phronēsis.