File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9809, message 57


Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1998 07:49:58 -0700
From: Mike Staples <mstaples-AT-argusqa.com>
Subject: Re: Meaning


GBORGERSON-AT-delphi.com wrote:

> What I'm wondering is how
> Heidegger would handle meaning as significance that is personal,
> perhaps
> even latent, in Merleau-Ponty's, formulation, sedimented as in
> Husserl's
> formulation or unconscious, as in Freud's formulation.

I would be interested to hear Michael E's comment here, especially with
regard to significance as "personal". I wonder what that
means..."personal"? I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just wondering
about this sort of distinction. As I understand it, significance is
drawn from our shared background of understanding--the horizon for
Being-in-the-world. Is it then made "personal"? Does personal mean that
only I experience the phenomenon? Or does personal mean that a given
phenomenon is especially significant? Perhaps some guidance here would
help.

> Husserl and
> Merleau-Ponty would allow for meaning that is unmediated by language,
> but
> I don't think that is possible for Heidegger.

Greg, doesn't the difference here hang on what we mean by "language"? If
by language you only mean a grammar, or a system of communication, then
there would certainly be a distinction between what Heidegger means by
language. With Heidegger, as I understand him, there is no need for an
experience to be mediated by language because the experience is itself
language. Below you are pointing to interpretation through languag as if
the experience sits on one side while the interpretation sits on the
other. Again, we return here to my lengthy battle with Henry about
interpretation-all-the-way-down. I think I have always sided with
Michael E's view here, but for what appears to be kind-of-sort-of
technical reasons having to do with ferreting out the different usages
of understanding versus interpretation. But I also see the use of
Henry's point about interp-all-the-way-down when you begin attempting
to  make such clean distinctions between interpretation and experience
as below.

> So I'm still floundering
> around with this one because I think that some forms of human
> experience
> are not mediated through language, they certainly could be interpreted
>
> through language.

Michael S.



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