Heidegger and language: from the reception of being to the reception of the other

Abstract

This text investigates the ethical implications of Heidegger's conception of language, starting with Being and Time and then analyzing his mature texts of the fifties. It develops itself around two interrelated hypothesis: the first one is that Heidegger's mature understanding of the essence of language was already defined in its major lines in Being and Time, although at that moment it had not yet received its full development. The second hypothesis is that the welcoming of Being that underlies and constitutes the core of Heidegger's meditation on the essence of language brings with itself intrinsic ethical implications, since it provides the possibility of a post-metaphysical welcoming of the other. In the period of the project of fundamental ontology, the appropriation of one's own being through authentic resolution provided the possibility of appropriating one's own speaking and hearing, which is a fundamental precondition to acknowledging and welcoming the other as other. In his later works, the welcoming of Being depends on a thorough deconstruction of the metaphysical conception of the human being as the rational animal, as well as of the traditional understanding of language as an enclosed system of logic propositions. That process of deconstruction aims towards a meditation concerning the essential relationship between the essence of language and the mortal essence of human beings. I shall argue that it is this essential relationship that provides the path towards the condition for a post-metaphysical ethical encountering and welcoming of the other as other, inspired by the acceptance and affirmation of one's own capacity to experience one's own death as death. Keywords: Heidegger, Language, Post-metaphysical ethics.