The influence of Schleiermacher's second speech On Religion on Heidegger's concept of Ereignis

Review of Metaphysics, The, June, 2008 by Alexander S. Jensen

This also sheds light on the continuity of Heidegger's thought. Heidegger's reading of Schleiermacher in the summer of 1917 seems not only to have led to his "hermeneutic breakthrough," which would influence his whole life's work, (38) but also to have given him the philosophical tools with which he could attempt to solve the questions raised in his later philosophy.

In addition, the reading of Heidegger proposed here contributes to our understanding of meaning and reference. For both Heidegger and Schleiermacher, language ultimately refers to the immediate disclosure of being. We have seen in Schleiermacher's Speeches that the immediate disclosure of the universe in relation to an object is then processed and conceptualized through the double movement of intuition and feeling. Now the observer begins to understand the disclosure, and can articulate it.

Heidegger uses a different terminology, but develops a very similar thought. For him, the meaningful relationships of being, of which both the observer and the object are part, are disclosed immediately (without mediation). Heidegger describes this as "language speaks," referring to language as Sage. The human observer, having received language (Sage), can now answer in human language (Lauten des Wortes). Nonconceptual language (Sage) has thus been translated into human language. Heidegger does not explain how the "answering," that is the translation from the preconceptual encounter with language (Sage) in the Ereignis, takes place, but he must assume some process by which the preconceptual thought is conceptualized.

So for both, human language refers to human thought, which refers to the disclosure of meaningful relationships of being. This is the "thought content" of language, or, to use the language of the hermeneutical tradition, the "mental image." In this way, both Schleiermacher and Heidegger follow the Augustinian tradition, (39) according to which the preconceptual thought (inner word--verbum interius) is translated into conceptual thought (external word--verbum externum), which can then be articulated. This translation obviously does not happen without loss, so that the conceptual thought is never a fully adequate representation of the inner word. (40) The interpreter of the utterance then attempts to retrieve the thought content of the utterance. This, however, will never be fully possible, as both Schleiermacher and Augustine agree.

Thus for Schleiermacher and Heidegger, language has an ultimate reference, which is the thought content of the utterance. It is not a thing or state-of-affairs, but the impression that the encounter with the thing or state-of-affairs made on the observer, and how this changed the observer, either by penetrating the center of our being and there changing our drives and motives, or by altering our self-understanding. After the critique of ideology, psychoanalysis and other critical theories, we are aware today that the conceptualization of this will always be influenced by the observer's presuppositions, prejudices, social context, psychological condition, and other factors. However, following Schleiermacher and Heidegger, we can assume that there is an ultimate reference, distorted as its linguistic representation may be.