26 November, 2007

Heidegger: say it like you mean it


For to be human means to be a sayer. Human beings are yes- and no-sayers only because they are, in the ground of their essence, sayers, the sayers. That is their distinction and also their predicament. It distinguishes them from stone, plant, and animal, but also from the gods.

Even if we had a thousand eyes and a thousand ears, a thousand hands and many other senses and organs, if our essence did not stand within the power of language, then all beings would remain closed off to us - the beings that we ourselves are, no less than the beings that we are not.

Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics

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