On Heidegger's Thinking Of Language

The problem of language has always been a major concern of Western philosophers,among them Martin Heidegger was a unique one.Heidegger not only disclosed the poetic essence of language,but also related language and world closely to each other.Heidegger's first attempt to discuss the language issue was found in Being and Time published in 1927,in which language appeared in the form of “discourse”,as a constitutive moment of the world,disclosing Dasein's Being-in-the-world.In his 1929 essay "What is Metaphysics?” Heidegger began to reflect on his way of questioning the meaning of Being in Being and Time,focusing on the idea of "nothing" as opposed to"something." In this essay,he put forward the proposition "das Nichten des Nichts"(The Nothing-ing of the Nothing)as a transition to his later thinking.In his explanation of the“nothing”,Heidegger discovered a poetic way of looking at language,and introduced"silent language" in compatible with it,thereby making a transition to his later thinking of language.In Introduction to Metaphysics published in 1935,Heidegger clarified for the first time the important position of language,taking language as a key to the understanding of Being and carried out a detailed historical investigation of the question of Being from this point of view.With the publication of the "Letter on Humanism" in 1947,language was moved into the center of Heidegger's thinking of Being,and the proposition"language is the house of being" became well known at this time,while “house” and“world” are closely related.In Lectures and Proceedings(1954)and On the way to language(1959),the issue of language finally became inseparable from Heidegger's later thinking of the world as the fourfold play of earth,heaven,mortals and divinities.Taking a whole view of Heidegger's thinking on language,the uniqueness of this thinking shows itself mainly in two aspects: the first is the poetic essence of language,and the second is the relation between language and world.People(especially the Chinese)tend to understand Heidegger's thinking on language mainly from the first aspect,while the send one is to the large part ignored.Although Heidegger's thinking on language isvery attractive regarding the poetic essence,the relation between language and world as a dimension going through his early to later thinking should not be ignored.Therefore,this thesis attempts to look at Heidegger's thinking on language from the perspective of the relation between language and world.This thesis consists of 5 parts.The first part explains the purpose and background of the thesis topic,the relative researches on this area in China and abroad,as well as the creativity and limit of this thesis.The second part will start with Heidegger's Being and Time,focusing on Heidegger's discussions regarding the relation between the world and discourse.The third part discusses the key proposition "the Nothing-ing of the Nothing" in Heidegger's turn from early to later thinking.The fourth part will discuss in detail the later Heidegger's new thinking on language and world,highlighting the role language plays in Heidegger's later idea of the world.The fifth and last part will conclude the thesis by giving a holistic and critical view the relation between language and world in Heidegger's thinking.The main creativity of this thesis is taking the intrinsic relation between language and the world as a new way to look at Heidegger's thinking on language.Through the analysis of language and the world in his early writings,the thesis discovers the origin of his view on language.Then it catches the key proposition of Heidegger's transition from the early to later thinking,and interprets the synchronic change of language and world in his path of thinking.At last,the thesis analyzes Heidegger's thinking on language to re-interpret its theoretical and practical significance.This thesis holds the view that it is very important to understand Heidegger's thinking on language in terms of the relation between language and world.Language appears as a way of relating Dasein to the world in his early thinking.Language was the silent voice of discovering the world in "nothing" during the transitional period.In Heidegger's later period,language was the major constituting structure of the world,and was the key for exploring the dwelling place of human beings,and the returning to our home in language.