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June 3, 2003
I've started unpacking some of my books. One that I came across is Heidegger's On the Way to Language. In an essay called 'The Way to Language' he writes:
"We are, then, within language and with language before all else. A way to language is not needed."
Heidegger then moves on to consider the way to language. It is the first sentence that would strike many people as absurd. Why? Because it is assumed that language is an instrument, a tool that we use to toss words (tokens) over to someone else when we want to communicate. Living within language? Crazy. We act as though we are the shaper and master of language not as if language is the master of us.
It did not strike Jonathan Delacour as absurd. He says that he "was absolutely entranced, and I suppose I still am, by the beauty of this idea: that we live within language..."
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