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and he develops the linkage between language and thinking in On The Way To Langu
age. That is a thorny text also, but a pivotal idea is that we are not thinking
because we are unheedful of the language of thinking. A full elaboration of this
idea is impossible here, but the claim, roughly, is that to be thoughtful is to
exist as authentically immersed in language.
The nature of the alleged connection between language and thinking can be somewh
at clarified, I suggest, by making a key distinction that I find missing in disc
ussions of what Heidegger means. The distinction is about the phrase "the langua
ge of thinking". This phrase is ambiguous, I note, and it will prove instructive
to identify the different senses. To begin, "the language of thinking" is ambig
uous in the way that "the idea of God" or "the call of Being" are ambiguous, and
thus one can assume that Heidegger intends the ambiguity. In other words, all o
f these phrases can be taken either in the subjective or objective genitive, and
those are possibilities on which Heidegger likes to play. The phrase, "the idea
of God", for example, means "God's idea" in the subjective genitive and "the id
ea about God" in the objective genitive. In like manner the phrase "the language
of thinking" means "thinking's language" or "the language found in thinking" in
the subjective genitive and "language about thinking" in the objective genitive
. The difference, then, is between the language found in thinking generally and
the language found in thinking about thinking. It would be a mistake, I suggest,
to regard Heidegger's claims on language and thinking as being merely or primar
ily about the language used in thinking; the words and metaphors "used" in talki
ng about thinking can also lead us away from thinking. (17)
2. Thinking as gathering. Legein signifies gathering and the gathered, and Heide
gger develops the nuance in this manner:
Thinking demands...that we engage ourselves with what at first sight does not go
together at all. (18)
But by thinking qua gathering Heidegger means not merely Kant's synthesis of con
cepts, and perhaps even something different than what Wilfrid Sellars had in min
d when he spoke of "numbers and duties, possibilities and finger snaps, aestheti
c experience and death." (19) Heidegger's gathering is of Being:
Thinking cuts furrows into the soil of Being. (20)
Thinking is the gathering of that which calls to be gathered--the modes of our e
xistence and Being as such. Thinking can begin when we hear that which calls for
thinking:
Joyful things, too, and beautiful and mysterious and gracious things give us foo
d for thought...if only we do not reject the gift by regarding everything that i
s joyful, beautiful, and gracious as the kind of thing which should be left to f
eeling and experience, and kept out of the winds of thought. (21)
Thinking, then, is not so much a matter of being an expert or technician in a fi
eld--even if the field be philosophy--as it is being responsive to the various m
odalities of who we are, and this points to the existential modality of "being t
houghtful" as the ground of thinking.