A Note on Heidegger and the Limit of Language (With a Reference to Rumi)

By Richard Capobianco, Stonehill College

The turn to “language” in Continental philosophy in the latter part of the 20th century

brought with it peculiar philosophical conclusions. It became fashionable to claim (not argue) that

what “is”—being—is reducible to language. “Being” is measured out by human language. I have

discussed the philosophical difficulties with this proposition in other places. In this Note, however,

I am more concerned to point out that it is a mistake to consider this to be Heidegger’s position on

language. Those in Continental thinking who continue to view language in this way often look to

Heidegger as the “source” of the position, yet what is thereby overlooked is how Heidegger

rejected a reduction of being to language. Indeed, he insisted that being always exceeds language

and remains beyond the reach—and capture—of language.

Heidegger’s text most often cited by those who would maintain the reduction of being to

language is his “The Essence of Language” (1957-58; for the English translation, see On The Way

To Language, trans. Peter Hertz, Harper & Row, 1971). In particular, they cite the conclusion of

the text, where Heidegger invokes the poet Stefan George’s line: “Where the word breaks off no

thing may be” (108). The problem is that they do not take into account what follows. Heidegger

immediately proceeds to cite the line “An ‘is’ arises where the words breaks up.” In other words,

he is concerned to show that the “is”—being—reveals itself as what is beyond language, what

exceeds, overflows, evades language, what is inexpressible. As Heidegger puts it, “the sounding

word returns into the soundlessness, back to whence it was granted: into the ringing of stillness….”

That is, our most proper comportment to being is—silence.

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 Heidegger reiterates this theme throughout his later work, and yet somehow it is missed by

those who maintain the reduction of being to language and make Heidegger their champion. What

is missing in their readings is the Heidegger who was fond of citing the lines from Hebel’s poem

“Ecstasy”:

No word of language says it—

No picture of life paints it.

For more on these lines, see my forthcoming book Heidegger’s Being: The Shimmering

Unfolding, University of Toronto Press. Yet, the point here is apparent enough: Although

Heidegger surely loved language and especially poetic language, and although he was intensely

interested in uncovering and recovering the deeper nature of language, still, he never proffered the

position that being is reducible to language. In fact, quite to the contrary, he resisted all such

reductions and made it his life’s work to “free” and “safeguard” being from human capture.

What is difficult for many commentators in the contemporary age to accept is that

Heidegger belongs to a long tradition of poets and thinkers who have understood that the “source”

of all human language and meaning is beyond all human language and meaning. The “source” is

expressed by us again and again, and yet it remains inexpressible.

It would be wise to recognize that Heidegger shared in a longstanding view, stretching

across the ages and across world cultures, that the “source of all” is made manifest by language

but not exhausted by language. Heidegger was recalling for us this insight, and yet, admittedly, it

is unfortunate that he often put too great a distance between himself and other authors past and

present. I have discussed many of these authors in other places, but for this Note let us listen to

the testimony of the great Persian poet Rumi. For Rumi, language is but the “veil of the soul”:

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The source of all is brought close by language and yet it remains infinitely distant. Rumi ruefully

but also humorously remarks on this in his poem “A Thirsty Fish” (translation by Coleman Barks):

This is how it always is

when I finish a poem.
A great silence overcomes me,
and I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.