Language as communication/ Language as Truth
Heidegger addresses language-as-communication vs. language-as-truth, 1957
Martin Heidegger is not easy. But give this short video a chance. Heidegger was one of the first intellectuals to challenge the ubiquity of technology, and here he is questioning the use of language as the mere technology of communication. What else could language be, you may say, but communication? What else? The instrument of truth, which Goethe (as cited here by Heidegger) called “the poetic language.” Genuine poetry doesn't just communicate, it uncovers truth. It is the same when we use words to unveil concepts, whether concepts of material entities or of experiential conditions.
Heidegger called the truth “aletheia” or “unconcealment.” The use of words as logos serves the truth. Poetry does this and so do we when we look deep at an object or into an idea and determine the right word for it. In everyday use, however, words can become easy handles for second-hand concepts. In the video, Heidegger notes that language of the naturally familiar and the language of science were drifting further and further apart, and that scientific language emphasized calculation. At 4:31 he observes that the emphasis on scientific language was (already in 1957) “changing and hardening man’s imagination into merely a kind of calculative thinking.”
Consider where we are today with “Artificial Intelligence,” which is not intelligence at all. Noble Prize-winning physicist Sir Roger Penrose has pointed out again and again that “AI” is not intelligence, but calculation. No one seems to listen to him. Intelligence means the ability to grasp the identity, the nature, the essence of X, not merely analyze it. So-called “AI” can tell you everything about a cat, from its physical characteristics and its history to its biology, but it has no idea what a cat is.
Why is this important? Because the truth is being diminished to mere mathematics. Because the truth requires freedom of the individual to uncover/unconceal for him/herself the essences of things, and when this is reduced to mere calculation, we might as well hang up our humanity and let AI roll over us.
Listen to the video and see if you don’t glimpse something prophetic from nearly 70 years ago.
(For those who object on obvious grounds: Yes, I know that Heidegger was a member of the Nazi Party for about a year in the 1930s. He was a political idiot, overwhelmed by his German nationalism in spite of the fact that his teacher Husserl was Jewish, his mistress Hannah Arendt was Jewish, and a number of his prominent students, such as Emmanuel Levinas, were Jewish. Heidegger was de-Nazified after the war and for two years forbidden to hold a university position. Arendt’s intervention put him back in circulation. Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz, adored Heidegger’s work and paid him a friendly visit following the war. Sephardic Jewish philosopher Jacques Derrida based much of his philosophy on Heidegger’s principles. If he and Arendt and Frankl can forgive Heidegger, so can we. The truth is too important to ignore just because it comes from a man who has committed a foolish and stupid act. Richard Wagner wrote some viciously anti-semitic articles. I still listen to his music. Feel free to argue to the contrary.)