If I Had a Hammer, I’d Dasein in the Morning

Using the old Macquarrie and Robinson translation of Being and Time one finds on p. H. 68 Heidegger’s referencing of the ancient Greek term for things (pragmata) which he glosses thus: “…that is to say, that which one has to do with in one’s concernful dealings,” which dealings he further denotes as the ancient Greek praxis. So “praxis” refers to concernful dealings with “pragmata,” or things as they figure in those dealings — which is not as they appear to distinterested contemplation.

Heidegger then designates these pragmata as “equipment,” and notes that equipment is always part of a totality, is something one uses in order to do something else by means of further equipment. The relationship of equipment to other equipment is that of Verweisung, translated here as “reference.” Heidegger states that we encounter a totality of equipment, an arrangement, first, and only within the context of such arrangements do we use and become aware of particular bits of equipment. For example, I encounter the road and stop lights and my car and other cars all together as an arrangement, and only within this context do I deal with my steering wheel and the gas pedal.

 Heidegger goes on to stress that our original engagement with such equipment is ready-to-hand and hence non-thematic. That is, equipment such as a hammer appears to us first not as a distinct thing, an object, set over against us as subjects and distinct from other objects, but instead fits in seemlessly as that which is transparently referenced by our activity in the workshop. When we need to hammer, we reach for the hammer. When our coping in this manner works smoothly, we need not even be aware of the hammer in the sense of awareness priviledged by most Western philosophy.

This account reverses the order of meaning presumed by most philosophers since Descartes and even Plato. The more traditional account begins with the individual mind’s representations of that which it encounters, from the sum of which are eventually somehow built up the subject’s valuings of and involvements in the world. In this always already thematized world it is easy to discern where language would fit. Language provides extensive resources for representing entities to subjects (a point not contradicted by those such as Brandom who conceive of language primarily as means of making inferences rather than representations), and thematic thought can easily be understood as language-spoken-to-oneself.

My question here is whether the early Heidegger’s alternative account of being human effectively elides this link with language. As I stated in my last post, clearly Heidegger’s account in Being and Time does give a prominent place to language. So, what I’m asking is not whether early Heidegger actually showed how language is unnecessary for a meaningful existence, but whether he provided resources for making such a case. 

Assuming for the sake of argument that his account of transparent coping with equipmental totalities is basically correct, we can ask whether language is necessary for such experience, and if so, whether such a languageless experience is in fact meaningful. For now, simply to stake a claim without yet supporting it, I will posit that language, in any appropriate sense of the term, is not necessary for transparent coping with equipmental totalities, either proximally (i.e. actually employed in the experience) or foundationally (i.e. providing a prior structure for the understanding at work in such endeavors), and that the hammer and the nails, the steering wheel and the road, are indeed all meaningful to the Dasein engaged with them. And this is primal praxis.