Abstract

This paper investigates the relation of language to the openness of the world in the context of Heidegger’s early thinking, especially in Being and Time. My main contention is that Heidegger’s view of language in the 1920s cannot be reduced completely to the one-sided, subjectivist enactment of speech-act or Rede. First, I analyse the original meaning of the word “articulation” as structured division and connection in Being and Time and link it to the Greek word ἄρθρον, which Plato uses in describing the dialectical procedure. The second part discusses the concept of understanding with respect to the characterisation of Dasein as possibility. In the last part, I tackle the problematic of the tension between Nous and Logos by showing how Heidegger describes the phenomenological givenness of something as a unified whole. In conclusion, the role of the phenomenological Logos in the sense of articulation of understanding lies in evoking the latent potential of the structured world and responding to its horizontal openness of meaning.