Another Way of Laughter

Please forgive my philosophical bent, but I do so enjoy the humor of philosophy as much as the humor of science. You can't read Heidegger to get any understanding out of him (well, some people may, but not I), but you can get a sense of …well, something.

My example of philosophic humor comes from a dialogue between Heidegger, the (I)nquirer, and a (J)apanese visitor found in Martin Heidegger's On the Way To Language.

Let me offer a few preliminaries.

Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation (of language, literature, the Bible, etc.). As you suspect, its origin refers to the Greek messenger god Hermes and, as Heidegger admits, "it has a playful thinking that is more compelling than the rigor of science."

Heidegger, at one point, advanced the idea of the 'hermeneutic circle' meaning that language is needed to interpret language, so, kind of like Godel's incompleteness theorem, we are already in the system we wish to explain. Also, the act of using language (Hermes delivering the message) is important (since it reveals Being itself), perhaps as important as the message (which reveals something about beings and reality).

By the way, I believe Heidegger (like Wittgenstein) would say that there is no isomorphic one-to-one correspondence between language and reality, but I'm not comfortable saying anything Heidegger would say.

Finally, 'Saying' probably means "the same as 'show' in the sense of: let appear and let shine, but in the manner of hinting."

Anyway, here is the dialogue:

J: How would you present the hermeneutic circle today?

I: I would avoid a presentation as resolutely as I would avoid speaking about language.

J: Then everything would hinge on reaching a corresponding saying of language.

I: Only a dialogue could be such a saying correspondence.

J: The course of such a dialogue would have to have a character all its own, with more silence than talk.

I: Above all silence about silence….

J: Because to talk and write about silence is what produces the most obnoxious chatter.

I: Who could simply be silent of silence?

J: That would be authentic saying…