World and earth

pp. 109-123

in: Karsten Harries, Art matters, Berlin, Springer, 2009

Abstract

In the course of his discussion of the first of the three familiar, but inadequate interpretations of what makes a thing a thing, Heidegger had called attention to the remarkable way in which the structure of a simple proposition mirrors our understanding of the thing as a substance with attributes; and he had raised the question: "Is the structure of a simple propositional statement (the combination of subject and predicate) the mirror image of the structure of the thing (of the union of substance with accidents)? Or could it be that even the structure of the thing as thus envisaged is a projection of the framework of the sentence?" (G5, 8/23–24). The primacy of the simple assertion as the paradigmatic speech act and of the thing understood a something present at hand is here assumed, a primacy Heidegger had called into question already in Being and Time. But such questioning does not remove the fundamental problem. At issue is the relationship of what is real or things to language.