i don't know what you mean by reducing mowing the lawn to discourse. — Joshs

The argument put forward by Arne, if I understand him correctly, is that this activity must be understood as standing under state of mind, understanding, or discourse. He puts it under discourse.

What is it you want mowing the lawn to be besides a signiicant meaning within a totality of relevance? — Joshs

Is a totality of relevance discourse?

Are you arguing that when we articulate the meaning of mowing the lawn as ready to hand, this interpretation of the activity is a discursive treatment added onto beings which we initially encounter ? — Joshs

Beings which we initially encounter? Encounters of the third kind?

Talking about mowing the lawn is discourse:

Its constitutive factor are: what discourse is about (what is discussed), what is said as such, communication, and making known. — Fooloso4

In other words, that an initially objectively present world-stuff were ... — Joshs

You are stuffing straw, man.

Without discourse, mowing the lawn has no meaning. — Joshs

Once again, it is through discourse that the meaning of mowing the lawn is disclosed. That does not mean that mowing the lawn is discourse.

Once again, it is through discourse that the meaning of mowing the lawn is disclosed. That does not mean that mowing the lawn is discourse. — Fooloso4

How do you know that someone is mowing the lawn? Describe the ways of knowing that a lawn is being mowed(by someone else or by you), that don't involve taikng about it.

Is a totality of relevance discourse? — Fooloso4

The articulation of a totality of relevance is discourse. "What is articulated in discoursing articulation as such, we call the totality of significations.(161)" Since all experiences are articulated in this way, all experiences are discursive(if discursive means articulating a totality of significations). If you prefer this to 'all experiences are discourse', then I'm fine with that.

The traditional concept of reality for Heidegger (being in the sense of the pure, objective presence of things) is ontologically inadequate. So is the phenomenal concept of reality that Husserl advances, since it distinguishes indication from expression and posits a pure living present.

Speaking on behalf of Husserl - if not Heidegger; but likely so - the point of phenomenology was to explore the subjective matter NOT to postulate objective claims of reality (that is the domain of the natural sciences). Husserl was attempting to give science a firming grounding against metaphysical ideas that bled into mystical mumbo jumbo.

@Fooloso4

As I read him, reality is phenomenal — Fooloso4

Heidegger is slippery to say the least. Given that he hasn’t completely abandoned the founding premise of the phenomenological pursuit this cannot be true. It gets tricky if people start talking about different kinds of ‘reality’ - I’ve fallen foul of this easy cop-out too often myself! (Shame on me!)

I’d say both Husserl and Heidegger fall prey to the pursuit of some ‘pure’ beingness ... if you know what I mean. I’d say the big difference is that Husserl was trying to establish a scientific perspective of subjectivity whilst Heidegger was focused in one a particular aspect of said subjectivity - the interpretive lingual aspects of how we frame ‘being’ and trying to capture what isn’t ‘thought’ in words in words; an obvious contradiction akin to the misconception of saying ‘I understand my unconscious content’ which is impossible as we’re not ‘conscious’ of the ‘unconscious’ yet have some appreciation of how such content presents itself ambiguously through conscious experience and analysis by way of hindsight and foresight.

I think the idea is that our whole range of abilities to deal with the "equipment" of everyday life is itself a linguistically based discourse in the sense that we know and can say what the equipment is for (the "in-order-to") and what the roles and importance of its various functions in our lives is (the "for-the-sake-of-which").

So, to use your particular example, the oven is in order to cook food, which obviously is for the sake of nutrition. — Janus

I’d have to agree with @Fooloso4, though - I don’t see this as necessarily discourse. It is entirely possible to succeed in baking the potato without being able to know or say what an oven is or what it’s for, let alone to know or say anything about nutrition. You could teach a chimpanzee to bake a potato or mow the lawn, for instance, and he could then carry out the exact same actions without too much trouble - would that be discourse?

While I understand that the actions of turning the oven to 425 degrees and mowing the lawn could be discursive, I would think that in most situations they are not: one is not often explicitly articulating their understanding of either the in-order-to or the for-the-sake-of in performing these actions, unless they were doing so expressly for-the-sake-of being helpful, for instance.

Perhaps, at best, they may be considered ‘idle talk’. This is Dasein’s everyday mode of being. Discourse, on the other hand, is a more authentic mode of being and involves interpretation - ‘taking something as’ - and then explicitly articulating that interpretation as a way of relating to others. This is not happening in these actions.

Discourse doesn’t really come into the picture until the second part of B&T. @Arne’s explanation that Heidegger was talking about the ‘average everydayness’ refers to the first part, to readiness-at-hand for instance and other inauthentic modes of being - not to discourse.

How do you know that someone is mowing the lawn? Describe the ways of knowing that a lawn is being mowed(by someone else or by you), that don't involve taikng about it. — Joshs

Okay, I am going to end this talk about mowing the lawn, but the lawn will still get mowed, if not by me then by someone else.

Is a totality of relevance discourse?
— Fooloso4

The articulation of a totality of relevance is discourse. — Joshs

A totality of relevance and the articulation a totality of relevance are not the same. I do not see how it makes sense to say that mowing the lawn is the articulation of a totality of relevance when that articulation is about the totality. Mowing the lawn is something that occurs within that totality, not the articulation of that totality.

I’d have to agree with Fooloso4, though - I don’t see this as necessarily discourse. It is entirely possible to succeed in baking the potato without being able to know or say what an oven is or what it’s for, let alone to know or say anything about nutrition. You could teach a chimpanzee to bake a potato or mow the lawn, for instance, and he could then carry out the exact same actions without too much trouble - would that be discourse? — Possibility

Chimpanzees don't have "being-with" (which makes the activity or behavior to discourse, i think). So, other chimpanzees moving around the chimpanzee taught to bake don't have an understanding that there is a "baking" going on. That is, there is no effective discourse existing in that situation. Humans are in a world where there is "mowing the lawn" over there, "baking" over there, "nothing happens" over there, "something strange" over there etc etc. Every one basically "knows" what is happening. Every one is i n discourse. Chimpanzees are basically just feeling pleasure-unpleasure with regard to sensations. There is no "pleasurable b a k i n g", "unpleasurable m o w i n g the lawn". There is no such basic units of meaning in chimpanzees "world". It could be said that chimpanzees are governed by causality, not by discourse/sense. (Through the expression "causality" we try to give a certain sense to chimpanzees' nonsense random activity.)

From this there arises the insight that among the modes of Being of entities within-the-world, Reality has no priority, and that Reality is a kind of Being which cannot even characterize anything like the world or Dasein in a way which is ontologically appropriate. 211)

As we have noted, Being (not entities) is dependent upon the understanding of Being; that is to say, Reality (not the Real) is dependent upon care. (212)

I think that what Heidegger is getting at is that reality is not an ontological category. It is phenomenal not in the sense of as opposed to the noumenal, but that it is part of rather than independent of the ontological structure of Dasein.

I

Discourse doesn’t really come into the picture until the second part of B&T. — Possibility

Good point. It is here we find the call of conscience.

Discourse doesn’t really come into the picture until the second part of B&T. — Possibility

It comes into the picture in an important way a quarter of the way through the book as an introduction to being-with-others in average everydayness and modes of language such as idle talk. In this first part of the book , discourse is fleshed out in relation to inauthentic modes of being. In second part it is connected with authentic being and temporality.

A totality of relevance and the articulation a totality of relevance are not the same. I do not see how it makes sense to say that mowing the lawn is the articulation of a totality of relevance when that articulation is about the totality. Mowing the lawn is something that occurs within that totality, not the articulation of that totality. — Fooloso4

No, they are not the same thing. And attunement and understanding are not the same thing. They are equiprimordial, though. As is discourse. IF mowing the lawn occurs within that totality it is a signification, and thus it is language, which implies and is a derived mode of discourse. So mowing the lawn is discusive by virtue the fact that it is a symbolizing. There is no such thing as a doing that is not a symbolizing, to Heidegger. You believe differently . Youre clearly more of a traditionalist about the relation between language and perception. That why you can say

I am going to end this talk about mowing the lawn, but the lawn will still get mowed, if not by me then by someone else. — Fooloso4

and not treat it as an incoherent statement. For Heidegger , it would be incorrent to distinguish an activity or experience from a system of differential signs. It's not that it would be false to say that the lawn will get cut. It would be neither true nor false until there is a Dasein to symbolize it as an assertion.

"Before there was any Da-sein, there was no truth; nor will there be any after Da-sein is no more. For in such a case truth as disclosedness, discovering, and discoveredness cannot be. Before Newton's laws were discovered, they were not "true." From this it does not follow that they were false or even that they would become false if ontically no discoveredness were possible any longer."(227)

Where there is anything for Dasein, there is a system of differential signs composing its structure, as attuned, discursive understanding. This is what Dasein IS as being in the world in involvement with things and other Daseins.

IF mowing the lawn occurs within that totality it is a signification, and thus it is language — Joshs

I don't see how it follows from being within a totality of signification that mowing the lawn is language. But we can go back and forth claiming it is and is not. I am open to amending my position but only if you can point to something substantive in Heidegger that identifies such activities as language.

So mowing the lawn is discourve by virtue the fact that it is a symbolizing. — Joshs

What does it mean to say that mowing the lawn is symbolizing?

There is no such thing as a doing that is not a symbolizing, to Heidegger. You believe differently — Joshs

Point to something substantive in the text. It is not a matter of what I believe but of my trying to understand Heidegger.

That why you can say
I am going to end this talk about mowing the lawn, but the lawn will still get mowed, if not by me then by someone else.
— Fooloso4
and not treat it as an incoherent statement. — Joshs

Do you not understand what I said?

For Heidegger , it would be incorrent to distinguish an activity or experience from a system of differential signs. — Joshs

Are you not able to distinguish between mowing the lawn and baking a potato? Would it be all the same if you put the lawnmower in the oven?

Are you not able to distinguish between mowing the lawn and baking a potato? Would it be all the same if you put the lawnmower in the oven? — Fooloso4

In dong so, what I am distinguishing are 2 patterns of significations, bound up within a larger totality of significations.

Point to something substantive in the text. It is not a matter of what I believe but of my trying to understand Heidegger. — Fooloso4

The Heidegger scholar Daniel Dahlstrom wrote an interesting short piece on the relation between discourse and language in Being and Time. This may be helpful.
https://www.bu.edu/philo/files/2013/09/d-powell-book.pdf

In dong so, what I am distinguishing are 2 patterns of significations, bound up within a larger totality of significations. — Joshs

This does not explain why you think my statement is incoherent.

From Dahlstrom's article:

Implements have meaning, in the broad sense of the term. Discourse supposes and contributes to these meanings. We talk about and specify things in terms of meanings with which we are already acquainted, meanings that have taken shape (laterally, ultimately, or existentially) in the course of our being-in-the-world. Discourse, not to be confused with
language, contributes to the constitution of this meaningful whole (existential meaning) since discourse is no less basic an existential than understanding or disposedness. xxii
Meanings narrowly construed, i.e.,the lexical (linguistic) meanings of words, take shape in the meaning-in-use (discursive meaning) that is co-extensive with an interpretative understanding of the meaningful whole.

...

After relating that he regards disposedness and understanding as "equiprimordially
constitutive manners of being-here," Heidegger adds that these two fundamental
existentials are "equiprimordially determined by discourse."xxvi This claim underscores the
central role he accords it in the constitution of our being-here. By identifying it as
"equiprimordial," he means to call attention to, among other things, the fact that the
everyday intelligibility of things for us is always already sorted out ("gegliedert"). Just as
we always already find ourselves in a situation, disposed in various ways to ourselves and
others (others like and unlike ourselves), and just as we are always already projecting
ourselves onto some possibility or another, so we are always already speaking with
ourselves or others, articulating the intelligibility of our dispositions-and-projections.
Stressing this equiprimordial character, Heidegger adds that discourse, precisely as the
articulation of that intelligibility, underlies interpretation and assertion.

So, tell me where you find in this or elsewhere in the article or anywhere in Being and Time the idea that mowing the lawn or baking a potato is discourse.

It comes into the picture in an important way a quarter of the way through the book as an introduction to being-with-others in average everydayness and modes of language such as idle talk. In this first part of the book , discourse is fleshed out in relation to inauthentic modes of being. In second part it is connected with authentic being and temporality. — Joshs

This is where we tend to get confused about the role of language. The suggestion in the OP is that discourse “is intended to render explicit our understanding of being in the world”, but when we’re referring to average everydayness, idle talk and other inauthentic modes of being, then we’re not talking about everything we do as intended discourse.

There is a difference between intentionally rendering explicit our understanding, and making it explicit by idly ‘doing what one does’. The difference is in hearing the call of conscience, in articulating our own understanding of being the world.

I think as long as it’s clear that we’re talking about unintentional discourse and inauthentic modes of being, then I’m with you. But I’m not sure it’s possible to discuss the relationship between language and discourse in this way across both authentic and inauthentic modes of being.

That’s my view, FWIW.

The suggestion in the OP is that discourse “is intended to render explicit our understanding of being in the world”, but when we’re referring to average everydayness, idle talk and other inauthentic modes of being, then we’re not talking about everything we do as intended discourse. — Possibility

Using the word "intended' is a bit confusing in relation to Heidegger's use of the word. Heidegger explains that included in Dasein's inauthentic involvement in the world is the use of tools and being-with-others. These are for him intentional modes in the sense that in the average everyday interpretive mode of handiness, which inclues language and being-with -others, one interprets the meaning of things in a relevant way in relation to one's purposes.

Heidegger says, for instance:
"The handy presence of signs in everyday associations and the conspicuousness
which belongs to signs and can be produced with varying intentions." (81)

"Letting something be relevant lies in the simplest handling of a useful thing. Relevance has an intentional character with reference to which the thing is useable or in use. Understanding the intention and context of relevance has the temporal structure of awaiting. Awaiting the intention,
taking care can at the same time come back to something like relevance" (353)

Idle talk can include scientific discourse , which is certainly intentional in a broad sense.

What distinguishes the authentic from the inauthentic mode of being is not intentionality, but a kind of intentionality that doesnt stop at the usefulness of things for our purposes in the world conventionality given to us alongside others, but always brings our purposes in the world back to a kind of meta-intentionailty, not just a conventional normative goal-orentiedness , but a disclosing one's ownmost possiblities, apart from and beyond their socially normative senses .

So far you have made the following argument:

“The issue under discussion is whether acts such as baking a potato are examples of or expressions of non-verbal discourse.”

“Discourse does not come into play in the performing of an activity.”

“It is not the act of mowing or baking that is a signification. The meaning of the activity of mowing the lawn or baking a potato is what is articulated in discourse. The activity of mowing or baking is not discourse, but is taken up in discourse as part of the totality of involvement and totality of signification.”

We can talk about ovens and baking potatoes, but that does not mean that talking about ovens and baking potatoes and lawn mowers and mowing the lawn are a priori conditions for using ovens and lawn mowers or that the activities are discursive.”

Tell me if i am getting anywhere near to your position on the relation between what you are understanding as Heidegger's notion of discourse , and the performance of an activity.

It seem to me that you are making a distinction between experiences as they are in themselves and our representations of experiences. So you read Heidegger as saying that discourse and language have to do with subjective representation of reality, as opposed to the things or activities in themselves. We can understand the idea of things as they are in themselves apart from how we articulate them in discourse. Would it be fair to assume that your thinking on language and reality is consistent with Kant's on the relationship between intuition and conceptualization?

If this is the case, it would be necessary for me to show how Heidegger's use of such terms as articulation, intelligibility , discourse and language are intended in a radically different way than what is implied by representation.

It would be necessary to present a Heideger for whom there is no reality outside of a process of the endless self-unfolding of a chain of differential signs. These signs don't represent anything outside of themselves, they transform the signs they refer back to, and this transforming-referring(disclosure) is what they are, is what Heidgerrian BEING is.. Disclosure is ta moving beyond itself, not a representing. A world is not a present reality that is represented by language, it is enacted,

Forgive me for quoting Derrida here, but this is the direction that I (and Derrida) believe Heideger was headed in:

“Henceforth, it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no center, that the center
could not be thought in the form of a present-being, that the center had no natural site, that
it was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of non-locus in which an infinite number of
sign-substitutions came into play. This was the moment when language invaded the
universal problematic, the moment when, in the absence of a center or origin, everything
became discourse-provided we can agree on this word-that is to say, a system in which the
central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside
a system of differences.”

This would be a Heidegger who is offering a postmodern construction-ism, where it becomes incoherent to talk about what anything is outside of how it is constructed and reconstructed in language in relation to our purposes. .langue is no longer a linking of a stable thing with a sign for it,or the use of a sign as a tool, but signs without signifieds as the only reality.

It seem to me that you are making a distinction between experiences as they are in themselves and our representations of experiences. — Joshs

I don't know what you mean "in themselves". I am simply saying that what we do and talking about what we do are not the same.

If this is the case, it would be necessary for me to show how Heidegger's use of such terms as articulation, intelligibility , discourse and language are intended in a radically different way than what is implied by representation. — Joshs

The only way in which representation comes into our discussion here is your misrepresentation of what I have actually said.

Forgive me for quoting Derrida here, but this is the direction that I (and Derrida) believe Heideger was headed in: — Joshs

I am not interested in discussing what direction you or Derrida believe Heidegger was headed in. But by all means introduce the work of another philosopher so that those who might be interested can argue about the interpretation of not one or two or more philosophers, but I am not going to join in.

I'll note once again, that you have not been able to provide any evidence from Being and Time that activities such as mowing the lawn or baking a potato are considered by Heidegger to be forms or examples of discourse.

you have not been able to provide any evidence from Being and Time that activities such as mowing the lawn or baking a potato are considered by Heidegger to be forms or examples of discourse. — Fooloso4

You repeat the same sentence over and over again, disagreeing with me without offering any detailed definitions of your terms, quote Heidegger at length but never reveal how YOU understand him to mean what he says in your own words (please define discourse and activity, and how they differ from each other, without quoting Heidegger). I have no idea what you stand for philosophically unless you tell me.

by all means introduce the work of another philosopher so that those who might be interested can argue about the interpretation of not one or two or more philosophers, but I am not going to join in. — Fooloso4

You've barely joined in in arguing for your interpretation of Heidegger, so I can see why you'd be reluctant to add another thinker into the discussion.

I am simply saying that what we do and talking about what we do are not the same. — Fooloso4

Please elaborate on this. Ideally in more than one sentence. I'd be thrilled if you'd bring in support from your favorite philosophers so I can get a better sense of where youre coming from.

The only way in which representation comes into our discussion here is your misrepresentation of what I have actually said. — Fooloso4

You havent said a hell of a lot. It's almost all Heidegger without any translation into your terms.
in what way is Heideggerian discourse different from representation , in you own words? .

Speaking on behalf of Husserl - if not Heidegger; but likely so - the point of phenomenology was to explore the subjective matter NOT to postulate objective claims of reality (that is the domain of the natural sciences). Husserl was attempting to give science a firming grounding against metaphysical ideas that bled into mystical mumbo jumbo — I like sushi

I like Husserl a lot , and think that he was enormously important to the advent of Heideggerian thinking, and through Heidegger, to Derrida's project. Husserl’s Transcendental Subjectivity seems to have provided the structural basis for Heidegger’s Dasein (and Derrida’s differance) . With Husserl, we Here we see Intentionality as the primary basis of empirical science, logic and mathematics.One could say that what Heidegger did was to take Husserl’s separate but mutually implied aspects of temporalization(retention-recollection, presencing, protention) and intentionality(ego pole, subjectively appearing entity, objectively meant object) and make them inseparable, equiprimordial modes of a single, transcendental experiential moment.

Joshs, I am done. If you go back over what I have said I think I have made clear what I think Heidegger means by discourse ... or don't.

Thank you for explaining this and for the quotes. I think I see it more clearly now. The distinction between authentic and inauthentic is much finer than I originally thought, and I think there is a tendency for summaries of Heidegger to avoid this area in order to make clearer other aspects of his approach (which are easier to navigate). The nuances of the journey from Part I to Part II in terms of discourse suffer as a result.

But I’ve always understood discourse as rather obviously encompassing more than language or words, so I have no argument here. We do communicate more in what we do than what we say, and the lack of subject-object awareness in much of this inauthentic behaviour begs comparison with that of self-aware yet non-linguistic animals such as chimpanzees, as I suggested before.

Chimpanzees don't have "being-with" (which makes the activity or behavior to discourse, i think). So, other chimpanzees moving around the chimpanzee taught to bake don't have an understanding that there is a "baking" going on. That is, there is no effective discourse existing in that situation. Humans are in a world where there is "mowing the lawn" over there, "baking" over there, "nothing happens" over there, "something strange" over there etc etc. Every one basically "knows" what is happening. Every one is i n discourse. Chimpanzees are basically just feeling pleasure-unpleasure with regard to sensations. There is no "pleasurable b a k i n g", "unpleasurable m o w i n g the lawn". There is no such basic units of meaning in chimpanzees "world". It could be said that chimpanzees are governed by causality, not by discourse/sense. (Through the expression "causality" we try to give a certain sense to chimpanzees' nonsense random activity.) — waarala

Their discourse, of course, is quite different to that of humans, but I don’t think we can assume they don’t have ‘being-with’, or that some of their intelligibility of being in the world cannot overlap with our own. The problem is that we only have our own discourse with which to make sense of it, and we necessarily prioritise language in that process, where anthropomorphism looms large. But we can and do put language aside, nevertheless, to actively explore those elements of discourse we have in common - discovering elements of being-with that we may share, rather than intellectually avoiding the space in order to maintain some sense of superiority.

Joshs, I am done. If you go back over what I have said I think I have made clear what I think Heidegger means by discourse ... or don't. — Fooloso4

1) You give up really easily.
2)if you go back over this thread and consolidate every positive statement you have made delineating in your own words, not Heidegger's, discourse, activity, language and their relationship as it pertains to our discussion, you'll find no more than a small handful of scattered sentences.

Heidegger has been interpreted in a thousand different ways. Simply quoting him at length is profoundly inadequate at giving me a sense of how you understand him. Which of the many Heidegger is yours? You've been little more than a ghost in this discussion up till now, being very good at articulating disagreement but not presenting your own thinking in a positive vein. I dont need for us to come to agreement on Heidegger. My only goal in this discussion is being able to adequately summarize your thinking on Heideggerian discourse and 'activty', so that I can read it back to you in a way you will recognize.

The issue I always have with such statements is that “Dasein” doesn’t mean anything. Heidegger also took one section of phenomenology and ran with it. Derrida is another I find needlessly - and in his case purposefully - obtuse.

The issue I always have with such statements is that “Dasein” doesn’t mean anything. Heidegger also took one section of phenomenology and ran with it. Derrida is another I find needlessly - and in his case purposefully - obtuse. — I like sushi

Here ya go: "Da-sein is a being that does not simply occur among other beings. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that in its being this being is concerned about its very being. Thus it is constitutive of the being of Da-sein to have, in its very being, a relation of being to this being. And
this in tum means that Da-sein understands itself in its being in some way and with some explicitness."(12). Think of it this way. Dasein defines man in terms of his framing of the world as meaningful relative to his purposes and values.

Heidegger took the entirety of phenomenology and reinvented it as existential phenomenology. Not everyone finds Heidegger or Derrida obtuse. I suspect it has as much to do with the reader's diffilculty in absorbing complex new ideas(there likely isn't a single major philosopher who hasn't been accused of being obtuse) as it does the writer's style of exposition.

I’m sure we can find time, some time, to go into this argument more. It’s neither the time nor the place though - I doubt we’ll ever agree on this but maybe we can at least reveal a little of something new to each other in the future.

I tend to view Derrida as a kind of “conceptual artist”.

I'll note once again, that you have not been able to provide any evidence from Being and Time that activities such as mowing the lawn or baking a potato are considered by Heidegger to be forms or examples of discourse. — Fooloso4

Activity "mowing the law" has certain form or grammar which gives it certain limits within which it is understandable as "mowing the law". So, in this sense it is discourse. In B&T, this grammar is formally presented as references, spatiality etc i.e. as the worldliness of the world. Constitutive elements of the worldliness applies to all innerwordly beings as their (ontological) grammar. And B&T is of course about significations as such and not their particular instances. Specific (ontical) grammar of the signification "mowing the law" determines all the specific references involved there. There is many different "languages" out there. Heidegger's ontology could be an application of Husserl's idea of the "universal grammar of meanings" (in Logical Investigations).

Discourse expresses, gives voice to, to have one’s say, to be heard, to find one’s voice.

Discourse articulates, distinguishes, brings forth, and gathers together (the Greek ‘leg’ is the root of logos, meaning to collect or gather together).

Discourse is communicated, makes known, conveyed, transmitted - stories, mythologies, revelations, narratives, accounts, explanations.

Discourse calls - to make a call or determine, to call someone out, summons, to be called, to have a calling.

Edited to add: Dialogue - dialectic, argument, response to what earlier philosophers have said