As I understand Heidegger, Dasein is always a doing, but doing for Heidegger means a meaningful involvement with others in the world.which is at the same time a praxis, an understanding, an attunement and a discoursing. Discourse serves the same purpose for Heidegger that language does for Derrida and other post-structuralists. Rather than being a secondary phenomenon in relation to perception, it is intrinsic to all forms of experiencing. — Joshs

You will never be able to capture the average everydayness of our involvement in the world without accounting for all expressed interpretations. Either Discourse will include non-verbal expressions of interpretations or it will be defined in such a way as to claim that it does not include non-verbal expressions of interpretations but will capture them nonetheless. Philosophers are good at that. And the post-structuralists are especially good at that.

[X] is the expressing of interpretations. If your term for X does not capture all expressions of interpretations, then it is useless.

The degree to which one insists upon language as somehow running through and through our average everyday involvement in the world is the degree to which one's comportment toward being-with-others has become an emotional need for others.

whether language is inherent in all actions does not determine whether an action is verbal/non-verbal.

If we account for those actions (in which language is inherent) that are verbal and call them Discourse, then we still must account for those actions (in which language is inherent) that are non-verbal (which for Heidegger will constitute most of our average everyday involvement in the world).

And if we call the latter something other than Discourse, then Disposition, Understanding and Discourse as comprehensively constitutive of being-in-the-world will not capture the non-verbal acts that make up the greater portion of our average everyday involvement in the world. And that would be a strange interpretation of Heidegger indeed.

So even conceding that language is inherent in everything we do changes nothing so long as we cling to the notion that Discourse includes only verbal acts.

Simply put, whatever term one uses for that which is equiprimordial with disposition and understanding, it must capture all expressions of interpretations or it will not capture our average every day involvement in the world. And if you are a Bavarian peasant, it will not even come close.

IF a primary purpose (perhaps the primary purpose) of Being and Time is to capture the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-world;

AND

IF much (perhaps most) of the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-world is comprised of what would be typically described as non-verbal acts (mowing the lawn, driving to the store, baking a potato);

AND

IF State-of-Mind, Understanding, and Discourse are equiprimordial and comprehensively constitutive of being-in-the-world;

THEN: Discourse must include those acts typically described as non-verbal OR Heidegger fails (MISERABLY) at capturing the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-world.

Or put another way, you cannot capture the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-world without accounting for those acts typically described as non-verbal.

IF a primary purpose (perhaps the primary purpose) of Being and Time is to capture the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-world — Arne

The primary purpose is to once again ask the question of the meaning of being. The everyday mode of existence is the starting point for his explication of Dasein. The everyday is not Dasein's mode of being for in everyday existence our concern is not the question of the meaning of being, that is, what it is for us to be. Dasein is:

That entity which in its Being has this very Being as an issue, comports itself towards its Being as its ownmost possibility. In each case Dasein is its possibility, and it 'has' this possibility, but not just as a property [eigenschaftlich], as something present-at-hand would. And because Dasein is in each case essentially its own possibility, it can, in its very Being, 'choose' itself and win itself; it can also lose itself
and never win itself; or only 'seem' to do so. But only in so far as it is essentially something which can be authentic-that is, something of its own -can it have lost itself and not yet won itself. (42-43)

IF much (perhaps most) of the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-world is comprised of what would be typically described as non-verbal acts (mowing the lawn, driving to the store, baking a potato) — Arne

This is what Heidegger calls involvement with equipment, the 'ready to hand'. 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.

IF State-of-Mind, Understanding, and Discourse are equiprimordial and comprehensively constitutive of being-in-the-world.

THEN: Discourse must include those acts typically described as non-verbal OR Heidegger fails (MISERABLY) at capturing the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-world. — Arne

It does not follow from the equiprimordiality of state-of-mind, understanding, and discourse that discourse must include such things as mowing the lawn and baking potatoes. Their equiprimordiality means that none of them is primary, that they do not derive one from another. Our active involvement in the world is not reducible to discourse.

Though language might well be "front, center, and all around" when dealing with expressions intended for public consumption and evaluation, — Arne

I take and acknowledge your point. But I have not myself been as clear as I should have been. Drop a stone into a pond and the only evidence is the ripples. Language is the ripples of being; more precisely, language is the being in which the Being of being is made manifest. (It's always a kick to create one's own Heideggerian sentences!)

The issue of rede was raised above; points to someone. What I mean by language is that that carries. You bake a potato and do all the things with and to it a potato lover might be wont to do - and not a word spoken. Still, though, I maintain that the "storage" of the phenomenon is in language, and language defined by that.

That is, I do not restrict or limit language to "expressions intended for public consumption and evaluation." Or to the point, I do not think Heidegger so restricted language.

It does not follow from the equiprimordiality of state-of-mind, understanding, and discourse that discourse must include such things as mowing the lawn and baking potatoes. Their equiprimordiality means that none of them is primary, that they do not derive one from another. Our active involvement in the world is not reducible to discourse. — Fooloso4

i disagree with this. Equi-primordiality means that all of them are equally primary, and all of them are implied in all experience. Experience is reducible to all of them. Thus, discourse must include such things as mowing the lawn and baking potatoes. These activities are experienced, and as experiences they are signifiications. They matter to us in a heedfully circumspective way, and thus are discursive.

"The loveliness of the valley and the menace of the mountain and of
the raging sea, the sublimity of the stars, the absorption of the plant and
the ensnaremcnt of the animal, the calculated speed of machines and the
severity of the historical action, the harnessed frenzy of the created work,
the cold boldness of the questioning that knows, the hardened sobriety of
labor and the discretion of the heart-all that is language; wins or loses
being only in the event of language. Language is the ruling of the world-forming
and preserving center of the historical Dasein of the Volk. Only
where temporality tcmporalizes itself, does language happen; only where
language happens, docs temporality temporalize itself." Logic as the Question of Being, sec. 29

Or put another way, you cannot capture the average everyday involvement of being-in-the-world without accounting for those acts typically described as non-verbal. — Arne

I agree with this. The languaged basis of non-verbal experience is a well-developed idea not only in post-structuralist philosophy but also within cognitive science, incorporating such sources as Gibsonian perception. Perceiving organisms are languaging beings prior to the capacity for formal language in that perception is an interpretive act involving a relatiing of signs.

Equi-primordiality means that all of them are equally primary ... — Joshs

What I said was:

Their equiprimordiality means that none of them is primary, that they do not derive one from another. — Fooloso4

The second clause qualifies the first. If they are equally primary it means that no one of them is primary or before the others.

Thus, discourse must include such things as mowing the lawn and baking potatoes. These activities are experienced, and as experiences they are signifiications. — Joshs

That is not quite the same as saying baking a potato or mowing the lawn is a mode of discourse. It is not the act of mowing or baking that is a signification:

In the act of understanding [ Verstehen], which we shall analyse more thoroughly later (Compare Section 3 I), the relations indicated above must have been previously disclosed; the act of understanding holds them in this disclosedness. It holds itself in them with familiarity ; and in so doing, it holds them before itself, for it is in these that its assignment operates. The understanding lets itself make assignments both in these relationships themselves and of them. The relational character which these relationships of assigning possess, we take as one of signifying. In its familiarity with these relationships, Dasein 'signifies' to itself: in a primordial manner it gives itself both its Being and its potentiality-for-Being
as something which it is to understand with regard to its Being-in-the world. The "for-the-sake-of-which" signifies an "in-order-to" ; this in turn, a "towards-this"; the latter, an "in-which" of letting something be
involved ; and that in turn, the "with-which" of an involvement. These relationships are bound up with one another as a primordial totality; they are what they are as this signifying [Be-deuten) in which Dasein gives itself beforehand its Being-in-the-world as something to be understood. The relational totality of this signifying we call "significance". (87)

That which can be Articulated in interpretation, and thus even more primordially in discourse, is what we have called "meaning" [significance, German Bedeutung]. That which gets articulated as such in discursive Articulation, we call the "totality-of-significations" [Bedeutungsganze]. (161)

The intelligibility of Being-in-the-world-an intelligibility which goes with a state-of-mind -expresses itself as discourse. (161)

The totality-of-significations of intelligibility is put into words. To significations, words accrue. But word-Things do not get supplied with significations.

The way in which discourse gets expressed is language. (161)

Discourse is the articulation of meaning . 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.

Discourse is the articulation of meaning . 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. — Fooloso4

We need to dissect this a little. A person is performing an activity alone. Where does discourse, in your view, come into play here? Do other people have to be involved in a communication for discourse to take place, or does the person performing the activity have to undergo a modification , translation, elaboration, articulation of the experience to themselves in a second step? "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." If the activity of mowing or baking is not discourse , is it something else? Does it have a meaningful existential status or is it a meaningless notion without discourse? If mowing and baking have a status without discourse, describe what this status is.

lets also examine the idea of something being 'taken up in' discourse: If it is equi-primordial with attunement , care ,understanding and temporality, then there could be no status or sense to that which which is outside of, separate or independent from the discourse in which it is being 'taken up'. Being taken up in discourse would have to be primary, just as being affected by mood, or taken into understanding . So if mowing or baking are 'taken into' discourse, this cannot be a second step or development in relation to some supposed prior being of these activities. Articulation as discourse could not 'come after' an initial experience of mowing or baking but be simultaneous with it.

The primary purpose is to once again ask the question of the meaning of being. The everyday mode of existence is the starting point for his explication of Dasein. The everyday is not Dasein's mode of being for in everyday existence our concern is not the question of the meaning of being, that is, what it is for us to be. Dasein is: — Fooloso4

It matters not whether your purpose is 1) to tell us the meaning of A by fully explicating B or 2) to fully explicate B in order to tell us the meaning of A. Heidegger has tied a full explication of Dasein to explaining the meaning of being in such a way that the two are inseparable to his purpose. And you already know this. If all he wanted to do was tell us the meaning of being, he could have stopped after page 26 of the M&R translation of B&T.

This is what Heidegger calls involvement with equipment, the 'ready to hand'. 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. — Fooloso4

Seriously? I know what Heidegger calls involvement with equipment and at no point did I suggest that talking about anything is an a prior condition for using anything. (and by the way, the ready to hand and equipment are not synonymous). I did suggest that one cannot possibly render explicit their understanding of how to mow a lawn if they did not already have a general understanding of how to mow a lawn. The point being is that interpretations (the rendering explicit of understanding) are done for the purpose of acting upon the interpretation. And rendering explicit (interpreting) my understanding of the proper heat at which to bake a potato is done for the purpose of setting the oven to the appropriate temperature. And the act of setting the oven to the appropriate temperature is a non-verbal expression of my interpretation (explicit understanding) of how to bake a potato.

It does not follow from the equiprimordiality of state-of-mind, understanding, and discourse that discourse must include such things as mowing the lawn and baking potatoes. Their equiprimordiality means that none of them is primary, that they do not derive one from another. Our active involvement in the world is not reducible to discourse. — Fooloso4

Seriously again? The primary issue is not the definition of equiprimordial. You may rest assured I know what it means. Instead, the issue is whether when taken together these primoridials constitute the existential whole of Dasein. And they do. Please see B&T (M&R) at page 224 (German at 180).

It would be strange indeed if Heidegger laid out the “existential whole of Dasein” and it accounted for the expressions of interpretations made by Dasein except for the expressions of interpretations at the very heart of Heidegger’s originality, i.e., non-verbal acts expressing our interpretations (explicit understandings) of how to use (not talk about) equipment (such as ovens and lawn mowers). And if you think that is what Heidegger has done, then you are wrong. And I can live with that.

A person is performing an activity alone. Where does discourse, in your view, come into play here? — Joshs

It may not come in at all. That it does not come into play is not the result of being alone but of performing the activity

Do other people have to be involved in a communication for discourse to take place, or does the person performing the activity have to undergo a modification , translation, elaboration, articulation of the experience to themselves in a second step? — Joshs

Heidegger says:

The items constitutive for discourse are : what the discourse is about (what is talked about) ; what is said-in the-talk, as such ; the communication; and the making-known. These are not properties which can just be raked up empirically from language. They are existential characteristics rooted in the state of Dasein's Being, and it is they that first make anything like language ontologically possible. (162-163)

The activity that Heidegger is calling our attention to is not whatever we do, but the doing of something specific that is, if not unique, essential to Dasein. This is why he goes through the history of logos. He wants to get back behind that development already under way in which Aristotle's claim that man alone of the animals has logos, is understood to as man is the rational animal. Man talks. This essential feature of our being is lost when every activity of thought to be discourse.

If the activity of mowing or baking is not discourse , is it something else? — Joshs

Yes, it is mowing or baking - "stop talking and get back to work".

Does it have a meaningful existential status or is it a meaningless notion without discourse? — Joshs

Mowing the lawn or baking a potato are not "notions", they are activities. There are a variety of ways in which they may be meaningful - they may serve some purpose or get taken up in discourse and shown to play a role in a totality of significations. The activities are not, however, the articulation of meaning, their meaning must be brought to light in discourse.

Being taken up in discourse would have to be primary, just as being affected by mood, or taken into understanding . — Joshs

Discourse is primary, what is taken up in discourse is not.

So if mowing or baking are 'taken into' discourse, this cannot be a second step or development in relation to some supposed prior being of these activities. — Joshs

Again, discourse or talk is always about something. In this case talk about mowing or baking. It is not a second step or development.

If all he wanted to do was tell us the meaning of being, he could have stopped after page 26 of the M&R translation of B&T. — Arne

The meaning of being is not something he or anyone else can tell us. What it is to be is not a matter of definition. It is the question that guides Dasein's authentic being. Essential to this is an openness to possibilities for what one is to be. That is something each of us must determine for him or her self.

the ready to hand and equipment are not synonymous — Arne

On that we agree, but:

The kind of Being which equipment possesses-in which it manifests itself in its own right-we call "readiness to-hand" (69).

at no point did I suggest that talking about anything is an a prior condition for using anything — Arne

You did not, but:

If the 'as' is ontically unexpressed, this must not seduce us into overlooking it as a constitutive state for understanding, existential and a priori.

But if we never perceive equipment that is ready-to-hand without already understanding and interpreting it, and if such perception lets us circumspectively encounter something as something, does this not mean that in the first instance we have experienced something purely present-at-hand, and then taken it as a door, as a house ? This would be a misunderstanding of the specific way in which interpretation functions as disclosure. In interpreting, we do not, so to speak, throw a 'signification' over some naked thing which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it; but when something within-the-world is encountered as such, the thing in question already has an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world, and this involvement is one which gets laid out by the interpretation. (149-150)

The point being is that interpretations (the rendering explicit of understanding) are done for the purpose of acting upon the interpretation. And rendering explicit (interpreting) my understanding of the proper heat at which to bake a potato is done for the purpose of setting the oven to the appropriate temperature. And the act of setting the oven to the appropriate temperature is a non-verbal expression of my interpretation (explicit understanding) of how to bake a potato. — Arne

But your interpretation is not discourse. Discourse is what make interpretation possible:

The intelligibility of something has always been articulated, even before there is any appropriative interpretation of it. Discourse is the Articulation of intelligibility. Therefore it underlies both interpretation and assertion. (161)

The primary issue is not the definition of equiprimordial. Instead, the issue is whether when taken together these primoridials constitute the existential whole of Dasein. — Arne

The issue under discussion is whether acts such as baking a potato are examples of or expressions of non-verbal discourse. Our disagreement has nothing to do with the definition of equiprimordial.

Please see B&T (M&R) at page 224 — Arne

Finally, an actual reference to the text! But it is not a point in contention.

It would be strange indeed if Heidegger laid out the “existential whole of Dasein” and it accounted for the expressions of interpretations made by Dasein except for the expressions of interpretations at the very heart of Heidegger’s originality, i.e., non-verbal acts expressing our interpretations (explicit understandings) of how to use (not talk about) equipment (such as ovens and lawn mowers). And if you think that is what Heidegger has done, then you are wrong. And I can live with that. — Arne

You have moved away from the claim that discourse (talk) is not about what we say but about what we do. Interpretation is addressed, as I quoted above, in the section on understanding. Discourse is not interpretation or the expression of an interpretation, it is what makes both interpretation and its expression possible.

Discourse may not come in at all. That it does not come into play is not the result of being alone but of performing the activity — Fooloso4

The activity that Heidegger is calling our attention to is not whatever we do, but the doing of something specific that is, if not unique, essential to Dasein. This is why he goes through the history of logos. He wants to get back behind that development already under way in which Aristotle's claim that man alone of the animals has logos, is understood to as man is the rational animal. Man talks. This essential feature of our being is lost when every activity of thought to be discourse. — Fooloso4

There are many readings of Heidegger and I respect that yours is different than mine.
I will not claim that one is correct and the other incorrect, only that there is a loose consensus around the interpretation I've been trying to elaborate that I share with readers of Heidegger like Derrida and Hubert Drefyus. According to this reading, all of the equi-primordial dimensions that Heidegger mentions, including discourse, always come into play in every experience.

What is essential to Dasein is temporality. Temporalilty is the tripartite unity of three ecstacies: the having been ,present and future. Dasein is not a subject that experiences objects, but an in-between, a becoming. There is no subject and no object that exist in themselves first and then relate to each other. Relational involvement is primary, and this is what a self is for Heidegger. As this in-between, Dasein is alwasy already in the midst of involvement in a world that matters to it and has significance for it. Whatever we do has this character of mattering to us. The reason that man talks is that man has temporality. Temporalization means that whatever we experience is relevant for us in relation to some purpose. There is never any experience that is without relevance or outside of some purpose in relation to which it has meaning for us. Discourse for Heidegger is nothing other than the way that our having been, our present and the future all 'communicate' with each other in each temporalizing moment. This is the origin of language. In the later pages of Being and Time Heidegger show s how authentic Dasein calls us out of everydayness. He says this call, this summons is a mode of discourse. How can that be? Because discourse has to do with the way every experience communicates to us, calls us out of the previous. "The human being shows himself as a being who speaks. This does not mean that the possibility of vocal utterance belongs to him, but that this being is in the mode of discovering world and Da-sein itself."(Being and Time 166)

Mowing the lawn or baking a potato are not "notions", they are activities. There are a variety of ways in which they may be meaningful - they may serve some purpose or get taken up in discourse and shown to play a role in a totality of significations. The activities are not, however, the articulation of meaning, their meaning must be brought to light in discourse. — Fooloso4

Im referring to your notion of activity, which seems to lack Heidegger's structure of temporality.
All activities for Heidegger are part of a purposive context, and all activities play a role in a totality of significations. There is no such thing for Heidegger as an activity that is not itself part of a larger totality of significance. IT would not be an activity in the first place if it did not emerge as a relevant elaboration and articulation of such a context . That is the essential being of an activity. Note that in the section of Being and Time on handiness, all of this is delineated without mention of the role of discourse. But the in-order-to and the for-the-sake-of-which that organizes our heedful involvement with things is a form of talking for Heidegger, but not as a secondary function in relation to passively perceiving the world or being involved in an activity.

Again, discourse or talk is always about something. In this case talk about mowing or baking. It is not a second step or development. — Fooloso4

.

All experience for Heidegger is always about something, whether we 'talk' about it or not. To experience something AS something , whether it is a memory, thought, activity, perception, is a "confrontation that understands, interprets, and articulates, and at the same time takes apart what has been put together."
This act of experiencing something as something is always affectively attuned and always discursive, not in the conventional way in which you understand it but in Heidegger's sense of a being called beyond itself. "The structure of care as being-ahead-of-itself-already-being-in-a world-as being together with innerworldly beings contains the disclosedness of Da-sein. " Dasein is discovery and disclosure.

There is no point to laying out the process of interpretation without accounting for the primary results and aim of interpretation (facilitating the transformation from understanding to purposeful involvement in the world). And it is absurd to suggest that Heidegger would lay bare an “existential whole of Dasein” wherein the collective primordials account only for the least significant form of interpretive results.

If the relations among the primordials 1) State-of-Mind, 2) Understanding, and 3) Discourse (which together constitute the existential whole of Dasien) do not account for the non-verbal expressions of interpretation, then they cannot account for either our involvement in the equipmental whole (such involvements generally being non-verbal expressions of interpretations) or the ultimate for the sake of which (from which involvements draw their purpose).

There is our State-of Mind, there is our Understanding, and there is what we do.

Discourse is what we do!

Being as the always present yet necessarily hidden continually emerging openness that makes possible an awareness of beings as beings.

There is nothing more meaningfully expressive of our explicit understanding of entities as entities than our regular and ongoing involvement with them in a fluid and seamless manner. The ability to verbally express that same understanding pales in comparison.

According to this reading, all of the equi-primordial dimensions that Heidegger mentions, including discourse, always come into play in every experience. — Joshs

I agree with that, but it does not follow that mowing the lawn is discourse. There may be all kinds of things that come into play with any activity but that does not mean that the activity is those things that come into play.

The reason that man talks is that man has temporality. — Joshs

I was with you up until this point.

He says this call, this summons is a mode of discourse. — Joshs

Yes. I made this point in one of my first posts.

How can that be? Because discourse has to do with the way every experience communicates to us, calls us out of the previous. — Joshs

It is because of:

... the basic a priori structure of discourse in general as an existentiale. (165-166)

But the in-order-to and the for-the-sake-of-which that organizes our heedful involvement with things is a form of talking for Heidegger, but not as a secondary function in relation to passively perceiving the world or being involved in an activity. — Joshs

Discourse as part of the basic a priori structure of Dasein is a condition for the possibility of our being in the world. Heedful involvement with things is not possible without discourse. It is, however, through the expression of discourse in language that this is brought to light.

Discourse is the articulation of intelligibility (161).

I take this to mean that the a priori structure of discourse articulates in the sense of things being phenomenally distinct, that is, particular. There can be no intelligibility without things being distinct one from the other. Thus, he says, we do not hear pure noise but a wagon or motorcycle (164).

There is our State-of Mind, there is our Understanding, and there is what we do.

Discourse is what we do! — Arne

State of mind, understanding, and discourse make possible what we do. They are together the a priori conditions for all that we do.

I think it evident that I am not going to change your mind about this. While it is possible that you might change my mind, it would only happen as a result of providing textual support. If discourse is what we do then it makes not sense to call it Rede instead of action or behavior or what we do.

seriously, it is called all sorts of things and we are dealing with a translation. If I were to take up learning a new language, it would definitely be German. But I also remind myself that Being and Time was written under hurried circumstances and that there were portions (particularly Discourse and Space) that Heidegger was not happy with.

So, instead of providing textual support for the claim that discourse is whatever we do you provide excuses for why you cannot provide it.

I am willing to leave it there.

Discourse is the articulation of intelligibility (161).

I take this to mean that the a priori structure of discourse articulates in the sense of things being phenomenally distinct, that is, particular. There can be no intelligibility without things being distinct one from the other. Thus, he says, we do not hear pure noise but a wagon or motorcycle (164). — Fooloso4

The point Heidegger is trying to make here is that in the classic understanding of perception, we experience raw stimuli, the data of sensation, and then we construct from this chaos our concepts. So in understanding language, we are presumed, according this model, to first take in bits of uninterpreted sensory information, which we then process and interpret. For Heidegger, however, Dasein never encounters a raw world of sensory data, but via projecting, fore-having understanding already sees the particulars of the world as meaningfully relevant and significant in relation to its purposes. There is no such thing for Heidegger as a pre-interpreted, pre-lingustic world.

it does not follow that mowing the lawn is discourse. There may be all kinds of things that come into play with any activity but that does not mean that the activity is those things that come into play. — Fooloso4

It 's interesting that you used the word 'is'. You said "That does not mean that the activity IS those things."

Heidegger has a lot to say about the 'is', the copula. For him , the 'is' does not act as a secondary glue sticking subject and object together. Instead, the 'is' rests at the center of his project. I talked about how temporality is key to understanding Being (and the 'is') for Heidegger. For Heidegger, any experience conforms to the structure of temporality. An event is at once a having been, a presencing and a not yet or beyond itself. The equi-primoridial modes of attunement, understanding and discourse
belong to and are always implied by this structural unity.

"Every understanding has its mood. Every attunement understands. Attuned understanding
has the characteristic of entanglement. Entangled, attuned understanding articulates itself with regard to its intelligibility in discourse. The actual temporal constitution of these phenomena always leads back to that one temporality that holds within itself the possible structural unity of understanding, attunement, entanglement, and discourse."

So lets bring this back to the activity of mowing the lawn. First, it should be pointed out that taking any concept primordially means that mowing , or any activity, is not understood in the abstract, but always my use of this word here , right now, in this context, in relation to my purposes . Given that, what is it that mowing 'is'? Its isness is its temporalizing out of a having been that presences and at the same time points beyond itself. Its 'isness' , its essence, its being, is that in my sense of its meaning for me right now, it affects me in a particular way, That is, I am attuned to it affectiively. Also, my sense of mowing the lawn right now projectively understands this concept . And finally, I articulate the intelligibility of what is disclosed to me as this mowing in discourse. Put differently, what ever sense of .mowing' I experience right now is interpreted , signified, conceptualized, This is a discursive move. Actually, the discursive move comes prior to my interpretatively signifying it as a word. So , like any and all experences, mowing IS a temporalizing . It IS an understanding. It IS attuned. It IS an entanglement and a falling prey. And it IS discourse(an articulation of intelligibility).

In an earlier post you wrote " Man talks. This essential feature of our being is lost when every activity of thought to be discourse." Does this mean you distinguish Heidegger from writers like Derrida, who says there is nothing outside the text(what he meant wasn't that there is nothing outside formal language , but that all meaning emerges within a differential, and endless relation of signs without signifieds.)?

Is man's essential feature talking or is it creating meaning out of a totality of relevance? Doesnt the latter already imply the former?

Doesn't the Robinson translation draw a line between interpretation and Interpretation anyway? The former's discursive in the sense of being socially-normatively enriched without necessarily consisting of acts of language, the latter consists of (the existential structure of blah blah...) acts of language.

But it has been a while since I've been through B&T.

The point Heidegger is trying to make here ... — Joshs

I agree that this is a point that he makes but I think there is more to it. We might say, for example, that a hand is one thing but that the palm and fingers are two things and that each finger is several things. How we divide the world is both determined by and determines what we say.

It 's interesting that you used the word 'is'. — Joshs

It was Arne who said this:

... discourse is what we do and not what we think or say. — Arne

Put differently, what ever sense of .mowing' I experience right now is interpreted, signified, conceptualized, This is a discursive move. — Joshs

This discursive move will not get the grass cut. The lawnmower has to move. I can talk about it, but talking about it, disclosing its significance is not mowing the lawn.

In an earlier post you wrote " Man talks. This essential feature of our being is lost when every activity of thought to be discourse." Does this mean you distinguish Heidegger from writers like Derrida. Does this mean you distinguish Heidegger from writers like Derrida ... — Joshs

I meant to say when every activity is thought to be discourse. I am not prepared to discuss Derrida. Compounding the problem of interpreting by introducing the problem of interpreting Derrida is problematic. What I meant simply is that there is something distinctive about talk or Rede. That is lost if everything we do is said to be talk.

This discursive move will not get the grass cut. The lawnmower has to move. I can talk about it, but talking about it, disclosing its significance is not mowing the lawn. — Fooloso4

Is there for you any sense of the meaning of or existence of a lawnmower, grass and cutting apart from how they are interpreted in the context of your actual involvement at a particular point in time in the world ? Are you arguing for an Independence of things from our concepts of them? Is there a reality independent of our relevant circumspective contextual dealing in the world? Heidegger was not a realist. every place in Being and Time he mentions reality he puts it in scare quotes and explains how problematic the concept is.

I meant to say when every activity is thought to be discourse. I am not prepared to discuss Derrida. — Fooloso4

How about Rorty or any of those who say language is prior to perception?

I get that ‘for the sake of which’ can apply to discourse, but I can’t see how it applies in this case, except perhaps in writing/saying “I turn the oven to 425 degrees” - which of course defeats the purpose as an example of non-linguistic discourse. — Possibility

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.

Is there for you any sense of the meaning of or existence of a lawnmower, grass and cutting apart from how they are interpreted in the context of your actual involvement at a particular point in time in the world ? Are you arguing for an Independence of things from our concepts of them? Is there a reality independent of our relevant circumspective contextual dealing in the world? — Joshs

My point once again is simply that saying that mowing the lawn is discourse is a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what I take Heidegger to mean by discourse. Mowing the lawn can be interpreted within the totality of our involvement with the world but that does not reduce mowing the lawn to discourse.

As I read him, reality is phenomenal:

Of course only as long as Dasein is (that is, only as long as an understanding of Being is ontically possible), 'is there' Being. When Dasein does not exist, 'independence' 'is' not either, nor 'is' the 'in-itself'. In such a case this sort of thing can be neither understood nor not understood. In such a case even entities within-the-world can neither be discovered nor lie hidden. In such a case it cannot be said that entities are, nor can it be said that they are not. But now, as long as there is an understanding of Being and therefore an understanding of presence-at-hand, it can indeed be said that in this case entities will still continue to be. (212)

The question of what there was prior to or what there is without Dasein is a question that Dasein asks, and so, cannot be asked or thought or known independent of Dasein.

Interesting discussion. Andrew Inkpin has written some nice stuff on how to understand rede - which he perspicaciously translates as 'articulacy' rather than 'discourse' - that helps make sense of its relation to both the linguistic and non-linguistic:

"The close connection between Articulacy and Language ... is such that the full range of functions Heidegger attributes to Articulacy can be realized in language use but not in intelligent nonlinguistic behaviors, so that the former but not the latter provides an adequate model for defining Articulacy. ... Language serves as a model for the various functions of Articulacy, defining a field of possibilities for Articulate activity, some—but not all—of which can also be realized in intelligent nonlinguistic behaviors.

In this light, the relation of intelligent nonlinguistic behaviors to the notion of Articulacy modeled on language use is like that of inauthentic to authentic Dasein: the former is in both cases a limited realization—albeit an indispensable, foundational one—of the available possibilities. There is also no problem in explaining Heidegger’s emphasis on intelligent nonlinguistic behaviors. He does this not because he wants to suggest it is more properly human to wield hammers than to wield propositions, but because focusing on purposive understanding serves as a corrective to traditional misrepresentations of the human-world relation" (Inkpin, Disclosing the World: On the Phenomenology of Language).

Mowing the lawn can be interpreted within the totality of our involvement with the world but that does not reduce mowing the lawn to discourse. — Fooloso4

i don't know what you mean by reducing mowing the lawn to discourse. What is it you want mowing the lawn to be besides a significant meaning within a totality of relevance? How else can mowing the lawn be interpreted? 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 ? In other words, that an initially objectively present world-stuff were "subjectively colored" in this way by discursive articulation of it? If that is your position then I can understand your objection to the idea that discursive articulation entirely captures the meaning of mowing the lawn.

Let me go back a step. I asked myself why it was necessary for Heidegger to add the mode of discourse to the equiprimordial modes of attunement and understanding. I would have initially thought the mode of understanding would allow one to have the meanings of ready to hand beings that one is involved with(like lawn mowers, grass and cutting).

But this paragraph made it clear that understanding does not serve this purpose for Heidegger.

"When with the being of Da-sein innerworldly beings are discovered, that is, have come to be understood, we say that they have meaning. But strictly speaking, what is understood is not the meaning, but beings, or being. Meaning is that wherein the intelligibility of something maintains itself. What can be articulated in disclosure that understands we call meaning. The concept of meaning includes the formal framework of what necessarily belongs to what interpretation that understands articulates. Meaning, structured by fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception, is the upon which of the project in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something"(151)

So it was necessary for Heidegger to conceive of discourse (and its derivative mode of language) as that aspect of disclosure that gives meaning to the world (attunement and understanding do not achieve this). If Dasein is being-in-the-world, it is discourse that allows the world to appear in its meaningfulness for Dasein, Without discourse, mowing the lawn has no meaning. That is to say, it has no content, only an attuned mood and a projectively understood familiarity.

As I read him, reality is phenomenal: — Fooloso4

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.