Glossolalics

Thomas Sheehan of Stanford University coined the term “glossolalics” (analogous to alcoholics) referring to the addiction to terms / glossary by the so called Heideggerians. Oh I like the term! It perfectly pictures the overwhelming difficulties one is having when dealing with Heidegger’s new or newly invented terms. It is so overwhelming that Sheehan cynically said that Heideggerians tend to pay too much attention on the glossary: “Heideggerians seem to have abandoned philosophy to become a glossolalics who think the same thought without need of speech and babble the same speech without need of meaning”. He even added that it was not only the outsiders (non-Heideggerians) that did not understand what we (the Heideggerians) were talking about, “there is a growing suspicion that we don’t either.” Oops!!

Though Sheehan’s comments really nail the head, the Heideggerians are not to be blamed. I think it is simply inevitable because Heidegger’s main ideas are centered around those new terms: Being, Dasein, Ereignis, Geviert, Gelassenheit, Austrag, Abgründ, etc. I believe the problem lies not so much on the new terms themselves because anyway Heidegger still uses human languages despite his efforts to find the originary meanings of the words. He digs up some ancient Greek words and creates new German words. The thing is he hardly gives clear, distinct definitions of the words. Even if he does, the meaning often changes or being redefined throughout his scattered essays or writings. This has created so many interpretations over the ambiguous meanings.

He, of course, realized this difficulty. He defended himself calling his works not “works” but “ways”. But these “ways” have given me hard time. So not only one has to deal with ambiguous meaning of the words but s/he also has to figure out these confusing ways of Heidegger. And things are even harder for someone like me who has to write her thesis in Indonesian. I wrote a thesis on later Heidegger focusing on Dasein as the clearing site of Being to find out about the relationship between man and Being. Since I have never seen any books on later Heidegger written in Indonesian, I had to find or reinvent new Indonesian words, new terms. Believe me, this was a tremendous task! Moreover, I do not read Heidegger’s works in German. Well, even if I did, I don’t think it would have been so helpful because the words are not the everyday German. I often find different English words for the same German word because they were translated by different translators. I got lost in translation.

After a long struggle, I managed to finish my long overdue thesis two weeks ago. It took me almost 4 years to finish it before I get kicked out of the school, STF Driyarkara. I was supposed to sit for the exam next month. Well, I don’t care about the exam. I hate exams. I am just hoping that my Indonesian terms do not stray way too far from its original meaning. In fact, I do not dare to ask whether they express what Heidegger really meant with those terms. I try to focus more on Heidegger’s ideas instead of those mind-boggling terms. But I am afraid I just joined the forces, become the glossolalics myself. Do I really know what I write? So what is Being? Who is Dasein?