Ambiguity [Zweideutigkeit] – Part 2 (BT174) (2024) Ζωγραφική από Noël Van Hoof

Martin Heidegger – Being and Time – BT174

But when Dasein goes in for something in the reticence of carrying it through or even of genuinely breaking down on it, its time is a different time and, as seen by the public, an essentially slower time that of idle talk, which 'lives at the faster rate'. Idle talk will thus long since have gone on to something else which is currently the very newest thing. That which was earlier surmise and has now been carried through, has come too late if one looks at that which is newest. Idle talk and curiosity take care in their ambiguity to ensure that what is genuinely and newly created is out of date as soon as it emerges before the public. Such a new creation can become free in its positive possibilities only if the idle talk which covers it up has become ineffective, and if the 'common' interest has died away.
In the ambiguity of the way things have been publicly interpreted, talking about things ahead of the game and making surmises about them curiously, gets passed off as what is really happening, while taking action and carrying something through get stamped as something merely subsequent and unimportant. Thus Dasein's understanding in the “they” is constantly going wrong [versieht sich] in its projects, as regards the genuine possibilities of Being. Dasein is always ambiguously 'there' – that is to say, in that public disclosedness of Being-with-one-another where the loudest idle talk and the most ingenious curiosity keep 'things moving', where, in an everyday manner, everything (and at bottom nothing) is happening.
This ambiguity is always tossing to curiosity that which it seeks; and it gives idle talk the semblance of having everything decided in it.

(Translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson)

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Martin Heidegger