Idle Talk [Gerede] – Part 1 (BT168/169) (2024) Painting by Noël Van Hoof

Martin Heidegger – Being and Time – BT168/169

In the language which is spoken when one expresses oneself, there lies an average intelligibility; and in accordance with this intelligibility the discourse which communicated can be understood to considerable extent, even if the hearer does not bring himself into such a kind of Being towards what the discourse is about as to have a primordial understanding of it. We do not so much understand the entities which are talked about; we already are listening only to what is said-in-the-talk as such. What is said-in-the-talk gets understood; but what the talk is about is understood only approximately and superficially. We have the same thing in view, because it is in the same averageness that we have a common understanding of what is said.
Hearing and understanding have attached themselves beforehand to what is said-in-the-talk as such. The primary relationship-of-Being towards the entity talked about is not 'imparted' by communication; but Being-with-one-another takes place in talking in one another and in concern with what is said-in-the-talk. To this Being-with-one-another, the fact that talking is going on is a matter of consequence. The Being-said, the dictum, the pronouncement [Ausspruch] – all these now stand surely for the genuineness of the discourse and of the understanding which belongs to it, and for its primary relationship-of-Being towards the entity talked about, or else has never achieved such a relationship, it does not communicate in such a way as to let this entity be appropriated in a primordial manner, but communicates rather by following the route of gossiping and ing the world along. What is said-in-the-talk as such, spreads in wider circles and takes on an authoritative character. Things are so because one says so. Idle talk is constituted by just such gossiping and ing the world along – a process by which its initial lack of grounds to stand on [Bodenständigkeit] becomes aggravated to complete groundlessness [Bodenlosigkeit]. And indeed this idle talk is not confined to vocal gossip, but even spreads to what we write, where it takes the form of 'scribbling' [das “Geschreibe”]. In this latter case the gossip is not based so much upon hearsay. It feeds upon superficial reading [dem Angelesenen]. The average understanding of the reader will never be able to decide what has been drawn from primordial sources with a struggle and how much is just gossip. The average understanding, moreover, will not want any such distinction, and does not need it, because, of course, it understands everything.

(Translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson)

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Martin Heidegger