PERCEIVING THE UNEXPRESSED
What is self-evident is not discussed. It is taken for granted; it “goes without saying.” Cela va sans One only has to ask: what exactly is it that is taken for granted and so may remain unexpressed?
In this seemingly innocent situation, which in its turn is largely taken for granted, there lies the most important and the peculiar difficulty of all textual interpretations: namely, that in a passage to be elucidated certain notions remain unexpressed because they were self-evident to the author, whereas they are in no way self-evident to the man who is interpreting the text. Consequently, he does not automatically include them in his perception. And this means that the emphasis of all he does perceive is changed. In the interpretation of a text, especially one from a civilization or epoch remote from our own, what is plainly decisive and yet by no means easy is this: to grasp those basic assumptions which, remaining unexpressed, nevertheless permeate all that is actually stated; to discover, so to speak, the hidden keynote that dominates whatever has been explicitly said.
It could be positively maintained that the doctrine of a thinker is precisely im Sagen the unexpressed in what is expressed.” This is how Heidegger begins his own interpretation of a Platonic The phrase is no doubt deliberately strained, but it is clear that an interpretation which does not reach the unspoken assumptions underlying the actual text must remain, in essence, a misinterpretation, even if in other respects the letter of the text be commented upon with considerable learning; this latter fact may, indeed, make matters worse.
Is there a way to get on to the track of such underlying and therefore unformulated assumptions? I think there exist several such deciphering keys. One, which I have frequently verified, is certainly this. It occasionally happens that what is unexpressed shows itself, as though through a “hole,” through a “gap” in the pattern, in a certain “jump” in the development of the thought, a kind of inconsequence in the argument. (This at least is how it appears to who interpret and start out with other assumptions which are just as implicit and perhaps never once explicitly formulated.) What matters is that, whenever one of these seeming illogicalities is encountered, we avoid passing over it carelessly. There will be later an opportunity to speak of one concrete instance of this kind.