« The call of Being originates in the depths of the “soil” — the depths of the past into which our ancestors have departed. We cannot allow for their lives to end up meaningless, but they might very well turn out meaningless if all the ages of labor, feats, and struggle lead to a worthless us. “By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:16)…
Past generations depart and their forms die only to become the soil for the birth of the new. All that is left is the burning of their spirit, the burning of their aspirations, dreams, and ideals, and that which remains constitutes the foundation of the continuity of life and true immortality. This fire fills up language as the event of meaning and “shoots” or breaks up out of the depths of lingual consciousness into the sprout of the word. The word is born as man — from Being.
Just as parents do not create their child’s soul, so man does not create the meaning of a word, that is, its capacity to influence consciousness. Man lets the word resound and pronounces it, but it is through the word and through man that the imperfect past draws towards perfection, the sinful towards redemption, the meaningless towards the meaningful, or more accurately, the old meaning towards its self-resurrection in new, clearer, fuller meaning. In this call, it is not only the voice of past generations that calls, but the voice of all of “natural history,” the voice of all of mute nature that requires man to give it the word and fill its existence with meaning. »
— Egor Falyov, Heidegger’s Hermeneutics (forthcoming from PRAV Publishing)
