Dasein - Monoskop

252 PART III
symbol, while, at the same time, being distinct from both. The central
characteristic of the sign is "pure indication", the referring to
something else through pointing away from itself. At the other end
of the scale, the symbol's doing is dubbed "pure representation"; the
symbol represents the symbolized in such a way that the symbolized
is present in the symbol, so that one does not have to go beyond
the symbol in order to get, as it were, to the symbolized. The picture
shares with the sign the attribute of referring beyond itself, but
it differs from the sign in not pointing away from itself. Yet it is
more than a symbol, too, for it produces an increase of meaning
that is not apparent in the pictured: "But that means that what is
represented—the 'original'—in the picture is more fully there, more
properly just as it truly is." 72
As we turn to Gadamer's arguments to the effect that language
is neither sign nor copy but rather a picture of the world, note that
Gadamer could have developed this idea in direct criticism of Husserl.
For as we saw earlier (p. 64), Husserl had distinguished in the sixth of
his Logical Investigations between sign and picture (Bild) by saying
that in the case of the picture there exists a relation of similarity
between the picture and what is pictured. (Thus the Husserlian
picture is the Gadamerian copy.) Husserl had claimed that since
in the case of words similarity between words and things is purely
coincidental, words must be treated as arbitrary signs. Husserl had
been ready, nevertheless, to concede that natural language speakers
experience something of an apparent picture relation between word
and thing since their thinking is so intertwined with language that
they cannot but project their language onto the objects. Finally,
Husserl had gone on to speak of "the deep-set tendency to exaggerate
the bond between word and thing", and he had warned against the
temptation to treat word and thing as a "mystic unity". 73
Even though Gadamer rejects Husserl's alternative of sign relation
vs. similarity relation, and even though he is ready to speak of
a "mysterious" relation between word and thing, he does 4iot turn
against Husserl but rather against Plato. The reason for this way of
proceeding is that Gadamer tries to show that the roots of the sign
conception are to be found in Plato. It is not difficult to see that this
claim is informed by Heidegger, for Heidegger held that modern tech-