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According to Aristotle, intellection is universal, while sensation is singular. Yet intellectiondepends upon sensation. While we cannot think without the singular, we never cognizeit as such. Individual things are cognized only insofar as they are instances of a universal.Scotus’s work on this problem generated the doctrine of haecceitas, the notion of theconcrete intelligibility of the singular. For Scotus, Aristotle’s doctrine of the ineffabilityof the singular exposes the limits of the mode of thinking constituted by defining andjudging universals. Ineffability does not signify unintelligibility but the limitations oftheoretical cognition. If the singular exhibits an intelligibility which eludes abstract intellection,we must speak of a fore-theoretical stratum of intelligibility. When we look athow we use language, Heidegger says, we see that defining content and judging are not theonly ways of expressing intelligibility. Where definitions are not possible, language canperformatively and exhortatively point to that which cannot be named. The exhortationcalls the recipient, not to think certain thoughts, but to perform a way of thinking.Formally indicative language is a spur to existential self-engagement. To understanda formal indication, I must break out of the self-forgetfulness of theoretical speculationand apply it. Formal indication highlights historically differentiated semantic structure bysuspending the relational-sense, the how of the phenomenon. 17 We are not told how tointerpret the matter. Rather, we are invited to interpret the matter ourselves. Formal indicationis an exhortation to apply a way of thinking, without any clear directives as to howthinking is to be applied. Thus the formal indication puts the recipient into crisis. It is anintentional and strategic ambiguity. 18 Determinate meaning is in some way withheld andapplication (the enactment-sense or Vollzugssinn) is highlighted as the locus of significance.The formal indication is therefore semantically unsatisfying yet formally charged withsuggested and possible meaning.The formal indication is analogous to the ironic speech act. The semantic gap in theformal indication, like the ambiguity in the ironic statement, startles us into interpretation.The contradiction between the form and content of the ironic speech act emphasizes acontextual significance that exceeds the content of the individual words. In order to understandthe expression, I must enact it. I have to put myself into the situation of the speakerand see what it could mean for him or her. The understanding of irony is only possiblethrough self-transposition: we see the expression through the eyes of the one who uses itand only then grasp its meaning. But to ‘see something through the eyes of another’ is tosee it through our own eyes, that is, to apply the meaning in a certain way.Hermeneutic phenomenology is inevitably circular, life’s re-doubling of itself. In theopening pages of Sein und Zeit, Heidegger shows how we cannot ask the question aboutthe meaning of being without already understanding something about being. (SZ 4) Yetwe cannot thematize our pre-understanding of being without first articulating the question.17“The formal indication is intended primarily as an advance indication of the relational sense ofthe phenomenon, in a negative sense at the same time as a warning! A phenomenon must be pre-given in sucha way that its relational sense is held in suspense. One must guard against assuming that its relationalsense is originally theoretical. This is a position that opposes the sciences in the extreme. There is noinsertion into a content-domain, rather the opposite: the formal indication is a warding off, a preliminary protection,so that the enactment character remains free. The necessity of this precaution lies in the decadenttendency of factical life experience, which forces us into the objective, from which we must neverthelessdraw the phenomena.” GA60 44.18“The formal indicator, although it guides the consideration, brings no predetermined opinion intothe problem. . . . The formal predication is not bound to any content, however it must be motivated somehow.How is it motivated? It arises from the meaning of the attitudinal relation itself. I do not look fromthe what determination to the object, rather I view the object in a manner of speaking in its determinateness.I must look away from the given what-content, and instead see that the given content is given,attitudinally determined.” GA60 38, 40.272