Living as being-in-a-world finds itself characterized by ἡδονή insofar as the ἡδύ is there. For animals, encountering the world in the character of the ἡδύ is, for example, encountering a favorable feeding place and not a symphony. It is always something that is in the animal’s surrounding world. This being that is there in the character of mattering-to-animals is indicated, animals give a “sign,” σημεῖον. It indicates beings that are there with the character of the ἡδύ. The indicating gives no report about the being-at-hand of what is pleasing outside in nature, but rather this indicating and crying out is itself an enticing or a warning. The indicating of the being that is there is an enticement, a warning. Enticement and warning have, in themselves, the character of addressing itself to. . . . Enticing means to bring another animal into the same disposition; warning is the repelling from this same disposition. Enticing and warning as repelling and bringing, in themselves, have in their ground being-with-one-another. Enticing and warning already show that animals are with one another. Being-with-one-another becomes manifest precisely in the specific being-character of animals as φωνή. It is neither exhibited nor manifested that something as such is there. Animals do not subsequently come along to ascertain that something is at hand; they only indicate it within the orbit of their animalistic having-to-do. Since animals indicate the threatening, or alarming, and so on, they signal, in this indicating of the being-there of the world, their being in the world. The world is indicated as ἡδύ and, at the same time, it is a signaling of being, being-threatened, having-found, and so on. [Heidegger, GA18:54-55]
SÊMEÎON [grec]
subs. nt.
Mis à part l’emploi spécial où il désigne le point mathématique, sémeîon a le sens très général de signe, naturel ou conventionnel : indice ou présage tiré de faits naturels, signal ou signe de reconnaissance. En rhétorique, c’est un argument de vraisemblance, ce d’où Ton peut inférer la conclusion prétendue. Appliqué à la langue, il désigne, chez Platon, le « signal vocal » affecté à une chose (Soph. 262 a), qu’il représente à la façon d’un emblème ; ses constituants, lettres ou syllabes, participent à sa valeur de signe (Crat. 427 c). Chez Aristote, sémeîon, conservant par ailleurs ses autres sens, prend dans l’analyse linguistique une acception neuve. Le mot, unité minimale de sens (Int., chap. 2), n’est sémantikôs que dans la mesure où il renvoie à l’énoncé qui définit ce qu’il désigne : signe d’un logos, et non plus d’une chose (Met. Γ, 7, 1012 a 23-24). (M. Narcy) [NP]