In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

BEING-IN-THE-WORLDS OF 1926 453
of its own--can it have lost itself and not yet won itself. As modes of
Being, authenticity and inauthenticity (these expressions have been chosen
terminologically in a strict sense) are both grounded in the fact that
any Dasein whatsoever is characterized by mineness. But the inauthenticity
of Dasein does not signify any "less" Being or any "lower" degree
of Being. Rather, it is the case that even in its fullest concretion Dasein
can be characterized by its inauthenticity-when busy, when excited,
when interested, when ready for enjoyment. 60
In the mode of in authenticity, Dasein "falls to" (verfallt) "the publicness
of the 'they'" (der Offentlichkeit des Man) and becomes an unidentifiable
part of it.61 Bertoh Brecht's pun on the word man in the title of
his 1926 play Mann ist Mann refers to a plot which tells of a specific
case of such "falling to the publicness of the 'they"'-more precisely, the
loss of a man's individuality in the process of his integration into the
anonymous collectivity of military action. What gives a specifically conservative
connotation to Heidegger's use of these concepts, especially in
comparison with Brecht, is the fusion of the "they" with the public
sphere as expressed in the phrase "the publicness of the 'they.'" If any
further evidence were needed to prove Heidegger's bias against the public
sphere, it would lie in the superposition of a third code upon the cluster
constituted by authenticity/inauthenticity and individualitylcollectivity.
Inauthenticity and collectivity, the negative values, are associated with
"idle talk" (Gerede), whereas authenticity and individuality are linked
to silence. [see Silence vs. Noise] By explicitly including certain modes of
reading and writing in the concept of "idle talk," Heidegger transforms
it into a key element of his notoriously anti-intellectual and anti-academic
position.
And indeed this idle talk is not confined to vocal gOSSIp, but even
spreads to what we write, where it takes the form of "scribbling" ...
In the latter case, the gossip is not based so much upon hearsay. It feeds
upon superficial reading ... The average understanding of the reader
will never be able to decide how much has been drawn from primordial
sources with a struggle and how much is just gossip. The average
understanding, moreover, will not want any such distinction, and does
not need it, because of course it understands everything. The groundlessness
of idle talk is no obstacle to its becoming public; instead it
encourages this. 62