Heidegger's Etymological Web

Abstract

In An Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger compares language in general to a well-worn streetcar in which everyone rides hindrance and above all without danger.' A singularly reactionary complaint, we may say. Do we really need more danger in the world at present? But, then, what might we mean by 'danger'? The question seems impertinent until we realize that in German Gefahr, related to fahren, go, derives from an old substantive vare, which meant not only ambush, peril, fear, but also endeavor, aspiration, a word which, moreover, in its oldest historical form is cognate with Latin periculum, trial, danger, and its verbal offshoot, experiri, to try, test, prove (placet experiri being Hans Castorp's initiatory motto in The Magic Mountain). Danger is literally cousin to experience (Erfahrung). The German and Latin terms, together with the Greek peira, trial, experience, and empeiros, experienced (>'empirical'), go back to a reconstructed Indo-European root form per-, meaning specifically to try, undertake, risk. To try is metaphorically to lead over, press forward, and this verbal base belongs to a more general word family, built around the phoneme per, in which we may trace the extension