The Pursuit of an Authentic Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Everyday by David Egan

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Pursuit of an Authentic Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Everyday by David Egan Lee Braver David Egan. The Pursuit of an Authentic Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Everyday. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xii + 256. Cloth, $75.00. The odyssey of twentieth-century philosophy has produced a number of ventures to find a way between the Scylla of continental and Charybdis of analytic philosophy. The pairing of Heidegger and Wittgenstein, arguably the greatest figures of each tradition, has been a particularly strong siren song to many on this quest, who have approached it from different angles. Egan uses Heidegger's explicit discussion of authenticity in his early work to bring out a similar idea implicit in Wittgenstein's later. Given their many parallels, Egan reasons, chances are good that an idea so central to the former could be found in the latter, were one to look at it in the right way. Thus, Egan uses Being and Time to enter previously inaccessible regions in Philosophical Investigations, to find hermeneutic plunder therein. Part 1 establishes the preliminary thesis, that the two share philosophical views, in particular on the topic of philosophical views. Both distinguish between talking about facts (ontic assertions about beings, science) and talking about how we talk about facts (ontological descriptions of the being of beings, grammatical investigations). Problems arise when philosophers engaged in the latter think they are doing the former. Rather than bringing us new, esoteric knowledge or changing our views, authentic philosophy describes and reminds. In keeping with this view of philosophy, both reject all transcendent perspectives—represented by McDowell's sideways-on view—emphasizing instead our communal attunement as what grounds our ability to converse about the world and traverse about in the world. While this ground is itself groundless—external foundations for our speech and practices could only be found and founded externally—this groundlessness is only worrisome from the same incoherent perspective, as Egan discusses in part 2. Both therefore reject equally foundationalism and standard reactions to foundationalism rejected: anxiety for Heidegger, skepticism for Wittgenstein. These apparently opposing views agree on the transcendent view common to both because required by both, and that is what Heidegger and Wittgenstein are seeking to escape. Instead of looking down upon ourselves and our relationship to the world from the outside, either in hope or despair, the proper response is to fully inhabit the inside, doing so in such a way that it no longer is seen as an inside, for sides make no sense if crossing does not either. Without sides, neither is there a sideways-on perspective, nor sides to take up concerning traditional philosophical arguments such as realism versus antirealism (of course, some of us see antirealism as itself this rejection of sides rather than one of them). Authenticity means recognizing the everyday as our home, the source and arena of philosophical thought that cannot slough it off to transcend into a sublime beyond. It makes no sense to say that we are trapped in an underground cave if there is no aboveground escape to supply the contrast, nor can shadows on the wall be disparaged without originals to be shadows of. This is what knowledge is; realizing this is wisdom. And this is what Egan finds in Wittgenstein's quest to return words to their everyday usage. After a journey through the bizarre, spellbound realm of philosophy, words must [End Page 828] come back home to their jobs and families. Not because these are the only meanings they can have, but because the uses philosophers put them to are not genuine, coherent possibilities; they are monsters. Philosophers do not realize this because we have been blinded and bewitched by pictures, so Wittgenstein assembles reminders of what we already know to dispel them and lead words home. Egan's part 3 finds Wittgenstein outdoing Heidegger at doing less. Heidegger's formal indications avoid ontic factual discourse, but with the misleading vocabulary of things hidden, which he discovers and informs us of. Wittgenstein is more consistent because his questions, imaginary scenarios, and dialogues dismantle philosophical pseudo-problems and -solutions while remaining immanent, introducing no new insights, for those could only come...