Wittgenstein and Heidegger: The relationship of the philosopher to language

Abstract

It seems at times as if, where Heidegger is invoked on one side and Wittgenstein on the other, the common presuppositions which are necessary if there is to be a conversation are lacking. One publishes in different journals, reads different books, speaks a different language. Those unfortunate enough to lose their way and to end up in the wrong camp, may find it difficult to understand what the people there are doing. One reason for the lack of communication between Wittgensteinians and Heideggerians has been a widespread failure to pay sufficient attention to the origins of Wittgenstein's and Heidegger's thought. Both have invited such a disregard of the past. This is certainly true of Wittgenstein: repeatedly he suggests that traditional philosophy rests on a misuse of language. One can point to these passages to present Wittgenstein as an anti-philosopher who has surpassed the philosophy of the past by showing that the puzzles which occupied it can be made to disappear by "bringing words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use." (Inv. 116) Heidegger, too, speaks of the end of traditional metaphysics; his own thinking is an attempt to step back to a more fundamental plane. This, it has been argued, makes it impossible to compare Heidegger to the philosophers of the past. 1 His thinking is fundamental in a way which forbids all comparison. But if the work of Wittgenstein and Heidegger does constitute a break with traditional, especially Cartesian philisophy, it nevertheless has its roots in that tradition and an attempt to relate Wittgenstein and Heidegger to one another can be made, using this common point of departure. This move is made easier by the fact that both have written works which are still part of that tradition, so that their break with it is at the same time a break with an earlier phase of their own thinking. Thus Wittgenstein came to criticize the Tractatus, while Heidegger abandoned the views of his dissertation, Die Lehre vom Urteil im Psychologismus, and of his Habilitationsschrift, Die Kategorienund Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus.