Wittgenstein and Heidegger: Language as universal medium and inexpressibility of semantics

Abstract

In this paper I will try to show that Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger defended conception of language as a universal medium in both phases of their work. Both philosophers believe that we are „prisoners“ of the language that we speak, so that we can not step outside of it and describe the semantic relationships of language and the world from metalinguistic point of view. For both thinkers the basic problem is of methodological nature: for, if we can not speak about the relationships between language and the world, then how can we say that we can not speak about the relationships between language and the world? I will argue: a) that the universalism of early Wittgenstein and late Heidegger is transcendentally motivated, and that they both deal with the problem of inexperessibility of semantics by invoking the language of poetry as a way to express a universalist point of view, and b) that the universalism of late Wittgenstein and early Heidegger is pragmatically motivated, and that the difference between two philosophers is that early Heidegger accepts, while late Wittgenstein rejects semantic paradox of universalism. For early Heidegger inexpressibility of semantics is evidence that there is something that eludes the ordinary language and that that something has to be grasped by use of special method, for late Wittgenstein it is the evidence that there is nothing that can not be expressed in ordinary language and that the problem of inexpressibility of semantics is a pseudo-problem