Heidegger and the Philosophy of Language

Abstract

Two facts about Heidegger's published works invite an effort to understand and explain the negative opinion of the philosophy of language the undeveloped, critical remarks above indicate. First, there is not to be found in Heidegger's published works any systematic critique of philosophy of language as such. Second, despite the large number of his essays on language, it cannot be said that there is a developed Heideggarian philosophy of language, at least in any ordinary sense of that phrase. Such an attempt can be neither a mere exposition nor a simple derivation or deduction. It must rather be a restricted speculative construction, one that is alert to certain features of philosophy of language, on the one hand, and that does not violate either the letter or the spirit of Heidegger's thought, on the other. I shall attempt here such a constructive exploration of why Heidegger had the negative opinion of the philosophy of language the above quotations indicate. I shall proceed by (1) sketching a general characterization of philosophy of language by focusing on what philosophers of language typically take as their subject matter, their typical means of access to it, and what they typically seek to accomplish; (2) in the spirit of Heidegger's thought.