ABSTRACT
This is a tale of two readings, and of a non-encounter: the missed encounter between two philosophers whose legacy, as has been noted, might jointly define the scope of problems and questions left open for philosophy today. In particular, I will discuss two remarks, one by Wittgenstein on Heidegger, and the other by Heidegger on Wittgenstein. The first is one of only two (as far as I know) recorded remarks by Wittgenstein about Heidegger, and the second is one of only two (again, as far as I know) by Heidegger about Wittgenstein.1 As readings, both remarks that I shall discuss are, at best, partial, elliptical, and glancing. Interestingly, as I shall argue, each is actually a suggestive misreading of the one philosopher by the other. By considering the two misreadings, I shall argue, we can understand better the relationship between the two great twentieth-century investigators of the still obscure linkages among being, language, and truth. And we can gain some insight into some of the many questions still left open by the many failed encounters of twentieth-century philosophy, including what might be considered the most definitive encounter that is still routinely missed, miscarried, or misunderstood, the encounter between the “traditions” of “analytic” and “continental” philosophy, which are still widely supposed to be disjoint.
