wittgenstein and heidegger 287InCulture and Valuehe suggests that the ‘simplest explanation’ of a
musical phrase ‘is sometimes a gesture; another might be a dance step,
or words which describe a dance’ (Wittgenstein 1980 : 69 ), so indicating
that understanding cannot be construed simply in terms of ‘grasping
the sense’ of propositions. In theInvestigationshe maintains that ‘Speak-
ing thoughtlessly and not thoughtlessly is to be compared with playing a
piece of music thoughtlessly and not thoughtlessly’ (Wittgenstein 1984 :
341 , 388 ), which again underlines the sense in which thought need not
be propositionally articulated. Verbal language plays a necessary role in
articulating a world, but it is not a sufficient condition of all the kinds
of intelligibility at issue here.
An important further aspect of Wittgenstein’s exploration is appar-
ent in a remark which begins ‘This musical phrase is a gesture for me. It
insinuates itself into my life. I make it my own’ (Wittgenstein 1980 : 73 ).
If gestures were thoroughly predictable, they would presumably lose
their expressive quality: ‘Expressionconsistsfor us in unpredictability’
(ibid.). However, even in the case of already familiar music, the ges-
tures ‘always remain gestures for me, although I know what will come.
Indeed, I can even be surprised over and over again. (In a certain
sense.)’ (ibid.). This is a remark about a key aspect of aesthetic experi-
ence, but it is also an important indication of just how central music is
to the image of language that Wittgenstein seeks to develop. In music
the expressive quality which language and physical gesture can lose by
repetition is retained, and the reasons for this have wider consequences
for our theme.
One of the issues in Heidegger that we shall examine in a moment
is his insistence on language’s ‘world-disclosive’, ‘ontological’ nature,
in opposition to the idea of language being primarily ontic and rep-
resentational. Heidegger’s position on this issue changes significantly
between his earlier and later conception. The former is in many respects
pragmatic: language is part of our manipulation of the world for differ-
ing purposes. In the latter, poetry, as we saw, is regarded as the key to an
appropriate understanding of language, to the extent that philosophy
itself, as ‘Western metaphysics’, is seen as contributing to a misrecog-
nition of the truth of language. Heidegger, then, connects these issues
to a broader conception of the role of philosophical issues in mod-
ern culture. Although Wittgenstein does make remarks, particularly in
Culture and Value, indicating the wider cultural and historical signifi-
cance of music for conceptions of philosophy, these do not play an
explicit role in his investigation. The reasons for this seem to be mainly