wittgenstein and heidegger 299If involvement in a practice is supposed to involve a kind of legitima-
tion which is inaccessible to objective description, the critical reflexive
moment that is essential not just to philosophy, but to all forms of cul-
tural practice, risks being neglected. It is also the case that any practice –
including the use of a simple sentence, or, for that matter, of any thing
in the world – will transcend the ways in which it can be theoretically
characterised. However, such objections miss the key point, which is
indicated by Besseler’s insistence on thetensionbetween making music,
and analysis of music. Interpretation of our meaning-articulating prac-
tices and participation in those practices are inextricably connected,
but not reducible to each other. As Adorno says: ‘interpreting lan-
guage means: understanding language; interpreting music means: mak-
ing music’ (Adorno 1997 : 16 , 253 ). This dual sense of interpreta-
tion – where the terms are not opposed, but not identical in meaning
either – are implied by the later Wittgenstein’s remarks on gesture as a
means of interpreting a musical phrase, which highlighted the impor-
tance of avoiding the idea that ‘language always only functions inone
way, always serves the same purpose’. How, then, does Heidegger’s later
work, in which he moves away from the very idea of doing philosophy,
relate to the questions just considered?
On the way to music?Heidegger’s ‘turn’ can be interpreted in terms of the issue of objectifi-
cation that we encountered in the tension between music-making and
music analysis. This interpretation maps easily onto aspects ofOn the
WaytoLanguage. The reason is quite simple: by this time Heidegger
has moved away from his concern withDasein’s projects and from the
delineation of theExistentialienas the route to the understanding of
being. He now develops the position in which language is the ‘house
of being’, in the sense of the ‘space’ in which being’s truth can be artic-
ulated, which therefore allows things to be. Once again the problem
arises of how to assert the truth about language within language, thus
making language into the object of language, without falling prey to the
circle in which initial assumptions about what language is simply dic-
tate the conclusions. Consider an obvious alternative. What, on the one
hand, would make the assertion that language is the ‘house of being’
true? Must the metaphor be cashed out into a prior literal statement,
and in that case, why does Heidegger not talk in literal terms in the
first place? On the other hand, if language, as it is in many areas of