wittgenstein and heidegger 305is again an objectification which moves away from ‘these words in these
positions’, so it must be at the level of what I have referred to as the
‘musical’.
It is not clear that this is what Heidegger intended, but the problem
with his later work is that it gestures towards something which inher-
ently resists being specified, and yet makes nothing of the idea of the
musical as a possible aspect of what it is that he is gesturing towards.
He therefore necessarily puts himself into a paradoxical position with
regard to language, on the one hand using it to try to reveal something
otherwise hidden, on the other denying that a discursive philosophical
text can articulate what he is seeking. He uses words while regarding
them somewhat in the manner of the thinkers and writers associated
with ‘Sprachskepsis’, like Rilke, who also saw poetry as a way of seeking
a new relationship between words and things. Heidegger does not aim
at a ‘critique’ of modern technological civilisation – that would entail
adopting the kind of metaphysical perspective that he wishes to cir-
cumvent. He does, though, use a version of the history of philosophy
to reach a generalised verdict on the nature of modernity (for some of
the details see Bowie 1997 : ch. 7 ). The stages of the history of being
from Plato to Nietzsche exhibit the essence of the story he thinks has
led to the contemporary situation, namely the story of ‘subjectification’
and technological dominance.
But why should Heidegger’s story based on his construal of the his-
tory of philosophy be the decisive one, when there are other stories
which seek to understand the nature of modernity that also involve
many of the factors which he sees as decisive? The emphasis placed
on language in his story is understandable, but attaching this empha-
sis to an overall assessment of history requires a more differentiated
approach. The very idea that – however much it may be affected by
the processes of modernity – everyday language should become the
‘language of metaphysics’ forces Heidegger into a series of reductions,
not least because the notion of a language that is circumscribable as
the ‘language of metaphysics’ itself sounds suspiciously metaphysical.
From what perspective does one judge what falls within it and what does
not?^24 Would not such a perspective itself just involve another kind of
domination by philosophy, because of the totalisation it entails, even
though the aim is to find a way of avoiding objectification?24 Heidegger is aware of this issue, but this does not stop him using the term ‘language of
metaphysics’.