TITLE:
Heidegger’s Ereignis and Wittgenstein on the Genesis of Language
AUTHORS:
Richard McDonough
KEYWORDS:
Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Ereignis, The Open, Primordial Truth
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Philosophy,
Vol.4 No.3,
August
22,
2014
ABSTRACT: The paper argues that the orthodox readings of pgh. 608 of
Wittgenstein’s Zettel (hereafter
Z608), which holds that Z608 suggests the possibility that language and thought
may emerge out of physical chaos in the brain (connectionist processing, causal
indeterminism, a pile of sawdust, etc.) cannot be correct. Among Wittgenstein’s signature views are that the philosopher “must
not advance any kind of theory” and that everything must be “open to view”. Despite
this, the orthodox readings not only attribute theories about hidden processes
to Z608, but quite extreme one’s at that. What the commentator should infer is that the kind of centre,
chaos, and “arising” of language from chaos inZ608 must be of the sort that is already “open to view”—that is, a
“phenomenological” reading, broadly construed. The paper argues that
Heidegger’s account of the Ereignis (the opening of the Open, or “primordial truth”), provides a far better model
of Z608 than the orthodox
neurological interpretation—illuminating both Heidegger and Wittgenstein
in the process. Against this background, it is argued that the central point in Z608 is precisely that the centre of
a language referenced in Z608 cannot be the neural centre. Just as Copernicus replaced the old centre of the
universe, the sun, by a new centre, the earth, so too, the aim in Z608 is to replace the old view that
language is centred in the brain with the new view, reflected on virtually
every page of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, that language centres around the
everyday arena of human behaviour which is “always before one’s eyes”. Z608 is not stating theories about the
brain, but is proposing a new “Copernican” paradigm in the philosophies of
language and mind, a paradigm which is also found in Heidegger’s account of the Ereignis.