Epilogue

between scylla and charybdis—Gadamer's hermeneutics

Herbert Spiegelberg

pp. 229-258

in: Martin Kusch, Language as calculus vs. language as universal medium, Berlin, Springer, 1989

Abstract

In the main body of this study we have seen that Husserl and Heidegger take radically different stands on such key philosophical issues as the accessibility of semantics, the possibility of a re-interpretation of language, the intelligibility of speaking of worlds in the plural, the possibility of avoiding (linguistic) relativism and (semantical) Kantianism, the correct account of truth, and the justifiability of metalanguage and formalism. However, the main objective of the interpretation in parts II and III above was not (only) to draw attention to this list of differences but also to explain them as resulting from two fundamentally opposed ways of conceiving of language; to wit, to conceive of language as either being something like a re-interpretable calculus, or being as it were a universal medium of meaning. While Husserl and Heidegger were shown to stand on opposite sides of this divide, each of them turned out to be in respectable company: Husserl in that of modern semantical theory, Heidegger in that of Frege and Wittgenstein.