Bridging the Boundary of Language in the Philosophies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger

The study reconstructs approaches to solving the ontological problem of the boundary of language and the world in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger. These philosophers are the most authoritative thinkers of the twentieth century and their intellectual heritage has greatly influenced the formation and development of modern philosophical science. A comparative analysis of the key philosophical attitudes of both thinkers on the nature of the relationship between language, world and the mystical sphere of human life allows us to establish the basic method to bridge the boundary of formal-logical and everyday languages: it is "showing". According to the early Wittgenstein and the late Heidegger, "showing" is possible by the phenomenon of silence and by poetry as a pure language, respectively. Despite significant differences in the philosophical attitudes of both thinkers, the results of the comparative analysis of their linguistic and philosophical ideas at opposite stages of intellectual activity allows us to draw profound conclusions. Both philosophers shared the idea of the dualistic nature of the world because of its separation into actual (physical) and mystical (spiritual-metaphysical) components. The problem of the inexpressibility of mystical entities and concepts in everyday language actualizes the search for ways out of this situation when language is not able to reflect the entirety of the world. At an early stage of his intellectual activity, Wittgenstein believed that sentences of language strictly correspond to certain situations in reality while mystical phenomena can only "show" themselves in the world. Since transcendental metaphysical entities are present in one way or another in human life, silence about them has become an exceptional way to avoid meaningless discourse that goes beyond a formal-logical language. Heidegger shared the position according to which the truth of any being can only be "shown" but not expressed in everyday language. However, he took a step forward in comparison with Wittgenstein's the judgments and revealed a fundamentally new level of "pure" language that is essentially different from the formal-logical and everyday languages. Heidegger proposes poetry as a pure language, which is ontologically close to "saying" (sage). "Saying" is a proto-language laid down as the basis for the substantiation of being. According to Heidegger, only a poetic language, through a special gift of a poet, can bring a person closer to the disclosure of the hidden nature of things and suggest a way to transcendental things that are inexpressible by means of everyday language.