“Wittgenstein did not and could not have known Gadamer’s work in this area. Gadamer tells us that he had not seriously read Wittgenstein until after the publication of Truth and Method (1960).”
“Though Gadamer comments in several essays on the proximity of his views about language to the views of Wittgenstein, he does not explore the connection. Coming from different contexts and with different philosophical motivations, these two thinkers appear to many, including Gadamer, to have developed convergent views, at least in part, with regard to language – a central theme for both thinkers.”
“Taylor’s account in two papers collected in Philosophical Papers I, “Language and Human Nature,” and “Theories of Meaning,” is more nuanced than Lawn’s. Taylor recognizes that the view of Heidegger and Gadamer with respect to language is not simply continuous with the expressivism of the late 18th and early 19th century German romanticism.”
“Lawn’s large statement that the purpose of language ultimately is self-expression is misleading with regard to Heidegger and Gadamer. Heidegger’s turn to language is at one with his attempt to leave behind subjectivity and self-consciousness. Language is, first of all, disclosive, not expressive for Heidegger and Gadamer. Lawn misstates Gadamer’s debt to Heidegger for the notion that “language speaks us before we speak it,” (Lawn, p. 49) when he assigns this notion to Being and Time. The notion is not to be found there but in the later writings of Heidegger on language.”
“What Lawn finds in common between Gadamer and Wittgenstein with regard to language is the central importance of the concept of play and the game, “an attack on isolated subjectivity” (p. 23), anti-foundationalism, an understanding of language as praxis, the rejection of private language, and the dialogical character of language (though later in the book Lawn qualifies the importance of dialogue for Wittgenstein).”
“Two things separate Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language from that of Gadamer. First, according to Lawn, Wittgenstein did not appreciate sufficiently the ramifications of the historical character of language. Secondly, Wittgenstein failed to take the hermeneutical turn. In short, Wittgenstein is insufficiently Gadamerian.”
“Lawn provides an adequate account of Gadamer’s philosophy of language as non-instrumental, disclosive, conversational and dialogical, and so on, though his writing sometimes trips over itself.”
“The second interpretation of Wittgenstein considered that differs with Lawn’s is that offered in an essay by Ulrich Arnswald in the recently published Gadamer’s Century (edited by Malpas, Arnswald, and Kertscher, MIT Press, 2002). Arnswald provides a more positive account of the transitory, variable, and mutable character of language games and their transformations in Wittgenstein such that he finds an “astonishing accordance” with Gadamer. (Gadamer’s Century, p. 40)”
“In response to Arnswald Lawn refers us to Habermas’ critique of Wittgenstein’s account of language games “monadically sealed off” and providing for a “rigid designation for its application.” (See Habermas’ “Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method,” in Wachterhauser, Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy, p. 249)”
“Lawn argues that language is playful for Gadamer but not for Wittgenstein. There may be “play” in Wittgenstein but it is not “playful” since it is strictly regulated, rule-governed.”
“Lawn acknowledges the more poetic readings of Wittgenstein by Cavell and Perloff. He suggests the outlines of a “more positive case” for Wittgenstein (pp. 137-8), but he considers these attempts to throw a “lifeline” to Wittgenstein “sketchy.””