(click it to expand, please)
(By the way, sorry for the crappy screen capture. This is from a totally different book. But there's a reference there to the source).
How do I understand this? Basically, Wittgenstein seems to by saying that yes, we can all identify with the kind of experience Heidegger describes: the dread, the sense of nothingness, astonishment (the "Why") etc. The question is what do you go on to do with it. From Wittgenstein perspective (and here we should note this was written during the so called "early Wittgenstein" period -- although I would venture to say this particular view applies for the later one as well), what Heidegger is doing is to try and investigate that realm of "beyond". And as much as he insists that this is not conceptual knowledge, it's still an attempt to construct knowledge. For Wittgenstein, this won't fly. There's no knowledge, conceptual or other, to be spoken of there. Heidegger ends up producing a lot of, basically, non-sense, albeit wrapped up in an air of profoundness. For Wittgenstein, the most you can do is point to the border between sense and non-sense, being and nothing; to point to that sense of dread etc. -- and that is indeed an important thing to do (he's not dismissing that). But don't delude yourself that you can actually provide answers about what goes on there, and certainly not that this kind of investigation (read metaphysics) should serve as some kind of basis for other forms of knowledge (science).
Basically, I completely agree.
NF
