There are good grounds for proposing that Wittgenstein has a Wesenschau similar to the phenomenologists'. He never gives up the search for essences, for "essence is expressed in grammar" and "grammar tells what kind of object anything is" (PI, §§371, 373). But Wittgenstein's Wesenschau is one that is much closer to the existential phenomenologists. Just as Heidegger believes that there are no pure noises (SZ, p. 163; U K, p. 156), Wittgenstein argues that there are no pure colors. The eidetic reduction of the color red reaches its end in the shiny bright red of the football uniform, the woolly red of the carpet, and the rustic red of fall leaves. Like Heidegger, Wittgenstein recognizes the limits of the "hermeneutical circle," that fact and essence are inextricably bound in Lebensformen. In a direct criticism of Husserl, Heidegger maintains that even the Wesenschau is grounded in existential Verstehen (SZ, p. 148). Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein agree that essences can be found in the grammar of our language and forms of our lives, but these essences cannot be said—i.e., articulated in a completed eidetic reduction—they can only be shown. Because the essence of language "lies open to view," one does not need any special method to see the "structure and function" of language, short of learning to view phenomena "synoptically" (PI, §92).
Nicholas F. Gier, Wittgenstein and Phenomenology: A Comparative Study of the Later Wittgenstein, Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty
