Sein und Zeit Lectures

Hat tip to Enowning for stumbling on Benjamin Waters' Lectures to Heidegger's Sein und Zeit. Also of interest are his Lectures on Philosophical Hermeneutics, which includes a section on Heidegger and Gadamer. Waters apparently teaches at The University of Sydny as a tutor.

Read more!

¶4. The Ontical Priority of the Question of Being

We may provisionally understand a “science” as “the totality established through an interconnection of true propositions” (32/H11). Heidegger corrects this later by seeing science as “a way of existence and thus a mode of being-in-the-world” (408/H357), which is a precondition for both “interconnection,” “truth,” and “propositions.” As said earlier, a science can exist only insofar as it is “capable of a crisis in its basic concepts” (29/H9). There must be something more fundamental than interconnected propositions, than the collection of facts, which points to the ontological hermeneutical foundations of all ontical sciences whereby the basic concepts are understood and challengeable. Thus, the possibility of crisis, which defines science, is fundamental ontology—”sciences have the manner of being which this entity—man himself—possesses” (32/H11). This again illustrates Dasein’s priority as the being that we will examine.

Dasein is peculiar in that Dasein is that being that, “in its very being, that being is an issue for it” (32/H12). This implies that Dasein has a particular relationship with being that relationship is itself Dasein’s being; to use Heidegger’s later language, Dasein’s being is constituted by care, that it cares about its being. Lastly, this means that Dasein understands its being in a particular way and that this “[u]nderstanding of being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein’s being. Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological” (Ibid). Let me restate this more succinctly: ontically, Dasein has priority because it is that being whose being is an issue for it; ontologically, Dasein has priority because this very ‘being an issue for it’ is an ontological (i.e. not merely ontic) mode of its being. But if we understood “ontology” in the way it is traditionally understood—as “that theoretical inquiry which is explicitly devoted to the meaning of entities”—then Dasein’s being and its understanding of that being must be “pre-ontological,” or pre-theoretical (Ibid). These two modes of being are what define Dasein as “being in such a way that one has an understanding of being” (Ibid).

That towards which Dasein directs itself in its being we will call “existence” [Existenz], which later will be understood as Dasein’s futural temporal mode of being—projection. Because of this, Dasein understands itself “in terms of a possibility of itself: to be itself or not itself” (33/H12). The possibility of not being itself is Dasein’s inauthentic (uneigentlich) mode of existing—where one’s possibilities are defined by what one (das Man) does and are not “one’s own” (eigen).¹ The possibility of being itself is Dasein’s authentic (eigentlich) mode of existing—where one’s possibilities are taken up as one’s own. This will be exemplified, within B&T, in the discussion of death which is “that possibility which is one’s ownmost [eigenste]” (294/H250). Death is an example of that which is necessarily Dasein’s own, it cannot be ‘shared’ by das Man, though even this ownness is possible only on the background of Dasein’s being-in-the-world and, hence, is not “subjective” in the usual sense; something ‘beyond’ Dasein’s ‘inner’ world is essential to the possibility of authenticity. Dasein’s concrete (ontic) understanding of itself will be termed “existentiell [existenziell]”—the specific modes of being that Dasein can enact—while the (ontological) understanding about the “structures” that make Dasein’s ontic being possible—that allows Dasein to be in a particular way—will be termed “existential [existenzial]” (33/H13). It is through an examination of Dasein’s ontic (existentiell) being that its fundamental ontological (existential) structures will be made transparent. It should be restated, however, that this understanding must move within an understanding of being, not in terms of some ‘inner’ essence, like Jean-Paul Sartre’s appropriation of Heidegger’s thought.

Dasein’s understanding of being essentially entails 1) “an understanding of something like a ‘world’” and 2) “the understanding of the being of those entities which become accessible within the world” (Ibid). The examination of being-in-the-world that will happen later in this work is an attempt to bring to light these two entailments: of how “world” and “entities” are co-necessary in man’s essential relationship and understanding of being. As said earlier (see ¶3), B&T fails in moving beyond this analysis to being itself—it is ultimately too concerned with discussing how beings appear—but a proper grasp of the being of beings is needed before we can understand being itself.

With the above we have made clearer Dasein’s ontical and ontological priority in the question of being. “Therefore fundamental ontology, from which alone all other ontologies can take their rise, must be sought in the existential analytic of Dasein” (34/H13). To restate, Dasein has three levels of priority: ontically, Dasein is that being whose being is an issue for it and thus “has the determinate character of existence,” of possibility (Ibid). Ontologically, Dasein’s “existence is…determinative for [its being]” (Ibid); you cannot separate Dasein’s ‘essence’ from its ‘existence,’ nor should one even accept the duality.² In fact, Heidegger will argue that the traditional categories of ‘essence’ and ‘existence’ are themselves ontologically inadequate because they are ontic categories that continue to hold force because of the historical forgetting of the question of being—we have become entrenched in one mode of disclosure. Lastly, what might be called a methodological priority, Dasein, because of its understanding of beings/being, is the “ontico-ontological condition for the possibility of all ontologies” (Ibid). Ontology, as an articulation of being, requires a being with Dasein’s constitution, hence Dasein has methodological priority—it must be understood before we can better understand being.

Dasein’s relationship to entities has not been ignored even within more traditional ontologies, and Heidegger quotes Aristotle to that effect: “Man’s soul is, in a certain way, entities.”³ Similarly, Thomas Aquinas saw the priority of Dasein (the “soul”) as “an entity which…is properly suited to ‘come together with’ entities of any sort whatever” (Ibid).⁴ Contrary to many existential and so-called postmodern approaches, Heidegger is quick to point out that “[t]his priority has obviously nothing in common with a vicious subjectivizing of the totality of entities” (34/H14). This is due to Dasein’s intentional character and the transcendence of beings: that beings (including Dasein) necessarily escape any way we bring them to light; beings cannot be made completely transparent. The later Heidegger will refer to this as the essential belonging together of man and being, the essential belonging together of subject and object, which belonging together necessarily recasts those categories in a non-traditional way that has not yet become transparent. This warrants Heidegger’s statement: “Dasein then [in ¶2, as the being who’s questioning is an ontic mode of its being] revealed itself as that entity which must first be worked out in an ontologically adequate manner, if the inquiry [about the meaning of being] is to become a transparent one” (35/H14).

Heidegger ends this section with a good summary of Dasein’s priority:

If to interpret the meaning of being becomes our task, Dasein is not only the primary entity to be interrogated; it is also that entity which already comports itself, in its being, towards what we are asking about when we ask this question. But in that case the question of being is nothing other than the radicalization of an essential tendency-of-being which belongs to Dasein itself—the pre-ontological understanding of being. (35/H14-15)

Dasein already comports understandingly with being; it is always already in a relationship with being, which relationship is a positive constituent of Dasein’s being. What fundamental ontology attempts to do is to address this relationship in a more radical—i.e. more fundamental—way than our everyday understanding. But before we can do that we must start with Dasein’s everyday (inauthentic) mode of being with beings, after which we will be in a position to better understand Dasein’s authentic mode of being with beings.⁵

Notes:

1. M&R translate das Man as “the ‘they,’” which has a wrong connotation, as in us vs. them. In German one says, “Wie spricht man…” (How does one say…), or, “Wie tun man…” (How does one do…), which does not translate as well into, “How do they say…,” and, “How do they do…”
2. Nor should we think of pairing existence and essence with the ontological and ontic. Dasein’s essence is its existence; one is not derived from the other, nor does one have priority over the other. Furthermore, Dasein’s ontic facticity is not its essence, if we understand essence as the possession of the necessary and sufficient properties that make something what it is. The substance/property metaphysic on which most of our discussions of essence and existence rests subsists on an all-too-limited temporal priority—the present. Dasein, as an essentially temporal being, cannot be understood in terms of its pure presence in an abstract atemporal space (nature at an instant). This point will be accentuated throughout B&T.
3. De Anima Γ 8 431 b 21. Richard McKeon translates it as “the soul is in a way all existing things” (“De Anima,” Richard McKeon, trans., in The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), 595).
4. Questiones de Veritate, q. I, a 1 c.
5. For Heidegger, fundamental ontology and authenticity are intimately tied together. Our inauthentic relation with being remains inadequate due to its fallenness in das Man: my relation with being is mediated and delimited by ‘what one does’ and does not have the clarity that our phronetic grasp of the situation has (see ¶60). But when one has a phronetic grasp of the situation, one is then in a position to see that the understanding of das Man is fundamentally ungrounded, that beings exceed any given articulation. It is this ungrounding—the ‘nothing’ on which man’s being-in-the-world rests—that will preoccupy Heidegger’s thoughts into his later works. See Hubert Dreyfus, “Can There Be a Better Source of Meaning than Everyday Practices? Reinterpreting Division I of Being and Time in the Light of Division II,” in Heidegger’s Being and Time: Critical Essays, Richard Polt, ed. (Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 141-154.

Read more!

¶3. The Ontological Priority of the Question of Being

In the previous section it was argued that the question of being is peculiar because "a series of fundamental considerations is required for working it out, not to mention for solving it" (29/H8). This was seen in the circularity of dealing with "first principles"--being fundamental, they must be invoked in the questioning itself. Our motivation for raising this question deals both with its "venerable origin" within Greek thought, but also the lack of a satisfactory answer (see ¶1). But we are still tempted to ask: what is the aim in asking this question? Doesn't the question fly into the highest realm of abstraction and generality that only philosophers in their ivory towers would consider (implying that the question is empty of meaning), or is it in fact "the most basic and the most concrete" fact we can consider (29/H9)?

Heidegger's answer moves in steps: "Being is always the being of an entity" (Ibid). All entities are capable of being organized in such a way that they become the basis for a particular kind of study, such as "history, nature, space, life, Dasein, language, and the like" (Ibid). But before the sciences (used broadly) can stake out their areas of study and decide beforehand what kind of entities they are going to ask about, there is already a basic grasp of being in "our pre-scientific ways of experiencing and interpreting that domain of being in which the area of subject-matter is itself confined" (Ibid). A simple way of putting this is that mankind was related to beings (and, hence, understood being) long before any particular science (as either defined by the Greeks or us moderns) came on the scene. Not only this, but even the progress of the sciences stems not from collecting and collating facts, but when "their basic concepts undergo a more or less radical revision which is transparent to itself" (Ibid). To use an example, the major advancements in physics have not come from merely gathering facts, but in the irruption of paradoxes that made physics reexamine its founding principles. Newtonian physics in many ways breaks down on the quantum level, which fact cannot be illustrated simply by looking at the data. It is only by fundamentally reinterpreting the being of subatomic particles that the paradoxes can be meaningful and any advancement can be made. This is why a genuine science must be "capable of a crisis in its basic concepts" and why such a fact makes problematic the relationship between "positively investigative inquiry" and the "things themselves" that are its aim (Ibid).

Heidegger gives specific examples: the formalist/intuitionist debate within mathematics, relativity (and quantum mechanics) in physics, the movement beyond mechanism and vitalism in biology, historiological and literary ("humane") sciences seeing their objects of inquiry as "problems" rather than objective historical facts, and the question of man's relation to God in theology. All of these "crises" deal with the being of the objects examined in these sciences--their being can no longer be understood within the understanding of their being had by previous generations and the sciences themselves must change in relation to this difference (not the other way around). In doing fundamental ontology we are searching for the "basic concepts" that "determine the way in which we get an understanding beforehand of the area of subject-matter underlying all the objects a science takes as its theme, and all positive investigation is guided by this understanding" (30/H10). Put another way, our understanding of being is the basis on which beings can appear in their different modalities within the sciences--as Newtonian sensuous atoms or as Heisenberg's "partial differential equation in an abstract space of many dimensions."¹ It is also the basis on which beings can appear different than our preconceptions--we can be 'surprised' by something only on the basis of a prior understanding that cannot 'make sense' of this new aspect. It is because of this priority of our understanding of being that "[s]uch research must run ahead of the positive sciences, and it can" (Ibid).

Heidegger's project is that of "laying the foundation," which he understands as disclosing the foundations that make possible the understanding of being within a particular world--the world of physics, of art, of literature, etc. This, in turn, will require us to examine Dasein in its historicity insofar as its historicity (or temporality) is constitutive of its mode of being. By doing so we will make clear the apriori grounds on which beings appear in their being. In Heidegger's use, however, apriori doesn't simply mean 'prior to experience,' but rather the fundamental ontological grounds on which any notion of 'prior' or 'experience' is possible, what he referred to in the previous section as "first principles" (see ¶2). In this inquiry we must be careful to not be content with simply elucidating beings--if it is not to be "naive and opaque" our inquiry must "discuss the meaning of being in general" (31/H10). Incidentally, this will prove to be a failing in B&T itself--it never moves beyond beings to being. This failure is not without its positive contributions, however, as B&T still contributes to "laying bare the grounds for [answering the question about the meaning of being] and exhibiting them" (28/H8; from ¶1).

Heidegger summarizes his aim:

The question of being aims therefore at ascertaining the apriori conditions not only for the possibility of the sciences which examine entities as entities of such and such a type, and, in so doing, already operate with an understanding of being, but also for the possibility of those ontologies themselves which are prior to the ontical sciences and which provide their foundation. (31/H11)

When a science has failed to make the being of its entities clear it can fall into all sorts of errors, like assuming that its understanding of being, as seen in the entities that it interrogates, can be generalized to other modes of inquiry. It also makes that science "blind and perverted" in that it does not properly grasp how its entities are constituted and thus it becomes incapable of "crisis" as it is thereby incapable of questioning its foundations. This is the ultimate failing of Western philosophy, on Heidegger's understanding--it has thought the question of being (ontological) answered in terms of its understanding of beings (ontical). This has been exhibited in various ways through history, but it all comes down to Heidegger's central claim--that the question of being has been forgotten. Thus, the question of being does not have priority merely because of its "venerable tradition and advancement" (see the first part of this section), but because it is foundational to all ontic understanding of beings.

Notes:

1. Heisenberg in 1945, quoted in Alan A. Grometstein, The Roots of Things: Topics in Quantum Mechanics (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenium Publishers, 1999), 62.

Read more!

¶2. The Formal Structure of the Question of Being

In the second section of the Introduction to Being and Time, Heidegger addresses the nature of the question as question. By doing so he is trying to show how the "question of being" has a particular character that it does not share with other inquiries (24/H5). Every question is a seeking and every seeking is "guided beforehand by what is sought." Thus, every question is about something, but it is also a questioning of that something which, at present, remains indeterminate. Beyond this questioning we have the goal of the questioning: "that which is to be found in the asking" (Ibid). When we ask a question in an explicit way, as we are in the question of being, the question itself does not become transparent until we become clear about these different aspects of the question as question.

As something that must be guided before, the question of being must start from the fact that "being must already be available to us in some way" (25/H5). In fact, this understanding of being is necessary for even our most everyday activities within the world--opening doors, driving cars, eating food, etc. We cannot currently say that we "know" what being means, even if we use the copula (is) every day in various circumstances (see ¶1). Furthermore, "[w]e do not even know the horizon in terms of which that meaning is to be grasped and fixed" (Ibid), hence we do not even know where to start. However, we must realize that this understanding of being, however vague and imprecise, is a fact.

The indefiniteness of our understanding of being--that we use it and understand it every day but we cannot make it transparent--is itself a positive phenomena that we need to account for. But before we can understand how it is we are to clarify this common understanding of being, we need to examine the historical understandings of being as a concept. By doing so, we can gain a preliminary understanding of what our common understanding of being is; we can also locate possible obscurations that may hinder a more illuminated understanding. We may find that our average understanding of being is partially informed by various theories and opinions that simultaneously illuminate and obscure our common understanding. It will be necessary to make these theories explicit.

"What is asked about" in our inquiry is being--"that which determines entities as entities, that on the basis of which entities are already understood, however we may discuss them in detail" (25-26/H6). Here Heidegger brings in the ontological difference (taken from Aristotle), which should be quoted in full:

The being of entities 'is' not itself an entity. If we are to understand the problem of being, our first philosophical step consists...in not 'telling a story'--that is to say, in not defining entities as entities by tracing them back in their origin to some other entities, as if being had the character of some possible entity. Hence being, as that which is asked about, must be exhibited in a way of its own, essentially different from the way in which entities are discovered. (26/H6)

Because of this, "what is to be found out by the asking"--the meaning of being--must be seen on its own, "essentially contrasting with the concepts in which entities acquire their determinate signification" (Ibid). Being, as that which "determines entities as entities," cannot itself be an entity as, for every entity we can name, the question of its being still remains. Even modern discussions of 'necessary' and 'contingent' beings (as they relate to God or mathematical propositions) still pass over this point--the being of beings, whether they are necessary or contingent, has not been addressed but merely assumed (see ¶1).

Since it is being that we are asking about and being is understood as the "being of entities," we must initially turn to entities; entities are "what [are] interrogated" (Ibid). But if we are able to use beings as our basis for interrogating being, then it must be the case that beings are accessible to us "as they are in themselves." Thus, in asking about being, we must understand how it is that we access beings. But this raises a question: what being are we to interrogate, when everything (or every thing) that we speak of is a being? In looking at every being, there is one that has priority: Dasein, that which each of us is.

Looking at something, understanding and conceiving it, choosing, access to it--all these ways of behaving are constitutive for our inquiry, and therefore are modes of being for those particular entities which we, the inquirers, are ourselves. Thus to work out the question of being adequately, we must make an entity--the inquirer--transparent in his own being. The very asking of this question is an entity's mode of being; and as such it gets its essential character from what is inquired about--namely, being. (27/H7)

It might be immediately objected that this approach is circular: we are trying to understand an entity in its being so that we can "formulate" the question of being? This supposed circularity is inescapable when we are trying to find "first principles," but the charge is equally groundless. Heidegger has two reasons for making this assertion: first, it must be accepted that "first principles" will be in effect in any endeavor we make, so we cannot even raise the question of their meaning without invoking them (in this he is quite close to Kant). Second, as argued in the first section, our understanding of being is currently deficient and, hence, cannot be used circularly. He succinctly states this:

One can determine the nature of entities in their being without necessarily having the explicit concept of the meaning of being at one's disposal. Otherwise there could have been no ontological knowledge heretofore... The 'presupposing' of being has rather the character of taking a look at it beforehand, so that in the light of it the entities presented to us get provisionally articulated in their being. (27/H7-8)

An understanding of being, no matter how provisional, is a positive constituent of Dasein's being as seen in the fact that Dasein is that being that intelligibly speaks of being. Thus, there is no "circular argument" in raising the question of being in this way: we are not assuming a concept of being and then proving it by examining Dasein; rather, we are "laying bare the grounds for [answering the question about the meaning of being] and exhibiting them" (28/H8), which ground is that being that understands being. To quickly restate the argument: Dasein is that being that has an understanding of the meaning of being, hence it is important to understand how that being comes to this understanding so that we can unearth the grounds on which its understanding rest.

We may speak of our questioning of the meaning of being as a "'relatedness backward or forward' which what we are asking about (being) bears to the inquiry itself as a mode of being of an entity [Dasein]" (Ibid). We relate "back" by examining our currently vague understanding of being; we relate "forward" by interrogating a being in its being (Dasein) in order to further clarify our current understanding. We have already seen this in Heidegger's exposition of the mode of being of questioning: it is constituted by "what is asked about," "that which is interrogated," and "that which is to be found out by the interrogation." Not only does this mode of being have an explicitly temporal character, but it also exemplifies an intentional character that will later be seen in Dasein's "care structure" (see Part I Chapter VI). But we have yet to make explicit Dasein's special relation to the question of being--why Dasein itself has a privileged position in our interrogation--though we have already spoken about it in terms of Dasein's understanding of being.

Read more!

¶1. The Necessity for Explicitly Restating the Question of Being

This was my first (and last) post at this summer's Being and Time reading group. I don't think we had a clear enough plan on who was posting what and when, which slowed down the blog and lead to its (generally) quick demise. As I've been wanting to closely work through B&T, I thought I'd place it here as a beginning of a set of entries that summarize that important text.

Throughout I will be using mostly Macquarrie and Robinson's translation. I do have electronic access to Stambaugh's translation, but do not think that I will use it much. So, unless indicated otherwise, the translation that I am working with will be Macquarrie and Robinson. All in-text references will begin with the page number in the translation followed by the page number in the German text, designated by an "H" (e.g. 81/H55). Today I will finally purchase Sein und Zeit (I've been trying to find a way to get a copy without paying outrageous international shipping costs for a few years), which I hope to utilize throughout. Feel free to ask questions, give non-B&T references, etc.

Heidegger begins with his infamous claim that "[The Question of being¹] has today been forgotten" (M&R 21/H2). This should be strange to us as this question is not just any question, but the one that motivated Plato and Aristotle as the primary question of philosophy. Since then the question has gone through many "alterations" and "retouchings" after which "what [Plato and Aristotle] wrested with the utmost intellectual effort from the phenomena, fragmentary and incipient though it was, has long since become trivialized" (21/H2). Heidegger believes that there are three "dogmas" about being that have contributed to this decline:

1. Being is thought to the "most universal concept."
2. Being is thought to be indefinable.
3. Being is thought to be self-evident.

For the first, quoting Aquinas: "An understanding of being is already included in conceiving anything which one apprehends in entities" (Summa Theologica 11:1 Q.94 Art.2; 22/H3).² Thus being applies in some sense to everything. But here the universality is not thought in the sense of a class or genus, but transcends any genus. Aristotle himself saw the 'universality' of being to be analogous to the universality of a genus/class, but not reducible to one. This "put the problem of being on what was, in principle, a new basis" (22/H3). This, as Heidegger will later put it, is the "ontological difference"--the difference between being and beings, or, rather, the claim that being is not a being and should not be treated as one. This idea continued , though in an imprecise way, in philosophy through the Thomists, the Scotists (probably the two greatest early influences in Heidegger's thought), and even in Hegel, "except that he no longer pays heed to Aristotle's problem of the unity of beings as over against the multiplicity of 'categories' applicable to things" (23/H3).

So if it is said that 'being' is the most universal concept, this cannot mean that it is the one which is clearest or that it needs no further discussion. It is rather the darkest of all. (23/H3)

For the second, if it is the case that being is not the same thing as beings, then it cannot be defined or understood as beings are. Furthermore, as the most universal concept, we cannot understand being in terms of anything else; it is the ground of things and, thus, should not be thought of in terms of them. I think Heidegger puts it best:

We can infer only that 'being' cannot have the character of an entity. Thus we cannot apply to being the concept of 'definition' as presented in traditional logic [i.e. in terms of properties], which itself has its foundations in ancient ontology and which, within certain limits, provides a justifiable way of characterizing "entities". The indefinability of being does not eliminate the question of its meaning; it demands that we look that question in the face. (23/H4)

Here is the first intimation that we must move beyond logic and the traditional metaphysic in asking the question of being: it must transcend our usual ways of discussing things. As the Western tradition has focused so exclusively on beings instead of being, we cannot depend on its formulations. This does not make it useless, by any means, but we cannot simply refer to the usual formulations and constructions as if they were self-evidently true.

For the third, it is readily recognized that we constantly use the copula (i.e. "is") in our interactions with and discussions about beings: it pervades our language and we cannot help but use it. Thus we start this investigation with some understanding of being, but this understanding is "an average kind of intelligibility, which merely demonstrates that this is unintelligible" (23/H4). This demonstrates an "a priori...enigma"--that we understand being but view it as unintelligible.

The very fact that we already live in an understanding of being and that the meaning of being is still veiled in darkness proves that it is necessary in principle to raise this question again. (23/H4)

From the above we see that appealing to the self-evident nature of being is "a dubious procedure" since that which is self-evident is to become "the sole explicit and abiding theme for one's analytic--'the business of philosophers' (23-24/H4). Because of this we cannot simply let the matter lay where it is in its self-evident obscurity and calling it self-evident does not negate this obscurity. Simply looking at these three common conceptions of being demonstrates that the question of being has remained unanswered. If we are to revive it, "we must first work out an adequate way of formulating it" (24/H4), as the traditional formulations are obviously lacking.

Notes:

1. I will not follow M&R's pension to capitalize "Being." There is a danger in using the title case for being in that one might then think of it in terms of beings (perhaps as the greatest being--God, Nature, etc.), which is one of the central mistakes in Western thought according to Heidegger. Regardless, it should be obvious when I am referring to "beings" and when I am speaking of "being."
2. M&R quote an alternative translation: "For that which, before aught else, falls under apprehension, is being, the notion of which is included in all things whatsoever a man apprehends" (Thomas Baker, trans.; see here for the full reference). Aquinas, in the same reference, states, "'being' is the first thing that falls under the apprehension simply."

Read more!

Being and Time Reading Blog Started

Just thought I'd drop a note and say that the Being and Time reading blog was begun with a summary of ¶1 by me. As I want to increase reading for that blog, I won't post them here, though I am keeping each summary and might post them here at a later date. So come on over and comment!

Read more!

Outline for "Origin of the Work of Art"

Timothy Quigley, Associate Director of the General Studies Bachelor's Program at New York's The New School, provides a good outline of Heidegger's "Origin of the Work of Art." You might also want to check out his blog, Asymptote, that deals mostly with art/aesthetics; quite interesting.

Read more!

On the Essence of Truth--The Essence of Truth

5. The Essence of Truth
“The essence of truth reveals itself as freedom.” Freedom, we may recall, has an ek-sistent character--it stands outside itself by disclosing beings. Every comportment “flourishes in letting beings be” and is always going to be concerned in any particular instance with some particular being. But comportment itself goes beyond any particular being; it is “attuned” (Stimmung) to “beings as a whole.” It is from this more basic (or, for Heidegger, the most basic) attunement that any given disclosure of a being as a being occurs. As such, attunement can never be reduced to some “experience” or “feeling” as such particular (ontic) designations cover over attunement’s (ontological) essence. By reducing attunement to such things [129] attunement is understood in terms of something other than itself, which understanding can prevail only by sustaining this distorted understanding of attunement. This can easily be seen when we understand that any particular “experience” or “feeling” is possible only because man is essentially attuned to beings as a whole. What has been lost (or “forgotten,” as Heidegger will later put it) is our understanding of this attunement. This is because “[t]he openedness of being as a whole does not coincide with the sum of all immediately familiar beings.” In fact, it is often where beings are not familiar that our essential openness to beings as a whole “can prevail more essentially.” When we are dealing with everyday objects we do not question their being; their use is obvious and we see no reason to question or see the openness in which they appear as common objects (compare 116).

Precisely in the leveling and planning of this omniscience, this mere knowing, the openedness of beings gets flattened out into the apparent nothingness of what is no longer even a matter of indifference, but rather is simply forgotten.

Freedom, as an attunement to beings as a whole that lets beings be what they are, “prevails throughout and anticipates all the open comportment that flourishes in it.” As the ontological/existential essence of the appearing of any particular being, freedom as openness enables the appearing of beings and continually sustains each appearing, thereby making correctness/accordance possible. The “as a whole,” as it is understood here, will seem to be “incalculable and incomprehensible” to our modern conceptions; we cannot understand it in terms of how beings are revealed today, for “[a]lthough [comportment] ceaselessly brings everything into definite accord, still it remains indefinite, indeterminable; it then coincides for the most part with what is most fleeting and most unconsidered.” While this is true, the indeterminable aspect of comportment as openness to beings as a whole cannot be reduced to “nothing” or some empty formality (as in a transcendental unity of apperception), but must be given a positive meaning (as with “letting be”): every comportment of a being is also “a concealing of beings as a whole.”

Precisely because letting be always lets beings be in a particular comportment [130] that relates to them and thus discloses them, it conceals beings as a whole. Letting-be is intrinsically at the same time a concealing.

Every unconcealing of a being as something in particular conceals other ways that that being can be unconcealed. By doing so it conceals “beings as a whole,” or the open comportment that lets beings appear (see 127), forgetting the manner of its showing as presencing through unconcealment in preference to what is shown. By doing so man forgets the basis of every appearing and takes as self-evident a given mode of comportment and a particular way of appearing (see 115-116). As every unconcealing is a concealing, every aletheia is a lethe, untruth must be part of our analysis and cannot simply be ignored (see 119). We must, then, understand untruth positively as concealment/concealing.

Read more!

Being and Time Reading Blog

Jon Thysell and Rufus just started a Being and Time reading blog for the summer. Anyone interested in joining should! I'll be there.

Read more!

On the Essence of Truth--The Essence of Freedom

4. The Essence of Freedom
From the analysis already given we have little reason to give much credence to these criticisms, though we must be prepared for “a transformation of thinking” as we address what is lacking. Addressing the essence of freedom demands that we now examine “the essence of man in a regard that assures us an experience of a concealed essential ground of man (of Dasein) [this “ground” being freedom], and in such a manner that the experience transposes us in advance into the originally essential domain of truth.” One of the surprising claims Heidegger will make is that, if anything, freedom possess man, not the other way around: freedom is the ground upon which man must stand or, better put, man is freedom (later, Ereignis). Freedom allows for “the [125] inner possibility of correctness” because its own essence is found in “the more original essence of uniquely essential truth” which is open comportment that presences beings (see 122).

Recall that freedom was first spoken of as “freedom for what is opened up in an open region.” That which is “opened up” are beings (see 121-122) and these beings appear only within an open comportment that ‘creates a space’ wherein beings can appear.³ As the ground of this opening, the essence of freedom consists in “letting beings be” as they are. We usually speak of “letting be” in a negative sense in terms of relinquishing action; we do not ‘deal’ with something, but simply ‘let it be.’ But the notion of freedom we’ve given here, in terms of presencing beings (i.e. making beings present in an opening), does not allow for this negative definition: “To let be is to engage oneself with beings.” By letting beings be, we are open to beings in such a way that the beings can appear as they are. In other words, freedom is the capacity to allow beings to appear as they are, not as we would want them to be or as some preconceived theory demands. No other ground would allow us to make beings “the standard for the presentative correspondence” (122) as any predetermination on how beings can appear would, by definition, not let them appear as they are. The necessity of this should be apparent.

In the beginning of philosophy, the term used for the “open region” was ta alethea, or (literally translated) the unconcealed (a-lethea). Our use of a literal translation is not capricious; rather the literal translation “contains the directive⁴ to rethink the ordinary concept of truth in the sense of the correctness of statements and to think it back to that still uncomprehended disclosedness and disclosure of beings.” Disclosing beings through open comportment is to engage with beings in such a way that one’s preconceptions (see 118-119) withdraw so that beings can “reveal themselves with respect to what and how they are, and in order that representative correspondence might take its standard from them.” If it were the case that beings could only appear as they are constrained by our preconceptions (perhaps in a Kantian sense), then we would be incapable of letting beings be and we could not allow beings the privilege of being the “standard” for propositions. This “letting-be,” then, is [126] “intrinsically exposing, ek-sistent,” it is essentially tied to that which is transcendent from itself--being/beings.

With this understanding, freedom is not mere capriciousness or the absence of constraint (negative freedom); “[p]rior to all this...freedom is engagement in the disclosure of beings as such.” The disclosing itself, in its ek-static character, is preserved in comportment and even defines what it is, as “the ‘there’ [‘Da’].” By being Da-sein (literally, there-being, or being-there), by being and establishing a “there” (a context), man is able to exist, not in the sense of simply being present at a spatiotemporal coordinate nor as “man’s moral endeavor on behalf of his ‘self,’ based on his psychophysical constitution” (possibly alluding to Sartre’s appropriation [or mis-appropriation] of Heidegger’s thought), but being “rooted in truth as freedom” through openness to the disclosure of “beings as such.” On this primordial ground, “the ek-sistence of historical man begins at the moment when the first thinker takes a questioning [i.e. open] stand with regard to the unconcealment of beings by asking: what are beings?” By thus opening himself up to beings and by directing himself to the world around him, “unconcealment is experienced for the first time.” Within this openness, “Being as a whole” is seen in terms of physis, but not yet understood in the sense of a “particular sphere of beings” through mathematics/science, but beings in their “upsurgent presence.” The openness that man is can only be efficacious if there is something that enters into that opening; being/physis, then, is that which exudes, that upsurges, that flows into the opening.[127]

If “ek-sistent Da-sein” is grounded in freedom as the essence of truth and letting beings be, then caprice has no place in freedom. Freedom is constrained by beings, by our ability to disclose beings as they are. Similarly, we cannot say that man “possess” freedom as the opposite is the case: as the “there” (Da) of its being (Sein), openness “possess man” as it “secures for humanity that distinctive relatedness to being as a whole as such” which makes man what he is. Freedom, as disclosure (as Heidegger will later put it, as appropriation [Ereignis]) of beings, makes man what he is; he is understood in terms of his comportment with beings--as a teacher among students, blackboards, lessons, assignments, etc.; as a construction worker among buildings, power tools, foremen, engineering, etc.; as a Christian among rites, scriptures, beliefs, etc.--and cannot ‘be’ anything apart from this comportment, apart from some context (Da). This contextuality is what binds together everything we’ve already discussed:

Freedom, understood as letting beings be, is the fulfillment and consummation of the essence of truth in the sense of the disclosure of beings. “Truth” is not a feature of correct propositions which are asserted of an “object” by a human “subject” and then “are valid” somewhere, in what sphere we know not. Rather, truth is disclosure of beings through which an openness essentially unfolds [west]. All human comportment and bearing are exposed in its open region. Therefore man is in the manner of ek-sistence.

Every comportment of man has this openness and directedness toward beings, which thing is possible only through “the restraint of letting-be”--freedom. Similarly, it is only on this ground that correspondence is possible: only if we can let beings appears as they are can we give them the priority needed in correspondence. If man is currently ek-sistent (and he cannot be any other way), then he now possesses man’s “essential possibilities” through “the disclosure of beings as a whole”; the basic openness to beings, found in comportment through freedom, is available to all and is even the ground of history itself. It is the manner in which truth is unfolded through comportment at various points in history that creates an epoch, but the essence of comportment remains the same (which has been forgotten in technology). It is because things have been unconcealed as ‘resources’ that the ‘atomic age’ came about through such things as the Industrial Revolution (though, as we have seen, this manner of unconcealing began at least in the theism of the Middle Ages [see 118-119]).

If we understand truth’s essence as freedom, we must also admit to the possibility that “man can, in letting beings be, also not let beings be the beings which they are and as they are.” In this case, beings are covered (lethe) and mere “semblance” is made possible--a being can appear like something else in its appearing. “In [freedom] the nonessence of truth comes to the fore.” Since “ek-sistent freedom” is not [128] a property of man (see 127), as this ecstatic (etymologically--being outside oneself; ek--out--and stasis--place) freedom is itself what facilitates his historical mode of being, truth’s “nonessence” does not first appear because of man’s “incapacity and negligence” but derives its very essence from truth itself. In fact, it is because truth and untruth “belong together”⁵ that we can compare a true proposition with a false proposition. We now begin to see truth in a more essential way by including untruth in its essence; untruth does not fulfill this essential role by filling in gaps, but it plays an important role in “an adequate posing of the question concerning the essence of truth.” We have moved in our discussion from correctness (as the “usual concept of truth”) to the need of ecstatic (ek-sistent) comportment (which essentially includes man and being) to the place of freedom (which allows beings to appear as they are) and now we need to examine how untruth belongs to truth and freedom. Heidegger gives us a hint: “If the essence of truth is not exhausted by the correctness of the statement [requiring, as we have seen, presencing by open comportment which is made possible by freedom], then neither can untruth be equated with the incorrectness of judgments.”

Notes:

3. A comment from “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” might help us understand Heidegger’s point:

   We call this openness that grants a possible letting-appear and show “opening.” In the history of language the German word Lichtung is a translation derived from the French clairiere. It is formed in accordance with the older words Waldung (foresting) and Feldung> (fielding).

   The forest clearing (or opening) is experienced in contrast to dense forest, called Dickung in our older language. The substantive “opening” [Lichtung] goes back to the verb “open” [lichten]. The adjective licht “open” is the same word as “light.” To open something means: To make something light, free and open, e.g., to make the forest free of trees at one place. The openness thus originating is the clearing. What is light in the sense of being free and open has nothing in common with the adjective “light,” meaning “bright”--neither linguistically nor factually. This is to be observed for the difference between openness and light. Still, it is possible that a factual relation between the two exists. Light can stream into the clearing, into its openness, and let brightness play with darkness in it. But light never first creates openness. Rather, light presupposes openness. However, the clearing, the opening, is not only free for brightness and darkness, but also for resonance and echo, for sounding and the diminishing of sound. The clearing is the open region for everything that becomes present and absent.
   Joan Stambaugh, trans., in On Time and Being (New York: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 65.

   Light cannot penetrate a dense forest; a clearing, or opening, is needed for the light to appear. As such, man is the opening in which beings appear, the clearing that being can enter.

4. Heidegger is not dabbling in ‘word mysticism,’ but is being consistent with his own philosophy: he is letting language direct him towards being. Aletheia is one term that the ancients used to discuss truth (or, as the later Heidegger viewed it, the essence of truth [i.e. open comportment]) and perhaps, as is the nature of language, it is directing us towards being in a certain way, allowing us to see being more primordially. A critic, then, must not focus on Heidegger’s drawing upon ancient Greek itself and his (often) poor etymology, but either on Heidegger’s understanding of language or what the Greek shows (i.e. makes present) in relation to beings and truth.

5. In “The Principle of Identity,” Heidegger differentiates between “belonging together” (Zusammengehören) and “belonging together” (Zusammengehören). In the former we understand the “belonging” in terms of the “together,” as in just about anything can be placed in the vicinity of each other and hence can be “together.” On the other hand, when we understand the “together” in terms of the “belonging,” we see a tighter essential connection between the two, that they “belong” in their togetherness, or perhaps that they are ‘at home’ with one another (Identity and Difference, Joan Stambaugh, trans. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 29-30). It is the second essential belonging together that Heidegger means here--truth and untruth essentially belong together.

Read more!

On the Essence of Truth--The Ground of the Possibility of Correctness

3. The Ground of the Possibility of Correctness
Heidegger next asks the question: “How can something like the accomplishment of a pregiven directedness [i.e. comportment] occur?” The answer lies in freedom: “To free oneself for a binding directedness is possible only by being free for what is opened up in an open region... The essence of truth is freedom.” This is a notion of freedom that has thus far been “uncomprehended” in the history of philosophy; most discussion of freedom is spoken of in terms of ‘freedom from’ (or ‘negative freedom’), leaving us with the question of what is freedom for (‘positive freedom’)? For Heidegger, this means that existential freedom is an ubiquitous but ‘unthought’ ontological assumption within philosophy. As an existential ground for truth, freedom in this sense must be present in every truthful utterance or proposition. But Heidegger is not claiming that freedom is “an unconstrained act” of giving or receiving a proposition, as if freedom were restricted to such actions. Rather, “freedom is the essence of truth”; just as comportment grounds the possibility of accordance, freedom is the ground for the possibility of comportment. Hence, “essence” means “the ground of the inner possibility of what is initially and generally admitted as known [i.e. correctness].”

Does Heidegger mean that truth is merely a subjective whim based on “human caprice”? [124] It appears as if truth has been “driven back to the subjectivity of the human subject,” losing its connection with the world. This possibility is strengthened when we readily admit that all sorts of falsehood--“deceit and dissimulation, lies and deception, illusion and semblance”--are attributable to humans. Previously, though, we defined truth in relation to accordance, so referencing the human basis of error seems irrelevant: “This human origin of untruth indeed only serves to confirm by contrast the essence of truth ‘in itself’ as holding sway ‘beyond’ man,” perhaps in some “imperishable and eternal” world. Truth seems to exist in some extra-human world, perhaps in the intellectus divinus or, as more recent theorists propose, in independently existing propositions/universals. But this resistance to freedom as the essence of truth “is based on preconceptions, the most obstinate of which is that freedom is a property of man.” Since “[e]veryone knows what man is,” any further questioning seems unnecessary. Here we see the same roadblocks that we had in relation to truth: stubborn “common sense” and an indifference to the question.

Read more!

Omitted Translation in "The Principle of Identity"

Lately I've been working on an interlinear version of Heidegger's “The Principle of Identity” (found in Identity and Difference, Joan Stambaugh, trans. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1969)). In the process I discovered that Stambaugh did not translate two sentences (in bold):

Der Name für die Versammlung des Herausforderns, das Mensch und Sein einander so zu-stellt, daβ sie sich wechselweise stellen, lautet: das Ge-Stell. Man hat sich an diesem Wortgebrauch gestoβen. Aber wir sagen statt «stellen» auch «setzen» und finden nichts dabei, daβ wir das Wort Ge-setz gebrauchen. Warum also nicht auch Ge-Stell, wenn der Blick in den Sachverhalt dies verlangt?
“Der Satz der Identität,” 99.

The first sentence is translated as follows:

The name for the gathering of this challenge which places man and Being face to face in such a way that they challenge each other by turns is “the framework.”

As my German is sub-par, I emailed one of my old professors (who asked to be anonymous). He proposed that Stambaugh probably didn't translate these sentences because “they are a reflection [on] the neologism Ge-Stell that is very difficult to render into English” (Anonymous (personal communication), Thursday, May 18, 2006 10:15 AM). Stambaugh admits as much in the following footnote:

Framework or Frame (Ge-Stell) and event of appropriation (Er-eignis) are perhaps the two key words in this lecture. They are extremely difficult to translate. “Ge-Stell” in the sense in which Heidegger uses it does not belong to common language. In German, “Berg” means a mountain, “Geberge” means a chain or group of mountains. In the same way “Ge-Stell” is the unity (but not a unity in the sense of a general whole subsuming all particulars under it) of all the activities in which the verb “stellen” (place, put, set) figures: vor-stellen (represent, think), stellen (challenge), ent-stellen (disfigure), nach-stellen (to be after someone, pursue him stealthily), sicher-stellen (to make certain of something).
“Introduction,” in Identity and Difference, 14.

With that, my professor proposed the following “rough translation”:

One takes exception to this use of words. But we say instead of “place” (stellen) also “put” (setzen) and think nothing about the fact that we use the word “Ge-setz” (law). Therefore why not also Ge-Stell, when the view into the facts demands this?
Anonymous (personal communication).

Here, then, Heidegger seems to be making a case for his use of the neologism Ge-Stell, despite its non-existence in German. Then again, what else can he do when the idea that he is proposing cannot be adequately understood with already-existing terms that themselves are probably infused with the metaphysical worldview that he is critiquing? Such is a danger of letting “the matter speak for itself” (“The Principle of Identity,” 29)--it might speak something that is quite foreign to our usual concepts.

Read more!

On the Essence of Truth--The Inner Possibility of Accordance

2. The Inner Possibility of Accordance
We speak of accordance in a number of ways: two coins on the table can be said to accord because they materially resemble each other, both in composition and form. But we also speak of accordance when we say, “The coin is round.” But how does the proposition accord with the object? It obviously cannot be like the first correspondence, that they are materially similar:

Now the relation obtains, not between thing and thing, but rather between a statement and a thing. But wherein are the thing and the statement supposed to be in accordance, considering that the relata are manifestly different in their outward appearance? The coin is made of metal. The statement is not material at all. The coin is round. The statement has nothing at all spatial about it. With the coin something can be purchased. The statement about it is never a means of payment.

We then ask the question: “How can what is completely dissimilar, the statement, correspond to the coin?” [121] The proposition could not become the coin without changing its nature; we must retain the proposition as a proposition. So, the relation must consist in something else; unless we can make this relation explicit then all talk of correspondence is meaningless.

The proposition “relates ‘itself’ to the thing in that it presents [vor-stellt] it and says of the presented how, according to the particular perspective that guides it, it is disposed.” “[T]o present” means to let the thing stand out as an object, as something (or some thing)--as a dog, as a mathematical equation, as a piece of art, etc. As it stands out, the object also “withstands” or is “opposed” to me: it is there, opposite me, and presents itself in its solidarity, singularity, and presence.² Furthermore, this object only appears “within an open region” that precedes the appearing, which region is defined as “a domain of relatedness.” Within this domain entities are related and contextualized in terms of human comportments: the hammer is intelligible in the domain of construction, nails, wood, needs/desires (for shelter, convenience, as a job), etc. from which it gains its identity and meaning. From the above, the relation between the proposition and the thing is “the accomplishment” of the presencing (or making present) of the being through comportment.

Comportment is understood in terms of its ‘adherence’ to something, [122] namely what is made present, or “being.” Unlike Husserlian comportment that is related to subjective sense data, Heidegger sees comportment as being essentially towards beings that transcend the individual and her consciousness. “Every relatedness is a comportment,” or every relatedness is a gathering together of beings into a context whereby they are not made merely spatially present (spatial coordination to the other objects is not even necessary), but they are related in their manner of being--the hammer’s hardness is related to the hardness of the nails and wood, which is related to the nature of construction/building, etc. How man comports towards beings depends on the beings he is directing himself towards and the manner of his comportment. For example, hammers and pens each allow for different uses, hence they each determine how I can use them; similarly, the mode of my comportment will vary if I am playing soccer rather than playing chess, as each requires a different way of relating to the world (and confusing them will cause problems in doing either). It is only in this “open region” of comportment that beings first appear, which itself is a necessary precursor to saying things--making propositions--about beings.

This can occur only if beings present themselves along with the representative statement so that the latter subordinates itself to the directive that it speaks of beings such-as they are. In following such a directive the statement conforms to beings.

A statement can be “correct” only insofar as it opens up a region (and occurs within an open region; one must inhabit an open region in order to open up another region), through comportment, in which beings can appear in the manner prescribed by the statement. “Open comportment must let itself be assigned this standard,” even prior to any “pregiven standard for all presenting” (compare 117-119). Since this open comportment is itself the ground for the appearing of beings, of making propositions about beings, and the correctness of a proposition, then comportment itself “must with more original right be taken as the essence of truth.” Not only this, but open comportment also aligns us with the privative meaning of aletheia--the active un-concealing of beings, the presencing of that which is remote--which is missing from the usual understanding of truth. With this more primordial understanding, the traditional assumption that truth essentially deals with propositions is fundamentally faulty: “Truth does not originally reside in the proposition,” but necessarily comes both before and after it; before, because beings must appear prior to our propositions, and after, because the truth of the proposition itself depends on comportment making beings present (presencing beings). But this raises another question concerning the ground of this “inner possibility of correctness,” whereby it itself is made possible. [123]

Notes:

2. This is the resistance of the “earth” to being controlled by a “world,” or the excess of beings in terms of any way we can make them “present” (see “Origin of the Work of Art”). It withstands any attempt to dominate it, or subsume it under a single interpretation. Within this lecture, this shows itself in terms of “untruth” and the “mystery of being.”

Read more!

On the Essence of Truth--The Usual Concept of Truth

1. The Usual Concept of Truth
We ordinarily understand truth as “what [117] makes a true thing true.” From this, “[t]he true is the actual.” For example, we can detect true gold from fools gold because the latter is “merely a ‘semblance’,” it only looks like gold, whereas true gold actually is gold. But we cannot base our understanding in terms of ‘actuality’ since the fools gold also is also something “actual,” even if it is not “genuine” gold. What, then, do the terms “genuine” and “true” mean? It is often spoken of in terms of “accordance”--that the object conforms to our understanding of what “gold” is.

Genuine gold is that actual gold the actuality of which is in accordance [in der Übereinstimmung steht] with what, always and in advance, we “properly” mean by “gold.” Conversely, wherever we suspect false gold, we say: “Here something is not in accord” [stimmt nicht]. On the other hand, we say of whatever is “as it should be”: “It is in accord.” The matter is in accord [Die S a c h e stimmt].

This raises another issue: we do not only call facts/objects (“the matter”) “true,” but also “our statements about beings.” Thus, a proposition is true if “what it means and says is in accordance with the matter about which the statement is made.” But in this case, contrary to our previous exposition, it is the proposition, not the matter, that is “in accord.” Whereas before we were concerned with whether an object itself is genuine or false according to some established criteria, now we are concerned with whether a proposition that is about an object is genuine or false. Truth, then, is seen in a double relationship: first, that an object accords with a previously understood meaning, and second, that a proposition accords with an object.

Understanding this double nature, truth is that which “accords” in two senses: “on the one hand, the consonance [Einstimmigkeit] of a matter with what is supposed in advance regarding it and, on the other hand, the accordance of what is meant in the statement with the matter.” This is seen in “the traditional definition of truth: veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectūs.” [118] While this is traditionally translated as “truth is the adequation of intellect to thing,” this translation only makes sense on the basis of the “adequation of thing to intellect” (the more literal translation). Either way, both conceptions about “the essence of veritas have continually in view a conforming to... [Sichrichten nach...), and hence think truth as correctness [Richtigkeit].”

We need to understand that these two notions of truth are not mere inversions: depending on which translation we focus on the intellectus and res have different meanings. In its medieval manifestation, the adequation of thing to intellect is not a Kantian transcendental unity of apperception, but the Christian notion that the object, as a creation (ens creatum) of God, “corresponds to the idea preconceived in the intellectus divinus, i.e., in the mind of God, and thus measures up to the idea (is correct) and in this sense is ‘true.’” For the God who micromanages, as he does in traditional Christian thought, this means that everything--every object, event, being, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential--accomplishes some divine intent, some divine telos by virtue of being created by God. The human mind, as a gift from God, must also be adequate according to God’s intent and this intent is only realized in “the correspondence of what is thought to the matter” which, ultimately, returns to the ideas of God. In this way, the human intellect must be able to correspond to the matter in the same way as God’s ideas/intents, “on the basis of the unity of the divine plan of creation.” An object’s ‘true’ meaning depends on where that object fits within God’s plan; it is ordered in terms of the divine intention. With this understanding, “veritas essentially im-[119]plies convenientia, the coming of beings themselves, as created, into agreement with the Creator, an ‘accord’ with regard to the way they are determined in the order of creation.”

This, then, can be generalized: the theologically motivated understanding of creation can be replaced by “the capacity of all objects to be planned by means of a worldly reason [Weltvernunft] which supplies the law for itself and thus also claims that its procedure is immediately intelligible (what is considered ‘logical’).” With this teleological interpretation of the medieval conception of adaequatio rei ad intellectum, truth itself needs no more elucidation: correctness is essentially established by the intent of the agent; even material entities are correct only as they accord “with the ‘rational’ concept of its essence.” This interpretation seems to be far removed from questions of “the Being of all beings” and, thus, it seems to have a self-evident (or fundamental) feel to it: it apparently occurs prior to the question of being (it certainly does in its theological basis) and thus seems to escape any ontological commitments. This is seen in many modern approaches to rationality: it is the formal gateway through which all ontologies must pass, hence it is temporally and logically prior to all existence(s). Furthermore, it seems to account for the fact of untruth: untruth is “the nonaccordance of the statement with the matter.” Since truth is defined by its accordance, any discussion of truth itself can safely ignore the question of untruth. This notion, as Heidegger will later argue, misses the fundamental connection between truth and untruth, concealing their ontological intertwining. It is also worth pointing out the precursors of ‘technology’ in the above: the reduction of the essence of beings to their telic use, as ‘resources’ that are utilized through ‘planning.’

But where can we go from here when this conception of truth [120] seems to be fundamental and “obvious”? In seeing the theological ground for this notion of truth, even “the philosophical definition completely pure of all admixture of theology” is seen as “an old--though not the oldest--tradition of thinking.” With such a pedigree, what is still “worthy of question”? Fundamentally, we have yet to question the notion and nature of the “accordance of a statement with the matter.”

Read more!

On the Essence of Truth--Introduction

The more I read Heidegger’s work the more I realize that his understanding of ‘truth’ is central to understanding his thought as a whole, particularly his later work. As such I want to inaugurate my posting of summaries and commentaries by starting with Heidegger’s On the Essence of Truth (all page references [bolded numbers] taken from John Sallis’ translation in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell, ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 111-138). Many of my own current interests stem from Heideggerian aletheia, so a close study of this work will be good exercise for myself and (hopefully) a good introduction for others.

[NOTE: This is an ongoing project and will be posted by section in line with Heidegger's own work. Also, this is a work-in-progress, so I may make some changes to already-posted sections; I'll let you know if/when that happens.]

Written in 1943 (about a decade after Heidegger’s “turn”), “On the Essence of Truth” stands at a changing point in Heidegger’s understanding of truth, directing us back to his exposition in Being and Time and pointing forward to his reformulation of the idea in “Time and Being” and “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking.” This is seen particularly in his exposition of truth as “freedom” and his discussion of “errancy” and “forgetfulness” (both important for understanding Heidegger’s elucidation of the rise and [possible] ‘end’ of “technology”). Heidegger primarily deals with the correspondence/representational views of truth, attempting to ground it in something more primordial--the appearing of entities.

Introduction
[115]We are discussing “the essence of truth”; not the (ontic) question of the truth of science, of art, or even that of belief, but what truth itself is (ontologically). Some might think that this too abstract; aren’t we depriving truth of its real-world relevance when we push it to such a level of generalization? A philosophy that “turns to what is actual [ontology] must surely from the first insist bluntly on establishing the actual truth that today gives us a measure and a stand against the confusion of opinions and reckonings” (emphasis mine). Here we are thinking of science or modern epistemology with their ‘methods’ for determining and validating the nature of entities: through experimentation, normative rules, verification, logical coherence, etc. While no one can avoid “the evident certainty” of this claim or the seriousness with which it is given, [116] this demand inherently rejects the “essential knowledge” of beings, or philosophy.

“[C]ommon sense” has its own peculiar kind of “necessity” because it appeals to “the ‘obviousness’ of its claims and considerations,” for why should we doubt what ‘everyone’ (das Man) knows? But philosophy itself is defenseless against such, if only for the fact that “common sense” lacks the ability to hear what philosophy has to say. The average person does not want to be questioned, to be excised from their comfortable everyday understanding of things; allow them to be content with what everyone knows, that which does not need to be questioned because it is “obvious.”

[W]e ourselves remain within the sensibleness of common sense to the extent that we suppose ourselves to be secure in those multiform “truths” of practical experience and action, of research, composition, and belief. We ourselves intensify that resistance which the “obvious” has to every demand made by what is questionable.

Because of this, even if do question truth, we want to know “where we stand today” on the issue (compare 115); we want to start with the question of how our current notion of truth developed historically (through “research, composition, and belief”). We look at what philosophers and scientists are saying now and catalogue the possibilities that they have given, trying to find the strongest case among them. In doing so, “we call for the goal that should be posited for man in and for his history” by looking for the “actual ‘truth’” in what has already been accomplished. By putting things in these terms, we intimate that we already know “what truth as such means” and we think that we already have a grasp of it “today,” hence our appeal to the current situation. By looking closer at “where we stand today,” what we already know, what “common sense” dictates, truth is known only “in a general way” and the insistence that we already know what truth means shows our “indifference” to the question.¹ Such are the roadblocks that an examination of the essence of truth comes up against: stubborn “common sense” and a resultant indifference to the question.

Notes:

1. No doubt the philosophers who may read this will think (perhaps ironically, from Heidegger’s point of view) that this claim is patently false: surely ‘truth theory’ in the last century has amounted to more than a “vague” or “general” understanding of truth. Given Heidegger’s approach to philosophy, this may not be the case: much of 20^th century thought on the issue of truth all began from the wrong ground, whether that be logic/rationalism, empiricism, or scientism. By ignoring the question of being, and with it the question of man, modern thought on the question of truth will largely amount to vague generalities that are truly ungrounded. For Heidegger, only a thought that is grounded in being can bring truth-itself to light.

Read more!