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Mark Linsenmayer and Seth Paskin read and interpret Martin Heidegger's essay "On the Essence of Truth" (1943), first half.
This is a 17-minute preview of a two-hour, 38-minute bonus recording, which you can purchase at partiallyexaminedlife.com/store or get for free with PEL Citizenship (see partiallyexaminedlife.com/membership). You can also purchase it at iTunes Store: Search for "Partially Heidegger Truth."
A Close Reading is us going line-by-line through a text trying to figure out what's being said, which less much less agonizing than it sounds.
We've covered another later Heidegger essay, but had a hard time really making sense of his vocabulary, and so the Close Reading strategy is ideal for helping us (and you!) decode this difficult thinker.
Heidegger thinks that the traditional correspondence theory of truth somehow begs the question of what truth actually is. For Heidegger, the truth of sentences is derivative of the truth of beings, e.g. the difference between true gold and false gold is more fundamental than the sentence "this gold is true gold" being true or false. So what makes us call true gold true? Listen and see if you think Heidegger can give an alternative account that's more informative than correspondence theory and which doesn't itself somehow rely on the notion of truth. You may well want to throw up your hands and say that truth is simply fundamental and undefinable... but then I bet you'd say the same about being, wouldn't you? Heidegger wouldn't.
To read along, you can get ahold of a copy of Heidegger's Basic Writings
Luther Blissett says
February 23, 2015 at 10:36 amI think that to understand Heidegger’s contributions to our notion of truth, you first have to explain Aristotle’s. For Aristotle, too, “the truth of sentences is derivative of the truth of beings”, or, to put it more simply, truth-as-correspondence-between-beings, depends on truth-as-assertion-about-beings. Only once that’s clear, can Heidegger’s question, what makes truth-as-assertion possible?, emerge.
Wayne Schroeder says
February 25, 2015 at 12:06 pmLuther, how does “assertion” change Aristotle’s equation of truth in relationship to Heidegger?
Luther Blissett says
February 26, 2015 at 5:43 pmAristotle said, there’s truth as correspondence,
which depends on truth as assertion,
which, Heidegger said, depends on what makes truth as assertion possible.
Thinking about it some more, there’s another depends.
In order to assert a truth, about things,
the things must appear to us in a meaningful way
(Phenomenology, which Aristotle said shows up for us in logos, the truth of sentences),
which, Heidegger said, depends on what make phenomena possible.
Wayne Schroeder says
February 27, 2015 at 2:02 amAs Mark said, “Heidegger thinks that the traditional correspondence theory of truth somehow begs the question of what truth actually is.” Heidegger is all about Being, yes “appearing to us in a meaningful way, ” Being as the truth of being and beings, rather than of correspondence or of truth of sentences.
dmf says
February 27, 2015 at 9:46 amhttp://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2015/02/reflections-on-thomas-sheehans-making-sense-of-heidegger.html
Wayne Schroeder says
February 28, 2015 at 2:30 am“We shall first ask what it means to say that an assertion is true. . . assertion makes that which is talked about accessible . . . the hearer is not directed toward words or meanings or the psychical processes of the communicator . . . but toward the entity talked about . . . in its specific being (So-sein). . . This unveiling, which is the basic function of assertion, constitutes the character traditionally designated as being-true. . . The unveiling of the being that we ourselves are, the Dasein . . .we shall call . . . disclosure, opening up.” The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, p. 215
dmf says
February 24, 2015 at 11:19 amrecording this sort of reading is a real public service, will be interesting to see how it gets picked up or not, thanks for making the effort guys
Emma Hibling says
February 24, 2015 at 4:07 pmI found this both interesting and very helpful. I hope you get anough interest to tackle the second half.
Randy says
February 28, 2015 at 2:53 pmI’m not sure the opinion on mediation via the mind of God at the end of this preview is correct. It almost implies a form of monism. It’s painting with a very broad brush to talk of Heidegger’s text as referring to “Medieval” thought. What I heard here is roughly Augustinian. In my opinion, the stuff on ens creatum refers to created things which, as imperfections (i.e., they were created and hence not perfect, in the Aristotelian sense) DO correspond to the human mind in cognition (which also is an ens creatum), albeit in an imperfect way. But, the certain truth of that correspondence must ultimately rely on divine illumination. The mind, despite being illuminated by God when ascertaining truth, isn’t *participating* in the mind of God. A created (imperfect) being couldn’t have access to an uncreated (perfect) being.
DanLanglois says
February 28, 2015 at 3:41 pmHeidegger can be suspiciously beguiling. He functions like he has a sense of humor, though I don’t think he’s conscious of one. But he has a way of adding mystique and freshness to what otherwise might be common sense truisms. It’s not quite a common sense truism, though, I suppose, to say that truth or knowledge is a way of encountering objects. Or, again, that what used to be thought of as features of the cosmos—the nous, truth, beauty—are best thought of as features of human reason—modes or ways of thinking about or apprehending the world. Investigating our different and irreducibly different ways of encountering the world is different than investigating ‘its unity’ — the original unity of the world — a great God, if you will, as the unity — the world as seen from the perspective of God. This is exactly what I find in Heidegger, the idea that what we are interested in is the world as seen from our own perspective.
He wants to think the problem of the meaning of the world as the ways in which human beings approach or encounter the world; the ways in which we take it up. His point is about what is the question, what is the topic.
aleksi says
March 26, 2015 at 6:18 amI suppose that Heidegger is talking about impossibiliti for humav
n being to create a discloseness, Dasein is a person who existence near of the being.