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Heidegger on Truth as Opening Possibilities

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Heidegger and his Anglo-American Reception

Part of the book series: Contributions to Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 119))

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Abstract

In order to understand Heidegger’s notion of truth, we have to distinguish between evaluations of sentences or assertions as correct according to some formal criteria for evaluations of acts of material thinking that refer directly to my world of living experience or indirectly to the world of objective things and matters, as we may say. The distinction between merely formal truth and material truth should already be clear to anybody who knows enough about our schematic definitions of abstract truth-values for mathematical sentences. Systems of such sentences define, as we learn from Gottlob Frege, purely sortal domains of entities (such as pure numbers, sets or courses-of-values) and relations (like the ordering of numbers and the so-called element relation). Without analogical projections onto our world of practical interaction with our environment, no structure of this sort says anything about me or about the world.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I talk about a sortal domain here if we (can) presuppose a relatively fixed system of naming devices (as expressions like number terms t, t* or as designations in utterances by which we can refer to this stone in contrast to that one etc.) We also have to assume a fixed system of (relational) predicates φ(x) about the objects named (like t < t* for numbers) together with an equality (like t = t* and such that φ(t) holds if an only if φ(t*) holds). Only in (semi-)sortal domains of individuals as, for example, a class of living animals at a certain time and place do we arrive at sufficiently clear definitions of sets.

  2. 2.

    Karl Bühler introduced the German adjective ‘empraktisch’ in his book Sprachtheorie as a neologism to designate a holistic embedding in an institutionally formed practice. It replaces the word ‘implicit’ in such contexts since this word misleadingly suggests that practical forms in actions could be made explicit without any rest. Alva Noë and others use today the English neologism ‘enactive’ in a similar way, though only in order to express pre-established connections between animal sensations (resp. perception) and animal behavior. See Bühler, Sprachtheorie and Noë, Actions in Perception.

  3. 3.

    Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, § 44, 222; cf. also Skirbekk, Wahrheitstheorien, 422.

  4. 4.

    Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.

  5. 5.

    Habermas, “Wahrheitstheorien”.

  6. 6.

    Brandom, Making It Explicit.

  7. 7.

    Parmenides, 2014, Vom Wesen des Seienden and Stekeler-Weithofer “The Way of Truth.”

  8. 8.

    On the role of expectation and fulfilment, cf. Edmund Husserl‘s famous sixth Logical Investigation, 573.

  9. 9.

    Heraclitus, Frgm. 123.

  10. 10.

    McDowell, Mind and World. Cf. also Mind, Value, and Reality and Meaning, Knowledge, and Reality.

  11. 11.

    Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind and “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man.”

  12. 12.

    Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie, 65.

  13. 13.

    For Heidegger’s neologism see e.g. Beiträge §§ 37–38.

  14. 14.

    Bennett, The Act Itself.

  15. 15.

    Davidson, Essay on Actions and Events and Dretske, Explaining Behaviour.

  16. 16.

    For Husserl‘s analysis of performative acts of meaning in contrast to the ideal unity of meaning (as an object of reflection or logical form-analysis), see Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, vol. 2, I. part, chpt. I, §§ 31–35, 104–110.

  17. 17.

    Tugendhat, “Heideggers Idee von Wahrheit.” Tugendhat is especially wrong to say on page 443 that it is Heidegger and not rather Frege and his mathematical logic that gives a new meaning to the words ‘true,’ ‘truth,’ and ‘truth-value.’

  18. 18.

    Cf. Skirbekk, 446.

  19. 19.

    Neurath, “Physikalismus” and “Radikaler Physikalismus und‚ Wirkliche Welt.”

  20. 20.

    McDowell, Having the World in View and The Engaged lntellect.

  21. 21.

    This holds for the constructions of today’s formal epistemologists as well, e.g. for Williamson’s Knowledge and its Limits. Their talking about absolute truth thus refers, ironically, to some non-real, ideal or mystified pseudo-knowledge of a counterfactual, divine person, a god.

  22. 22.

    With respect to Husserl’s own anti-psychologistic criticism of evidence with regard to “logic as a theory of evidence,” cf. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, vol. 1, § 49 = Gesammelte Schriften 2, 183–195.

  23. 23.

    Husserl, Die Krisis.

  24. 24.

    We have defined (semi-)sortal domains above as classes with individuals as members that allow for sufficiently clear definitions of subsets, pairings, relations and functions as we know them from mathematics.

  25. 25.

    Ontic existence presupposes a logical constitution of what it is and where it is at a certain time. This holds for objective things as well as for empirical processes or events, not for situation-general statements or laws. Their truth is generic, conceptual. Empirical ‘truth-conditions’ define how to evaluate empirical claims a posteriori as true, for example, the claim that right now a crow is sitting on the tree in front of my window—which might turn out wrong if the seeming crow shall be shown to be a raven.

  26. 26.

    Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Wahrheit.

  27. 27.

    Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, 13.

  28. 28.

    Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2. Vol., II. part = Husserl, Gesammelte Schriften 4, 535.

  29. 29.

    Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2. Vol., II. part = Husserl, Gesammelte Schriften 4, 402.

  30. 30.

    Frege, “Über Begriff und Gegenstand,” 196; also in Frege, Funktion, Begriff, Bedeutung, 70 (transl. PSW). On pp. 59 f., Frege declares that words like ‘although’ and ‘however’ are just variants of the word ‘and.’ By assuming that they only express additional subjective surprises, Frege misses the non-monotonic logic of the word ‘but’ as a signal for the logical form of privation.

  31. 31.

    Aristotle addresses the logical form of privation under the label ‘steresis.’

  32. 32.

    However, artificial meat or milk is no meat or milk at all.

  33. 33.

    Husserl tries to distinguish general ‘objects’ from individual ‘entities,’ as chapter I in section II of his Logische Untersuchungen, vol. 2, I. part shows; see Gesammelte Schriften 3, 110–126.

  34. 34.

    Cf. again Husserl, Gesammelte Schriften 4, 573.

  35. 35.

    In § 650 of his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein presents the famous example that a dog can fear that her master will beat her now, but that we cannot say that she fears that her master will beat her tomorrow.

  36. 36.

    Cf. Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie.

  37. 37.

    Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 229.

  38. 38.

    Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 229.

  39. 39.

    Cf. Husserl’s 6. Logical Investigation §§ 4,5.

  40. 40.

    Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 214–219.

  41. 41.

    Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 219ff.

  42. 42.

    Cf. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 219 with 229.

  43. 43.

    Cf. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 227, my translation.

  44. 44.

    Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, 28.

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  1. Institute of Philosophy, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Pirmin Stekeler

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  1. Ecole normale supérieure, Archives Husserl de Paris, Paris, France

    John Rogove

  2. Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Pietro D’Oriano

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Stekeler, P. (2022). Heidegger on Truth as Opening Possibilities. In: Rogove, J., D’Oriano, P. (eds) Heidegger and his Anglo-American Reception. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 119. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05817-2_15

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