Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 20:48:07 +0200
Subject: Truth



Michael wrote, commenting on Henk on Habermas:

>Consider just one short passage:
>Zwischen Werk und Person darf kein kurzschluessiger Zusammenhang hergestellt
>werden. Heideggers philosophisches Werk verdankt, wie das anderer
Philosophen,
>seine Autonomie der Kraft seiner Argumente. (Foreword to Farias book, German
>edition S.34)
>
>translation:
>There must not be any short-circuited connection construed between oeuvre
and
>person. Heideggers philosophical oeuvre, like that of other philosophers,
owes
>its autonomy to the power of its arguments.
>
>This is a formal kind of observation. And it is said from the metaphysics of
>rationality for which truth is located in statements, and truth is
established
>by moving from one true statement to another by way of admissible,
compelling
>inferences (zwangloser Zwang des besseren Arguments). Heideggers experience
>of truth is deeper, however. Truth for Heidegger is not (on the deepest
level) a
>matter of argument but, more originarily than that, of the uncovering
>(_alaetheuein_) which takes place in Dasein, which can also (subsequently)
come
>to speech (in argument). Heideggers writings, from beginning to end, point
to
>this possible experience (_formale Anzeige_). The uncovering is prior to any
>statement which could be true or false or any other purely linguistic
>phenomenon. There is nothing in Habermas (or Levinas, for that matter) to my
>knowledge (maybe I have missed something) to indicate that he has understood
>this.

I would agree with your interpretation of Heidegger - there's brilliant
stuff on this in GA 29, for example, where he patiently explains why he
believes propositional truth is secondary, and, incidentally, _argues_ for
it. The problem is that Habermas knows this too, and criticizes Heidegger
nonetheless. I'd say that the short version of his argument on the link
between Heidegger's philosophy and his Nazism is as follows: when you
believe that Truth-with-a-capital-T "takes place" in some "deeper" level of
"experience" than public discussion, you risk sliding towards taking the
originary "revelation" to the chosen ones, Thinkers-with-a-capital-T, as
something that does not have to be justified before and to the Other: "All
refutation in the field of essential thinking is foolish." (Letter on
Humanism, p. 239 in _Basic Writings_). Belief in the inner truth and
greatness of your own thinking, your own German nation, regardless of what
others think or say is what makes possible silencing, or gassing, the
others, the parasites.

For Habermas, truth can never be anybody's private property. Having said
that, I don't mean to imply that Heidegger would think otherwise; Heidegger
is not a philosopher of will-to-power, on the contrary, and _aletheia_ is
not subjective. This, I grant, Habermas might well have missed. But it
would be foolish to deny that Heidegger has a tendency to use a dangerous
rhetoric of privileged access, from beginning to end. The very idea of a
depth beyond the reach of ordinary people and public discourse is what
metaphysics is all about.

To say that conceiving truth as propositional is metaphysical is just novel
Heideggerian semantics. As you well know, in the analytical tradition since
early Wittgenstein it is precisely the other way around: any
non-propositional conceptions of truth are metaphysical. And Habermas is
one of the very few philosophers who have actually argued why truth should
be conceived as property of statements rather than experience (see his
'Wahrheitstheorien' in _Vorstudien und Erg=E4nzungen zur Theorie des
kommunikativen Handelns_, Suhrkamp 1984).

What I would like to see is an account of truth that gives absolute
privilege neither to discourse or to disclosure. I hope there are "deeper"
thinkers than Rorty who have discussed that, and would appreciate references.

>Perhaps you could point to just one passage in Habermas which shows that
>he has understood the innermost heart of the thinking of being.

I thought the innermost heart of the thinking of being could not be brought
to argumentative language.... Seriously, it will always be possible to for
you to say that someone hasn't understood "the innermost heart of the
thinking of being"; you can not be refuted by any number of passages, and
that is precisely the problem.

In another post Michael wrote:
>H.'s texts may help to think through certain phenomena.
>H. the man, citizen, person, professor, rector, etc. is unimportant for
this.

Compare this to the Habermas passage you yourself quoted: "Heideggers
philosophical oeuvre, like that of other philosophers, owes its autonomy to
the power of its arguments." Habermas is trying to explain _why_ and _to
what extent_ Heidegger as "the man, citizen, person, professor, rector,
etc." is unimportant to  his texts helping us think through certain
phenomena. His basic reading strategy is looking for turns in Heidegger's
thinking that cannot be accounted for by his arguments; in that case, they
have to be accounted for by something else, such as his political
commitments or (more plausibly) cultural conservatism, ie. by Heidegger as
"the man, citizen, person, professor, rector, etc.". There is nothing wrong
or metaphysical about this. At the same time, it is quite possible that the
turns in Heidegger's thinking _can_ be accounted for without bringing in
external factors, and Habermas has simply missed the _arguments_ Heidegger
has for speaking of Dasein of a people rather than the structures of Dasein
in general, for example. I cannot claim to have understood the innermost
heart of Heidegger's thinking, so I am not in a position to judge.

Antti



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