Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 02:47:23 +0200
Subject: Re: heidegger-digest V1 #867



I'm reading this list in Digest form, so there will be some delay in my
responses; if you intend to comment on something I've written, I would
appreciate a copy cc'd directly to my address (Antti.Kauppinen-AT-helsinki.fi).

>Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 21:02:28 +0100
>From: "Prof. Dr. Rafael Capurro" <capurro-AT-hbi-stuttgart.de>
>Subject: Re: Truth

>As you well know, all interesting questions concerning life and ethics are
>already (!) for Wittgenstein I beyond propositions.

And so beyond truth and falsity.

>This is more the case for Wittgenstein II who in fact, with his theory of
>_Sprachspiele_ as _Lebensformen_ is not far away from what H. intended to
>say concerning the openness of _truth_ .

I've often seen something like this asserted, but to tell you the truth, I
do not see any but most superficial similarities - in other words, I doubt
if those who make the comparisons have seen the innermost truth of
Wittgenstein's thinking of language. But I'm willing to hear arguments for
the case.

>Some place H. says that it would have been better not to use the word
>_truth_ for the dimension he was pointing to with _aletheia_. So, if
>Habermas is criticizing Hs conception of truth he may be talking about
>something else...

Habermas isn't so much criticizing Heidegger's conception of truth (and
what he says about it may be quite far off the mark), but, I'd say, some of
the conclusions Heidegger draws from it. Maybe you can speak of
Unverborgenheit as truth, but go from that to the position that you do not
have to justify your position with arguments in a public discourse is the
problem. (More on this in my reply to Michael.)

>>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.>
>
>But this is a problem of any (!) thinking including Habermas! If you do not
>try to _realize_ what the other is talking about, you will never be able to
>get into a conversation. There is nothing _mystical_ or specific
>Heideggerian in this. 

Indeed, and I said nothing to the contrary.

>I you try to refute Professor Habermas, he may tell
>you, that you did not reach into the innermost heart of the thinking of
>communicative action or whatever. 

In theory, he might say that, and has said something alike ("X hasn't
understood me"), but immunizing himself from all criticism that way would
be contrary to everything he has written. I'll try to be more precise.

Listen to the phrase "innermost heart"; does that not suggest something
shrouded in secrecy, something available only to the initiated? Of course
Michael's own practice suggests he does not regard himself as a keeper of
secrets, as he goes on to sketch in a couple of simple paragraphs just what
this innermost heart amounts to. My objection is to setting the criteria
for criticism impossibly high, until you're at the point where anybody who
criticizes the master thinker simply has not understood him, or at least,
not understood the innermost heart of his thinking. Also, such hyperbolic
phrases imply that the speaker himself _has_ not simply understood the
thinker, but indeed the very heart of his thinking; how else what he be in
a position to criticize those who perhaps merely understand the thinker in
question? I believe that Heidegger himself is responsible for this
practice, which is regrettably widespread among Heidegger scholars (and by
extension, with Derrida etc. scholars), and probably one of the main
reasons for mainstream analytic philosophers' dislike of Heidegger and the
Heideggerians.

One way to put the difference between saying "you don't understand" and
"you don't fully, completely, totally understand the innermost truth" is
that refuting the former requires a finite amount of argumentation, whereas
the latter can be maintained infinitely. For example, based on what Michael
has written to this list, it can reasonably be said that it has been
tentatively established that he understands what Heidegger's view of truth
is about. In contrast, it does not quite yet show that he has fully and
totally understood it without any possible remainder. Now, what I'm saying
is that it is a wholly unreasonable standard to require everyone who wishes
to discuss Heidegger (or Habermas, or anyone else) to understand him
completely (how would one show that? would a dissertation suffice?), and
that that is the standard implied by Michael's complaint that Habermas
hasn't understood the innermost heart of the thinking of being. Such a
standard would make even discussing Heidegger the privilege of a few true
believers. None of this implies that discussing and criticizing Heidegger
wouldn't require trying to understand him better and better (which implies
lack of perfect understanding), nor that one couldn't be criticized for
genuine misunderstandings.

Jan, thank you for the Bhaskar reference, I hope I have time to look that up.

Anthony wrote:
>At first, the claim of Wittgenstein, as well as of many other modern
analytical 
>philosophers, that "all interesting questions concerning life and ethics are 
>already ... beyond propositions" may seem strikingly similar to what
Heidegger 
>says about propositional truth. But there is a key difference. Heidegger
adds 
>that propositional truth is truth in a derived and DEPRIVED sense (ie,
knowing 
>is a deprived mode, not merely one among many). This is precisely why 
>Heidegger's analytic truly transcends metaphysics. To stop merely with the 
>analytical claim that propositional truth is not the only kind of truth is
to 
>implicitly grant the old metaphysical paradigm of truth as needing
justification 

I could not disagree more. First, the analytical claim is precisely the
opposite, that propositional truth _is_ the only kind of truth: "'True' and
'false' are, in their ordinary meaning, predicates that apply to
propositions, and only to propositions." (D.M. Armstrong, _Belief, Truth,
and Knowledge_, 48). Second, this also implies that conceiving truth as
something more than a second-order property of propositions (or, sometimes,
sentences or statements) is at best metaphorical and generally
metaphysical, such as when one speaks of "truth of Being". Third,
"ontologically" speaking, truth, unlike justification, is a property that
cannot be lost, and is not dependent on our knowledge of it;
epistemologically speaking, having justification for believing that p is
generally taken to be a condition for believing that it is true. (I do not
know exactly what you mean by "truth as needing justification", nor do I
know why that would be metaphysical.)

That is just to clarify how truth is traditionally conceived of in the
analytical tradition. I would not myself be so restrictive about the use of
"truth"; otherwise I would not be so interested in and fascinated by
Heidegger. However, as good a case as Heidegger makes for aletheia, I'm not
quite convinced yet that propositional truth would be somehow secondary or
necessarily metaphysical.


Antti



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