Heidegger is wrong on truth but has true insights?
So he has true insights, he just doen't have a true insight about
truth? He does not have the truth about truth?
What would the truth of truth be? What is the height of height?
What is the weight of weight? These are nonsensical questions, in
that they commit what Wittgenstein called the fallacy of the measure
(you cannot have a measure of the measure. How do you know
something is a yard long? You measure it with a yardstick. What if
you aren't sure that your yardstick is really a yard long? You take
your yardstick and measure it against the yardstick which is the
official standard of measure. But how do you know that Yard is
*really* a yard? At some point the conceptual spade turns and human
beings rely on conventions.)
There is no measure of the measure; no truth of truth. But what
Heidegger does, following Hegel's insights into the historicity of
truth, is to show that what we take as truth has a history; the
contemporary idea of truth as a correct assertion is a refinement of
the older view of truth as the adequate correspondence of assertion
with that about which it asserts, etc. What Heidegger adds is that
all of these notions of truth rely on and logically presuppose the
idea of truth as disclosure, un-concealment.
Iain
In the end, Heidegger is wrong on truth. Happily, he doesn't
profess to
> have all the answers to the Question of Being. So we can at least
take
> his work and redeem it and talk intelligently about Truth, denying
none
> of his true insights.
>
> Chris Morrissey
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
So he has true insights, he just doen't have a true insight about
truth? He does not have the truth about truth?
What would the truth of truth be? What is the height of height?
What is the weight of weight? These are nonsensical questions, in
that they commit what Wittgenstein called the fallacy of the measure
(you cannot have a measure of the measure. How do you know
something is a yard long? You measure it with a yardstick. What if
you aren't sure that your yardstick is really a yard long? You take
your yardstick and measure it against the yardstick which is the
official standard of measure. But how do you know that Yard is
*really* a yard? At some point the conceptual spade turns and human
beings rely on conventions.)
There is no measure of the measure; no truth of truth. But what
Heidegger does, following Hegel's insights into the historicity of
truth, is to show that what we take as truth has a history; the
contemporary idea of truth as a correct assertion is a refinement of
the older view of truth as the adequate correspondence of assertion
with that about which it asserts, etc. What Heidegger adds is that
all of these notions of truth rely on and logically presuppose the
idea of truth as disclosure, un-concealment.
Iain
In the end, Heidegger is wrong on truth. Happily, he doesn't
profess to
> have all the answers to the Question of Being. So we can at least
take
> his work and redeem it and talk intelligently about Truth, denying
none
> of his true insights.
>
> Chris Morrissey
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---