Duits; On Tugendhat's Analysis of Heidegger's Concept of Truth

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On Tugendhat's Analysis of Heidegger's Concept ofTruth

Online Publication Date: 01 June 2007To cite this Article: Duits, Rufus , (2007) 'On Tugendhat's Analysis of Heidegger'sConcept of Truth', International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 15:2, 207 - 223To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/09672550701383491URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09672550701383491

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International Journal of Philosophical Studies

Vol. 15(2), 207–223

International Journal of Philosophical Studies

ISSN 0967–2559 print 1466–4542 online © 2007 Taylor & Francishttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

DOI: 10.1080/09672550701383491

On Tugendhat’s Analysis of Heidegger’s Concept of Truth

Rufus Duits

Taylor and FrancisRIPH_A_238238.sgm10.1080/09672550701383491International Journal of Philosophical Studies0967-2559 (print)/1466-4542 (online)Original Article2007Taylor & [email protected]

Abstract

This paper responds to Tugendhat’s well-known and influential critique ofHeidegger’s concept of truth with the resources of Heidegger’s texts, in partic-ular §44 of

Being and Time

. To start with, Tugendhat’s primary critical argu-ment is reconstructed. It is held to consist firstly in the charge of ambiguityagainst Heidegger’s formulations of his concept of truth and secondly in theclaim that Heidegger’s concept of truth is incompatible with an adequateconcept of falsehood. It is shown that the supposedly ambiguous meaningsare, on the one hand, in fact clearly distinguished by Heidegger and, on theother, that they merely amount to different extensions of the same meaning oftruth. It is then shown how this concept of truth is indeed compatible with anadequate, albeit post-metaphysical, concept of falsehood. Finally, the groundsof falsehood in the untruth of the existential of

Verfallen

are pursued andfurther objections are dismissed.

Keywords:

Heidegger; Tugendhat; truth; Verfallen; phenomenology; metaphysics

My task in this paper is to defend Heidegger’s concept of truth fromTugendhat’s well-known critique in his

Habilitationsschrift

of 1965,

DerWahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger

(henceforth,

WHH

).

1

I aim todemonstrate the way in which this critique fails to understand Heidegger’sclaims and his intentions, and to show the sources of these misunderstand-ings, abstracting my argumentation solely from Heidegger’s texts. In thisway the import and meaning of Heidegger’s concept of truth and the extentof its break with the traditional concept should be revealed.

Of course, Heidegger produced many analyses of truth throughout hisphilosophical career, presented in different sorts of philosophical language,and perhaps even with essentially different intentions and grounds. Anyinterpretation of Heidegger faces the problem of specificity. Although thereis no space here to support it with sufficient argumentation, it is my opinion– and it will here remain a background assumption – that Heidegger’sconcept of truth, whilst it may be articulated in very different ways in later

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

208

texts, does not receive any philosophical import other than that which it wasgiven in Heidegger’s analyses in

Sein und Zeit

(henceforth,

SZ

). In any case,for the purposes of this paper, I shall restrict myself for the most part to aconsideration of its presentation in this early work, since that is also thefocus of Tugendhat’s critique, which takes it as exemplary for Heidegger’sconsideration of truth in general. It is accepted that, whilst many of theimportant texts that we now have which deal with the question of truth werenot available when Tugendhat was writing, one may not wish to subscribeto this focus.

Tugendhat’s book has had a significant impact on the understanding andcritique of Heidegger’s thinking as a whole, especially in Germany. Apartfrom the book’s obvious merits, this is no doubt due to the fact thatHeidegger’s questioning concerning truth is not at all a peripheral concernof his thinking, one incidental to the project of raising the question ofbeing. It is rather the necessary preparation of this question, the

Vorfrage

through which access is first gained to the fundamental ontological prob-lematic, as Heidegger insists here in

Beiträge zur Philosophie

: ‘Die Fragenach der Wahrheit … ist für uns

die

Vorfrage, durch die wir zuersthindurch müssen.’

2

That this is so is emphasized also in the lecture

VomWesen der Wahrheit

, first given in 1930, where the question of the essenceof truth is shown to prepare the question of being insofar as it illuminatesthe path out of the categorical constellation of metaphysical thinking. Oncethis is borne in mind, the philosophical significance of

SZ

’s discussion oftruth begins to emerge: since the existential analysis has the intention ofovercoming the metaphysico-epistemological perspective of philosophicalquestioning, the explicit examination of the concept of truth is not onemore analysis in addition to the many others, as a cursory reading mightsuggest; it is rather the case that the entire existential analysis, as the inter-pretation of being-in-the-world as disclosure, of

Dasein

as

Erschlossenheit

,is only to be understood properly as an analysis of the phenomenon oftruth. The moment of Heidegger’s overcoming of metaphysics is accom-plished precisely as his reformulation of the concept of truth, beyond itstraditional representation and in re-appropriation of its original Greekroot. The question of truth is therefore inseparable from the question ofbeing. And thus the acceptance of Heidegger’s entire philosophical enter-prise depends upon an agreement with his thematization of truth. Indeed,if one refuses to accept Heidegger’s critique of the traditional schema oftruth, and his demonstration of its derivation, then one has contested notmerely the philosophical primacy of the question of being, but also its verypossibility – the possibility of retrieving the meaning of being from itsconcealment beneath the metaphysical conceptual edifice.

Tugendhat’s critique is articulated primarily in §15, on which we shallfocus here, and begins with the clear programmatic claim that Heidegger isjustified in taking as the starting point of his analysis the most familiar

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TUGENDHAT ON HEIDEGGER’S CONCEPT OF TRUTH

209

understanding of truth, namely, that pertaining to the proposition, sincethe affirmation of the existence of a more original truth can only be justi-fied insofar as it makes the status of the common and most generally recog-nized conception of truth clear. ‘Daß ein Wahrheitsbegriff auf dieAussagewahrheit paßt, ist die Minimalbedingung, die er erfüllen muß,wenn er überhaupt ein Wahrheitsbegriff sein soll.’

3

Whilst this capturesHeidegger’s initial intentions well, it also marks out the domain ofTugendhat’s critique. Tugendhat will claim that Heidegger’s conception oftruth is untenable just to the extent that it does not accord with the mean-ing usually assigned to the word truth. In which case, Tugendhat’s openingclaim functions as a basic premise within his argument. This premise,however, while it is perhaps not immediately controversial, at least not onthe face of it, is nevertheless not defended. Whilst the new concept of truththat Heidegger develops is indeed intended to make the standard or tradi-tional conception understandable in its ontological genesis, it is neverthe-less in essential respects incongruous with it as the basic determination ofthe concept of truth.

The standard conception of truth as propositional truth predicates truthof the proposition which corresponds to the object to which it refers. Theproblem of truth, and therefore the central problematic of epistemologyand thus metaphysics in general, concerns the possibility of this relation ofcorrespondence. Now, in the first instance, Heidegger’s claim in regard tothis conception is not, as is often suggested, that it belies an inadmissiblephenomenology of relation, but rather that the mode of being of this corre-spondence, its ontological determination, remains unquestioned by themetaphysical tradition. Thus when Tugendhat’s critique sets off immedi-ately with the claim that in his pencil sketch of correspondence theories oftruth Heidegger does not manage to incorporate all such theories, indeedthat he only manages to incorporate the weakest, and that most notably hefails to incorporate Husserl’s account, in which the correspondence is heldto pertain between two ideal contents rather than between an ideal contentand a real thing

4

– then Heidegger is already misunderstood; for Husserl asmuch as any other theorist leaves the ontological determination of thecorrespondence unthematic. The primary claim of §44 is that once the modeof being of the relation of the proposition to its object is put into questionphenomenologically, the relationality as such is revealed to be dissimulated,belying an ecstatic movement or process of unconcealment, discovering.Husserl’s phenomenological account is just as much subject to this critiqueas the medieval

veritas est adaequatio intellectus ad rem

.Tugendhat’s basic critical argument is focused on the way in which

Heidegger reaches his first positive statement of his concept of truth byway of a series of formulations, which, on the face of it, appear to be equiv-alents, but which conceal, according to Tugendhat, essential equivocationsthat Heidegger makes no attempt to make explicit or justify. According

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210

to Tugendhat, Heidegger suggests that the following propositions areequivalent:

1 On p. 218, Heidegger writes: ‘Das gemeinte Seiende selbst zeigtsich

so

,

wie

es an ihm selbst ist, das heißt, dass

es

in Selbigkeit soist, als wie Seiend

es

in der Aussage aufgezeigt, entdeckt wird,’

5

which is abbreviated by Tugendhat to: ‘Die Aussage ist wahr,wenn sie das Seiende “so” aufzeigt, entdeckt, “wie es an ihm selbstist”.’

6

2 ‘Die Aussage

ist wahr

, bedeutet: sie entdeckt das Seiende an ihmselbst.’

7

This second formulation leaves out the phrase ‘so, wie es an ihm selbstist’. Nevetheless, it is allowed by Tugendhat to count as equivalent to thefirst formulation insofar as the ‘so, wie’ is included or incorporated in‘selbst’. Whilst this may be acceptable, it is nevertheless the case that byleaving aside in this second formulation the aspect, the ‘so–wie’, Heideggeremphasizes the fundamental thought that the proposition is not to beconceived as uncovering its object in terms of a representation of it in the‘how’ of its being. Whilst Heidegger has already made himself explicit onthis point, it remains ambiguous in the extrapolation that Tugendhatpresents above. The purpose of this second formulation is once more tobring this point to the centre.

8

It is, however, the third formulation, accord-ing to Tugendhat, which takes the decisive step.

3 ‘

Wahrsein

(

Wahrheit

) der Aussage muß verstanden werden als

entdeckend-sein

.’

9

This step is decisive for Tugendhat insofar as Heidegger no longer formu-lates his position in terms of

how

an object is uncovered, but rather in termsof uncovering as such, uncovering without regard to the

how

of that whichis uncovered. ‘The

how

of that which is uncovered’ – this is ambiguous: itmight refer to the how of the entity uncovered as it is independent of thisuncovering, or it might refer to the how of the entity within its uncovered-ness, how it is uncovered. It is precisely the distinction and the relationbetween these that, Tugendhat claims, is essential to the concept of truth assuch. Insofar as this distinction is left aside or covered over, so that therelata of the relation lose their definition, Heidegger takes his analysis,according to Tugendhat, beyond the sphere in which it remains meaningfulto speak of the concept of truth.

Tugendhat himself locates the ambiguity in the word

Entdecken

, andclaims that it is used to form a bridge which allows Heidegger to cross,apparently innocuously, the essential gap between the second and thirdformulations above. On the one hand, Tugendhat claims, the word

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Entdecken

corresponds to the Greek

apophainesthai

, and is equivalent inmeaning to the German

Aufzeigen

, to point out, which, it should berecalled, is the primary concept Heidegger used to characterize the mode ofbeing of the proposition in §33 of

SZ

. On the other hand,

Entdecken

is usedin such a way as to correspond to the Greek

aletheuein

, to uncover or revealwhat is true. Whilst on the first meaning every proposition will count as anuncovering, the false as well as the true, on the second meaning only a trueproposition will count as an uncovering; the false proposition will insteadamount to a covering up.

Tugendhat’s worry might be expressed in terms of a concern with thequestion of falsehood. How is it possible for truth conceived simply asuncovering to incorporate or at least accord with an adequate concept offalsehood? He claims that the word truth only receives its determinationthrough possible contraposition to its opposite, falsehood, that it is opposi-tionally defined: ‘Es ist aber gerade diese Differenz [zwischen einem unmit-telbaren, gleichsam vordergründigen Gegebensein … und der Sache selbst],aus der das Wort “Wahrheit” überhaupt erst seinen Sinn gewinnt.’

10

Andthus if it turns out that the conception of truth which Heidegger arrives at in§44 is incapable of being intelligibly opposed to falsehood, then no furthergrounds are needed for rejecting it.

This is the essential import of Tugendhat’s critique. Before consideringwhether Heidegger’s characterization of propositional truth as uncoveringcan incorporate an adequate conception of falsehood, which will require athematization of Heidegger’s fundamental concept of untruth and itsgrounds, I shall first consider whether Tugendhat is justified in chargingHeidegger with ambiguity. Are the two meanings of uncovering elaboratedabove really to be distinguished? On the face of it, it appears so.

Uncovering conceived as a function of any and every (meaningful) prop-osition, whether true or false – does that not amount to Heidegger’s basicontological concept of disclosure? One should not forget that languageconstitutes, albeit not by itself alone, the disclosure of

Dasein

. Of course,Heidegger characterizes the proposition as a derivative mode of interpreta-tion, of understanding, but nevertheless, despite this determination, itretains the basic trait of language as such, its revelatory function. Onecannot say that the disclosure which the proposition effects is merelygrounded in the ontologically fundamental disclosure that is

Dasein

itself iflanguage makes this disclosure first possible.

On the other hand, in §44 Heidegger writes: ‘die Entdecktheit des inner-weltlichen Seienden

gründet

in der Erschlossenheit der Welt’.

11

The partic-ular disclosure of inner-worldly beings of the (true) proposition is hereclaimed to be grounded in the basic disclosure of

Dasein

. It would seem thenthat Heidegger in fact explicitly distinguishes the two meanings contrastedby Tugendhat. In this case, Tugendhat’s argument, despite his own presen-tation, should not be construed as charging Heidegger with ambiguity, but

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rather in terms of the claim that the derivative manoeuvre, which Heideggerapparently presumes to perform, the bridge across which Heidegger slipsbetween the two formulations above, the

grounding

of the specific uncov-eredness of propositional truth in the original truth of disclosure as such, isunjustified, at least in the terms of the text. But should there be a movementof derivation here? Does Heidegger slip between the two? If disclosure

assuch

is understood, not as a state of affairs, or as a fact of the matter, or asof the mode of being of

Vorhandenheit

, but rather as a happening, or as aprocess, as the ontological event of emergence from concealment intounconcealment, then these two ostensibly different characterizations oftruth – considered purely with regard to this determination – are not in factdistinguishable. And Heidegger insists that it should be so understood inso-far as he equates the

ecstatic

being of

Dasein

with it: ‘Erschlossenheit aberist die Grundart des Daseins, gemäß der es sein Da

ist

.’

12

Rather than havingtwo different concepts here, we have two different employments or exten-sions of the same concept, distinguished by their target domain – one ontic,one ontological. Both extensions refer to the simple happening of emer-gence from concealment to unconcealment.

Is not Heidegger then to be charged at least with inconsistency, or evencontradiction, since the talk of a grounding function is incompatible withholding the revelatory function to be singular? The distinction here isbetween the ontological and the ontic. The grounding function concernsunderstanding. Ontic understanding, according to Heidegger, is groundedin ontological understanding. The determination of the horizon of world is

Dasein

’s unthematic understanding of being, which is so long as

Dasein

is.Upon this horizon, inner-worldly beings are first disclosed in their particu-larity. The ontic understanding of inner-worldly beings is thus grounded inthe ontologically prior understanding of being. Nevertheless, the revelatoryfunction as such, which accords with these forms of understanding, is thesame. The grounding concerns ‘levels’ of understanding, but the form ofdisclosure proper to each is the same – the process of unconcealment.

Tugendhat’s mistake is to conceive uncovering, not as a process, but as a

factum

, a stasis, according to the traditional categories of constant presence.He then finds it necessary, in order to make sense of §44, to distinguish two,as it were, ‘levels’ of manifestation of this stasis, one as propositional truth,one as disclosure as such, and consequently finds no legitimation given inthe text for moving from one to the other whilst using the same name forboth. Once uncovering is conceived, as Heidegger conceives it, as ecstatic,as a process or happening, there is no longer any ground on which theymight be separated: both are the fundamental ontological happening ofunconcealment ecstatically constitutive of the being of

Dasein

. Whilst onemay distinguish two different domains of application, the event of uncover-ing is the same in both. Heidegger would not be slipping between two mean-ings attributed to the word

Entdecken

, but between two applications of the

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same meaning. Thus, granted that propositional truth is to be understood asuncovering, then, insofar as this process of uncovering is the ontologicalevent of

Dasein

as such, Heidegger is justified in claiming the latter, disclo-sure in general, under the banner of original truth. Uncovering is an onto-logical determination.

It seems, then, that the ambiguity Tugendhat professes to find in Heideg-ger’s analysis of truth in §44 is illusory, and appears as such only from thestandpoint of the traditional conception of truth – which is precisely thatwhich

SZ

as a whole is intended to overcome by laying bare its ontologicalgenesis. Nevertheless, this meets only part of Tugendhat’s critique. Itremains to question whether this conception of truth as uncovering is capa-ble of supporting a phenomenologically adequate concept of propositionalfalsehood, or indeed of untruth in general.

According to Tugendhat, if propositional truth is to be understood asuncovering, then the false proposition is also to be understood as uncover-ing, namely, as uncovering its object in a way other than it in fact is, and inthis sense amounts at the same time to a

Verdecken

, an en-covering. Forhim, this implies that truth conceived as uncovering cannot do without thequalification ‘as it in fact is’, or some equivalent, and thus that the thirdstatement of truth as uncovering formulated above is inadmissible as itstands as a candidate for the thematization of truth. As I have just shown,however, Heidegger’s thesis concerning ontological truth is not thrown intodoubt by this last point. Heidegger too speaks of the false proposition asuncovering:

Das Entdeckte und Erschlossene steht im Modus der Verstelltheitund Verschlossenheit durch das Gerede, die Neugier und dieZweideutigkeit. Das Sein zum Seienden ist nicht ausgelöscht, aberentwurzelt. Das Seiende ist nicht völlig verborgen, sondern geradeentdeckt, aber zugleich verstellt; es zeigt sich – aber im Modus desScheins. Imgleichen sinkt das vordem Entdeckte wieder in dieVerstelltheit und Verborgenheit zurück.

13

That the false proposition is also an uncovering, and that the event ofuncovering is primordial truth, implies that truth incorporates falsehoodwithin itself, that the false is part, an element, a mode perhaps, at least adetermination, of the true, rather than standing in stark opposition to it.This is the thought which decisively distinguishes Heidegger’s concept oftruth from that of the tradition, and accomplishes the phenomenologicalstep that Tugendhat is no longer prepared to follow. That this is so is giventestimony by the incredulity with which Tugendhat writes, for example:

Was hätte [Heidegger] in diesem Fall dazu veranlassen können, geradedas Wort ‘Wahrheit’ zu gebrauchen? Etwa daß die Erschlossenheit der

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Wahrheit ‘zugrunde liegt’? Und das berechtige sogar, sie als‘ursprünglichere Wahrheit’ zu verstehen? Aber dann könnte man siemit demselben Recht auch als ursprünglichere Falschheit bezeichnen.

14

But what does it mean to conceive falsehood as integral to truth?Suppose the person with her back to the wall in Heidegger’s example hadsaid falsely: ‘the picture on the wall is not hanging crookedly’. Now, if oneremembers that the angle at which Heidegger attempts to enter the prob-lematic of truth, the context in terms of which he presents his illustration,has to do with

Ausweisung

, with proof, with the establishment of truth andfalsehood, then it is not difficult to see here that the falsehood of the prop-osition also consists in uncovering: in order that the person can turnaround and establish that her proposition is false, falsehood must also beestablished by the uncovering of the picture itself. The false proposition,just as much as the true, must be directed immediately as an unconcealingfunction towards the picture itself. But then one might wonder whyHeidegger characterizes falsehood in terms of

Verdecken

,

Verstellen

,

Verschlossenheit

,

Entwurzelung

,

Verborgenheit

, and even

Entdecken imModus des Scheins

, etc., rather than simply in terms of uncovering. But thiswould indicate a misunderstanding of the normative asymmetry proper tothe structure of truth and falsehood. The uncovering that establishes theproposition to be false is precisely the uncovering as the truth of thematter. Establishment concerns uncovering as truth. Only therefore does italso concern falsehood. Insofar as the false proposition is immediatelydirected towards (a being-towards) its object, it is to be conceived in termsof an uncovering function.

15

What marks it out from the true proposition isthe fact that it dissimulates its object in its statement of it and in this senseis at the same time an en-covering, a concealing function. The essentialpoint is that uncovering–encovering belong together; that is, the encover-ing, as dissimulation, is always at the same time an uncovering. One cannotargue then that one must at least have recourse to a relationality of corre-spondence, or rather non-correspondence, in the case of the false proposi-tion, a non-correspondence between the object as it in fact is and theobject as it is represented in the proposition, a non-correspondence of twobeings of the mode of being of

Vorhandenheit

. As an immediate being-towards the object, the falsehood of the false proposition does not consistin the comparison of two presentations of the entity, but rather in thedissimulation or en-covering within its uncovering function. The falseproposition is uncovering insofar as it is a being-towards, but as this uncov-ering it is dissimulated insofar as the being that it is towards is proposeddifferently from its genuine unconcealment.

Indeed, falsehood can only stand in an opposition to truth as disclosurebecause both are determined fundamentally as uncovering. One couldconstrue truth and falsehood as configuring the structure of truth. In this

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case, truth as unconcealment, as uncovering, is the possibility of this struc-ture. Heidegger’s argument in §44 would then move from a determinationof truth as it appears in contrast to falsehood to a determination of thatwhich makes both truth and falsehood possible. As we have seen, this doesnot ground any ambiguity since truth as that which makes both truth andfalsehood possible is not something additional to the determination of truthand falsehood themselves. Both ‘truths’, if one is allowed to put it this way,are ecstatic uncovering, unconcealment, disclosure. But this should not hidethe fact that it is precisely insofar as falsehood is taken up into the essenceof truth that original truth can be articulated beyond the reach of metaphys-ical categories. It should also not be forgotten that equally fundamental tothe movement overcoming metaphysics is the claim that propositional false-hood is only one mode of what Heidegger calls untruth, and indeed an onto-logically insignificant mode at that. In the rest of this paper I shall offer areading, far from comprehensive, of Heidegger’s concept of untruth as it isarticulated in

SZ

.

16

In the first place it should be noted that, whilst it may not be brought outthematically in §44, nevertheless it is made clear in

SZ

, in particular in thefourth chapter of the second part (

Temporality and Everydayness

), that allunconcealment is at the same time a concealment. Disclosure is the play ofdisclosure and closure, revealing and veiling. Every unconcealment is at thesame time a concealment of all that is not unconcealed. One must not forgetthat unconcealment is always partial – that is what makes history possible.Indeed, whilst there is no ontological priority here, concealment is thatwhich holds sway in general, first and foremost, that which determines thebeing of Dasein always already.

The structure of concealment–unconcealment is, of course, an ontologi-cal determination of Dasein, being configured within the basic ontologicalstructure of temporality. Structured according to the three temporalecstasies, Dasein’s being is correlatively determined by the threemoments of the structure of Sorge, care: facticity, existentiality, Verfallen.Verfallen denotes the rigidifying of the temporal dynamic amongst thebeings of the world, that Dasein first and foremost understands itself interms of the static mode of being of the beings constantly present in theworld around it. Verfallen thus denotes the congealing of the temporalhorizon, which blots out above all its own movement of exclusion; itdenotes the closure of the essential openness which is the temporalecstasy, that is, its existential determination – which is to say it denotesthe restriction of disclosure, the concealment within unconcealment. Ittherefore functions as the existential or ontological ground of the untruthproper to the essence of truth, the ground of concealment. Yet it alsodesignates the existential correlative of the temporal ecstasy of thepresent. Presence itself is the site of concealment, and openness itselfinitiates closure; and it is on the basis of the primordial absence of the

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ecstatic future that the unconcealment or disclosure of projective under-standing is first possible.

Verfallen is therefore the ground of false propositions, but also, asHeidegger makes clearer in Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, of all other modes oferror: ‘Jedes Verhalten hat gemäß seiner Offenständigkeit und seinemBezug zum Seienden im Ganzen je seine Weise des Irrens. Der Irrtumerstreckt sich vom gewöhnlichsten Sich-vertun, Sich-versehen und Sich-verrechnen bis zum Sich-verlaufen und Sich-versteigen in den wesentlichenHaltungen und Entscheidungen.’17 Error is here to be understood as theontological or existential ground of all ontic or existentiell erring in general,of which the false proposition is only a relatively insignificant instance. Thepossibility of error is grounded in the constitution of the being of Dasein asVerfallen; Verfallen is the formal possibility of error. In order to defend thisreading, which differs markedly from the accounts of many commentators,we shall consider the existential of Verfallen in more detail.

Verfallen is to be understood in terms of the inauthenticity of Dasein.Inauthenticity is, for its part, to be grasped as one of two basic modes oftemporality, indeed as its all-pervasive mode. In this temporal modality, thefuture is awaited and the past forgotten in an enmeshment within a non-ecstatic present. Correlative with the structure of care with Verfallen as itspivot, original temporality dissimulates itself through the ecstasy of thepresent, through the understanding of being as presence (Anwesenheit).Being the breakdown of the dynamic whole into discrete, articulated units,inauthenticity is only determinable, despite being the all-pervasive mode oftemporality, in terms of an original ecstatic being of Dasein, in whichDasein’s being is disclosed to itself on the dreadful horizon of death. Theformer mode of being is given the terminus inauthenticity precisely becauseit covers over, conceals, the being of Dasein. For Heidegger, all understand-ing of inner-worldly beings, all ontic or existentiell understanding, presup-poses an understanding of existential possibility, that is, of the being ofDasein. Only thus is understanding projective. Inauthenticity thereforenames the ontological error by which the being of Dasein, existence, isdissimulated, the ontological error that makes ontic understanding inevita-bly prone to error, to misrepresentation, misunderstanding, falsehood, etc.Being is dissimulated from the bottom up, as it were. Uneigentlichkeit isessentially connected with untruth. On the other hand, by the obverse argu-ment, authenticity, as the mode of temporality in which the truth of Dasein’sbeing as such is disclosed, as the mode in which ontological truth functionsas the basis of projection, is the ground of the possibility that ontic under-standing is first of all not subject to the dissimulations and concealments oferror. It is the mode in which the structure of care coincides, accords, oreven corresponds with the self-temporalization of temporality as such. Thiscoming into coincidence is the clearing away of the dissimulations of inau-thenticity, the opening of the clearing for truth. Grounded in the revelatory

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projection of being as such, authenticity makes genuine unconcealment firstpossible.

Heidegger analyses the existential of Verfallen, and hence inauthenticity,in terms of three interrelated concepts, which develop the preceding analy-ses of the being-in constitutive of being-in-the-world: das Gerede (chatter),die Neugier (curiosity), die Zweideutigkeit (ambiguity). The task of theseconcepts is to capture the existential and existentiell consequences of the‘transformation’ (the quotation marks indicating here, of course, thatdespite the analytical exigency of speaking of an ontological transformation,in fact Dasein is always already in the mode of being of inauthenticity, andindeed that authenticity is not at all a distinct mode of being, but is ratheritself a modified mode of inauthenticity) of the original disclosure of Dasein,through the dissimulative function of its ontological-structural moment ofVerfallen – and therefore, let it not be forgotten, as a function of its inter-course with other Daseins – into a closure, a concealment, a dissimulation.Rede (speech or talk), for example, which is held to be constitutive of disclo-sure, flattens out into Gerede, chatter, in which the sayings, expressions,vocabulary, etc. of das Man predominate and close off a genuine and origi-nal, or better, an inceptual relationship to that about which one speaks, and,indeed, to language itself. On the other hand, in the case of curiosity, whichdenotes the inauthentic encounter of Dasein with inner-worldly beingspresented to or for it, the proper understanding of beings, their originaldisclosure, is shut down and Dasein considers them or is interested in themjust insofar as they suggest novelty – a flattening out and up-rooting of exis-tential interest, of the project in general. Nothing, therefore, is really orgenuinely encountered at all; no inceptive relationship with inner-worldlybeings is fashioned. Inner-worldly being as such is dissimulated. Together,curiosity and chatter determine the ambiguity of the disclosure of Dasein inthe mode of being of inauthenticity. Nothing, no experience, is definitive;nothing is essentially decided; nothing is determinate; the lines or contoursof existential activity are blurred so that nothing really matters, nothing isreally grounded. For Dasein is not in a position to care genuinely about itsinner-worldly being – and thus allows the existentiality of das Man to takeover and determine it.

In general, the movement of Verfallen can be understood to imply twobasic ontic characteristics for disclosure. On the one hand, the possibility oforiginal or inceptive disclosure, the possibility of a genuine relationship tothings, is cut off by the predomination of the opinions and the chatter of dasMan. On the other hand, this characteristic is itself concealed by thepredominating opinion that das Man knows everything already, has under-stood everything already, has already made all the important decisions, andhas answered all significant questions. Taken together, it is not difficult tosee the essential connection of Verfallen with untruth. Das Man remains inthe world, within the clearing of disclosure; only it never generates an

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authentic, grounded being-towards anything. How can it if the originalbeing-towards-death of Dasein, the genuine understanding of possibility, ofbeing, is shut off? Inner-worldly beings in general are dissimulated, sinceonly the genuine understanding of existence can ground something like thecare by which the experience of inner-worldly beings can be brought togenuine unconcealment.

Tugendhat shares my conviction that Verfallen is in the first place to beunderstood purely formally: ‘Das “Verfallen” soll aber nicht eine bestim-mte konkrete Tendenz des Daseins sein, sondern steht lediglich für dieformale Struktur der Verdeckungstendenz überhaupt.’18 But this claimstands in immediate contradiction with his critique of Heidegger’s conceptof truth. If Verfallen, constitutive of the being of Dasein, itself the possibilityof disclosure, is the formal condition of covering-up in general, thenconcealment–unconcealment must configure the structure of truth, giventhat truth belongs to the being of Dasein. Every characteristic of Dasein isonly to be understood in terms of a concealing–revealing function. IfTugendhat claims that truth cannot be so conceived, and if he wishes touphold the concept of truth as such, then he thereby rejects not onlyHeidegger’s concept of truth, but also the existential analysis in its entirety.

Nevertheless, his account of Heidegger’s concept of Verfallen demon-strates the same misunderstanding as his account of Heidegger’s concept oftruth. Tugendhat distinguishes Verfallen as Verdeckungstendenz fromDasein’s possibility of Sichverschließen. ‘Diese Verdeckungstendenz ist vonder Möglichkeit des Sichverschließens klar unterschieden.’19 In the firstplace, parallel to the case of disclosure, it can be pointed out that theconcealing function of closure and covering-up is the same in each instance.Every process of concealment bears the same ontological determination.Again we have two different applications of the same basic concept, oneontic, one ontological. Further, it must be remembered that the covering-upfunction of Verfallen just is a self-concealment, a closing oneself off, namely,from the dreadful disclosure of Dasein’s genuine ontological constitution.The two are correlative. It is precisely in terms of a closure of the originaldis-closure of existence that Dasein flees to the familiarity of a mode ofbeing in which the truth of its comportment is not put into question.

It may pertinently but briefly be recalled at this stage that Tugendhat hadclaimed the necessity of Heidegger’s concept of truth being congruous withthe traditional conception in order that it count as a concept of truth at all.Without entering into the details of Heidegger’s derivation of the traditionalconcept of truth from truth as disclosure, one may note that insofar as thistraditional concept is grounded in the mode of being of Verfallen, it will beessentially grounded in untruth. Of course, put as baldly as this, Heidegger’sargument appears circular, but nevertheless this consideration at leastthrows into relief the requirement that Tugendhat argue for, rather thansimply presuppose, this basic premise of his discussion.

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One may object that this categorical homology of truth and authenticity,untruth and inauthenticity, is contrived and too formal, and cannot possiblydo justice to the multifarious phenomena of daily life. Surely, one thinks,despite the dissimulation of beings in the world, inauthentic Dasein is capa-ble at least of uttering true propositions. Heidegger’s illustration in §44 doesnot necessarily thematize an authentic Dasein’s utterance. Similarly, is it notplausible to imagine that authentic Dasein is capable of making mistakes ofone kind or another, and therefore of erring? Even resolute authenticDasein does not have complete control over its corporeality and is subjectto the basic finitude of existence. Indeed, typically perhaps the personwhom we should like to call authentic is quite hopeless at making her wayin the world – she falls down wells, fails in the economic system, is sociallyinept, etc., whilst the inauthentic person, she who is continually adaptingherself to the exigencies of circumstance, to her society and company, whois always willing to deceive, to be disingenuous and dishonest, is preciselythe one who ‘succeeds’.20

Such criticisms ought not to be simply dismissed as irrelevant to thefundamental ontological enterprise. This enterprise must remain faithful tothe phenomenology. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that Daseinis a structure, the structural possibility of disclosure – temporality – and thatthe various analyses of SZ are structural analyses or analyses of structuralpossibilities of the being of Dasein.21 Conceived as the structural, and thatmeans formal, possibility of untruth, Verfallen may not appear whollycongruous with the apparent facts whilst retaining fundamental ontologicalexplanatory value. Of course inauthentic Dasein is capable of uttering truepropositions. As we have already noted, inauthenticity and authenticity arenot at all factically mutually exclusive. They are structural possibilities –abstractions, even – within a dynamic whole, and at the same time, authen-ticity is only a modification, itself a mode of inauthenticity. Dasein is alwaysinauthentic. Untruth in its various forms thus remains a permanent possibil-ity of its being, just as truth never fully emerges into the clearing within thedarkness of concealment.

The analysis of Verfallen attempted to show that inauthentic Dasein is cutoff from an original and thus genuine relation to beings insofar as, in accor-dance with its structural constitution, it conceals its own being and thus exis-tential possibility as such. But only a genuine relation to beings grounded ina revelatory relation to being as such, authenticity as resoluteness,22 couldguarantee the truth of one’s utterances, the correctness of one’s decisions,the proper use of one’s time, remembering, etc., in general: the avoidanceof error. Nevertheless, it can be pointed out that this does not preclude inau-thentic Dasein from, as it were, uttering true propositions fortuitously. Thiswould not conflict with the analysis, since there we have to do with a formalgrounding of the possibility of truth, for which truth cannot remain merelysomething fortuitous. Indeed, if there is to be an existential analysis at all, if

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philosophy in general, the thinking of being, is to be possible, then truthmust be able to be guaranteed, whether or not this guarantee is hermeneu-tically conditioned. The normativity of truth would tolerate no arbitrari-ness. And insofar as authenticity, as a mode of inauthenticity, is apermanent possibility of Dasein, truth is also its permanent possibility, evenif, as it were, it will always remain a partiality; Dasein never has the wholetruth. The formal possibility that is the guarantee of truth is the creation oforiginal ontic relationships through the fundamental ontological relation-ship that is the determination of authentic Dasein. Only authentic Daseincan, properly speaking, be certain. Conceived as formal conditions of possi-bility of truth and untruth, it is no argument against the analysis of the beingof Dasein in terms of authenticity and inauthenticity that Dasein is alwayscapable of standing within truth or within error. Authenticity and inauthen-ticity are permanent structural possibilities of its temporal being.

As regards the existential ineptitude of authentic Dasein, this wouldconcern the inauthentic judgement of das Man, who has already decidedwhat is important and what is not, who has already decreed the criteria ofsuccess, and for whom the projection of authentic Dasein may be unintelli-gible. Untruth can only be judged, in the last place, from the perspective ofthe disclosure of being as such, which grounds understanding at the ontolog-ical level.

There is no ontological primacy within the structure of truth, no hierarchy,only an essential normative asymmetry, as we noted above. Concealment isonly possible on the basis of unconcealment, and unconcealment is alwaysan overcoming of a prior concealment. Withdrawal (Entzug) is the essence(Wesen) of being as presence. Conceived in this way, the horizon of the ques-tion of truth is no longer metaphysical – no longer are the categories of objec-tive presence determinative, no longer is truth conceived solely in essentialstatic, isolated, and fixed contradistinction to its opposite, falsehood. Thefundamental flaw in Tugendhat’s critique is first of all his refusal to takethe decisive step onto that horizon where the possibility of a fundamental-ontological, post-metaphysical critique of Heidegger’s concept of truthwould first be available.

Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany

Notes

1 2nd ed (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1970).2 Beiträge zur Philosophie, Gesamtausgabe Bd 65, 2nd edn (Frankfurt am Main:

Vittorio Klostermann, 1994), p. 345: ‘The question concerning truth … is for usthe prior question, which we must go through first.’ All English translations in thispaper are my own, except where otherwise indicated.

3 WHH, p. 331: ‘That a concept of truth accords with propositional truth is theminimum condition it must fulfil in order to count as a concept of truth at all.’

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4 For the Husserl of the Logische Untersuchungen truth is ‘the ideal adequation ofa relational act to the corresponding adequate percept of a state of affairs’ (trans.J. N. Findlay), or in general the absolute adequation that obtains in the unity ofcoincidence between the epistemic essences of an intention and a fully givenstate of affairs or object. See Vol. II, §39.

5 ‘The being intended itself shows itself as it is in itself, that is, that it is in samenessjust as it is indicated to be in the proposition.’

6 WHH, p. 332: ‘The proposition is true if it indicates, uncovers, the being as it isin itself.’

7 SZ, p. 218: ‘The proposition is true means: it uncovers the being in itself.’8 There are two German words that can be translated with the English ‘as’: als

and wie. Prior to §44, Heidegger has given his well-known analysis of what hecalls the Als-Struktur, which is found in the context of discussions of interpreta-tion and the proposition. Whilst Heidegger does not incorporate this figureonce more into the explicit argument of §44, nevertheless it is clearly of rele-vance to the determination of propositional truth in terms of a wie. Heideggerdistinguishes two nomenclatorial meanings of Als: the existential-hermeneutic,which is primordial and concerns the projection of interpretation onto thedetermining horizon of world; and the apophantic, derivative of the latter,which concerns the determination of the propositioned being in the mode ofbeing of Vorhandenheit. The discussion of propositional truth in §44 obviouslyhas in the first place to do with the latter. The determination of something assomething requires primordially, for Heidegger, the structure of projectiveunderstanding. The explicitation of understanding through speech is clearlystructurally homologous. Language is to be conceived existentially. The as thataccords with any uttered proposition is thus relative to the given understandingor interpretative projection as part of which the proposition is uttered. Thismeans that the determination of any proposition is relative to an existentialscheme, which in turn precludes propositional truth from being thematized interms of universal validity, a notion decisive for both the Husserlian and theneo-Kantian theorizations of truth. Although this is not the primary focus ofTugendhat’s critique, it is nevertheless of relevance to it. The as-structure canbe seen to deprive all determination of any intrinsic character: there is no deter-mination, no meaning in-itself, that is, outside all existential reference.Tugendhat’s insistence on the concept of truth maintaining reference to an ‘as itis in-itself’ can, consequently, be understood as an attempt to retain the essen-tial connection between truth and universal validity.

9 SZ, p. 218: ‘The being-true (truth) of the proposition must be understood asbeing-uncovering.’

10 WHH, p. 335: ‘It is, however, precisely this distinction [between an immediateand, as it were, ostensible givenness … and the thing itself] in terms of which theword “truth” first receives a meaning at all.’

11 SZ, p. 220: ‘The uncoveredness of inner-worldly beings is grounded in the disclo-sure of world.’

12 SZ, p. 220: ‘Disclosure is, however, the basic character of Dasein, in virtue ofwhich it is its “there”.’

13 SZ, p. 222: ‘Through chatter, curiosity and ambiguity, that which is uncoveredand disclosed stands in the mode of dissimulation and closure. Being towardsbeings is not extinguished but is uprooted. Beings are not fully concealed, ratherthey are precisely uncovered, but they are at the same time dissimulated, theyshow themselves – but in the mode of apparentness. At the same time, that whichwas previously uncovered sinks back again into dissimulation and concealment.’

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14 WHH, p. 336: ‘What could have induced Heidegger to use the word “truth” inthis case? Perhaps that disclosure “grounds” truth? And that even justifies itsbeing understood as “original truth”? But then with the same justification onecould also refer to it as original falsehood.’

15 It can be no argument against this thesis that the objects of false propositionsoften are not, since that can also be true of true propositions: ‘The holy RomanEmpire no longer exists’, for example. The logical problems of non-referringterms are well known, and I should only add that insofar as Heidegger’s mostbasic philosophical categories are presence and absence (Anwesenheit andAbwesenheit), he himself outlines a new logic of absence, of non-being, of thenothing.

16 Although at this point, it might be considered fair to pause in order to contextu-alize, to some extent at least, the motivation and precedent behind the critiqueissued here by Tugendhat. Earlier work of his (in particular his doctoral disser-tation, Ti Kata Tinos (Freiburg im Breisgau: K. Alber, 1958)) had taken issuewith Heidegger’s interpretations of Greek philosophy, specifically of Plato andAristotle and their particular doctrines of being and truth. As is well known,Heidegger considers the origin of the metaphysical understanding of being –being as presence, Anwesenheit – to lie at the very beginning of philosophy, withthe pre-Socratics. He points out that the Greek word that we translate with‘truth’, aletheia, meant, literally conceived, un-concealment, and not simplycorrectness. It is not difficult to imagine that the determination of being as pres-ence – for the Greeks, phusis – and the determination of truth as unconcealmentare conceptually implicatory – being is, after all, ‘that’ which is true. The changein the conception of truth, from aletheia, or unconcealment, to correctness – thatis, to the metaphysical conception – which goes hand in hand with a change in theway being is understood, took place, according to a relatively early essay ofHeidegger’s, in Plato’s philosophy. Heidegger later came, at least in a certainsense, to retract this consideration of a change in what he termed the essence oftruth, but at the time Tugendhat was writing his dissertation the claim was gener-ally held to be a key thesis of Heidegger’s philosophy of the history of being.Tugendhat, however, gives both the pre-Platonic concept of truth and thePlatonic concept of truth a different determination and thereby contests Heideg-ger’s thesis concerning an essential change. For Tugendhat, aletheia, beforePlato, meant unconcealment, but unconcealment that excludes from itself allconcealment, that has left all concealment behind itself; simple revealedness(schlechthinniges Enthülltsein (p. 9)); it did not mean, as per Heidegger’s earlycontention, an un-concealment that includes or incorporates the moment ofconcealment, that carries with it, precisely in and through its unconcealment, anoblivion. On the other hand, Plato’s doctrine of forms, in which being as such isnewly cast as presence before or for apprehension or perception, does notinitiate a change in this conception of aletheia, but rather simply amounts to aprecise determination of it. Being as presence for perception again implicatestruth as simple unconcealment – and subsequently as the correctness of theperception. It is not that the moment of concealment was driven out of theconcept of truth by Plato’s doctrine of forms, and thus it is not, as for Heidegger,that truth’s determination was essentially modified.

Our task in this paper is restricted to Tugendhat’s critique of Heidegger’s ownconcept of truth, and therefore differences in the reception of Greek philosophyare not immediately relevant to our discussion. Nevertheless, it is significant tonote that here the charge against Heidegger takes a similar form: Tugendhatwants to drive a radical wedge between truth and falsity, and cannot accept that

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truth and untruth are inseparable. His most basic diagnosis of Heidegger’sdeception also occurs in his dissertation. The characterization of the metaphysi-cal understanding of being as presence (Anwesenheit) contains a vital ambiguity.On the one hand, it is true that presence corresponds to that which all metaphys-ical theory understood as being in its authentic sense – the intelligibility of theintelligible; in fact, that which is super-sensuous. On the other hand, it also corre-sponds to that which metaphysical theory considered to be precisely not being inits authentic sense, namely, appearance, the phenomenal, mere seeming. ForHeidegger, the characterization of being as presence has the virtue of capturingboth of these determinations; for Tugendhat, in contrast, it is precisely this ambi-guity, or the forgetting of this distinction, which distorts Heidegger’s conceptionof truth. But here it again becomes clear to what extent Tugendhat remainswithin a metaphysical conceptuality.

17 Wegmarken, 3rd edn (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996), p. 197:‘All comportment has its own manner of erring, according to its openness and itsrelation to beings as a whole. Error extends from the most ordinary wasting oftime, making mistakes, miscalculating, to going astray and venturing too far inessential attitudes and decisions.’

18 WHH, p. 326: ‘“Verfallen” should not, however, be a particular concretetendency of Dasein, but rather stands simply for the formal structure of thetendency for covering up as such.’

19 WHH, p. 314: ‘This tendency for covering up is to be sharply distinguished fromthe possibility of self-closure.’

20 Of course, in general, failure is only to be determined within the configuration ofan existential projection. The phenomenon of regret is particularly illustrative. Itis only possible to regret something that is incongruous with some currentproject. Insofar as authenticity and inauthenticity determine essentially differentprojective horizons of possibility, their respective understandings of regret orfailure will be incommensurable.

21 Thus, it must, it seems, always be re-emphasized that Dasein is not simply asynonym for ‘human’. Dasein is best perhaps understood as the structure whichdetermines the essence of the human to be disclosure of being. Or simply: Daseinis the structural possibility of disclosure.

22 From Latin resolutus, past participle of resolvere, to unbind, loosen, open. Theetymology of Entschlossenheit, meaning originally Aufschließen, to unlock, isessentially the same.

Documents

Duits; On Tugendhat's Analysis of Heidegger's Concept of Truth