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The Essence of Truth: On Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theaetetus PDF

259 Pages·2013·1.5 MB·English
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TITLES IN THE BLOOMSBURY REVELATIONS SERIES Aesthetic Theory, Theodor W. Adorno Being and Event, Alain Badiou On Religion, Karl Barth The Language of Fashion, Roland Barthes The Intelligence of Evil, Jean Baudrillard I and Thou, Martin Buber Never Give In!, Winston Churchill The Boer War, Winston Churchill The Second World War, Winston Churchill In Defence of Politics, Bernard Crick Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, Manuel DeLanda A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari Anti-Oedipus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari Cinema I, Gilles Deleuze Cinema II, Gilles Deleuze Taking Rights Seriously, Ronald Dworkin Discourse on Free Will, Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther Education for Critical Consciousness, Paulo Freire Marx’s Concept of Man, Erich Fromm and Karl Marx To Have or To Be?, Erich Fromm Truth and Method, Hans Georg Gadamer All Men Are Brothers, Mohandas K. Gandhi Violence and the Sacred, Rene Girard The Essence of Truth, Martin Heidegger The Eclipse of Reason, Max Horkheimer The Language of the Third Reich, Victor Klemperer Rhythmanalysis, Henri Lefebvre After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre Time for Revolution, Antonio Negri Politics of Aesthetics, Jacques Ranciere Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure An Actor Prepares, Constantin Stanislavski Building A Character, Constantin Stanislavski Creating A Role, Constantin Stanislavski Interrogating the Real, Slavoj Žižek Some titles are not available in North America. The Essence of Truth On Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theaetetus Martin Heidegger Translated by Ted Sadler Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK 1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Originally published as Vom Wesen der Wahrheit © Vittorio Klosterman GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 1988 Die Herausgabe dieses Wekes wurde aus Mitteln von INTER NATIONES, Bonn gefördert English translation first published by Continuum in 2002 © Continuum 2002 This paperback edition first published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Academic All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. eISBN: 978-1-47253374-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Contents Translator’s Foreword Preliminary Considerations §1 The Questionworthiness of Our ‘Self-Evident’ Preconceptions Concerning ‘Essence’ and Truth’ §2 History of the Concept of Truth: Not Historical Confirmation of Preconceptions, But Return to the Originary Greek Experience of ἀλήθεια (Unhiddenness) Part One The Clue to the ‘Essence’ of Ἀαηθεια Interpretation of the Allegory of the Cave in Plato’s Politeia 1 The Four Stages of the Occurrence of Truth A. The First Stage (514 a 2–515 c 3): the Situation of Man in the Underground Cave §3 The Unhidden in the Cave: the Shadows B. The Second Stage (515 c 4–515 e 5): a ‘Liberation’ of Man within the Cave §4 New Features of ἀλήθεια Revealed by the Unsuccessful Attempt at Liberation C. The Third Stage (515 e 5–516 e 2): the Genuine Liberation of Man to the Primordial Light §5 The Ascent of Man from the Cave Towards the Light of the Sun a) Levels of Unhiddenness outside the Cave b) Four Questions Concerning the Visible Connections of ἀλήθεια in the Occurrence of Liberation §6 Idea and Light a) The Seeing of What-Being b) The Essence of Brightness: Transparency c) The Fundamental Accomplishment of the Idea: Letting-through the Being of Beings §7 Light and Freedom. Freedom as Bond to the Illuminating §8 Freedom and Beings. The Illuminating View as Projection of Being (Exemplified by Nature, History, Art and Poetry) §9 The Question Concerning the Essence of Truth as Unhiddenness a) Gradations of Unhiddenness. The Ideas as the Primordially Unhidden and Most Beingful of Beings b) The Ideas as What Is Sighted by a Pre-modelling Perceiving within the Occurrence of Unhiddenness c) Deconcealment as the Fundamental Occurrence of the Existence of Man D. The Fourth Stage (516 e 3–517 a 6): the Freed Prisoner’s Return to the Cave §10 The φιλóσοφοϛ as Liberator of the Prisoners. His Act of Violence, His Endangerment and Death §11 The Fulfilment of the Fate of Philosophizing as an Occurrence of ἀλἡθεια: Separation and Togetherness of the Manifest and the Hidden (Being and Illusion) 2 The Idea of the Good and Unhiddenness §12 The Idea of the Good as the Highest Idea: Empowerment of Being and Unhiddenness §13 Seeing as ὁρᾶυ and νοεῖν. Seeing and the Seeable in the Yoke of the Light §14 The Good: Empowerment of That upon Which All Depends §15 The Question Concerning the Essence of Truth as the Question Concerning the History of Man’s Essence and His παιδεία 3 The Question Concerning the Essence of Untruth §16 The Waning of the Fundamental Experience of ἀλἡθεια. The Philosophical Obligation to Re-awaken It: the Abiding Origin of Our Existence §17 The Neglect of the Question Concerning the Essence of Hiddenness. Transformation of the Question Concerning the Essence of Truth into the Question Concerning the Essence of Untruth §18 Justification of the ‘Detour’. Preliminary Clarification of Fundamental Concepts: ψεῦδοϛ, λήθη and ἀ-λήθεια §19 Summary: Unhiddenness and Being; the Question Concerning the Essence of Untruth Part Two An Interpretation of Plato’s Theaetetus with Respect to the Question of the Essence of Untruth 1 Preliminary Considerations §20 The Question Concerning the Essence of ἐπιστήμη: Man’s Attack on the Self-evidences of His Self-understanding §21 Fundamental Content of the Greek Concept of Knowledge: Fusion of Know-how and Seeing Having-Present of That Which Is Present 2 Beginning of the Discussion of Theaetetus’ First Answer: ἐπιστήμη is αἴσθησιϛ. Critical Demarcation of the Essence of Perception §22 Αἴσθησιϛ as φαντασία, The Self-showing in Its Presencing §23 The Senses: Only Passage-way, Not Themselves What Perceives in Human Perception §24 The Soul as the Relationship that Unifies the Perceivable and Holds It Open §25 Colour and Sound: Both Perceived at Once in διανοεῖν 3 Stepwise Unfolding of Perceiving in All Its Connections A. Step One: Perceiving of Beings as Such §26 A Strange ‘Excess’ in the Perceived over and above the Sensory Given: ‘Being’ and Other Characters as the Necessary but Unnoticed Co-perceived B. Step Two: Inquiry into What Perceives the Excess in the Perceived §27 The Sense-Organs: No Passage-way to the Common in Everything Perceived §28 The Soul as What Views the κοινά in διανοεῖυ C. Step Three: The Soul’s Relation to Being as Striving for Being §29 The Priority of Striving for Being in the Soul as Relationship to the Perceived §30 Having and Striving a) Apparent Incompatibility between Striving and Perception b) Losing Oneself in Immediate Perception c) Non-regarding and Non-conceptual Perceiving d) Free Possession of Truth (Knowledge) Only in the Relationship of Striving towards What Is Striven for; Inauthentic and Authentic Having §31 Inauthentic and Authentic Striving. The ἔρωϛ as Striving for Being §32 More Determinate Conception of Striving for Being a) More Essential Unfolding of the Determinations of Being in Attunedness b) The Taking-in-View of the Connections of Being c) Interpretation of Connections of Being in the συλλογισμóϛ d) Initial Clarification of the Connection of Being to Time §33 The ‘Excess’: Not an Addition to What Is Sensed, but the Conceptual Highlighting of Distinct Characters of Being in the Sphere of Striving for Being D. Step Four: Being-Human as Historical in Staking and Stance (παιδεία) §34 The Rooting of ‘Abstract’ Characters of Being in the Unity of Bodily Existence. Their Difference from ‘Self-less’ Nature. Being out Beyond Oneself in Primordial Yearning §35 Inadequacy of Theaetetus’ First Answer. Perception Still More Than Perception. Broadened Experience of αἴσθησιϛ as the Condition of the Possibility of Unhiddenness 4 Towards a Discussion of Theaetetus’ Second Answer: ἐπιστήμη Is ἀληθὴϛ δóξα. The Various Meanings of δóξα §36 The Emergence of the Second Answer out of the Question of Untruth §37 Double-Meaning of δóξα (View): Look and Opinion §38 Two More Faces of δóξα: The Wavering between Letting- Appear (εῖδος) and Distorting (ψεῦδοϛ) 5 The Question Concerning the Possibility of the ψευδής δóξα A. Preparatory Investigation: Impossibility of the Phenomenon of the ψευδὴς δóξα §39 The Horizon of the Preparatory Investigation as Excluding in Advance the Possibility of a ψευδὴς δóξα a) First Perspective: Alternatives of Knowing and Not-knowing b) Second Perspective: Alternatives of Being and Non-being c) Third Perspective: The ψευδὴς δóξα as ἀλλοδοξία (Substitution instead of Confusion) §40 Result of the Preliminary Investigation: λóγος-Character of the δóξα; Its Aporia: Suppression of the Phenomenon through the Guiding Perspectives B. Main Investigation: Saving the Phenomenon of the ψευδὴς δóξα §41 Retracting the Guiding Perspectives of the Preliminary Investigation in Favour of Previously Denied Intermediate Phenomena §42 New Characteristics of the Soul: Two Similes a) Simile of the Wax; Keeping-in-Mind b) An Example: the Feldberg Tower; Having-Present and Making- Present c) Simile of the Aviary; Modes of Retaining §43 Confirmation of the Connection between αἴσθησις and διάυοια through Broadening the Field of the Present §44 Clarification of the Double-Meaning of δóξα: Its Forking into Having-Present and Making-Present §45 Enabling of Mis-taking through the Forking of the δóξα §46 The Shifting of Ontological Failure into the Incorrectness of the Proposition. What Remained Un-happened in the History of the Concept of Truth Appendix Supplementary Materials from Heidegger’s Notes Editor’s Afterword English–German Glossary Greek–English Glossary Translator’s Foreword This book is a translation of Vom Wesen der Wahrheit: zu Platons Höhleng- leichnis und Theätet, first published in 1988 as volume 34 of Martin Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe. The text is based on a lecture course delivered by Heidegger at the University of Freiburg in the winter semester 1931–32. Part One of the course provides a detailed analysis of Plato’s allegory of the cave in the Republic, while Part Two gives a similarly painstaking exegesis and interpretation of a central section of Plato’s Theaetetus. As always with Heidegger’s writings on the Greeks, the point of his interpretative method is to bring to light the original meaning of philosophical concepts, especially to free up these concepts, which in the subsequent tradition have become overlaid by secondary and even quite different meanings, to their intrinsic power. In this regard the present text must count as one of Heidegger’s most important works, for nowhere else does he give a comparably thorough explanation of what is arguably the most fundamental and abiding theme of his entire philosophy, namely the difference between truth as the ‘unhiddenness of beings’ and truth as the ‘correctness of propositions’. For Heidegger, it is by neglecting the former primordial concept of truth in favour of the latter derivative concept that Western philosophy, beginning already with Plato, took off on its ‘metaphysical’ course towards the bankruptcy of the present day. In the lectures here translated, Heidegger is not concerned to demonstrate this larger thesis as such, but to clarify the aforesaid distinction upon which it is founded. This he does through his characteristic combination of philological acumen and philosophical incisiveness, or, more precisely, by employing philological expertise in the service of philosophical insight. Heidegger himself often emphasizes that the results or constituent theses of a philosophical discourse cannot be separated from its method, indeed that the latter, as precisely what makes a genuine ‘showing’ possible, is ultimately more important than theoretical conclusions. This applies to Plato’s dialogues or the closely argued treatises of Aristotle as much as to the present lecture course by Heidegger. In the following pages the reader will encounter the ‘art of going slowly’ brought to the highest consummation, always for the purpose of thoroughly comprehending the matter at hand. Indeed it is Heidegger’s conviction that philosophy, genuinely undertaken and carried through, subverts

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Martin Heidegger is one of the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th Century. A major figure in the development of phenomenology, his work also profoundly influenced many of the intellectual movements that followed in his wake, from Sartre's Existentialism to Derrida's deconstructi
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