Introduction
The task that Heidegger undertakes in Being and Time is the "retrieve of the question of being."(2) This is an important task, Heidegger believes, because ontological inquiry itself, as the study of the being of beings, remains poorly defined so long as we are unclear about the meaning of being in general. But as important as it is, the retrieval of the question of being is a daunting task. No other question is more universal and all encompassing in its scope. Whenever we speak of "beings" we presuppose "being," and though we do so unreflectively, it is with a certain degree of understanding and attunement. Being is always present, and it is this constant presence which makes it hard for us to initiate its interrogation in the first place. We take it for granted, like we take for granted the air that we breath.
Plato and Aristotle didn't take the question of being for granted, however. Heidegger prefaces Being and Time with a quote from Plato's Sophist which raises the question, and in Metaphysics, Aristotle undertakes an exhaustive investigation into the possibility of a "science of being." The question of being may have been forgotten, but in order to be forgotten it must already have been asked. Heidegger was obviously aware of his Greek predecessors and their concern for this issue. Just as obvious is the fact that Heidegger was not satisfied with their conclusions. Though their insights pointed in the correct direction, they had not discovered the proper phenomenological means of access to the problem.
In his own work of retrieval, Heidegger sets out to ask what being "is," and he does so through an investigation into the very being that raises the question in the first place. Da-sein is that "being which is concerned in its being about its being."(3) As such, it is the appropriate point of entry for an eventual clear and philosophical understanding of the meaning of being in general. Heidegger's task, then, is to allow the phenomena which comprise Da-sein's everyday world to become manifest and then to undertake an analysis of the conditions which make that world possible. By working back to the preconditions of Da-sein's existence, Heidegger hopes to dis-cover the truth about being itself. The truth that Heidegger eventually uncovers is that "there are no eternal truths."(4)
Da-sein
Heidegger's jumping-off point into the issue of being is Da-sein. "Da" is a German word referring to place. It means "there" or "here." It also has a temporal aspect to it, such as "then, at that time."(5) "Sein" means "to be" or "to exist." "Da-sein," then, means "being-there-or-here-then" or "existing-there-or-here-then." Normally, it is translated simply as "being-there," although the temporal component of Da-sein takes on overwhelming importance in the second division of Being and Time .
"The essence of Da-sein lies in its existence."(6) In asserting this, Heidegger intends to draw a distinction between the manner in which Da-sein exists and the manner in which other "beings" exist. Da-sein is not simply objectively present in the world as an extended thing. Its possibilities are what uniquely define it as "who" it is. Da-sein is singular amongst all other beings in that, first of all, it is able to raise the question of its own being, and secondly, it can choose to relate itself authentically or inauthentically to its possibilities. This latter characteristic is why Heidegger claims that "the being which this being is concerned about in its being is always my own."(7) Rocks, watermelons and even dogs are incapable of this kind of existence since their essence lies not in their possibilities, but in their actuality. They have definite natures which can be categorically summed up. This is why Heidegger calls the characteristics of beings unlike Da-sein "categories."(8) Da-sein, however, is purely potential, and its characteristics are distinguished from those of objectively present things by the term "existentials."(9) It distinguishes itself in the course of existing by constantly running ahead of any categorical summing up of its characteristics. While things that are objectively present are referred to as "whats," Da-sein is referred to as a "who." It is, in sum, what we think of when we think of "human-being."
Anthropology, psychology and biology have all failed to give an ontologically sound treatment to human-being because they mistakenly treat humans as "whats" rather than as "whos." Da-sein is a subject, not an object, and any treatment that neglects this existential characteristic fails to get at the primordial "truth" about being-human. Heidegger mentions Descartes by way of illustration in this respect. Descartes' cogito sum was intended to be an indubitable foundation upon which to build a philosophical investigation of existence. Beginning a priori, from within his own mind and before experience, Descartes tried to formulate a series of logically indubitable assertions which would allow him to establish the existence of the world around him. In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes dramatically reconstructs the procedure he followed. First, everything must be doubted, even the most apparently self-evident perceptions. We are often fooled by optical illusions and hallucinations, so how can we be certain that everything we see around us is not illusory? In fact, there is no test with which we can establish that all we experience is not occurring in a dream. Even the truths of math and logic might be doubted if we entertain the possibility of an evil god who constantly tries of fool us. Once we have doubted everything that can be doubted, the second step of Descartes' project is to look for something that can't be doubted. This he finds in the recognition that every time he thinks, he must necessarily exist as a thinking thing. This is absolutely certain: I exist as a thinking thing. The third step in Descartes' program is to establish the existence of the world on the basis of his new discovery. Some of the ideas that he as a thinking thing possesses are too great to have originated from him, for the cause of an idea must contain as much reality as the idea itself. So, since he has the idea of God as a perfect being, God must exist and he must not be a deceiver since deception is a sign of imperfection. Ultimately, then, it is God who guarantees that the world as it presents itself to the senses is pretty much the way that it appears to be. There is a world outside of the human mind, and so long as we don't allow our imagination to outrun our judgment, we will not be mislead.
Despite the fact that Descartes successfully discovered "thinking being" as distinct from "extended being," he spent most of his energies investigating "thinking" and neglected the prior question of "being" itself. In reducing the world to "extended stuff," Descartes radically split humans off from that world. Only by God's grace is a connection between the two allowed, and for this reason Charles B. Guignon writes, "...the quest for certainty that motivates Cartesian foundationalism ends in frustration."(10) Descartes never asks about the being that is common to both thinking and extended "stuff" and so leaves humans alienated from their own environment. A major portion of Heidegger's project will be to repair this split by demonstrating that the powerful legacy of Cartesian Dualism in anthropology, psychology and biology must be overcome. Heidegger does not so much want to show that this dualistic way of conceptualizing the world is false so much as he wants to show that it is inadequate and incomplete. He wants to "get behind" Cartesian thinking in order to reveal how this way of seeing the world is possible and grounded in a more primordial mode of existence.
Being-in-the-World
Da-sein is already "thrown" into the world. Descartes' error was to overlook this primordial fact. Instead of being split off from other beings in the world, the very constitution of Da-sein requires a world of interrelations to give it meaning in the first place. Da-sein's essence as possibility consists in its ability to draw together things that are "handy," thereby fashioning a world in which it navigates. But it is important to recognize that the "in-ness" of Da-sein in its world does not consist of being objectively present amongst other beings. This is the Cartesian mistake. Instead, Heidegger insists that being-in-the-world is characterized by a complementary dependence between Da-sein and its world. The two are not separate from one another in our everyday existence, but only come to be separated when we encounter problems or attempt to theorize about ourselves. Normally, we "de-distance" beings and gather them into a "clearing" as things that are connected by a web of significant relationships which form "equipmental totalities."
For instance, Heidegger's favorite example involves the use of a hammer. A hammer as hammer is discovered in the use of a certain object for the purpose of driving nails into pieces of wood. The "hammer" is meaningful as a hammer insofar as it allows us to engage in the practice of nail-driving, which itself serves a certain function within a larger context of projects: The hammer drives a nail. Driving nails is useful for attaching one piece of wood to another. Attaching one piece of wood to another is useful for building a structure, which is in turn useful for sheltering us from the elements, and so on... So long as the hammer carries out its function in an inconspicuous manner, we don't even notice it. It remains "handy." In its handiness a thing allows us to look past its immediate usefulness towards other projects for which it is instrumental, and in this way we discover the world. "Our absorption in taking care of things in the work world nearest to us has the function of discovering..."(11)
So, the simple example of a hammer reveals a number of things. First, it shows that the very meaningfulness of a thing in the world is dependent upon its significance in relation to other things. Second, the significance of one thing to another acts to "de-distance" objects, collapsing the gap that theoretically exists between beings in the world. Third, the resultant network of significant relationships which holds between beings in the world just is Da-sein's world. Da-sein is the clearing in which this network finds "space."
Hammers sometimes break, and when they do so the taken for granted world of Da-sein is called into question. The "unhandiness" of a broken hammer forces one to stop doing what one is doing and in this the tool itself and all of the things which it is instrumental to accomplishing become "conspicuous." It is here that another constituent of Da-sein's world becomes manifest. Da-sein's world is held together by "care." The reason that things have significance for us in the first place is because we desire certain things to be accomplished. We want to see things carried out and "taken care of." When things break down, our care is "made visible." The world throws our care back in our faces like a spiteful lover, screaming at us, "Look at what you have taken for granted!" For this reason, Heidegger writes that for Da-sein, "its being toward the world is essentially taking care."(12)
We are not only in the world among objects, but with other humans. Da-sein is always with others that it is like, and its world is thus an irreducible "with-world." We care about others that are like us and so run the risk of becoming absorbed into the world of the "they." In fact, in our everydayness, we abandon ourselves to the public world of others, becoming absorbed into a web of human relationships which dissolves our unique awareness of ourselves. We are "thrown" into a public world no less than we are thrown into the world of equipmental totalities, and like a well functioning hammer, we tend to lose ourselves in the projects of others, becoming instruments rather than selves. The choices that we make under these public circumstances are "inauthentic" choices. In its throwness, Da-sein falls away from itself by "falling prey to the world."(13)
Being-in as Such
Having outlined the structural moments of Da-sein's being-in-the-world, Heidegger finds it necessary to move beyond this and attempts a reconstruction of the "structural whole" of the phenomenon of "being-in." He does so in terms of "attuned understanding."
Da-sein, as has been shown again and again, is "thrown" into the world. This throwness is disclosed to Da-sein by way of a special attunement, and this attunement has the character of a "mood" for us. We are accustomed to talking about "being in" good or bad moods, but Heidegger insists that, in fact, we are always in some kind of mood which even as it sensitizes us to the world, also turns us away from that world. Mood normally discloses by sensitizing us to something that we want to reject and close our eyes to. For instance, a bad mood makes us want to withdraw from others and the world. We want to be left alone and be by ourselves when this kind of mood strikes us. Yet, in entering this mood we are already aware of something that threatens us and needs to be attended to. The mood directs us towards something at the same time that it covers that thing over. We become ever more "entangled" in the world as we attempt to wrestle free of it.
Our attunement is equiprimordial with our understanding of the world. Whereas attunement directs us and sensitizes us to the world, understanding uncovers and discloses it. "Understanding is always attuned."(14) It makes the world "transparent" by revealing the possibilities that are latent there. Da-sein is given "sight" by understanding, and with this sight Da-sein sees the projects that it is capable of pursuing. Possibility is disclosed and shows itself. The understanding that Da-sein possesses is capable of pulling away the curtain which conceals the being of Da-sein itself, and that being which is disclosed through attuned understanding is Da-sein's own "thrown possibility." The being which lies at the foundation of Da-sein is just its unchosen possibility to project into the future. In the activity of being authentic, Da-sein is "called" away from the world of the "they" and back to itself in order to confront its own "guilt" in throwness, and it is not until it authentically confronts its own being-towards-death that it realizes how separate it is from the "they." Da-sein always already understands all of this in an average, everyday way, but "true" understanding comes only when it turns towards itself, attuned to its own always immanent death in the mood of "angst." In ultimate transparency, being attuned to death reveals the temporal being which is the essence of Da-sein and the world. However, so long as it is tied to the perspective of Da-sein, the understanding of all of this is forever in the nature of an interpretation.
Interpretation is the understanding of understanding. It develops the possibilities already discovered by the primordial understanding of being. Interpretation, according to Heidegger, runs the same path as all understanding. It is never a matter of producing isolated facts which bear no relation to other things. Rather, all interpretation involves understanding one thing "as" another. The primordial "as" relation is equivalent to the primordial understanding which sees all things "as" linked in a network of interconnections. The authentic, primordial "as" relation, however, is watered down in most everyday cases of interpretation. Heidegger offers as an example of this diluted form of understanding an analysis of "statement."
Heidegger has several goals in his analysis of statement. First, he wants to sharpen our focus on the twin phenomena of understanding and interpretation by showing how the primordial "as" relation is modified in statement. Second, he wants to show how ancient ontology, with its emphasis on logos, failed as a guide towards the "being of beings." Finally, he hopes to lay the ground for a future discussion on the problem of truth. He begins by observing that the term "statement" is ambiguous, having at least three separate "significations." Primary among these is the meaning of statement as "pointing out."(15) In this sense, a statement brings a being to our attention, even if it is not present or near enough to be seen. For example: the statement, "The philosopher is speaking cryptically" focuses our attention on the "cryptically speaking philosopher" who is not at hand. Statements in this way de-distance beings.
Secondly, "statement" means "predication."(16) Whereas in the first sense statements point us in a direction, in this second sense statements further limit and focus our "seeing." Breaking a statement into subject and predicate allows us to concentrate even more clearly on the 1st signification (the subject) by separating it from the 2nd signification (the predicate).
Finally, "statement" means "communication."(17) This brings together the meanings above and adds an additional social element to the meaning of statement. As communication, statement allows us to "see" and "point out" with others. In this way we can share a "being toward" the thing indicated.
Statements can do what they do on the basis of "being-in-the-world," and so they always contain "fore-having," "fore-sight," and "fore-conceptions." Statements only are able to act as pointers and limiters because they operate within a realm of related concepts. Language is this system of concepts, and the entanglement of statements in language shrouds the fore-conceptions which make statements intelligible. For example, the statement "The philosopher is speaking cryptically," presupposes that this "particular thing" has the property of "speaking cryptically." Prior to these linguistic formulations there is only heedful circumspection of a being in the world. One actually experiences the obscurity of the philosopher's speech. When the thing-at hand is interpreted in terms of a statement, however, a transformation takes place. The statement is now about "philosopher" "as" "cryptic speaker." Of course, philosophers have other properties than speaking cryptically, but the statement focuses our attention so closely on the "philosopher" "as" "cryptic speaker" that it eliminates the "as" of "circumspect interpretation" and retains only the "as" of objective presence. The problem is that the former is more foundational than the latter. Aristotle formalized this "as" relation of "binding" and "separating" in his system of logic, and in the process the phenomenological judgment vanished altogether into a system of "coordination" and "calculation," thus side-stepping an ontological interpretation. Heidegger thinks that grammar should be freed from logic and instead seek its roots in the ontology of Da-sein.
It is here with Heidegger's critique of logic that we find him butting heads with a giant. Although Heidegger thinks that it was the interpreters of Aristotle, rather than Aristotle himself, who were misguided in their approach to truth, there is evidence in Aristotle's own texts which seems to point to a major opposition between Heidegger and Aristotle on this issue. In Categories , Aristotle undertook an examination of language which he claimed would be useful for an inquiry into the question of being. According to Aristotle, things may be called by "equivocal," "univocal," or "derivative" names.(18) If things are univocally named, then the definition of the things so named are the same. If things are derivatively named, then those things derive their names from a common source, yet find their ultimate, specific definitions in differing places. If things are named equivocally, then those things have differing definitions but the same name. The term "being" is often used equivocally, though its various meanings are derived from a common source. Ultimately, all that "is" is said to be true. However, things are true in four different ways: (1) accidentally, (2) essentially, (3) potentially, or (4) actually.
For Aristotle, when I say something "is" the case, I am saying that the statement expressing this state of affairs is true. "To be" means "to be true." By disambiguating the term "being" in the course of a linguistic analysis, Aristotle tries to show the differing senses in which it is used. Ultimately what he strives for is the "essence" of the term itself. By demonstrating what is common to all uses of the word, he provides a univocal definition of the word. Though Aristotle's discussions of being are complicated and sometimes contradictory, one thing definitely seems to emerge from his various analyses. When we make true statements about the being of beings, those statements correspond to substances in the world. Substances are the "being" or "whatness" of things.(19) When asked what a thing is, the natural answer is in terms of its substance, and all other qualities, quantities, etc. are exhibited through this. Substance is primary in: (1) definition (all definitions must be in terms of substance), (2) order of knowledge (we know a thing most fully in its "whatness"), and (3) time (only substance can exist without qualification).(20) Being is substance according to Aristotle, and "the truth" consists in judgments which correspond to the substance of things.
Heidegger, Aristotle and Truth
When you butt heads with a giant you must either have a very thick skull or be protected by a very strong helmet. Heidegger's "helmet" is one that he has borrowed from Aristotle himself, and it consists in a retrieval of the original meaning of the Greek word "aletheia." Heidegger writes, "in the end it is the business of philosophy to protect the power of the most elemental words in which Da-sein expresses itself from being flattened by the common understanding to the point of unintelligibility..."(21) By going back to the original meaning of the word aletheia, Heidegger hopes to reveal the most primordial conception of truth, and in so doing to demonstrate that all other conceptions are watered down and derivative. He also hopes to show that Aristotle never held that "the primordial 'place' of truth is the judgment."(22)
"Aletheia" means "unconcealment." In this ancient conception, the act of judging and the content of the judgment are not separated. Instead, they remain together as one piece. The "real" act and the "ideal" content cannot legitimately be pulled apart from one another since this would destroy the unity which gives meaning to both. In fact, the attempt to oppose the real act of judging to the ideal content of the judgment is the same mistake that was to doom Cartesian Dualism thousands of years later. Once the elements of a totality are detached and isolated from one another, they become objectively present and lose the character that gave them life in the first place. They become "unhandy" and in this unhandiness they fail to serve the function that they had served so inconspicuously up to that point. Truth, like a faulty hammer, is "broken" by the attempt to separate the act of judgment from the content of the judgment. When truth is broken in this manner it no longer serves its purpose. It becomes conspicuous and useless, and in its uselessness it becomes false. "Aletheia," then, does not mean the same thing as the modern concept of "truth." Aletheia is a primordial singleness of judging and judgment, and it is only when these aspects are separated and opposed that the concept of truth as correspondence of a judgment to its object emerges. But as Dorothea Frede remarks, "the question remains: How can there be truth if it is conceived of as the correspondence between our thoughts (or the content of our consciousness) and the outside world? In other words, what guarantees the objectivity of our subjective impressions?"(23)
The authentic, primordial meaning of truth has to do with the activity involved in discovering things, and it is Da-sein that engages in this activity. We have already discussed how Da-sein is in-the-world. The clearing in which Da-sein gathers together the various strands of its world is the only world there is for Da-sein, and "truth," if the word is to mean anything, must be found in that world. But as well as being in the world, "Da-sein is in the truth."(24) Wanting to retain the primordial echoes of aletheia, Heidegger thinks of "truth" as the unconcealment and self-showing of what is already there. So, "truth," for Heidegger, involves the unfolding of being as it shows itself through Da-sein. But, Da-sein is "thrown possibility" and is itself in-the-world. So what is already there in the world is never fully complete and as a result neither is "truth." As Gadamer sums up Heidegger's position: "There are no eternal truths. Truth is the disclosure of being that is given with the historicity of Da-sein."(25)
Why is truth such an important issue for Heidegger? If what he is telling us is that our ordinary, everyday conception of truth is actually more akin to falsehood, why not just abandon all this talk about "true" and "false" and instead talk about "concealed being" and "unconcealed being"? The answer, in a nutshell, is that according to Heidegger, "being and truth (as aletheia) 'are' equiprimordially."(26) If we want to ask the question of being, then we must at the same time ask the question of truth. Being and truth exist together as an undifferentiated, primordial whole. To understand being clearly, according to Heidegger, is to understand the truth. In this respect, Heidegger is not so different from Aristotle who claimed that "to be" is "to be true." Heidegger's main difference with Aristotle on this issue involves the role of logic and statement in ascertaining and systematizing the truth.
For Aristotle, it was not enough to simply recognize that something "is" the case. This was only the first step towards constructing a science. Man is endowed with memory, and with this, man may collect his observations together and organize them into a systematic body of knowledge. With statements, we can sum up and organize our remembered observations, forming universal judgments which, through the exercise of reason, may be understood in terms of first principles. For Aristotle, it is not enough for us as rational animals to know "that" something is the case. We also need to know "why" things are as they are. Aristotle demanded explanations for things, and his major contribution to this human need for explanation was the syllogism. Heidegger only went half-way according to the Aristotelian view of science. Either that or he somehow made an uncanny leap into the first principles of the universe and stayed there to bask in his undifferentiated grasp of being.
Suppose we accept Heidegger's characterization of "truth." Then we find ourselves in an awkward and peculiar position. First of all, what Heidegger calls truth and falsehood lie on a continuum. The highest level of this continuum is the full disclosure of being, and this would be the highest truth. However, the highest truth is unattainable to Da-sein since:
(1) Da-sein can never possibly fully disclose being. It always is involved in interpretation equiprimordially with its understanding, and in this process it produces more things that need to be understood. Da-sein is like a debtor who uses cash advances on his credit cards to pay his bills. In the very act of paying one bill, he owes on another.
(2) Da-sein is "in" being. If Da-sein was able to fully disclose being, it would then become completely transparent and no longer have the character of Da-sein. Furthermore, Da-sein is already in the world together with others and can never completely turn away from "them." Yet, authenticity requires turning away from the "they."
(3) Da-sein is "being-towards-death." In death, Da-sein is incapable of uncovering anything. All understanding stops. "...truth is only because and as long as Da-sein is."(27) In death, there is no truth. But worse than that, in death there is the ultimate falsehood, since it is then that Da-sein falls to the most extreme end of the continuum away from the full disclosure of being.
For these reasons, Da-sein is never fully in the truth but is "equiprimordially in truth and untruth."(28) This does not bother Heidegger, and it wouldn't bother us if all Heidegger meant was that we can't know everything.(29) But Heidegger seems to mean more than this. He seems to mean that because being is never fully transparent to us, any truth claims we make are partly false, and that it is inaccurate to claim that any human being is privy to an unmitigated truth. This is, of course, to deny Aristotle's law of non-contradiction, which as it appears in On Interpretation states: "...it is impossible that contradictory propositions should both be true of the same subject..."(30) Heidegger would probably answer this charge by reiterating that statement is not the most primordial locus of truth. Primordial truth resides in being rather than in statements about being. Though statements are subject to Aristotle's law, being is not. Statements shatter the whole truth into bits, and in the process these bits lose their meaningful connection to one another. Aristotle's rules of logic are thus akin to Descartes bringing God into the picture in order mend the split between mental and extended substance. It is a Band-Aid measure which would be unnecessary if we refused to initiate the split in the first place.
But then, given that the vast majority of human communication is carried out with the assistance of statements, doesn't this seem to reduce most human communication to "idle chatter"? Again, this might not bother Heidegger. But what status does that confer on the text known as Being and Time ? Are we to disregard it as "idle chatter" as well? Heidegger might even assent to this. He seems to have thought of the book as only one kind of experiment among many other possible ones.(31) More likely, Heidegger would probably claim that it is the spirit of his text which is important, not the details. His student Hans -Georg Gadamer has pointed out that when interpreting a piece of writing it is the subject matter of the text, and not the accidental qualities of syntax, grammar and logic, which is important. "The hermeneutical problem concerns not the correct mastery of language but coming to a proper understanding about the subject matter..."(32) With this in mind, perhaps we can be led to listen beyond the "chatter" that does occur in Being and Time in order to hear something which issues forth from a more subterranean region.
But we are still left with a dilemma. Even if we open ourselves to hear the truth that speaks through Heidegger's text, how are we supposed to recognize its call when we hear it? Truth is the uncovering of being. However, Da-sein is never fully in the truth but is always "equiprimordially in truth and untruth." In other words, we have never been exposed to the full force of truth. If this is the case, how does one distinguish greater from lesser degrees of truth? Heidegger leaves us with no criterion by which to judge. If we are looking for being "as" being, we are out of luck since the primordial "as" relation in terms of which we are supposed to understand being relates it to nothing other than itself. Completely uncovered being has no relatum. If we were exposed to it, we could not recognize it "as" anything.
Presumably, Heidegger would hold to the position that being "shows itself" with greater forcefulness when it is uncovered than when it is covered, and that a person who is properly attuned and turned away from the "they" is sensitive to this. In other words, you just know the truth when you see it. But consider the following example: a series of lenses is arranged in order to distort the light from a very bright light source which is illuminating a room in which a subject sits. The lenses may be removed and replaced independently of one another, leaving one or more to alter the character of the light that reaches the subject. Some of the lenses amplify the light, some distort it in other ways. The variety of distortions that may take place are, if not infinite, at least very diverse. The subject is asked to say when he sees the light in its truest and most undistorted view. Is it possible for him to respond to this request? Under these circumstances he would always be uncertain if his view was the "truest" possible since "truest" implies that he is able to relate his perception to some authoritative standard. But he has no such standard. Unless he had at some time in the past seen the light in its most unconcealed, undistorted and true nature, it wouldn't even make sense to ask him the question. He would have no way of making such distinctions.
Likewise, Da-sein has no standard by which to discern being which is more concealed from that which is less concealed. In the end, Heidegger expects us to just have faith that authentic Da-sein sees more clearly than inauthentic Da-sein.
Conclusion
In his discussion on Being and Time , Michael Inwood asks, "Is Heidegger telling the truth?"(33) In one sense this may be an unfair question given Heidegger's exposition on the issue of truth, but in another sense it cuts right to the heart of an important issue. If he is telling the truth, then Being and Time contains much falsehood, and it leaves the reader with an unsettled feeling. What is it that Heidegger has revealed and what is it that he has concealed in these pages? How do we make the distinction? If Heidegger is right, then he is also wrong, but how do we know what is right and what is wrong in his book?
According to Nietzsche, "...The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men..."(34) Heidegger's retrieval of the question of being has certainly borne fruit insofar as it has provoked a whole line of Heideggarian scholars who have taken up the question and attempted to think it through. But, as Heidegger himself admits, the only way to know if the path taken is the correct one is to follow it to its destination. If Heidegger's path really does lead to being itself, how will we know when we have arrived?
Notes
(1)Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra , in The Portable Nietzsche . (Penguin Books, 1968), p. 402.
(2)Martin Heidegger, Being and Time . (State University of New York Press, 1996), p. 1.
(3)Ibid, p. 40.
(4)Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method . (Continuum, 1997), p. 529.
(5)See: Langenscheidt's Pocket German Dictionary . (Langenscheidt, 1993)
(6)Heidegger, p. 40.
(7)Ibid, p. 40. Compare this to the treatment given by Max Stirner in his book The Ego and Its Own. (Cambridge University Press, 1995). There, Stirner rejects the Left Hegelian approach to "Man." He considers this approach an abstraction which ignores the dynamic and unique qualities possessed by each individual man. Instead, he speaks of "the Unique One" or of "Owness" or of "the Un-man." The upshot is that, like Heidegger's Da-sein, Stirner's Un-man is more like an activity than a thing. In its most uncorrupted existence, it genuinely faces its own possibilities with honesty and gusto.
(8)Heidegger, p. 42.
(9)Ibid.
(10)Charles B. Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge . (Hackett Publishing Co., 1983), p. 29.
(11)Heidegger, p. 67.
(12)Ibid, 53.
(13)Ibid, 164.
(14)Ibid, p. 134.
(15)Ibid, p. 144.
(16)Ibid, p. 145.
(17)Ibid.
(18)Aristotle, Categories . 1. 1a.
(19)Aristotle, Metaphysics Z. 1. 14.
(20)Ibid, Z. 1. 31.
(21)Heidegger, p. 202.
(22)Ibid, 207.
(23)Dorothea Frede, The Question of Being: Heidegger's Project , in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger . (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 61.
(24)Heidegger, 203.
(25)Gadamer, p. 529.
(26)Heidegger, p. 211.
(27)Ibid, p. 211.
(28)Ibid, p. 205.
(29)Although it may raise the hackles of someone like Nietzsche. One of Nietzsche's major criticism of both Christians and Anarchists is that they are utopianists who posit otherworldly realms that tempt this worldly creatures with unattainable promises. Heidegger's positing of a realm of unattainable "truth" may be seen as akin to this. Nietzsche's characterization of truth as "A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms" (On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense , in The Portable Nietzsche . p. 46) emphasizes the instrumental and practical usage of truth for life in the here and now. It is certainly not "truth" in the sense of correspondence or aletheia, but "truth" in the sense of pragmatics.
(30)Aristotle, On Interpretation . 12. 21b. 17.
(31)See his comments on p. 398. It is also very telling that the publication of Being and Time was premature, being pushed through in order to support Heidegger's advancement in academic rank. The finished work was supposed to include not only a third division, but a second volume. Debate over an "early" and a "late" strain in Heidegger's thought center around his apparent abandonment of the project begun with Being and Time .
(32)Gadamer, p. 384.
(33)Michael Inwood, Heidegger . (Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 44.
(34)Nietzsche, p. 30.
Bibliography
Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle (Random House, 1941)
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method (Continuum,1997)
Guignon, Charles B. Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge (Hackett Publishing Co., 1983)
------------------- (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time (State University of New York Press, 1996)
---------------------- Basic Writings (Harper and Row, 1977)
Inwood, Michael. Heidegger (Oxford University Press, 1997)
Langenscheidt Pocket German Dictionary (Langenscheidt, 1993)
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Portable Nietzsche (Penguin Books, 1968)
Stirner, Max. The Ego and Its Own (Cambridge University Press, 1995)