For The Love Of Wisdom by Josef Pieper

Author:Josef Pieper
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion, Philosophy, Catholicism, Christianity
ISBN: 9781586170875
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2010-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

HEIDEGGER’S CONCEPTION OF TRUTH

“The essence of truth is freedom”1—this sentence of Martin Heidegger’s, an extraordinary and astonishing sentence—is to be subjected in what follows to a critical examination. This thesis forms the centerpiece of a short essay, “Vom Wesen der Wahrheit” (On the essence of truth), published in 1943, which purports to lead “the question of the essence of truth beyond the confines of the ordinary definition provided in the usual concept of essence”.2 The essay takes up a question with which Heidegger had already dealt extensively in his most voluminous work up to that time, Sein und Zeit (Being and time), published in 1927. But even in that work the essence of truth had not yet been identified with freedom, although there are certain hints that already point in this direction. A more unequivocal anticipation of this thesis may, however, be found as early as 1929 in the monograph Vom Wesen des Grundes (On the essence of reason).

It would be difficult to argue that, in equating freedom with the essential attribute of truth, the restriction typically placed on such definitions has been observed, namely, that the definiendum be better known than the definiens. Is an inquirer after the meaning of truth not being referred with such a formulation to something much less evident, something even more convoluted? But it is not at all in keeping with the Heideggerian mode of philosophizing to offer textbook definitions. And in his discussion of truth he further admits to having no interest in “furnishing concepts”, as he somewhat pejoratively puts it.3 Metaphysics is, for its part, “not a division of academic philosophy”, but “the basic occurrence of Dasein [human existence]”, indeed, “it is Dasein itself”,4 and for that reason the disclosure of truth’s essence involves “a thinking, which, instead of furnishing representations and concepts, experiences and tries itself as a transformation of its relatedness to Being.”5

Such efforts at self-understanding are, however, of little use to someone who, in the end, simply wants to know how Heidegger formally defines “truth” and “freedom” and how freedom can be related to truth at all, much less how it can be presumed to constitute its very essence. Only with difficulty can the desire for clarification of a statement’s plain sense come to terms with this thinking, which conceives of itself in terms of human existence’s coming to an understanding of itself and which is rife with powerful tensions of both a conceptual and affective nature—to say nothing of the at times almost willfully playful neologisms, which make no concession to normal parlance.

What, then, does the proposition, “The essence of truth is freedom”, mean? To begin with, it is clear from the outset that the proposition is, in fact, being offered as a definitional attribute in the strict sense and not merely as a possible distinguishing mark. While it is true that whoever utters “a” truth or assents to one must be free to do so, this is not, Heidegger maintains, the point of his thesis; “rather, the proposition says that freedom is the essence of truth itself.

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