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

259 Pages·2013·1.5 MB·English

by  Martin Heidegger

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The Essence
of Truth
On Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theaetetus
Martin Heidegger
Translated by Ted Sadler

Bloomsbury Academic
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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
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eISBN: 978-1-47253374-6
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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