Heidegger's Concept of Truth Revisited

Abstract

In his recently published treatise Heidegger's Concept of Truth Daniel O. Dahlstrom provides an insightful, detailed account of most aspects of Heidegger's thinking during the Marburg years, in particular Heidegger's reflections on the phenomenon of truth. Central in this undertaking is Dahlstrom's attempt to defend Heidegger against Ernst Tugendhat's almost classic critique of the Heideggerian account of truth. As I shall argue in the present article, Dahlstrom's defense of Heidegger does not bear critical scrutiny, because it simply fails to address the real issue. In his attempt to demonstrate that Heidegger's notion of disclosedness as “original truth” meets the demands, Tugendhat claims any meaningful concept of truth must meet, Dahlstrom confuses two essentially different phenomenological levels. What is really an issue pertaining to the level of the studied phenomenon is by Dahlstrom tacitly construed as an issue pertaining to the level of phenomenological description itself. This will be demonstrated in three steps. First, I present Heidegger's conception of truth as it appears in the magnum opus Being and Time ; then I introduce what I take to be the core of Tugendhat's critique; and finally, Dahlstrom's defense will be presented and criticized.