The Anatomy of Disillusion: Martin Heidegger's Notion of Truth (review)

Abstract

268 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The Anatomy of Disillusion: Martin Heidegger's Notion of Truth. By W. B. Macomber . (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1967. Pp. xi+227. $7.00) The general questioning of philosophy today by itself, its scrutiny of its principles , methods, and intentions seems to reflect a crisis in philosophy, a crisis which comes into focus in regard to the question, what is L,~ath?Whereas many Anglo-American philosophers have more or less accepted various forms of the correspondence theory of truth and have been satisfied that propositional h'~aths are the only truths we can have, Heidegger has been interested in a~.~rtaining the ground of the L~uth of propositions, the essence of truth~ Macomber's analysis of Heidegger's conception of truth is sympathetic, occasionally bold, and generally tolerant in the face of Heidegger's most paradoxical pronouncements. Basically, Heidegger has two "arguments" against what he describes as the traditional theory of truth (the view that truth is adaequatio intellectus et rei, a theory which underlies Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: the correspondence theory of truth), the one logical, the other existential. Heidegger axgues that the traditional conception of truth has achieved the status of a self-evident dictum, a rigid doctrine. The question he raises is, what are the conditions for the possibility of this notion of truth? Although it is often assumed that the correspondence between judgment and things is a natural conception of truth, Heidegger claims that it is the product of an historical-cultural tradition since even Das Natilrliche ist immer geschichtlich. There is an ontological ground for this theory of truth, an accessibility of phenomena to the activity of discovery. Hence, Heidegger is concerned with a search for the ground of truth in the openness (Lichtung) which is the source of meaning in Dasein's experience (p. 24). The logical tracing of the assumption of correspondence between judgment and things leads to the question of Dasein's encounter with Seiendes, with "innerworldly beings." The nature of truth must be sought in worldliness--the condition of all human experience--in the ontologischen Bedeutung of the immediate, nontheoretical involvement of Dasein with the world in which he finds himself (p. 35). Propositional truth is possible because DaseLn is itself 'in' truth. The logical analysis of the basis of the truth of correspondence leads to a phenomenological analysis of the active discovery of truth, the encounter with the 'event' of truth, a description of the existential 'encounter' with truth. In his interpretation of the emergence of truth by virtue of a breakdown in life, a failure of instrumentality (e.g., the image of the broken hammer), Macomber insists upon a ~polarity in Heidegger's writings between beauty and instrumentality which seems strained (p. 49). Instrumentality, as well as the comportment towards art works, is a significant aspect of Dasein's being and, on occasion (in his essay Das Ding), Heidegger eliminates the distinction between the two (e.g., he describes the emergence to presence of the lgeing of a common utensil [a pitcher] in terms of its function). In discussing the notion that "nothing" is more primordial than negation Macomber seems to be led to make some rather exaggerated claims. Thus, for example, he claims that the concept of nothing plays the same role in human experience (for Heidegger) as the Platonic ideas insofar as the encounter with nothing enables us to understand what it means to be (p. 57). The Platonic form (eidos) is atemporal while nothingness is encountered within the horizon of temporality. To overemphasize the 'nothing' as the basis of intelligibility seems to undermine the interpretative activity of Dasein who wrests meaning from phenomena, to neglect the constituting activity of human understanding . In his treatment of Heidegger's notion of das Nichts Macomber is quite uncritical. He claims that the notion of nothing is like Aristotle's conception of nous BOOK REVIEWS 269 which does not have a nature of its own, which is no-thing. Then he adds that it resembles Kant's thing-in-itself except that the ding-an-sich is extratemporal whereas das Nicht is temporally conditioned. How, one may wonder, can what is not...