Truth and the essence of truth in Heidegger’s thought

Abstract

A central issue in Heidegger's thought, both early and late, is the nature of truth and its basis in what Heidegger calls “the essence of truth” or “unconcealment.” Unconcealment or aletheia (the Greek word for truth) is, Heidegger writes, “ the matter of thought, ” that is, “what is first of all to be thought, [but] to be thought as released from the perspective of the metaphysical representation of 'truth' in the sense of correctness.” As this passage intimates, Heidegger's thought on truth involves both a critique of traditional accounts of truth, and an inquiry into the unconcealment that is prior to truth as correctness. On the critical side, Heidegger argues that the tradition has misunderstood the nature of the relationship between intentional contents and the world. When a belief or an assertion is true, it is because the holder of the belief or the maker of the assertion has succeeded in directing her thoughts or words at the world in such a way that they capture the way things really are. But what does it mean for a proposition to capture the way things really are, and how can assertions and beliefs accomplish such a feat? Heidegger's thought on propositional truth as uncovering offers an alternative to traditional ways of exploring such matters. In the first section of this chapter, I review his account of a nonrepresentational form of correspondence as the uncovering of a state of affairs.