III. The Essence of Truth Philosophy 157 G. J. Mattey ©2002

Truth as Truth Truth can be about any number of objects, and can be pursued in many ways The essence of truth concerns what distinguishes truth as truth The question is abstract and inessential to common sense But philosophy is not beholden to common sense, though the “truths” of practice and science are presupposed here

The Usual Concept of Truth Truth is usually understood as “accordance” An object may accord with what we “properly” mean by it A piece of gold is truly gold if it meets the presupposed conditions for being gold (“consonance”) A proposition may accord with a subject-matter That this is gold is true if its meaning accords with the material it is about (“accordance”)

Correspondence The Medieval conception is truth is “the adequation of the intellect and the thing” The thing may correspond to the what is already in the intellect (“material” or “ontic” truth) Or the what is in the intellect may correspond to what the thing already is (propositional truth) These two are not equivalent: intellect and thing are conceived differently

Material and Propositional Truth In Christian theology, things must conform to the idea in the mind of God For Kant, things must conform to the subjective conditions of human cognition In modern thinking, things must conform to pre- conceived “rational” concepts of their essence (Husserl?) Propositional truth is the correctness of statements (though the basis of this is not known)

The Essence of Truth? The correspondence account of truth is “obvious” and generally accepted Even if we abandon material truth as theologically based, we have propositional truth Does propositional truth, the accordance with of a statement with its matter, give us the essence of truth?

Accordance We understand how two things may be in accordance with each other, e.g., two round coins How can a statement be in accord with a thing, if it does not share its characteristics? The statement “presents” or “discloses” the thing as being disposed in a certain way: the stone discloses itself as a hammer, or as a weapon For there to be accord, the thing must present itself in that way

Open Comportment For things to present themselves, there must be an “opening” or “clearing” (as in a cleared area of a forest) This opening is due to the comportment of man toward the thing Opening up toward things is what allows the things to be the standard for accord So, open comportment is closer to the essence of truth But it makes it appear that propositional correctness is the essence of truth

Freedom is the Essence of Truth We can be open to the direction given by the object only if we approach it freely This openness is required for the accord between statements and things So freedom is the ground of the possibility of truth As such, freedom is the essence of truth This does not undermine truth by basing it on arbitrariness

The Essence of Freedom Freedom is what lets beings be what they are To let things be is not to neglect them, but to be engaged with them This engagement is a withdrawal so that they can reveal themselves In the Greek tradition, truth is “a-letheia,” uncovering The essence of freedom is manifest in the exposure to the disclosures of being

“Da-sein” and “Ek-sistence” Freedom is “ek-sistent,” what exposes itself to the disclosing of beings It begins with the questioning of beings and then moves to being as a whole Dasein is the questioning being We can now understand it as the (only) being (“Sein”) that opens up a “there” (“da”): “Da-sein”

Untruth Human beings sometimes do not let things be This is the basis of untruth, covering up So untruth is not to be equated with incorrect judgments about things The essence of untruth is found in the essence of truth: in letting beings be, we conceal being as a whole

Concealment The essence of untruth is more basic than the essence of truth Concealment is more basic than the un-covering of the concealed “The mystery” is untruth, the non-essence of truth that makes the essence of truth possible What is mysterious is the fact that untruth pervades the being that opens up a “there” in which beings can un-conceal themselves

Forgottenness We “forget” the mystery through our immersion in familiar, comfortable beings The concealment of beings as a whole is partially glimpsed through the “puzzling, unexplained, undecided, questionable” These things only indicate our forgetfulness of “the mystery”

“In-sisting” In the state of forgetting the mystery, we take into account only our ordinary needs We plan and evaluate according to those needs We take ourselves, and not being as a whole, to be the ultimate standard But this is “in-sisting,” remaining with beings and ignoring being as a whole

Erring The flight from “the mystery” toward the readily available is erring Ek-sisting leads humans to in-sist. This tendency is based in the inner nature of Da- sein Errancy is the “open site for and ground of error” There are many modes of error, only one of which is incorrectness of judgment Others are wasting time, making mistakes, bad decisions, etc.

Penetrating “the Mystery” From time to time, Da-sein opens up to the mystery It questions the Being of beings This is called philosophy by Plato It is later called metaphysics Man is thereby liberated for ek-sistence and for history

Philosophy Even as men began to question being as a whole, common sense became predominant, through sophistry Philosophy does not disrupt the concealing, but opens up to it It lets being be as a whole So we have a much deeper conception of truth than the common one