Being and Truth

Martin Heidegger, Richard Polt, Gregory Fried

Description

Lectures given at the rise of National Socialism

In these lectures, delivered in 1933-1934 while he was Rector of the University of Freiburg and an active supporter of the National Socialist regime, Martin Heidegger addresses the history of metaphysics and the notion of truth from Heraclitus to Hegel. First published in German in 2001, these two lecture courses offer a sustained encounter with Heidegger's thinking during a period when he attempted to give expression to his highest ambitions for a philosophy engaged with politics and the world. While the lectures are strongly nationalistic and celebrate the revolutionary spirit of the time, they also attack theories of racial supremacy in an attempt to stake out a distinctively Heideggerian understanding of what it means to be a people. This careful translation offers valuable insight into Heidegger's views on language, truth, animality, and life, as well as his political thought and activity.

Translators' Foreword

THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION OF PHILOSOPHY
Summer Semester 1933

Introduction: The Fundamental Question of Philosophy and the Fundamental Happening of Our History

Main Part: The Fundamental Question and Metaphysics: Preparation for a Confrontation with Hegel
Chapter One. The Development, Transformation, and Christianization of Traditional Metaphysics
Chapter Two. The System of Modern Metaphysics and the First of Its Primary Determining Grounds: The Mathematical
Chapter Three. Determination by Christianity and the Concept of Mathematical-Methodological Grounding in the Metaphysical Systems of Modernity
Chapter Four. Hegel: The Completion of Metaphysics as Theo-logic
Conclusion

ON THE ESSENCE OF TRUTH
Winter Semester 1933-1934

Introduction: The Question of Essence as Insidious and Unavoidable

Part One. Truth and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Allegory of the Cave in Plato's Republic
Chapter One. The Four Stages of the Happening of Truth
Chapter Two. The Idea of the Good and Unconcealment
Chapter Three. The Question of the Essence of Untruth

Part Two. An Interpretation of Plato's Theaetetus With Regard to the Question of the Essence of Untruth
Chapter One. Preliminary Considerations on the Greek Concept of Knowledge
Chapter Two. Theaetetus's Answers to the Question of the Essence of Knowledge and their Rejection
Chapter Three. The Question of the Possibility of

Appendix I
Notes and drafts for the lecture course of Summer Semester 1933

Appendix II
Notes and drafts for the lecture course of Winter Semester 1933-1934

Editor's Afterword
German-English Glossary

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie politique
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Movements
• Political
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Phenomenology
• Politics
• Continental

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 06 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253004659
• Langue: English

Extrait

Being and Truth
Studies in Continental Thought
EDITOR
JOHN SALLIS
CONSULTING EDITORS
Robert Bernasconi
William L. McBride
Rudolf Bernet
J. N. Mohanty
John D. Caputo
Mary Rawlinson
David Carr
Tom Rockmore
Edward S. Casey
Calvin O. Schrag
Hubert L. Dreyfus
Reiner Sch rmann
Don Ihde
Charles E. Scott
David Farrell Krell
Thomas Sheehan
Lenore Langsdorf
Robert Sokolowski
Alphonso Lingis
Bruce W. Wilshire
David Wood
Martin Heidegger
Being and Truth
Translated by
Gregory Fried and Richard Polt
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
www.iupress.indiana.edu

Telephone orders
800-842-6796


Fax orders
812-855-7931


Orders by e-mail
[e-mail]

Published in German as Martin Heidegger, Sein und Wahrheit
2001 German edition by Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main
2010 English edition by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976.
[Sein und Wahrheit. English]
Being and truth / Martin Heidegger ; translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt.
p. cm. - (Studies in continental thought)
ISBN 978-0-253-35511-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Ontology. 2. Truth. I. Title.
B3279.H48S3713 2010
193-dc22
2010005841
1 2 3 4 5 15 14 13 12 11 10
BEING AND TRUTH
CONTENTS
Translators Foreword
THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION OF PHILOSOPHY Summer Semester 1933
Introduction
The Fundamental Question of Philosophy and the Fundamental Happening of Our History
1. The spiritual-political mission as a decision for the fundamental question
2. The Greek questioning in poetry and thought and the inception of philosophy. Philosophy as the incessant, historical, questioning struggle over the essence and Being of beings
3. What philosophy is not. Rejection of inadequate attempts to define it
4. The fundamental question of philosophy and the confrontation with the history of the Western spirit in its highest position: Hegel
M AIN P ART
The Fundamental Question and Metaphysics: Preparation for a Confrontation with Hegel
Chapter One
The Development, Transformation, and Christianization of Traditional Metaphysics
5. Considerations for the confrontation with Hegel
6. The concept of metaphysics and its transformation up to the time of classical modern metaphysics
a) The origin of the concept of metaphysics as a bibliographical title for particular Aristotelian writings ( ά)
b) From the bibliographical title to the substantive concept. The Christian transformation of the concept of metaphysics: knowledge of the supersensible ( trans physicam )
7. Kant s critical question regarding the possibility of metaphysical cognition and the classical division of metaphysics
a) On the influence of the Christianization of the concept of metaphysics
b) The three rational disciplines of modern metaphysics and Kant s question regarding the inner possibility and limits of metaphysical cognition as cognition on the basis of pure reason
Chapter Two
The System of Modern Metaphysics and the First of Its Primary Determining Grounds: The Mathematical
8. Preliminary remarks on the concept and meaning of the mathematical in metaphysics
a) The task: a historical return to the turning points in the concept of metaphysics
b) The Greek concept of the teachable and learnable ( ) and the inner connection between the mathematical and the methodological
9. The precedence of the mathematical and its advance decision regarding the content of modern philosophy: the possible idea of knowability and truth
10. Modern metaphysics in its illusory new inception with Descartes and its errors
a) The usual picture of Descartes: the rigorous new grounding of philosophy on the basis of radical doubt
b) The illusion of radicalism and the new grounding in Descartes under the predominance of the mathematical conception of method
) Methodical doubt as the way to what is ultimately indubitable. The simplest and most perspicuous as fundamentum
) The process of doubt as an illusion. The substantive advance ruling in favor of something indubitable that has the character of the present-at-hand
) The fundamentum as the I
) The I as self. Self-reflection as a delusion
) The essence of the I (self) as consciousness
) The self as I and the I as subject. The transformation of the concept of the subject
c) The substantive consequence of the predominance of the mathematical conception of method: the failure to reach the authentic self of man and the failure of the fundamental question of philosophy. The advance decision of mathematical certainty regarding truth and Being
11. The predominance of the mathematical conception of method in the formation of metaphysical systems in the eighteenth century
12. Introductory concepts from Wolff s Ontology . The point of departure: the philosophical principles of all human cognition
Chapter Three
Determination by Christianity and the Concept of Mathematical-Methodological Grounding in the Metaphysical Systems of Modernity
13. The two main tasks that frame modern metaphysics: the grounding of the essence of Being in general and the proof of the essence and existence of God
14. The mathematical character of the system at the basis of Baumgarten s metaphysics
a) The concept of veritas metaphysica: the agreement of what is with the most universal principles
b) Preliminary considerations on the principial character of the principle by which the ens in communi is supposed to be determined
15. Baumgarten s starting point as the possibile (what can be) and the logical principle of contradiction as the absolutely first principle of metaphysics
16. Remarks on the grounding of the principium primum . The principle of contradiction and human Dasein: the preservation of the selfsameness of the selfsame
17. The mathematical-logical determination of the starting point, goal, and deductive method in Baumgarten s metaphysical system
a) The summum ens as perfectissimum . The belonging of the perfectum to the concept of Being and its suitability as leading to the highest being
b) The main steps in the construction of the metaphysical system
) Beginning with what is thinkable in thought as judgment (assertion) and the principle of sufficient reason
) The logical delimitation of the ens. Possibilitas as essentia (what-Being): compatibility of the internal and simple determinations
) The relatio ad unum of essentia as perfectum . The mathematical sense of the concord of the perfectum
) The suitability of the perfectum as leading to the summum ens: the mathematically-logically necessary capacity of the perfectum to be increased to the perfectissimum
) The summum ens as perfectissimum and the inherent determinations of its Being
Chapter Four
Hegel: The Completion of Metaphysics as Theo-logic
18. Transition to Hegel
19. The fundamental character of Hegelian metaphysics. Metaphysics as theo-logic
a) Hegel s metaphysics as logic
) The science of logic as authentic metaphysics
) Metaphysics as logic in its higher form. The logic of the logos as logic of the pure essentialities
) The higher logic as logic of reason
) The essence of reason as self-conscious knowing
) The truth (the self-knowledge) of reason as absolute spirit
b) Logic as the system of the absolute self-consciousness of God: theo-logic
20. The completion of Western philosophy in metaphysics as theo-logic and the questionworthiness of this completion
Conclusion
21. Confrontation and engagement
ON THE ESSENCE OF TRUTH Winter Semester 1933-1934
Introduction
The Question of Essence as Insidious and Unavoidable
1. The question of the essence of truth and the willing of what is true in our Dasein
2. The question of the essence of essence. Presuppositions and beginning
a) Dasein s becoming essential in authentic care for its ability to be and the putting to work of the essence of things. The how of essence
b) The question of the what of essence. Harkening back to the Greek inception
3. The saying of Heraclitus. Struggle as the essence of beings
a) The first part of the saying. Struggle as the power of generation and preservation: innermost necessity of beings
b) The second part of the saying. The sway of the double power of struggle and the decisive domains of power
4. On the truth of the Heraclitean saying
a) Two traditional meanings of truth. Truth as un-concealment ( - ) and as correctness
b) The indeterminate prior knowing of truth and the superior power of Being
5. On truth and language
a) The human bond to the superior power of Being and the necessity of language
b) The logical-grammatical conception of language
c) The characterization of language as sign and expression
d) Toward a positive delimitation of the essence of language
e) The ability to keep silent as the origin and ground of language
f) Language as the gathered openedness for the overpowering surge of beings
g) Language as lawgiving gathering and revelation of the structure of beings
h) Language as and as
6. The double sway of the struggle ( - ) as indication of the connection between Being and truth
7. The historical tr