Ernst Tugendhat’s critique of Martin Heidegger’s conception of truth is an ongoing topic in Heideggerian scholarship. In this paper, I contribute to the ongoing exchange between defenders of Heidegger and those who are in agreement with Tugendhat. Specifically, I contend that Tugendhat’s criticisms fail to situate Heidegger’s account of truth within his broader phenomenological–hermeneutic project. In the end, Tugendhat’s critique is grounded upon philosophical assumptions that Heidegger is bringing under question by rethinking the concept of truth. I suggest that thinking (...) through Tugendhat’s critique and attempting to formulate an adequate Heideggerian response gives us a richer understanding of both Heidegger’s account of truth and his general philosophical project. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger and Alasdair MacIntyre both claim that universities perform important philosophical functions. This essay reconstructs Heidegger’s and MacIntyre’s views of the university and argues that they have a common source, which I call hermeneutics without historicism. Heidegger and MacIntyre are hermeneutical philosophers: philosophers who are sensitive to the ways in which thought is mediated by interpretation and conditioned by history and culture. But both of them reject the relativistic historicism sometimes associated with a hermeneutical approach to philosophy. This desire (...) to have it both ways leads Heidegger and MacIntyre to attach tremendous importance to activities that take place in universities but nowhere else. The essay also asks whether MacIntyre’s defenders should be troubled by the similarities between his account of the function of the university and Heidegger’s. I argue that they should not, because, while Heidegger’s account of the university has obvious moral and polit.. (shrink)

Christina Lafont has argued that the early Heidegger's reflections on truth and understanding are incompatible with ‘the supposition of a single objective world’. This paper presents her argument, reviews some responses that the existing Heidegger literature suggests, and offers what I argue is a superior response. Building on a deeper exploration of just what the above ‘supposition’ demands, I argue that a crucial assumption that Lafont and Haugeland both accept must be rejected, namely, that different ‘understandings of Being’ can be (...) viewed as offering ‘rival perspectives’ on a common subject-matter. I develop this case by drawing on an alternative account of what a Heideggerian ‘understanding of Being’ might be like. (shrink)

This thesis develops a hermeneutic philosophy of science to provide insights into physics education. -/- Modernity cloaks the authentic character of modern physics whenever discoveries entertain us or we judge theory by its use. Those who justify physics education through an appeal to its utility, or who reject truth as an aspect of physics, relativists and constructivists, misunderstand the nature of physics. Demonstrations, not experiments, reveal the essence of physics as two characteristic engagements with truth. First, truth in its guise (...) as correspondence enables a human being to prepare for the distinctive event of physics. -/- Second, the event of physics occurs in human perception when someone forces a hidden reality to disclose an aspect of itself. Thus, the ground of physics is our human involvement with reality achieved by way of truth. -/- To support this account of physics, the thesis reports phenomenological investigations into Isaac Newton’s involvement with optics and a secondary school physics laboratory. These involve interpretations of Heidegger’s theory of beings, schema and signification. The project draws upon, and contributes to, the hermeneutic phenomenology of modern physics, a tradition in continental philosophy that begins with Immanuel Kant, and advances particularly from Martin Heidegger to Patrick Heelan. -/- The thesis advocates an ontological pedagogy for modern physics which has as its purpose each individual student’s engagement with reality and truth. Students may achieve this through demonstrations of phenomena that will enable them to dwell with physics, an experience that contrasts with their embroilment in modernity, and which perpetuates nature’s own science. (shrink)

Resumen Numerosas derivas de la fenomenología contemporánea, especialmente francesa, tematizaron fenómenos con excedencia que desafían la estructura husserliana de correlación intencional e impronta epistémica del polo subjetivo. La filosofía heideggeriana se pregunta sobre la facticidad y sus fundamentos, arribando al terreno en que el fenómeno se sustrae y resulta, por ello, inaparente, pero a la vez fundante de todo el ámbito del aparecer. En el presente trabajo estudiaremos en primer lugar el marco en que la filosofía de Heidegger tematiza la (...) excedencia en el Seminario de Zähringen, consideraremos la tensión con la posición husserliana y analizaremos el planteo de la noción de “fenomenología de lo inaparente” para trazar algunas proyecciones de esta idea que habilitan la inclusión de las temáticas ligadas con la excedencia dentro de la economía propiamente fenomenológica.Many lines of contemporary phenomenology, especially in its French sides, have studied phenomena that exceed the limits and defy the original Husserlian structure and its commitment with intentional correlation and the epistemic aspects of the subjective pole. The direction of Heideggerian philosophy and its treatment about facticity and its foundations was a defining issue. In this context it is studied the phenomenon that subtracts itself and is, therefore, inapparent, but at the same time it is the founder of the whole field of appearance. The present work mil study the framework in which Heidegger's philosophy thematizes excess in the Seminar of Zähringen. It mil be considered the tension with the Husserlian position and the propos al of the notion of'phenomenology of the inapparent". On this basis it mil be possible to draw some projections of this idea that enable the inclusion of the issues linkedmth exceedance within the phenomenological sphere. (shrink)

Recently, a revival of phenomenological approaches has been gaining ground in the literature of cognition and human understanding. Heidegger’s Being-in-the-World plays a decisive role here. Instead of viewing the mind as an independent entity separated from the “outer” world, these approaches assert an immediate understanding of a meaningful environment. Such an immediate understanding is seen in the light of embodied practices, when humans are engaged in skillful absorbed coping. An analysis of Heidegger’s concept of truth provides a more sophisticated view. (...) Being-in-the-World does not always grant direct access to an immediate understanding of a meaningful environment. Often, other objects in the world conceal themselves from human view. In a first approach, this understanding of truth will be elaborated on the basis of an exegesis of Heidegger’s text concerning his question of truth. What this actually means for a phenomenological understanding will be explained by a closer look at two central topics in Being and Time: disturbance and anxiety. The idea is to show that Heidegger’s Being-in-the-World—properly interpreted—can offer a “third way” beyond the limits of a mindless coping and an understanding of the mind as a self-standing entity detached from other entities in the world. (shrink)

This paper argues that Tugendhat's critique of Heidegger's existential conception of truth as disclosedness is usually misunderstood. The main claim of this paper is that Tugendhat insists against Heidegger on certain conventional features of truth such as conformity of the law of non-contradiction, not because he adheres to an ideal of truth as correctness; rather, he proposes an alternative existential conception of truth in terms of an active, critical or self-critical, engagement with untruth. Various recent objections to Tugendhat's critique of (...) Heidegger are discussed against the background of his alternative and are rejected. The paper concludes by outlining several challenges to Tugendhat's alternative existential conception of truth. (shrink)