Event Detail

Thu Jan 19, 2012
Howison Library
4–6 PM
Philosophy Colloquium
Taylor Carman (Barnard College)
Heidegger on Truth and the Tyranny of Correctness

According to a tradition dating back to Aristotle, truth is correctness, more specifically a kind of agreement of thought with its object. Although Heidegger does not reject those rough, pretheoretical notions altogether, I argue that his alternative conception of truth as “unconcealment” rules out any substantive correspondence theory of truth. I then discuss whether unconcealment can or ought to be called “truth” at all. Heidegger eventually abandoned that dubious terminological choice. What motivated it to begin with, I will suggest, were two ideas: that unconcealment is what makes correctness both intelligible and important; and that unconcealment, quite apart from correctness, constitutes a legitimate aim of nonscientific inquiry.