Being and Truth

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

Download PDF (115.7 KB)
pp. 3-12

The German people is now passing through a moment of historical greatness; the youth of the academy knows this greatness. What is happening, then? The German people as a whole is coming to itself, that is, it is finding its leadership. In this leadership, the people that has come to itself is creating its state. The people that is forming itself ...

Main Part. The fundamental Question and Metaphysics: Preparation for a Confrontation with Hegel

Download PDF (17.4 KB)
pp. 13-14

Chapter One. The Development, Transformation, and Christianization of Traditional Metaphysics

Download PDF (117.2 KB)
pp. 15-22

The historical path into the essence of philosophy - there is no other, for the very reason that philosophy itself is the fundamental happening of the history of our Dasein. To be sure, the historical path is complex, but always because of an essential necessity in its outset, development, and goal. The goal is to overcome the accidental character of a particular preference ...

Chapter Two. The System of Modern Metaphysics and the First of Its Primary Determining Grounds: The Mathematical

Download PDF (230.2 KB)
pp. 23-40

With this we have provided an initially satisfactory clarification of how the concept "metaphysics" was fleshed out in a decisive period of Western philosophy. The only thing we lack is the insight into the truly determining forces and driving powers of metaphysics, into what wants to assert itself there as a claim and urgent need for human beings. ...

Chapter Three. Determination by Christianity and the Concept of Mathematical-Methodological Grounding in the Metaphysical Systems of Modernity

Download PDF (223.9 KB)
pp. 41-54

Metaphysics is the knowledge of beings as a whole. God - according to the tradition the highest being, summum ens - rules and determines all beings. But in another sense, Being is also comprehensive, that which belongs to every being as such, ens in communi. "God," taken in the light of the most universal concept of Being, is only one being among others, ...

Chapter Four. Hegel: The Completion of Metaphysics as Theo-logic

Download PDF (146.6 KB)
pp. 55-61

We have now fulfilled the task that we initially set ourselves - the exhibition of the two determining powers of Western, and in particular modern, metaphysics: (1) the worldview of Christian faith, (2) the mathematical in a sense that is broad in principle and that we have explained earlier, the mathematical as the propositional derivation of ...

Conclusion

Download PDF (37.5 KB)
pp. 62-64

What con-frontation¹ is not and what it is. Not a formal refutation, demonstration of mere incorrect points, but scission - and that only on the basis of decision. Decision only as engagement in Dasein; the decision for. Engagement as steadfastly letting fate hold sway. Wisdom—knowing—knowing that we do not know—questioning. The innermost and ...

Introduction: The Question of Essence as Insidious and Unavoidable

Download PDF (251.6 KB)
pp. 67-98

We are asking about the essence of truth. To begin with, this means that we want to find out what truth "in general" is, what such a thing "really consists in." So this questioning about the essence of truth is obviously a "profound" and "important" undertaking. Or does it only seem to be? Let us consider what it means to think about something like the essence ...

Part One. Truth and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Allegory of the Cave in Plato's Republic

Download PDF (26.3 KB)
pp. 99-100

Chapter One. The Four Stages of the Happening of Truth

Download PDF (357.6 KB)
pp. 101-142

Our answer to the question of the essence of truth had to pass through a decision. We cannot, as it were, think up the essence of truth in an indifferent rumination. Instead, what is at issue is the confrontation in history with the tradition of two fundamental conceptions of the essence of truth, both of which emerged among the Greeks: truth as ...

Chapter Two. The Idea of the Good and Unconcealment

Download PDF (271.2 KB)
pp. 143-164

In the previous session, we attempted to get clear about the fourth stage. What does it involve? What is its position within the whole? We discovered that the fourth stage is no mere appendix, nor a recapitulation: instead, the person under discussion here is fundamentally different from the other inhabitants of the cave. He has been transformed and he now ...

Chapter Three. The Question of the Essence of Untruth

Download PDF (218.4 KB)
pp. 165-174

We want to present a brief summary of the thoughts in our foregoing lectures. By clarifying the highest idea of the good, we want to grasp something about the essence of truth, to grasp which characteristics pertain to the essence of truth as a whole. ...

Part Two. An Interpretation of Plato's Theaetetus with Regard to the Question of the Essence of Untruth

Download PDF (25.8 KB)
pp. 175-176

Chapter One. Preliminary Considerations on the Greek Concept of Knowledge

Download PDF (127.3 KB)
pp. 177-183

In order to clarify the essence of untruth in the sense of falsehood, we will follow similes that Plato employs, as he does in all essential areas of questioning—two similes from the Theaetetus. We do this to evaluate how the concept of untruth has been passed over and how this has led to a situation in which the whole question about the essence of untruth ...

Chapter Two. Theaetetus's Answers to the Question of the Essence of Knowledge and their Rejection

Download PDF (137.0 KB)
pp. 184-191

This answer will be rejected later on, but initially we will ask why precisely this answer is given and why this answer is given as the first. We may make the assumption that in the dialogues the interlocutors do not babble randomly back and forth. Rather, the sequence of ...

Chapter Three. The Question of the Possibility of Vevðnç ðòea

Download PDF (206.0 KB)
pp. 192-201

A further division of meaning is made possible on the basis of this ambiguity. A view can be a positive force; it can hit the mark. But the appearance can also miss the mark. A view can give a thing as it is, but it can also offer a mere appearance in the sense of semblance. It can be a mere view, a mere belief. ...