In this Book
- The Truth (and Untruth) of Language: Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Derrida on Disclosure and Displacement
- Book
- 2010
- Published by: Duquesne University Press

In this study, Gert-Jan van der Heiden shows that this hermeneutic understanding of the relation between truth, untruth, and language can be clarified by inquiring into the meaning of two notions: disclosure and displacement. Unconcealment and hiding, truth and untruth, disclosure and displacement are the key notions to understanding the various conceptions of language in contemporary approaches to hermeneutics in continental philosophy. By painting a picture of the different meanings of these concepts in the work of Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Derrida, illuminating the differences and affinities of their respective projects, he finds an original way of showing how these three thinkers mutually discuss the relation between truth and language.
The Truth (and Untruth) of Language also confirms Heidegger’s continued influence in contemporary debates by tracing the influence of his account of the disclosure and displacement of language in the reigning schools of hermeneutical thought in continental philosophy. As a result, he offers a clear account of the comparison between hermeneutics and deconstruction by elucidating Ricoeur and Derrida’s shared resource of Heidegger’s project.
“Van der Heiden clearly locates the problem of language around its double ability to disclose the essence of things and displace the essence of things. No one has penetrated the Heidegger hinge between Ricoeur and Derrida as much as van der Heiden has.” — Leonard Lawlor, Edwin Erie Sparks Professor of Philosophy, Penn State University
Table of Contents

- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- p. vii
- INTRODUCTION: Truth and Language
- pp. 1-10
- TWO: The Transference of Writing
- pp. 58-123
- THREE: Inventions of Metaphor
- pp. 124-180
- FOUR: Mimesis in Myth and Translation
- pp. 181-235
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- pp. 269-284