Heidegger’s Concept of Truth: The Phenomenological Core of the Ontological Turn

Joshua Fahmy-Hooke

introduction

The implicit and explicit belief that Edmund Husserl is Martin Heidegger’s primary adversary remains a pervasive theme in the scholarly literature.¹ There are justified reasons for viewing the two thinkers as being at odds, yet their differences should not forfeit their similarities. Initially, phenomenology, as conceived in the Logical Investigations, provides a careful description of acts of consciousness and their correlated objects. In the 1920s, Heidegger endorses this methodology, albeit with some refinements, as indispensable for understanding the “comportment” of the “natural attitude,” “historical ego,” or the “ego of the situation” (GA 2: 312/Sz 362; GA 20: 131/95; GA 19: 12–14/9; GA 56/57: 205–7/179). With the discovery of intentionality and categorical intuition, Heidegger contends that Husserl disentangled the a priori from cognition as something purely internal and immanent to the subject (res cogitans); the genuine a priori is not merely a formalization of consciousness but is substantiated and intuited through the “consciousness of…” lived experience (GA 20: 46–47/36; GA 24: 224–5/158). For Heidegger, Husserl thus presents the operative grounding for the universal structures of Erlebnis without succumbing to the temptations of rationalism, psychologism, or Lebensphilosophie. In Heidegger’s eyes, “scientific ontology is nothing but phenomenology” (GA 20: 98–99/72–73). With the publication of Ideas I, Husserl insists that conscious acts uncovered through the phenomenological reduction must be considered in their purity and “stripped of everything empirical and every reference to factual existence.”² To Heidegger’s frustration, phenomenology underwent a significant shift from descriptive lived experience to a “pure science” of essences called “a new eidetics.”³ Dermot Moran suggests that “transcendental science […] requires, as Husserl insists in his Introduction to Ideas, ‘a new way of looking at things, far removed from the natural standpoint.’”⁴ Husserl’s thinking radically departs from the hallmarks that brought early success and, with it, the endorsement from Heidegger and his other students.⁵ The publication of Ideas I and its primary focus on the transcendental ego thus marks a definite break and foregoes the possibility, at least in Heidegger’s eyes, of constituting phenomenology on the basis of lived experience (GA 20: 165/119). This shift creates a justified lacuna between the two thinkers but also leads to pernicious caricatures of their views that are retroactively projected onto their early work. Despite Heidegger’s efforts to suppress Husserl’s influence, attentive readers of Being and Time not only recognize concepts borrowed from the Logical Investigations but also notice the omission of Husserl’s name in connection with those concepts, many of which Heidegger had openly endorsed and attributed to Husserl in his lecture courses just a few years earlier.⁶ One of the clearest examples of this occurrence is in Heidegger’s lecture course History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena from the Summer Semester of 1925 (GA 20). Heidegger offers an extensive account of Husserl’s “decisive discoveries” of intentionality, categorial intuition, and the original sense of the a priori. For Heidegger, these concepts are indispensable “in their content and the way they are considered” for “time to be brought into view phenomenologically” (GA 20: 34/27). For this reason, Theodore Kisiel notes that the main part of this lecture course is considered “a phenomenological draft” of the First Division of Being and Time (GA 20: xvii). For our purposes here, the Prolegomena Lectures offer an extended treatment of Heidegger’s conception of truth in relation to being (Seiendes) by revealing the phenomenological methodology that underlies the conclusions presented in §44 of Being and Time. Heidegger determines that the scholastic notion adaequatio intellectus et rei can be reinterpreted and thus “primordially appropriated” through the intentional and intuitive structure that unifies what is meant with what is given (i.e., phenomenon or being) (GA 2: 287–291/Sz 217–19; GA 20: 69/51). Husserl’s descriptive analysis of intentional acts in the Fifth Investigation determines that consciousness is always directed toward something, whether that something is real, imagined, or abstract. The general act character of any given act consists in an inseparable unity of act-quality (noesis) and act-matter (noema), determining (1) how the act is directed toward an object (e.g., perceived, imagined, remembered), and (2) what content is presented (Hua Xix/1: 425–6/119–20).⁷ Through a careful refinement of Franz Brentano’s account of intentionality, Husserl offers an alternative to representational theories of knowledge that rely on a division between psychic phenomena and physical objects.⁸ For Husserl, intuitions are not internal representations that mediate our access to the world but are direct experiences of transcendent objects (Hua Xix/1: 439/127; GA 2: 268–9/Sz 202–3).⁹ In the Sixth Investigation, Husserl makes a series of important distinctions that round out the purely formal characteristics of “objectifying acts” presented in the Fifth Investigation. Chief among these are the notions of empty and intuitive (or filled) intentions (Hua Xix/2: 586/218). All intentional acts have a telos (τέλος) or a “tendency toward fulfillment.”¹⁰ Here, telos is not merely any endpoint but one essential to the identity of the specific type of act in question. When an intentional act is fulfilled, we experience how an object that was “merely thought of” (i.e., an empty intention) “shows itself” and is “intuited as being precisely the same determinate so-and-so” (Hua Xix/2: 583/216–7). In other words, the object appears in its immediate presence, given in the flesh, just as it is meant or intended, and with intuitive clarity (Hua Xix/2: 591, 604, 678–9/221–1, 232, 284–55). It is important to note that Heidegger’s endorsement of Husserl’s phenomenology in the Prolegomena Lectures is more pronounced than in his other lecture courses. There are lecture courses given on the way to Being and Time in which Heidegger unequivocally intended, in many respects, to distance himself from Husserl.¹¹ Nevertheless, Heidegger retains two essential Husserlian insights in §44 of Being and Time. In §44 (a), Heidegger describes the notion of “Being-true” by employing the principled insights and the structural moments from Husserl’s characterization of empty and filled intentions (GA 2: 284/Sz 214). In an interlocutory relationship, the communicability of meaning aims for the listener’s empty intention to be fulfilled through the evidence (i.e., Seiendes) presented by the speaker. This sets the stage for Heidegger, in §44 (b), to revisit what was “pre-phenomenologically” understood in Ancient Greek thought as presence and absence (GA 2: 290/Sz 219). Heidegger introduces the concept of ἀληθεύειν, where the “truth-relation” between utterances (λόγος) and perceptual intuition brings entities out of their hiddenness (λήθη), allowing them to be seen or unconcealed in their unhiddenness (GA 2: 290/Sz 219).¹² Heidegger’s strategic reading allows for an endorsement of a phenomenological conception of truth, while also emphasizing its ontological dependency as articulated in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In Heidegger’s estimation, the phenomenon has “already” revealed itself as what it “is” (εἶδος) such that “there is truth” for λόγος to unconceal (GA 2: 298–9/Sz 226).

i: seeing husserl in §44 being and time

In §44 (a), to begin the investigation, Heidegger asks: “Let us suppose that someone with his back turned to the wall makes the true assertion that ‘the picture on the wall is hanging askew’” (GA 2: 285, 288/Sz 215, 217–18). In the Phenomenological Draft written just a few years earlier, Heidegger, using more Husserlian language, similarly states: “I can in an empty way now think of my desk at home simply in order to talk about it” (GA 20: 66/49). Recall that, for Husserl, the object (in this case, the picture and the desk) denoted by the utterance, or the “meaning-intention,” is intended but not given; it lacks “the intuitive content of a sensory perception” (Hua Xix/2: 611/236). The empty intention lacks a “fulfilling intuition” and, as such, cannot be said to exhibit a “coincidence of agreement or disagreement” between what the signitive intention expresses (or claims to express) and the object it indicates (Hua Xix/2: 566, 716f/206–8, 225f). The utterance is not authentically carried out but is nevertheless preserved as meaningful. Heidegger then asks the reader to consider what happens when you turn around and the picture is now present in perception (GA 2: 285/Sz 215). When your back was turned, you held an empty intention; now, facing it, that same object is perceptually given. The picture is bodily present (leibhaftig) and given in propria persona, as Husserl says (Hua Xix/1: 365/86). In this case, you observe what the statement indicates, and the object attains “full-bodied presence and intuitive fulfillment” (Hua Xix/1: 458/137). Heidegger continues by asking, “What does one’s perceiving of [the picture] demonstrate? Nothing else than that this Thing [is] the very entity which one has in mind in one’s assertion” (GA 2: 288/Sz 218, em; GA 21: 101/84). Here, Heidegger is speaking in the first person and suggesting that the perception is fulfilling what “one had in mind,” that is, the meaning that was sustained by the intention in the absence of the categorial or perceptual intuition. Likewise, in Husserl’s gloss, the object is ‘present’ or ‘given’, as what we intended, while nevertheless preserved when absent from our perception (Hua Xix/2: 647/260). Heidegger continues: “What comes up for confirmation is that this entity is pointed out by […] what is put forward in the assertion; thus, what is to be confirmed is that such Being, uncovering the entity which it is” (GA 2: 289/Sz: 218). Heidegger’s use of “pointing out” suggests that assertion functions as a way of revealing or uncovering the content that gives fulfillment. The confirmation implies the coincidence between the assertion and the “reality” of the entity. The entity is “pointed out” by the person engaging in the assertion: the act of asserting brings the entity into view or highlights its presence within the context of the state of affairs. In Husserlian terms, perception is related to our statements’ sense (Sinn), and “the statement expresses the percept and brings out what is perceptually given” (Hua Xix/2: 551/196). The same “percept” may serve as the foundation for several statements, and while their senses may vary, they all refer to the phenomenal content of perception (Hua Xix/2: 551/196). Heidegger states that the utterance about the picture demonstrates the “Real thing” as opposed to “mere representations” or “images” of “the thing in itself” (GA 2: 289/Sz 218). Put differently, “Representations do not get compared, either among themselves or in relation to the Real Thing” (GA 2: 289/Sz 218). Here, Heidegger reiterates Husserl’s critique of Brentano without mentioning either by name, suggesting: “What is to be demonstrated is not an agreement of knowing [between] the psychical and the physical” nor is it an “agreement between [the] content of consciousness among themselves” (GA 2: 289/Sz 218, TM).¹³ On the contrary, “in carrying out such a demonstration, the knowing remains related solely to the entity itself” (GA 2: 289/Sz 218). Heidegger ultimately superimposes this insight onto Aristotle. The basic structure of making assertions (ἀποφαίνεσθαι; λέγειν) in Greek thought indicates that the being it addresses is meaningful even when it is “not bodily present but only intended” (GA 21: 165/137). In the absence of that being, the “very same sense” of the statement entails that the being itself is intended and not

“some representation or image” that “corresponds to the absent being” (GA 21: 165/137). Heidegger provides a series of examples in Logic that were omitted in Being and Time to illustrate this point: The window, the walls, the chalkboard, the bench, and the lamp are what “my cognitive self-directedness intends” (GA 21: 100/83). When I look at the bench over there, “I do not first look first at the content of consciousness” then make a judgment or attribute value (GA 21: 100/83). When I see this lamp, “I do not apprehend sense impressions, the lamp, and the light it gives off” (GA 21: 100/83). Heidegger states, instead, “I apprehend the lamp itself” (GA 21: 100/83). Even less, Heidegger contends, do I see something like “an image in my consciousness” which I then relate to the object itself “in order thereby to slip out of my consciousness, in which I am allegedly imprisoned” (GA 21: 100/83). When Heidegger speaks of knowing an object itself, he uses “straightforward” and “simple” examples to illustrate his endorsement of Husserl’s broader conception of intentionality and intuitive fulfillment (GA 21: 124–5/103). Heidegger states: “Apprehending and having the thing itself in its bodiliness is the phenomenological definition of intuition” (GA 21: 102–3/85). When we make statements about these occurrences, we “render present the very thing intended” and “the thing intended is itself to be apprehended and understood in what it is” (GA 21: 85). For this reason, “we designate perception, where we have the thing not only ‘itself’ but also ‘bodily,’ as proper knowledge in the strict sense [ ….] [K]nowledge is apprehending and having the thing itself in its bodiliness” (GA 21: 102–3/85). In Heidegger’s reformulation in Being and Time, λόγος takes part in the presentation of the being-itself so that “what is demonstrated is solely the Being-uncovered [Entdeckt- sein] of the entity itself – that entity in the “how” of its uncoveredness” (GA 2: 289/Sz 218). In Husserl’s gloss, we could alternatively say “that the object of intuition is the same as the object of the thought which fulfills itself in itself and, where the fit is exact, that the object is seen as being exactly the same as it is thought of or (what always says the same in this context) meant” (Hua Xix/2: 567/207). Here, Husserl, like Heidegger, suggests that the same object that is thought is what is presented; there is not a likening of a representation in the subject, which then matches the thing itself. The real object is no other object than the intentional object in the mode of givenness of intuition. Both Heidegger and Husserl are consequently trying to avoid operating within a representationalist theory of knowledge, while simultaneously attempting to “hold out” against “the separation between the real and the ideal” (GA 2: 287/Sz 217).¹⁴ However, perhaps the most substantial insight Heidegger derives from Husserl is the identification of the thing itself as that which fulfills our intention or utterance.

II: heidegger’s phenomenological reading of aristotle’s conception of Λόγος

In §44 (b), Heidegger evaluates the Greek conception of λόγος phenomenologically to assert that language “lets something be seen in discourse” (GA 2: 290/Sz 220; GA 2: 32–34/Sz: 43–46). Heidegger states: “If a λόγος [word, discourse, speech, statement] as ἀπόφανσις [statement, proposition] is to be true, its Being-true is ἀλήθευειν [unconcealment] in the manner of ἀποφαίνεσθαι [showing forth, making manifest]” (GA 2: 290/Sz 219).¹⁵ Recall Heidegger’s critique of Hermann Lotze: the appraisal of truth’s ‘actuality’ (Wirklichkeit) said nothing about what makes the proposition true other than declaring it is valid (GA 21: 62–89).¹⁶ Now, Heidegger states that if λόγος as a statement (άπόφανσις) is ‘to be’ true (άπόφανσις), that which makes it true is the revealing function it possesses (its being-true; άποφαίνεσθαι). The overdetermined nature of the Greek words λόγος and ἀπόφανσις makes Heidegger’s conception of both terms appear to overlap. The Greek word ἀπόφανσις is derived from the verb ἀποφαίνω, meaning a “statement” or “proposition” that “reveals” or “makes manifest.”¹⁷ Λόγος is conceived by Heidegger as speech, discourse, language, which communicates meaning. However, far from a misstep, Heidegger argues that when Aristotle connects λόγος (proposition, assertion; statement) with truth, he does so by determining an assertion’s “ability to be true” based on the underlying phenomenon or being (Seiende) it addresses (GA 21: 129/108).¹⁸ Thus, λόγος and ἀπόφανσις are not merely synonyms for proposition or judgment, but the “showing forth,” “bringing to light,” or “unconcealment” of phenomena (GA 2: 298–9/Sz 226; GA 20: 110–2/81).

Heidegger interprets Aristotle’s conception of truth as ἀληθεύειν, understood as bringing entities out of hiddenness. The term derives from the privative prefix ἀ-, meaning “not” or “without,” and the verbal stem -λαθ-, meaning “to escape notice” or “to be concealed,” related to λήθη. The entity revealed in its unhiddenness (uncoveredness) is equated with “πράγμα and φαινόμενα” (GA 2: 290/Sz 219). Here, πράγμα, Heidegger suggests, is the “thing in itself,” but πράγμα also translates to “thing,” “matter,” or “object.” Φαινόμενα means “phenomena,” namely, a straightforward understanding of things that are observable and appear in the world around us. As an important qualification, Heidegger states that the “entity shows itself from itself [von ihm selbst her] (GA 2: 38/Sz 28). The phrase “von ihm selbst her” is translated as “from itself” or “from its own being” and conveys the idea that something originates or is determined by “what-it-is” (τί ἦν εἶναι). Heidegger expands on this notion in the Logic Lectures through an unconventional reading of Metaphysics Θ, 10 (GA 21: 170–82/143–54).¹⁹ In the Prolegomena Lectures, and for our purposes here, however, Heidegger emphasizes the self-referential or self-disclosing nature of Being, where understanding or truth arises directly from the thing itself. Against this backdrop, we are in a better position to understand Heidegger’s full declaration that “άληθεύειν “signifies […] things themselves […] and “how” they are uncovered. Λόγος as spoken truth in relatum to the entity is λόγος φρόζων όπως εχει (GA 2: 290–1/Sz 219). Φρόνων is the participle form of phroneo, which means “having an understanding” ὅπως “as,” “how,” or “in the manner that,” ἔχει (echei), “it is,” “it holds,” or “it stands.”²⁰ Without the constraints of English grammar: Utterances are language in the sense of having an understanding of how the being stands as it is in speech or discourse, expressing things as they are in experience. One of the primary takeaways from this analysis is that ἁληθεύειν is not a static bivalence of truth and falsity but, for the time being, a linguistic interplay between hiddenness (λήθη) and unconcealment (ἀλήθεια).²¹ Importantly, the negative dimension of concealment is not simply falsity or negation but a necessary condition for fulfillment.²² Notice that this interplay of empty/filled, concealment/unconcealment implies an interlocuter relationship. Intuition, in general, allows the speaker to enjoy the “indicated meaning” immediately: “It makes no difference whether they utter the words,” since they are directly experiencing the perceptual intuition and recognizing it as such (Hua Xix/2: 591f/222f).²³ However, Heidegger, like Husserl, emphasizes in the ‘pointing out,’ ‘predication,’ or ‘communicability’ of meaning through λόγος, the empty intention (λήθη) of the listener becomes fulfilled (ἀλήθεια) by the evidence presented through the speaker (GA 2: 205–6/Sz 154). In other words, the perceived object, as it is given in intuition or perception, is signified through the use of λόγος, such that I let something be seen in discourse. When this occurs, the recognition of the object as this intuited object “directly fuses an expressive experience with the corresponding percept” (Hua Xix/2: 591/222). Despite otherwise suggesting that the Greeks understood truth in a “pre-phenomenological manner,” Heidegger interprets Aristotle more phenomenologically than he is willing to admit (GA 2: 290–1/Sz 219; GA 21: 115–6/84). To recall the previous example of the assertion “the picture on the wall is hanging askew,” the speaker singles out one particular feature of the state of affairs, which could otherwise be the basis for an indefinite number of utterances. Yet, the meaning of my intentional expression does not uncover, indicate, or let the surplus of intentions come into view. On the contrary, the object of my intention, with which my utterance is meant to find coincidence and fulfillment, comes to view and nothing else (telos). In more Heideggerian language, we could say that the utterance uncovers a specific feature of the phenomenon in perceptual givenness by becoming aware of what was previously and unreflectively concealed. I did not notice, for example, that the picture was hanging askew, despite walking past it several times. When the speaker utters the sentence, the “empty intention is demonstrated [or fulfilled] in the state of affairs given in intuition; the original perception [had by the speaker] gives the demonstration” (GA 20: 66/49). The original perception here belongs to the speaker, and after the listener understands the sentence and turns to look at what the speaker has in mind, “what is at first only emptily presumed in it demonstrates itself as grounded in the matter,” that is, the entity is present in its intuitive content (GA 20: 67/49). Heidegger claims that through the structure of intentionality, we speak truthfully about phenomenal objects but do not claim to know the objects apart from our experience of them. For now, the question of whether or not objects exist apart from our experience is methodologically suspended. For Husserl, the difference between a veridical perception and proof that the thing exists apart from our experience is irrelevant to phenomenology (Hua Xix/1: 460/138). In judgment, we may modify the objectifying act to assert that something is not a mere illusion, hallucination, or fiction; however, the perceptual act remains the same regardless of whether or not the object can be proven to ‘truly exist’ (Hua Xix/1: 321/59; Hua Xix/2: 701–2/300). For this reason, when concluding the section in the Prolegomena lectures on Husserl’s decisive discoveries, Heidegger claims that despite the major achievements contained in the analysis of intentionality, which provides the proper field of subject matter, and in intuition, which constitutes its mode of apprehension, this approach has not brought us to a “happy ending” (GA 20: 109–110/79). Instead, by following the directive “to the matters themselves,” we are led back to the task of philosophy since Plato, that is, to return to “its true ground, inasmuch as it now makes it possible to carry out research into the categories [i.e., being]” (GA 20: 109–110/79).

III: the being presupposed by Λόγος

In the preceding analysis, Heidegger argues that Being-true (ἀλήθεια) occurs when λόγος gives expression to immanent intentional acts by “pointing out,” thereby revealing, uncovering, or bringing to presence what was previously concealed or unthematic (GA 2: 290/Sz 219). The empty intention, or the “entity itself which one has in mind,” is intuitively given (fulfilled) in propria persona, or gets uncovered “in its self-sameness,” successfully or adequately (GA 2: 289/Sz 218; Hua Xix/1: 365/86). The phenomenon “itself” plays an indispensable role in this achievement because it illuminates or fulfills the intention (GA 20: 78/58, 91/67; Hua Xix/2: 590/22). Where the phenomenon is lacking, adequate fulfillment cannot occur, and the presumed x may fail to coincide with the intuited x. For Heidegger, the merit of Husserl’s account, therefore, lies in its methodological conception of consciousness as a “directedness-toward-something,” characterized by a “tendency toward fulfillment” (GA 21: 107–108/88–89). Although Husserl’s phenomenological descriptions serve as the primary point of contact in the development of Heidegger’s conception of truth, his approach remains limited by its relative silence on the ontological nature of objects or phenomena. Husserl does not conceive of being beyond the taxonomic rank of objects and their corresponding degrees of evidence (e.g., ideal, real, or categorial) (Hua Xix/2: §38f). At best, the object exhibits “ideal fullness” (wahrmachender) for an intention, making it true.²⁴ This limitation is precisely what Daniel Dahlstrom identifies as the “double-edged character of Heidegger’s remarks about Husserl’s thinking.”²⁵ On the one hand, Heidegger credits Husserl with explaining “how propositional truth as the correctness of a judgment presupposes truth in the sense of the perceived identity of what is meant with what is intuited.”²⁶ On the other hand, Husserl’s account is vulnerable to the same critique that Heidegger leveled against Lotze (GA 2: 206–7, 286/Sz 156; GA 20: 45–6/35; GA 21: 101/84).²⁷ Husserl shares Lotze’s error of assuming that the static identity of phenomena constitutes the primary meaning of being.²⁸ Charitably, this assumption maintains that objects or states of affairs are Vorhandensein, awaiting cognition. Husserl’s phenomenology, therefore, ultimately only “brushes up against the question of being” and fails to take the necessary steps to reflect on the consequences of its ontological presuppositions (GA 15: 373–8). As a result, Heidegger’s inquiry into truth shifts from “transcendence in immanence” to genuine transcendence, that is, from phenomenology to ontology.²⁹ Against the backdrop of Metaphysics Θ, Heidegger turns to the “authentic Greek notion of οὐσία,” understood as presencing (Anwesen, Gegenwärtigen), to address the ontological questions left unanswered in Husserl’s phenomenology (GA 21: 170–1/143). In Heidegger’s eyes, Aristotle’s dynamic understanding of presencing, rooted in ἀλήθεια, challenges and modifies Husserl’s assumption of self-evident givenness

(Selbstverständlichkeit). From Metaphysics, Heidegger identifies two interconnected claims that mark “the pinnacle of the investigation” and allow ἀληθές (truth) to reach its “full and proper determination” (GA 21: 179/152). First, when considered ontologically, unconcealment is the self-showing of essence. Every being (Seiendes) has a constitution of its own Being (Sein) that determines “what-it-is” (τί ἦν εἶναι). In other words, a being’s Being has a “what” (Was), from which everything it is derives its origin (GA 21: 179/152). Second, Heidegger explains that our access to Being occurs through θιγεῖν (touch) and simple νοεῖν (recognition). Λόγος is always directed toward (αἴσθη− σις) the immediate grasp (θιγεῖν) of Being or essence (εἶδος). Even propositional falsity, or “being deceived,” presupposes an a priori understanding of the Being possessed by the entity in question (GA 21: 183/154). This means that unconcealment, or the presencing of being, is “already” operative in every intentional act and in every instance of addressing something as something (GA 21: 176/149).³⁰ For Aristotle, composite beings are constituted by form (μορφή or εἶδος) and matter (ὕλη): their essence (οὐσία) is unified through actuality (form) and potentiality (matter).³¹ The form provides identity, while the matter offers the potential for that form to be realized. Composite beings are subject to change and can undergo διαίρεσις (division) or σύνθεσις (synthesis).³² As a result, “the same opinion or the same statement can be true at one time and false at another.”³³ For composite beings, falsity is characterized as non-being, either through privation (the absence of a quality or state that a thing could possess), potentiality (the unrealized potential of something), or negation (the logical absence or contradiction of a proposition).³⁴ Conversely, incomposite beings are ontologically simple, fully actualized, and incapable of change; therefore, “opinions” concerning them do not admit temporal variability in their truth-value.³⁵ If the object exists, it exists (being) in a particular way. If it does not exist (non-being) in this way, it does not exist at all. Non-being, in this case, means pure non-existence (absolute absence of being). Falsity, therefore, is never the counterpart to an incomposite being, nor is error. Instead, Heidegger claims that non-being is characterized by Aristotle as a total absence of thinking and “being in contact with…” (GA 21: 177/149).³⁶ In short, incomposite beings cannot be otherwise (ἀδύνατα ἄλλως ἔχειν), and that which always exists (ἀεί ὄν) cannot be false; it can only be apprehended or non-apprehended.³⁷ Heidegger argues that when Aristotle speaks of ἀλήθεια as unconcealment, he retains the kind of access used to apprehend incomposite beings (ἀσύνθετα) (GA 21: 181–2/153). Heidegger is quick to note that Aristotle’s “flexible expression” θιγγάνων (touching) is used to capture several ways the intellect functions (GA 21: 181/153). To be sure, θιγγάνων is not an “actual touching or seeing” but the act of intellectual apprehension, whereby “knowledge in activity” is the same as its object.³⁸ To substantiate his interpretation, Heidegger cites Metaphysics IX 1052a1, where Aristotle classifies apprehension as akin to νοεῖν (thinking), or the act of intellectual apprehension of the νοητικόν (knowable). Further, in Metaphysics XII 1072b21, Heidegger finds that θιγγάνειν (touching) is καὶ νοεῖν (knowing). Its counterpart, in Metaphysics XII 1051b25, is μὴ θιγγάνειν (not touching), which, as ἀγνοεῖν (not knowing), denotes ἄγνοια (ignorance as the total absence of thinking). In De Anima II.2, Aristotle also uses the words ἁφή (touch) and αἴσθησις (sense perception) to indicate the same kind of receptivity, whereby “the faculty of sense receives the sensible forms without the matter.”³⁹ For Heidegger, the decisive mark in these citations is that beings which are unconcealed in seeing and touching are “had directly in and of themselves” (GA 21: 181/153). Heidegger reads Aristotle as suggesting that “being in and of itself” means essence, and that essence is incomposite: therefore, Being = essence = the truth of beings cannot be composite.⁴⁰ Heidegger states that “[Unconcelament] of a being that in and of itself is not composed therefore offers no possibility of seeing anything else in the being other than that being’s Being” (GA 21: 180/152, TM). Unconcealment offers no possibility of focusing on something else in the being or of showing the being in terms of something else (i.e., its predicates). Rather, the form of Being is manifest in and of itself. What follows from this kind of seeing and touching is speaking (φάναι), making something which is “already had” apparent (δηλοῦν). For Heidegger, therefore, despite

Aristotle typically reserving θιγγάνων for incomposite beings, if truth is understood through essence (the form of an object), then θιγγάνων, in its “most primary and authentic sense,” transcends its exclusivity to incomposite beings and methodologically points toward the essence of truth in all phenomena, including composite beings (GA 21: 181/153). While we may speculate about Heidegger’s motivations for presenting Aristotle in this unconventional way, it is only in the final pages of Part 1 of the Logic lectures that his philosophical ambitions become clear (GA 21: 191–5/161–6). Heidegger finds in Aristotle the same distortion he creates when reading Husserl’s four senses of truth in Chapter 5 of the Sixth Investigation, titled “The Ideal of Adequation: Evidence and Truth” (GA 2: 289/Sz 218; GA 20: 69f/51f; Hua Xix/2: §36–9/259f).⁴¹ Heidegger claims that Husserl’s first sense of being-true is experienced as evidence (Evidenz) (Hua Xix/2: 651–2/264). Consequently, what Heidegger calls “being-in-touch-with-the-subject-matter” (Bei-der-Sache-sein) constitutes the unthematic performance of intentionality and intuition, wherein what is immediately and transparently experienced is identified as true (GA 20: 70/52). ⁴² Heidegger then reads Husserl’s fourth concept of truth (the correctness of an assertion) as an intentional act that takes the “operative a priori” and makes truth a thematic object (GA 20: 70/52).⁴³ Likewise, when reading Aristotle, Heidegger asserts that the essence of a being is unconcealed and continues to be present and tacitly retained, allowing it to be pointed out and determined through λόγος when needed. In other words, we can bring an object, attribute, or interpretation into relief only if we continue to have it present in an unthematic way. For example, we assert that “the book is open” only on the basis of the continuous and unreflective possession of its “what-it-is” (τί ἦν εἶναι) – which, importantly, cannot be attained simply by nominalization or abstraction but instead involves “a straightforward having” (θιγγάνειν) (GA 21: 189–90/159–60; GA 2: 44f, 298–9/Sz 33f, 266).⁴⁴ Heidegger’s strategic reading of both thinkers allows for a phenomenological interpretation of the Ancient Greek concept of λόγος, while also addressing Husserl’s ontological limitations by returning to Aristotle’s Metaphysics. From the analysis developed in this article, we are better positioned to understand Heidegger’s conclusion about “the double possibility of λόγος” in the final paragraphs of §44 (b). Here, Heidegger adheres to the phenomenological characterization of λόγος outlined in Section I of this article, suggesting that “the Being-true of the λόγος is that way of comporting oneself to uncover or cover over entities” (GA 2: 298–9/Sz 266). Heidegger further incorporates insights from the Logic lectures on Metaphysics, claiming that since “Aristotle never upheld the [conventional] thesis” of truth at the level of the assertion, we can “broaden the conception of truth in λόγος to include pure νοεῖν” (GA 2: 298–9/Sz 266). Heidegger argues that λόγος stems from “the truth of seeing [αἰσθήσεις; θιγγάνειν] of ideas [εἶδος] as the primordial kind of unconcealment” (GA 2: 298–9/Sz 266, TM). Only because νοεῖν primarily unconceals can λόγος also have unconcealing as its function. From this analysis, Heidegger concludes that the occurrence of truth is neither “an arbitrary or private invention” based on judgment, nor exclusively something present-at-hand (Vorhandenheit). Instead, the inquiry into truth is brought back to “the ontological condition for the possibility that assertions can be either true or false, that they may uncover or cover things up” (GA 2: 299/SZ 226).⁴⁵

Notes

1. The contrast between these thinkers often exemplifies a core theme in contemporary phenomenology: the difference between embodied, lived-world experience and reflective self-consciousness. For the sake of space, an exhaustive list of sources cannot be provided here. To name a few, see Dan Zahavi’s Subjectivity and Selfhood (MIT Press, 2008); Nancy J. Holland’s Heidegger and the Problem of Consciousness (Indiana University Press, 2018); Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann’s Hermeneutics and Reflection, trans. Kenneth Maly (University of Toronto Press, 2013); Carl Friedrich Gethmann, “Zu Heideggers Wahrheitsbegriff,” Kant- Studien 65, no. 2 (1974): 186–200. I showed the limitations of “Heidegger’s pragmatism” in Joshua Fahmy-Hooke, “Martin Heidegger’s Concept of Understanding (Verstehen),” Analecta Hermeneutica 15 (2023). ↩
2. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. Karl Schuhmann, Husserliana: Edmund Husserl – Gesammelte Werke, vol. iii/1 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), §34 / 61, tm ↩
3. Dermot Moran, foreword to Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, by Edmund Husserl, trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson (London: Routledge, 2012), xvi. ↩
4. Dermot Moran, “Edith Stein’s Encounter with Edmund Husserl and Her Phenomenology of the Person,” in Empathy, Sociality, and Personhood: Essays on Edith Stein’s Phenomenological Investigations, ed. Dermot Moran and Elisa Magri (Cham: Springer, 2017), 34. ↩
5. Especially noteworthy are members of the so-called “Munich and Göttingen circles.” Edith Stein often refers to the “ominous sentence” in §49 of Ideas I: “Streichen wir das Bewußtsein, so streichen wir die Welt.” Edith Stein, Freiheit und Gnade und weitere Beiträge zur Phänomenologie und Ontologie (1917–1937), ed. Beate Beckmann-Zöller and Hans Rainer Sepp, Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe, vol. 9 (Freiburg: Herder, 2014), 89. Roman Ingarden recalls that Husserl frequently intoned this dictum in his Göttingen lectures. Roman Ingarden, On the Motives Which Led Edmund Husserl to Transcendental Idealism, trans. Arnór Hannibalsson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), 21. ↩
6. For example, GA 20, GA 21, GA 24, and after Being and Time, in GA 26 and GA 29/30. ↩
7. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band: Erster Teil. Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, hrsg. von Ursula Panzer, Husserliana Xix/1 (Dordrecht: Springer, 1984); Zweiter Band: Zweiter Teil. Texte für die Neufassung der vi. Untersuchung: Zur Phänomenologie des Ausdrucks und der Erkenntnis (1893/94–1921), hrsg. von Ullrich Melle, Husserliana Xix/2 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005).; Logical Investigations, vol. 2, trans. J. N. Findlay, ed. with a new introduction by Dermot Moran (London and New York: Routledge, 2001). Hereafter, Hua Xix/1 or Xix/2 with German / English pagination, or paragraph numbers where applicable. ↩
8. See, Heinrich Rickert, “Die Methode der Philosophie und das Unmittelbare. Eine Problemstellung,” Logos 12 (1923/24): 242, quoted in Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 28. ↩
9. See, Yuichi Tomiyama, “On the Transcendence and Reality of Husserlian Objects,” in New Phenomenological Studies in Japan, ed. Nicolas de Warren and Saulius Taguchi, Contributions to Phenomenology, vol. 101 (Cham: Springer, 2019) 45–56. https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11893-8_4; John Drummond and Dan Zahavi, “Husserl’s Legacy: Phenomenology, Metaphysics, and Transcendental Philosophy,” Husserl Studies 35 (2019): 265–273, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-019-09241-x. ↩
10. Rudolf Bernet, “Perception, Categorial Intuition and Truth in Husserl’s Sixth ‘Logical Investigation’” in The Collegium Phaenomenologicum: The First Ten Years (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1988), 34. ↩
11. Most notably, GA 17: Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Phenomenological Research, trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom, (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2005). ↩
12. For a note on the phraseology I am using here and the three meanings of ἀλήϑεια, see Thomas Sheehan, Making Sense of Heidegger: A Paradigm Shift (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 71f. I am addressing Entdecktheit / Unverborgenheit (the discoveredness of things). Ἀλήϑεια encompasses at least both meanings, but it is helpful, drawing on an indication from The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, to use ἀληθεύειν instead of ἀλήθεια to refer to the human act of apprehension (Vernehmen) (GA 24: 102/72, 266–9/188–9, 305–7/215, 309/217). Ἀληθεύειν is the verb form of ἀλήθεια, meaning “to speak the truth” or “to disclose.” It refers to the act or process of revealing or unconcealing. ↩
13. Like Brentano, Heidegger states that the ‘epistemological’ problematic for Lotze is to “regard the subject-object relation as restrictive to the “interpreting the ‘immanent consciousness of truth,’ and thus remain ‘within the sphere’ of the subject (GA 2: 286/Sz 216). Lotze was forced to “distinguish between the judging as a Real psychical process, and that which is judged, as an ideal content (GA 2: 207, 286/Sz 156, 216). For Lotze, “it will be said of the latter that it is “true” (GA 2: 286/Sz 216). ↩
14. The theory of objective validity in Marburg’s Neo-Kantian epistemology of the nineteenth-century thus aimed to address the “methodologically naïve realism” of adaequatio rei et intellectus (GA 21: 285/Sz 215). Neo-Kantianism and all prevalent philosophy in Germany continued their inquiry into truth along these lines. Philosophy came to orient itself toward the validity of theoretical knowing as that which constitutes the truth of the theoretical proposition, namely, the assertion. This was a result of the solution to the Psychologismus-Streit presented by Hermann Lotze. ↩
15. Aristotle. De Interpretatione. In The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, edited by Jonathan Barnes, translated by J.L. Ackrill, Princeton University Press, 1984, 17a1–5. ↩
16. See, Joshua Fahmy-Hooke, “Heidegger’s Critical Confrontation with the Concept of Truth as Validity,” Open Philosophy 7, no. 1 (2024): 20240054. https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2024-0054https:// doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2024-0054 ↩
17. Thomas Sheehan, “Hermeneia and Apophansis: The Early Heidegger on Aristotle,” in Heidegger et idée de la phénoménol- ogie, ed. Franco Volpi et al. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), 67-80. ↩
18. Aristotle, De Interpretatione, §13f. ↩
19. Anticipating Section iii, this conceptualization of Being closely aligned with the “authentic Greek notion of οὐσία,” or presencing (Anwesen; Gegenwärtigen), and answers the primordial questions of how a “being is uncoverable,” how “something is encountered at all,” and what it means for something to be in general (GA 21: 170–1f/143f; GA 15: 76–77/43). See Daniel Dahlstrom, Heidegger’s Concept of Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 177. ↩
20. Heidegger states: If by “that which shows itself” we understand those entities which are accessible through the empirical “intuition” in, let us say, Kant’s sense, then the formal conception of “phenomenon” will indeed be legitimately employed. In this usage “phenomenon” has the signification of the ordinary conception of phenomenon […] If, however, the phenomenological conception of phenomenon is to be understood at all, regardless of how much closer we may come to determining the nature of that which shows itself, this presupposes inevitably that we must have an insight into the meaning of the formal conception of phenomenon and its legitimate employment in an ordinary signification (GA 2: 41/Sz 34). ↩
21. The analogy of light—relucence—is frequently employed by Heidegger. The middle voice φαίνεσθαι (to appear) is derived from φαίνω (to bring to light, to make visible in itself, to place in a bright light). Φαίνω has the stem φα—φῶς (light, brightness), that in which something can become manifest or visible in itself. We shall adhere to this meaning of phenomenon: φαινόμε− νον (that which shows itself). The φαινόμενα (things that show themselves) constitute the totality of what is manifest, what the Greeks also simply identified with τὰ ὄντα (beings, entities) (GA 20: 110-112/81). ↩
22. See, GA 20: 110-115/81–3. ↩
23. Heidegger takes this up hermeneutically in his analysis of interpretation, stating what is carried out primordially is not a theoretical statement but in an action of circumspective concern—laying aside the unsuitable tool, or exchanging it, “without wasting words […] From the fact that words are absent, it may not be concluded that interpretation is absent” (GA 2: 208/Sz 157–9). ↩
24. Notice the term wahrmachender, as “more truthful” is akin to Lotze’s conclusion that an assertion is valid when it is ‘actually true.’ Lotze’s conception here renders to how we colloquially speak, e.g., “I believe that’s actually true.” ↩
25. Dahlstrom, Heidegger’s Concept of Truth, 176 ↩
26. Dahlstrom, Heidegger’s Concept of Truth, 176 ↩
27. I explain this critique in full in Joshua Fahmy-Hooke, “Heidegger’s Critical Confrontation with the Concept of Truth as Validity” Open Philosophy 7, no. 1 (2024): 20240054. https://doi.org/10.1515/ opphil-2024-0054https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2024-0054 ↩
28. Fahmy-Hooke, “Heidegger’s Critical Confrontation with the Concept of Truth as Validity,” 6–8. ↩
29. Steven G. Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths Toward Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 41, fn 14. ↩
30. In the Logic Lectures, Heidegger’s use of unconcealment, for the most part, refers to the apprehension of essence (εἶδος), but at times also means the sheer manifestation of phenomena. Nevertheless, Heidegger maintains that without unconcealment in either sense, the σύνθεσις (synthesis) or διαίρεσις (division) of form and matter, expressed as subject and predicate in λόγος, cannot occur. ↩
31. Aristotle, Metaphysics ix, 8, 1050a10-12; 7.4, 1032a28-30; 7.17, 1035b25-28; Physics 2.3, 194a14-18. ↩
32. Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 10f. For example, “This chalkboard is black” is a synthetic proposition that is true. “Black,” or “isblack,” is synthesized with “chalkboard,” and because the proposition synthesizes the two, the assertion is itself true. Conversely, “This chalkboard is not black” is a divided or separated proposition (διῃρημένος). The word “not” separates the predicate “blackness” from the subject “chalkboard,” and this separation results in the assertion being false. ↩
33. Aristotle, Metaphysics, ix, 10, 15, TM. ↩
34. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book iv, 1005b19–1006a12; Book ix, 1046a29– 1046b5, 1049b5–1050a3. ↩
35. Given Heidegger’s strategic reading, he has little to say about incorporeal substances (e.g., the unmoved mover, the soul, or mathematical objects). Aristotle, Metaphysics ix 8, 1050a10-12; 7.4, 1032a28-30; 7.17, 1035b25-28; Physics 2.3, 194a14-18. Also make notice that Heidegger is retaining Aristotle’s repeated use of “opinions” in Metaphysics with strategic rhetoric to downplay the role of language and prioritize the concept of being. Aristotle, Metaphysics, ix, 10, 15. ↩
36. Aristotle, Metaphysics, ix, 1052a1. ↩
37. Heidegger occasionally cites De Anima to make this claim (for example, De Anima iii, 430a26–430b5). To be charitable to Heidegger, despite his unconventional reading of Aristotle, he is merely asserting that the truth about beings is conditionally a priori. ↩
38. Aristotle, Metaphysics, xii.7, 1072a25-30. ↩
39. De Anima iii.2, 425b25-426a1. ↩
40. Following this seemingly unjustified pronouncement, Heidegger recalls his early critique of the conventional reading, which maintains propositions as the essence of truth. If truth as unconcealment is incomposite because it reveals essence or form (i.e., is not synthesized), then propositional truth, which is always synthesized through the copula, cannot be the essence of truth. Heidegger concedes that the idea of being as a synthesis is useful for speaking about beings, yet he argues that it is inadequate for determining their essence or their truth. ↩
41. In his reformulation of adaequatio rei et intellectus, ideal adequacy is an intentional experience that gives the object or state of affairs in ‘complete fullness’ The intellectus is the intention of meaning, and adaequatio occurs when the object is given exactly as it is meant and named (Hua Xix/2: 653–4/265; Sz 217–19 / 260–63). ↩
42. See Chad Kidd, “Husserl’s Phenomenological Theory of Intuition,” in Rational Intuition: Philosophical Roots, Scientific Investigations, ed. Lisa M. Osbeck, Barbara S. Held (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 142. This is a primary point of contact I use in my response to Tugendhat’s critique of Heidegger. ↩
43. This intelligibility is not yet the truth of correspondence. Something is taken as meaning something; This is patent of intentionality (GA 20: 37–9/30). ↩
44. Dahlstrom, Heidegger’s Concept of Truth, 217. ↩
45. A related but separate article, “Husserl’s Logical Investigations and the Problem of Truth: A Response to Tugendhat’s Critique of Heidegger,” is currently in development. While there is some overlap in the treatment of §44 of Being and Time and its relation to Husserl, that article develops a defense of Heidegger’s theory of truth through Husserl’s concept of evidence. The present article examines the historical-philosophical relationship between Heidegger, Husserl, and Aristotle, focusing on the influence and limitations of the Logical Investigations. Although both studies address phenomenological conceptions of truth in Being and Time, they differ in scope and intended audience. ↩

Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual 15 (2025) 177–200