Basic Questions of Philosophy

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Basic Questions of Philosophy

Selected “Problems” of “Logic”

Martin Heidegger

Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer

Series: Studies in Continental Thought

Distribution: World

Publication date: 7/1/1994

Format: cloth 0 pages
5.25 x 8.5

ISBN: 978-0-253-32685-0

cloth

$39.95

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Description

First published in German in 1984 as volume 45 of Martin Heidegger’s collected works, this book is the first English translation of a lecture course he presented at the University of Freiburg in 1937–1938. Heidegger’s task here is to reassert the question of the essence of truth, not as a "problem" or as a matter of "logic," but precisely as a genuine philosophical question, in fact the one basic question of philosophy. Thus, this course is about the essence of truth and the essence of philosophy. On both sides Heidegger draws extensively upon the ancient Greeks, on their understanding of truth as aletheia and their determination of the beginning of philosophy as the disposition of wonder. In addition, these lectures were presented at the time that Heidegger was composing his second magnum opus, Beiträge zur Philosophie, and provide the single best introduction to that complex and crucial text.

Author Bio

Richard Rojcewicz is Executive Director of the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center at Duquesne University.

André Schuwer is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Duquesne University and cotranslator (with Richard Rojcewicz) of Parmenides by Martin Heidegger and Ideas II by Edmund Husserl.

Reviews

"Well suited to the task of beckoning the novice onto the path of Heidegger’s most arduous thought. . . . a useful introduction to the thought of one of our most original thinkers." —International Studies in Philosophy

"A helpful elucidation of the truth as [Heidegger] sees it. . . . This excellent translation will be of great value to students of Heidegger’s thought." —Library Journal

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Translators’ Foreword

Preparatory Part: The Essence of Philosophy and the Question of Truth
Chapter One: Preliminary Interpretation of the Essence of Philosophy
1. Futural philosophy; restraint as the basic disposition of the relation to Being [Seyn]
2. Philosophy as the immediately useless, through sovereign, knowledge of the essence of beings
3. Questioning the truth of Being, as sovereign knowledge

Chapter Two: The Question of Truth as a Basic Question
4. Truth as a “problem” of “logic” (correctness of an assertion) distorts every view of the essence of truth
5. Discussion of truth by asking the basic question of philosophy. Including a historical confrontation with Western philosophy. The need and the necessity of an original questioning
Recapitulation
1) The question of truth as the most necessary philosophical question in an age that is totally unquestioning
2) What is worthy of questioning in the determination of truth hitherto (truth as the correctness of an assertion) as compelling us toward the question of truth
6. The traditional determination of truth as correctness
7. The controversy between idealism and realism on the common soil of a conception of truth as the correctness of a representation
8. The space of the fourfold-unitary openness. First directive toward what is worthy of questioning in the traditional determination of truth as correctness
9. The conception of truth and of the essence of man. The basic question of truth
a) The determination of the essence of truth as connected to the determination of the essence of man
b) The question of the ground of the possibility of all correctness as the basic question of truth

Recapitulation
1) The relation between question and answer in the domain of philosophy
2) The customary determiniation of truth as correctness of representation, and the fourfold-unitary openness as the question-worthy ground of the possibility of the correctness of representation
c) The question of truth as the most questionable of our previous history and the most worthy of questioning of our future history

Main Part: Foundational Issues in the Question of Truth

Chapter One: The Basic Question of the Essence of Truth as a Historical Reflection
10. The ambiguity of the question of truth: the search for what is true—reflection on the essence of truth
11. The question of truth as a question of the essence of the true: not an inquiry into the universal concept of the true
12. The question of the legitimacy of the ordinary determination of truth, as point of departure for a return to the ground of the possiblity of correctness
13. The foundation of the traditional conception of truth in the return to its origin
1) The historiographical consideration of the past
b) Historical reflection on the future, the future as the beinning of all happenings

Recapitulation
1) The ambiguity of the question of truth. The essence is not what is indifferently universal but what is most essential
2) The problematic character of the obviousness of the traditional conception of truth, and the question of its legitimacy
3) Toward the foundation of the customary conception of truth through a historical reflection on its origin. The distinction between a historiographical consideration and a historical reflection
3) The acquisition of the beginning in the experience of its law. The historical as the extension from the future into the past and from the past into the future
14. Return to the Aristotelian doctrine of the truth of the assertion as a historical reflection
15. The Aristotelian foundation of the correctness of an assertion as the essence of truth
16. The turning of the question of the essence of truth into the question of the truth (essentiality) of the essence. The question of the Aristotelian conception of the essentiality of the essence

Recapitulation
1) Rejection of three misterpretations of the distinction between historiographical consideration and historical reflection. Science and historical reflection
2) The path from the question of the essence of truth to the question of the truth (essentiality) of the essence

Chapter Two: The Question of the Truth (Essentiality) of the Essence
17. Historical relfection on the Aristotelian-Platonic determination of the essentiality of the essence
a) The four characteristics of the essentiality of the essence in Aristotle
b) The essence as the whatness of a being. Whatness as : the constantly present, what is in view in advance, the look

Recapitulation
1) Four characterizations of the essentiality of the essence in Aristotle. The whatness in Plato: the as what is sighted in advance, the look
2) How to understand the essence sighted in advance
18. The Greek determination of the essence (whatness) in the horizon of an understanding of Being as constant presence
a) The determination of the essence (whatness) as the “beingness” of beings. The understanding of Being as constant presence is the ground for the interpretation of beingness as
b) The Greek understand of the
19. The absence of a foundation for Aristotle’s essential determination of truth as the correctness of an assertion. The question of the meaning of foundation

Recapitulation
1) The conception of the Being of beings as constant presence: the ground for the determination of the essence as whatness
2. The absence of a foundation for the positing and for the characterization of the essence of truth as the correctness of an assertion. The meaning of foundation

Chapter Three: The Laying of the Ground as the Foundation for Grasping an Essence
20. The absurdity of attempting to found an essential statement about truth as correctness by having recourse to a factual statment
21. Grasping the essence as bringing it forth. First directive
22. The search for the ground of the positing of the essence. Ordinariness of an acquaintance with the essence—enigma of a genuine knowledge of the essence (grasping of the essence) and its foundation
23. The bringing of the essence into view in advance (the grasping of the essence) as the bringing forth of the essence out of concealment into the light. The productive seeing of the essence
24. The productive seeing of the essence as the laying of the ground.

Recapitulation
1) Renewed reflection on our procedure as a whole: the necessity of a historical relation to the history of the essence of truth
2) The succession of the steps made up to now from truth as the correctness of an assertion to the positing of the essence as a productive seeing and a laying of the ground
25. The unconcealedness of the whatness of beings as the truth pertaining to the grasping of the essence. The groundedness of the correctness of an assertion in unconcealedness
26. Unconcealedness and the openness of beings. The process of the submergence of the original Greek essence of truth in the sense of the unconcealedness of beings

Recapitulation
1) The productive seeing of the unconcealedness of beings as the ground of the essence of truth as correctness
2) The Greek as openness. The transformation of the concept of truth from unconcealedness to correctness

Chapter Four: The Necessity of the Question of the Essence of Truth, on the Basis of the Beginning of the History of Truth
27. The turning of the critical question of truth toward the beginning of the history of truth as a leaping ahead into the future. as experienced by the Greeks though not interrogated by them
28. Truth as correctness and its domination over its own ground as an essential consequence of the absence of a fathoming of the ground. The question of openness as the question of itself
29. The Greeks’ experience of unconcealedness as the basic character of beings as such and their lack of inquiry into

Recapitulation
1) The ground of the necessity of the question of the essence of truth
2) as primordial for the Greeks yet unquestioned by them
30. Their fidelity to the destiny meted out to them as the reason the Greeks did not ask about Non-occurrence as what is necessarily detained in and through the beginning
31. The end of the first beginning and the preparation for another beginning
a) Our situation at the end of the beginning and the demand for a reflection on the first beginning as a preparation for another beginning
b) The experience of the end by Holderlin and Nietzsche and their reflection on the beginning of Western history
32. The destiny meted out to the Greeks: to begin thinking as an inquiry into beings as such and in terms of an experience of unconcealedness as the basic charcter of beings

Recapitulation
1) The lack of an inquiry into unconcealedness on the part of the Greeks and the necessity of their task
2) Nietzsche and Holderlin as end and as transition, each in his own way
3) The task of the Greeks: to sustain the first beginnings
33. The beginning of thinking and the essential determination of man
a) The sustaining of the recognition of beings in their beingness and the essential determination of man as the perceiver of beings as such
b) The transformation of the primordial determination of the essence of man, as the perceiver of beings, into the determination of the essence of man as the rational animal
34. The need and the necessity of our inquiry into unconcealedness itself on the basis of a more original understanding of the first beginning

Recapitulation
1) The rigor and inner order of questioning in distrinction to the systematization of a system
2) Historical reflection on the necessity of the first beginning: acquisition of the norms for the necessity of our own question of truth
3) The origin of the apprehension of man as the rational animal out of an inability to sustain the first beginning

Chapter Five: The Need and the Necessity of the First Beginning and the Need and the Necessity of an Other Way to Question and to Begin
35. The distress of not knowing the way out or the way in, as a mode of Being. The untrodden time-space of the between
36. The need of primordial thinking and how this need compels man dispositionally into the basic disposition of wonder
37. The ordinary concept of wonder as guideline for a reflection on as a basic disposition
a) Amazement and marvelling

Recapitulation
1) The negativity of the distress as a not knowing the way out or the way in. The whence and whither as the open “between” of the undifferentiatedness of being and non-beings
2) The compelling power of the need, its disposing as displacing man into the beginning of a foundation of his essence
3. as the basic disposition of the primordial thinking of the Occident
b) Admiration
c) Astonishment and awe
38. The esseence of wonder as the basic disposition compelling us into the necessity of primordial thinking
a) In wonder what is most usual itself becomes the most unusual
b) In wonder what is most usual of all and in all, in whatever manner this might be, becomes the most unusual
c) The most extreme wonder knows no way out of the unusualness of what is most usual
d) Wonder knows no way into the unusualness of what is most usual
e) Wonder as between the usual and the unusual
f) The eruption of the usualness of the most usual in the transition of the most usual into the most unusual. What alone is wondrous: beings as beings
g) Wonder displaces man into the perception of beings as beings, into the sustaining of unconcealedness
h) Wonder as a basic disposition belongs to the most unusaul
i) An alysis of wonder as a retrospective sketch of the displacement of man into beings a such
j) The sustaining of the displacement prevailing in the basic disposition of wonder in the carrying out of the necessity of the question of beings as such

Recapitulation
1) The basic disposition of wonder versus related kinds of marvelling
2) Sequence of steps in the characterization of wonder as a way toward the necessity of the primordial question
k) The carrying out of the necessity: a suffering in the sense of the creative tolerance for the unconditioned
1) as the basic attitude toward, where the preservation of the wondrous (the beingness of beings) unfolds and is established. maintains the holding sway of in unconcealedness
m) The danger of disturbing the basic disposition of wonder in carrying it out. as the ground for the transformation of into The loss of the basic disposition and the absence of the original need and necessity
39. The need arising from the lack of need. Truth as correctness and philosophy (the question of truth) as without need and necessity
40. The abandonment of beings by Being as the concealed ground of the still hidden basic disposition. The compelling of this basic disposition into another necessity of another questioning and beginning
41. The necessity held out for us: to bring upon its ground openness as the clearing of the self-concealing—the question of the essence of man as the custodian of the truth of Being

Appendices
The Question of Truth
From the First Draft
I. Foundational issues in the question of truth
1. The compelling power of the need arising from the abondonment by Being: terror as the basic disposition of the other beginning
2. The question of the essence of truth as the necessity of the highest need arising from the abondonment of being
b) The question of truth as a preliminary question on behalf of the basic question of Being
II. Leaping ahead into the essentialization of truth
4. The question of the essentialization of truth as a question that founds history originally
5. Indication of the essentialization of truth through critical reflection and historical recollection
1) Preparation for the leap by securing the approach run and by predelineating the direction of the leap. Correctness as the start of the approach run, openness as the direction of the leap
b) The experience of openness as unconcealedness in the first beginning. The unquestioned character of unconcealedness and the task of a more original experience of its essence on the basis of our need
6. The abandonment by Being as the need arising from the lack of need. The experience of the abondonment of beings by Being as need in the coming to light of the belongingness of Being to beings and the distinction of Being from beings
7. Directive sketch of the esseence of truth on the basis of the need arising from the abondonment by Being
a) Openness as the clearing for the vacillating self-concealment. Vacillating self-concealment as a first designation of Being itself
b) The clearing for self-concealment as the supporting ground of humanity. Man’s grounding of this supporting ground as Da-sein
c) The question of truth, and the dislocation of humanity out of its previous homelessness into the ground of its essence, in order for man to become the founder and the preserver of the truth of Being
d) The question of the essentialization of truth as the question of the essentialization of Being
III. Recollection of the first shining forth of the essence of truth as (unconcealedness)
8. Recollection of the first knowledge of truth at the beginning of Western philosophy as an indication of the proper question of the more original essence of truth as openness
9. Articulation of the historical recollection in five steps of reflection
Supplement to 40
Supplement to 41

Editor’s Afterword

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