The Twofold Character of Truth: Heidegger, Davidson, Tugendhat

Abstract

The concept of truth as aletheia, or ‘unconcealment,’ is one of the founding concepts in Heidegger’s thinking. Yet it also appears to be a concept that is as problematic as it is central. Ernst Tugendhat, in particular, famously criticized Heidegger’s identification of truth with aletheia in a way that seems to have led Heidegger eventually to abandon that identification. Beginning with Kockelman’s own account of the idea of truth as unconcealment, I want to re-examine the questions at issue here, looking particularly at Tugendhat’s criticisms, but also drawing on the account of truth to be found in the work of Donald Davidson. My intention will be to show why it remains the case that aletheia has to be understood as indeed a mode of truth; that understanding this involves understanding a certain transcendental-topological structure as pertaining to aletheia, thereby understanding truth as standing in an essential relation to place or topos; and that the fundamental role played by truth as aletheia does not curtail, but itself constitutes the ground for, genuine questioning or critique.