Fairleigh Dickinson

Heidegger and the

Truth of Being

Bernd Magnus

T HEareIMPLICATIONS of Martin Heidegger's search for Being

manifold and complex. His attempt to re-call Being from
its oblivion constitutes, for him, not only a change in the direction
of metaphysics, but an actual "overcoming" of metaphysics. This
"overcoming" of metaphysics would result, further, in a radical
reversal in history and a change in human nature itself. Finally,
man's forgetfulness of Being is not simply a failure of thought, but
due to the epochal and eschatological nature of Being itself.
Each of these themes requires careful analysis. The attempt to
treat even one in an exhaustive fashion would involve treating them
all. Obviously, such an attempt is entirely beyond the scope of the
present paper.
In discussing Heidegger's notions of Being, Truth, and Poetry, I
selected those themes which I believe to be fundamental for a discus-
sion of his philosophizing. His critique of metaphysics, for example,
looks like a hopeless mystification unless his conception of truth is
grasped. From his point of view, our conception of mystification
is itself rooted in a series of presuppositions regarding what is "true"
for an explanation of that-which-is. Since this truth concept is itself
rooted in the concealment of Being, propositional truth is incapable
of grasping Being.
Heidegger's perspective is a shocking reversal of our ordinary way
of thinking. If traditional metaphysics, which is under violent at-
tack in many circles, begins by making room for the "transcendent"
through an analysis of the limits of human reason, Heidegger moves
in the opposite direction. Heidegger views the limits of reason as a
positive attempt to seize Being. Reason gains autonomy by shedding
its primal dependence upon Being.
246 MAGNUS

MEANING OF BEING

Since Aristotle, metaphysics has attempted to inquire into being

qua being. It is Heidegger's position that, since Plato, metaphysics
has not understood being qua being, but rather being qua that-which-
is.
Heidegger distinguishes "Being" from "that-which-is" by means
of the distinction of nouns, in German, das Sein and das Seiende.
The history of occidental metaphysics has involved, in his eyes, the
attempt to think Being as that-which-is (das Sein als das Seiende).
His fundamental ontology strives for that region in which the Being
of that-which-is can appear (das Sein des Seiendes).
The question of Being does not limit itself to a region of that-which-
is. Everything, in so far as it is, stands in Being. Thus, Heidegger
is not concerned with the being of any determinate thing, be it a
concept, a chair, Nature, or an atom. He is attempting to recall the
Being which every determinate "something" presupposes.
Heidegger began by asking for a clarification of what is meant
by the word ''Being,'' in Sein und Zeit (1927).2 He concluded that
in our thinking, from Plato to today, it has meant three fundamental
things; "the most universal concept,"3 the "undefinable"" and the
"self-evident. "5
As the most universal of all concepts,6 the notion of Being is al-
ready included within any conception whatsoever. That is, thinking
analyzes its object as existent in so far as it addresses itself to anything
at all. This most universal of all concepts, which Aristotle understood
to be beyond any genus, is not exhausted in the thought of any
possible being (thing).
That being is not grasped in the thought of any object of thought
means, simply, that Being is not an attribut(which we can predi-
cate of any subject. In thinking:of.any-thing, we do, indeed, think it as
existent, i.e., we think that-which-is to be. The object is, however,
only an instance of Being, not Being itself. This gave rise, in Plato
and Aristotle, to the problem of the "unity of analogy,"7 in which

1 Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit (Bern, 1947) p. 53.

2 Sein und Zeit (7. Aufl., Ttibingen, 1953), p. 2.
3 Ibid., p. 3.
4 Ibid., p. 4.
5 Ibid., p. 4.
6 See Aristotle's Metaphysics, B, 4, 1001 a 21.
7 Sein und Zeit, p. 4.
HEIDEGGER ON TRUTH 247

Being as it is in itself opposes itself to any individual existent thing.

In Plato this problem of the universality of Being in relationship
to the individual instance of that-which-is, is analogous to the prob-
lem of the relationship of a Form (eidos) to its manifestations.
That the concept of Being is undefinable follows from its universal-
ity. Any attempt to define Being involves saying "Being is ... "
in which the copula presupposes Being in its definition.
It is a long respected law of logic that "if a series of terms is ar-
ranged in order of increasing intension, the denotation of the terms
will either remain the same or diminish."8 If we analyze two proposi-
tions the relevance of this "law" will clarify the undefinability of
the term Being. The extension (denotation) of the term "unicorn"
is zero. That is, the range of application of the term "unicorn" is
zero. There are no actually existing members of the class (term)
"unicorn." Since the term operates over an empty set, the connota-
tion of the term (its intension) is precise and exhaustive. If I define
a unicorn as "a fabulous one-horned creature," I have given an ade-
quate connotative definition. The intension of the term is exhaustive
because the extension of the term is zero. The intension of the term
"Being," on the other hand, is zero because the extension of the term
is exhaustive.
The range of application of the term (class) "Being" is inexhaus-
tible, since everything that is, is a member of the class "Being."
Thus, if I were to define Being as "the Absolute," I would simply
be citing one member of the class "Being" and raising it to the level
of the term's intension. Being is the Absolute, but it is also the par-
ticular, the non-Absolute, world, concept, etc. In short, everything,
in so far as it is, belongs to the class "Being." Thus, the extension
of the term "Being" is the totality of that-which-is, and its intension
(connotation) zero.
The self-evident nature of Being is the third, and final, occidental
postulate. It is understood, in any expression whatsoever, that Being
is presupposed in the utterance. Thus, to take Heidegger's own
examples, everyone understands that Being is contained as self-evi-
dent in the assertions "The sky is blue," or "I am happy."9
In stating "The sky is blue," I am not inquiring into the Being
of anything whatsoever in so far as it exists. Similarly, the state-
ment "I am happy" does not question the ontological status of Being.

8 M. Cohen and F. Nagel, Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (2nd ed.
New York, 1962), p. 33.
9 Sein und Zeit, p. 5.
248 MAGNUS

In the former case I assume, as self-evident, the existence of the

sky which I am describing, just as in the latter case I do not place
Being into question. Each sentence assumes, as self-evident, that
Being is. Only in virtue of the facticity of Being am I able to speak
of a determinate "something." In both instances I am describing a
region of that-which-is in Being; in the one case the "objective"
world around me, and in the other my psychic state.
It would, of course, be possible to ask, Why is the sky? or Why
am I? But, this again should not be confused with the question of
Being. In asking both questions I am simply asking, Why, among
the things-that-are, is this region (the sky or the self) existent?

CRITIQUE OF TRADITIONAL ONTOLOGY

The initial project, in Sein und Zeit, was to culminate in a recapitu-

lation and "destruction of the history of ontology. "10 The "destruc-
tion" was prompted by the tradition's utter incapacity to grasp the
sense of Being. Heidegger had intended working back from an anal-
ysis of Kant, to Descartes and finally Aristotle. This project, which
was to constitute Part II of Sein und Zeit, was never completed.
In view of Heidegger's later publications it is not difficult to guess
what such a "destruction" involves. Destruction does not mean,
here, the annihilation of something worthless. Destruction does not
mean an anti-metaphysics metaphysic. Destruction, which involves
a recapitulation, means a removal of the hardened insensitivity into
which traditional ontologies had fallen. It is the attempt to glimpse
into what is concealed, covered, in the conceptual freezing of meta-
physics. If one may forgive an unpardonable pun, Heidegger at-
tempts to supply the anti-freeze to metaphysical freezing.
In his introduction to What Is Metaphysics? Heidegger takes
Descartes' analogy as his point of departure:
Thus the whole of philosophy is like a tree; the roots are metaphysics,
the trunk is physics, and the branches that issue from the trunk are all
the other sciences III

Heidegger asks the question:

In what soil do the roots of the tree of philosophy have their hold?
Out of what ground do the roots-and through them the whole tree-

10 Ibid., pp. 19-27.

11 Was isl Metaphysik'l (5. Aufl., Frankfurt, 1949), p. 7.
HEIDEGGER ON TRUTH 249

receive their nourishing juices and strength? What element, concealed

in the ground, enters and lives in the roots that support and nourish
the tree? What is the basis and element of metaphysics? What is
metaphysics, viewed from its ground ?12

The "metaphysics" placed into question in the above, is the "his-

tory of ontology" which was to be overcome in Sein und Zeit. The
soil into which the roots (metaphysics) are plunged is the Being
of that-which-is.
In what sense, then, are the three criteria for the question "What
is Being?" inadequate, so that metaphysics requires radical surgery?
Briefly, the criteria of universality, undefinability, and self-evidence
are inadequate precisely because they are concepts. They are inade-
quate in so far as they are postulates of reason in its attempt to gain
autonomy. They are removed from the soil in which metaphysics
is born in that they constitute an unwarranted extension of categorial
thinking to a non-categorial domain. This "rationalism," which is
a kind of subjectivity, began with Plato and can only be understood
in connection with Heidegger's critique of Plato.l3
Metaphysics began, with Plato, to analyze thinking as the distinc-
tive feature of man. In the attempt to explain that-which-is, in the
effort to overcome doxa (opinion), reason was appointed as the judge
in the court of reality, so to speak. In the attempt to interpret the
phenomenal realm, the point of departure became a criterion satis-
factory to reason itself. In the realm of Becoming, which is the realm
of that-which-is, nous (knowledge) meant breaking the procession
of change and espying beneath the fluctuating carnival of phenomena
the permanence and source of the illusive experiential realm.
In the Platonic dialogues the question "What is it as-it-is-in-itself?"
reverberates time and again in its varied forms. The attempt to
grasp the thing as-it-is-in-itself (be it the beautiful, the just or the
good) is the effort to tear the masks from the chimerical cycle of
genesis and decay and to discover behind the phenomenal realm
that which is its permanence and source. It is this power (dynamis)
of the psyche (reason) alone, the power to make patent what is hidden,
to un-veil, dis-cover and de-nude, which authenticates the "reality"
to which the haze of opinion (doxa) points. This procedure involves,
however, a serious bifurcation in which the Forms (eidos), as the
plenary mode of being, become dissimulated in the manifest world.

12 Ibid., p. 7.
18 P laions Lehre von der Wahrheit.
250 MAGNUS

Ignoring all the internal problems which such a dualism poses, there
are still two issues that are in need of clarification. First, what sort
of transformation occurs in the Being of that-which-is, if any, through
the appeal to a region of Forms to make sense of the world of expe-
rience? Second, how does this affect the nature of metaphysics
historically?
According to Heidegger, what occurs within Being, in Plato, is its
severance from thinking. The Being of that-which-is is no longer
experienced as a revelatory presence but falls under the yoke of the
Forms. Calling Being "a revelatory presence" is a bit premature at
this point. It might be best to simply state, at this juncture, that
in Plato "truth is no longer the revelation of the ground of Being
itself, but rather the correctness of the apprehension of that-which-
is. "14
In Plato, the constant attempt to seize the being of a thing arises
out of the appearance of the thing in multiplicity. The Beautiful, for
example, is essentially covered and hidden through the appearance
of many beautiful things. The method of unveiling the multiple
manifestations is the dialogue, dialectic. Dialectic makes the being
of a thing accessible. Thus, logoi issue a mandate to the being of a
thing to appear in a state of unconcealedness. It is Heidegger's
charge that the being of a thing (e.g., the just, the good) which dis-
closes itself to the mandate of reason is not Being but, simply, that-
which-is (the "essence" connecting the multiplicity). The Being of
that-which-is, by receiving a mandate to appear, falls into oblivion
precisely because what reason reveals is not what is concealed but
that which its categories make present. \Vhen Heidegger states that
in Plato truth looses the essential quality of unhiddenness, he is
indicating that truth is replaced by "correctness," which means a
correspondence between a proposition and that-which-is. Why
"correctness of apprehension" is incompetent to grasp Being will not
be clear until Heidegger's notion of Truth is analyzed in the following
section.
What is significant for Heidegger is that the search for the Forms
(idea, eidos) constitutes a forgetfulness of Being and, by a reflexive
act, the application of the categories-employed for the elaboration
of that-which-is-to Being itself. That is essentially what is meant
when we understand Being to be the most universal concept, the
undefinable, and the self-evident. Having reached a royal road
from which that-which-is can be seen, Plato treats the Being of that-

l4l Ibid., p. 46.

HEIDEGGER ON TRUTH 251

which-is as another instance of that-which-is. Plato fails to take

notice of the ontological difference between Being and that-which-is,
which does not permit a categorial analysis of Being. In the Re-
public,ls for example, the Form of the Good is pushed beyond Being
and Truth. In the Sophist,16 an Idea of Existence is even required.
The categories of universality, undefinability, and self-evidence
are inadequate because they are applicable only to that-which-is.
The criteria leave Being somewhere in limbo in the effort, on the
part of metaphysics, to attain autonomy. In the effort to uproot
itself from the soil in which it is given birth, metaphysics attempts
to retrieve the soil in terms which are inapplicable to it. If, as
Heidegger states in Jdentitiit und Ditterenz, we must constantly be
reminded of the "belonging-together"17 of man and Being, discursive
reason constantly breaks the bond. If metaphysical thinking begins
with the question "What is it ?," we are fated to begin either with
man or Being. If this is the case, and further, if this has characterized
all metaphysics from Plato to Nietzsche, how does Being appear?
Or, conversely, how does Being conceal itself in occidental metaphys-
ics?
The section on Poetry will deal with the former question: the
revelation of Being. The latter question, Being's concealment, re-
quires a closer analysis of the "mechanism" of concealment: the
concept of Truth. To this we will now address ourselves.

TRUTH AS CONCEALMENT OF BEING: PROPOSITIONAL TRUTH

Probably the most significant concept in Heidegger's philological

arsenal is his re-interpretation of the word "truth."18 It is my belief
that his mysterious Being of that-which-is cannot be understood
outside of this frame of reference.
Heidegger's critique of Plato can best be characterized as follows:
Truth changes its revelatory essence and emerges as an essential
concealment of Being. Truth emerges as concealment through its

15 See Republic, VI.

16 See the Sophist, in Cornford's Plato's Theory of Knowledge (New York,
1935).
17 Essays in 1VIetaphysics: Identity and Difference; trans. K. Leidecker (New
York: 1960), esp. pp. 22-23.
18 Sein und Zeit, pp. 212-230. Vortrage und Aufstilze (Pfullingen, 1954),
pp. 257-82. Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit. Yom Wesen der Wahrheit.
(3. Aufl., Frankfurt, 1954).
252 MAGNUS

fall from an ontological status into an epistemological possibility. This

distinction will become clear, we hope, in what follows.
The Platonic question, "What is it as-it-is-in-itself?" prompted
by the spectre of Becoming, forces us to inquire into the underlying
foundation (the Forms) behind manifestations. As has already been
stated, the dialogue's task is to uncover what is hidden in what-is.
The dialogue forces us to arrest the temporal sequence and reveal
behind it the immutable source. How does one proceed in that ven-
ture?
If Paul Friedlander is correct,19 that thinking and speaking are
the same thing (logos)-which accounts for the difficulty in trans-
lating the word logos-then logoi make present that-which-is. That
is, our knowledge of what-is, is determined by logoi. According to
this view, there is no prior cognitive act, in grasping the object,
which requires articulation. The "senses" do not, in any sense, give
us knowledge. The process of thinking-speaking is the medium in
which the object (Gegenstand) takes a position opposite the subject.
This is an extremely difficult anti-empirical notion. It means, strictly,
that the world-as a world-becomes present for us only in rational
discourse (logos). In a highly subjectivized language such as English
this sounds like lunacy. And, I might add, this is a lunacy which
Heidegger shares with Plato. This "lunacy," however, is a fruitful
insight. It means that the senses, strictly speaking, "tell" us nothing.
Rather, the senses inform us only to the degree in which we "say"
the senses inform us. Sensations become sensations only after we
determine that sensations "inform" us about an object (world) stand-
ing over against the subject. The world is founded in speech. This
does not imply, of course, that thinking requires vocalization nor
that thought and expression are one and the same thing. For, the
self can "speak" to itself without uttering a sound. Self-reflection,
too, (as in the Symposium trance of Socrates) is a dialogue.
Plato's rejection of the notion that knowledge is derived from
experience20 constitutes a radical point of departure. Knowledge,
then, is not passively derived from experience, but rather, logoi de-
termine what is to be experience for us. Out of these considerations
a clearer conception of the dialogue emerges.
Logoi make something lie before us. That is, they allow the obj ect
to take a position over against the subject as object. Dialegesthai,
dialogue, allows more than one perspective, in which the object is

19 Paul Friedlander, Plalo, trans. H. Meyerhoff (New York, 1958), vol. 1.

20 See Theaelelus for the most forceful exposition of this view.
HEIDEGGER ON TRUTH 253

made present, to appear. The dialogue is reconciled in truth, aletheia.

Aletheia is the spark which emerges out of the dialogue. 21
If my lege in (which Heidegger interprets to mean "saying"22) can
no longer be altered by another saying (legein) , then I may have
reached the essence of what appeared before me. Stated differently:
If I am to gain knowledge at all, I must escape the flux in which
phenomena appear through the possibility of many logoi. If our
words no longer contradict one another, we have arrived at the
reality of what appeared before us, because the words themselves
are no longer subject to change. Having reached such a perspective,
the object is fixed in its permanence. Neither object nor word are
subject to change any longer. Thus, lege in becomes noein ("knowl-
edge"?) in that the subject seizes the object of thought in its essence.
This noein is aletheia. It is the truth of what lay concealed in the
object confronting the subject. This truth (aletheia), as the un-cover-
ing of the essence of the object, is the Form (eidos, idea).
If the above is an accurate condensation of the Platonic ontological
zeal, something serious has occured to the Being of that-which-is.
The Forms have created a chasm between Thought and Being.
In the movement from lege in (saying) to noein (knowing) aletheia
(truth) becomes a "property" of the subject. That is to say, due to
"the preference given to idea or to eidos there emerges a change in
the nature of truth," such that "truth becomes correctness of appre-
hension and assertion. "23 In pushing the Forms beyond Being and
Truth,24 truth becomes the possibility of a correct judgement con-
cerning that-which-is. If legein makes present that-which-is, then
truth becomes the correct logos for that-which-is. This correct
logos, which is no longer subject to contradiction, is knowledge (nous).
In Heidegger's view, truth becomes subjectivized because it indicates
a predicate of thought and speech. We are no longer concerned
with the mystery that that-which-is appeared as an instance of Being,
but we are concerned with how that-which-is appeared in its uncon-
cealedness.
Here, truth emerges as an epistemological possibility in Plato.
It is a very short step, philosophically, from the notion that truth
is guaranteed-propositionally-by the Forms underlying and sus-
taining the phenomenal realm, to the notion that "veritas est adae-

21 See Plato's Epistle VII.

22 Holzwege (Frankfurt, 1950), pp. 296-343.
23 Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit.
24 Republic, VI.
 254 MAGNUS

quatio rei et intellecius"25 (truth is the correspondence between idea

and thing). What is common to both, epistemologically, is that truth
is "seated"26 in the proposition.
Is this not what we mean by truth? Namely, the possibility of
containing in the proposition the reality of what appears before us?
Is truth, in the final analysis, not epistemological?
According to Heidegger, not only is truth not exclusively epistemo-
logical, but on the contrary, propositional truth conceals truth as
the "clearing for the Being of that-which-is. "27
Curiously, for Heidegger, the word "truth," as essentially epistemo-
logical, is already the destiny of truth as conceived by Plato. After
Plato no occidental metaphysician is able to circumvent the proposi-
tional essence of truth.
When the first thinker posed the question "What is what-is ?"28
truth was experienced as unconcealment, according to Heidegger.
The Greek word aletheia, meant not only the experience of the
unhiddenness of that-which-is, but simultaneously, a re-calling of
that which is forgotten. (The word aletheia is compounded of the
prefix a (un, or non) and the stem derived from lethe, lanthano. 29 )
Truth, in its fundamental sense, became possible for that first thinker
because he was able to recall that truth is the clearing within Being
which makes present that-which-is. That-which-is is, only in so
far as man lets it be in logos. The founding of the world, as the total-
ity of that-which-is, the act of naming and questioning, and the
realization that the question makes Being present as a determinate
something (in which Being again veils itself), are one and the same
thing: Truth. Truth, in this very difficult sense, does not belong to
reason any more than Being can be made into a concept. Truth is
"ontological status" because it is the effort to seize Being in the
totality of that-which-is, in the very act of asking "Why is there
anything and not rather nothingness ?"30 In the very act of making
present that-which-is (founding a world) Being is experienced as a
primal mystery. Being prepares the clearing in man's making-present
that-which-is (truth) and recedes beyond the pale of that-which-is.
It remains shrouded and covered in darkness.

25 Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, p. 8.

26 Ibid., pp. 6-9.
27 Holzwege, p. 303.
28 Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, p. 16.
29 See FriedHinder's rebuttal in his Plato, II, 213-20.
30 The fundamental question of metaphysics asked, again, in Was ist Me-

• taphysik?
HEIDEGGER ON TRUTH 255

This rather difficult experience of truth may be made somewhat

clearer by way of an analogy. If that-which-is were a canvas, human
existence (Ek-sistenz) would find its abode within a corner of the
canvas. Dominated by the fusion of color, rhythm, and line, the
corner would conceal the area beyond the confinement from man.
It is as if, by choosing to dwell in a corner, the rest of the can vas
were covered with darkness. And yet, those colors, rhythms, and
lines receive their light and visibility from the totality, i.e., the
canvas. Moreover, the meaning of that corner exists only in relation
to that entire area which the corner bounds. If one were to ask,
What is what-is? from the confinement in which he is housed, the
confinement would cease to be a corner. The question would allow,
as if in a revelation, the questioner to peer beyond the corner to the
source of light. The moment those eyes are raised truth is made
present, insofar as the canvas is seen as a canvas. At that moment
when the man lets the totality be, by asking for it, the colors, shad-
ings, lines, and rhythms are experienced in the whole, i.e., the
meaning of the corner becomes meaningful in relation to the entire
canvas.
Yet, to push the image further, in the very moment the canvas
is grasped as a totality something is concealed. The moment that the
canvas is experienced as a fusion of color, line, shade, etc., truth is
obliterated. It is obliterated because we could now measure truth
by the correctness of our assertions regarding the totality of colors,
shapes, lines, etc. At that moment the fundamental essence of truth,
as a revelation of the totality of the canvas, surrenders to proposi-
tional correctness. From this new perspective we could not even
ask the fundamental question of wonder, What is the Being of the
canvas? In the moment of truth, in the revelation of the canvas
as a totality, we could still shudder before the mystery that the
canvas is. Now, when the revelation ceases to be a mystery, if we
were to ask, What is the Being of the canvas?, what could we say?
One would be fated to name Being Color, another would argue that
it was Line, still another would call it Rhythm. At that moment the
Being of that-which-is (the canvas) is concealed in the effort to
grasp it. But Being is not destroyed (Being cannot not Be).

In whatever manner that-which-is is interpreted-whether as spirit after

the manner of spiritualism; or as matter and force, after the fashion of
materialism; or as becoming and life, or Idea, Will, Substance, Subject
or energeia; or as the eternal recurrence of the same event-every time,
256 MAGNUS

that-which-is appears as what-it-is in the light of Being. Wherever met-

aphysics represents that-which-is, Being has entered into the light. 31

Such fundamental attempts to name Being describe that-which-is

in such a way that Being is negatively present. In saying what Being
is, we experience the inadequacy of any attempt to grasp it in proposi-
tional thinking. Being is negatively present in our attempt to say
what it is, in so far as we experience the incompleteness of any at-
tempt to state what the totality of that-which-is is.
Within the Platonic framework aletheia (un-concealedness, "truth")
was experienced as the bringing to light of that which was originally
hidden from view. What was brought to light, however, was the
proper words (logoi) to apply to phenomena so that the Forms,
which are the source and fount of truth, could insure knowledge
(nous). The cost of that un concealment is that the lethe (forgetful-
ness) of a-letheia (truth) takes possession of man. In identifying
truth with the possible rightness of propositions, Being falls into
oblivion. The revelation that that-which-is is in Being (the primal
mystery) is replaced by the consistency of propositions.
Propositional truth which, according to Heidegger, was made
possible by Plato, makes metaphysics, reason, autonomous and
self-sufficient. But, to gather-up the analogies scattered throughout
the paper, it is a metaphysics which conceives itself as a root without
a soil and a certitude in which the belonging-together of man and
Being is forgotten.
In Heidegger's formulations, man's relationship to Being is deter-
mined, in large measure, by his understanding of truth. Man's un-
derstanding of truth-as the determination of that-which-is-will,
in turn, determine the experience of Being in its remoteness as well
as its apocalyptic essence. Parenthetically, the prevalent truth con-
cept is, for Heidegger, the foremost analytic device for the comprehen-
sion of any epoch. Since traditional metaphysical truth concepts dissi-
mulate the primal revelation of man's belonging-together with Being, is
there a non-discursive language which will reveal the truth of Being?
One such language is the language of poetry.

For Heidegger, poetry is neither the symbolic construction of an

imaginative world, a product of culture, nor the transmutation of

31 Was ist Metaphysik? p. 7.

HEIDEGGER ON TRUTH 257

reality into an "ideal" through the "feelings" of the poet. More

correctly, poetry is all these things but none of them are sufficiently
fundamental to tell us what the essence of poetry is. For, if we in-
quire into what is experienced in the poetic transmutation, what
grounds the feelings which are expressed in poetry, we venture into
a new domain.
Heidegger does not intend to create a rival for literary criticism.
It is still "correct" to analyze poetry from the point of view of
"psychology" or "grammar,"32 i.e., from the point of view of what
the poet means in his poetry and how he expresses that meaning.
However, if we ask for the essence of poetry in its truth, i.e., its
unconcealedness, we move toward a deeper level of penetration in
which the poet no longer expresses meaning in the emotive sense of
a psychological response to a cultural environment. At that level
poetry, and the poet, becomes the bearer 0/ the history 0/ Being. On
this plane the vocation of the poet becomes a genuine calling. It is
a calling which re-calls Being in the act of naming the "Holy."
For Heidegger, this is what the essence of poetry reveals in Holderlin.
The poet's response is the response of Being in its remoteness
within any age. The poet points to what is lost, estranged, in a
given historical time. Our technological age, for example, has one
arch-rival: mystery. In Heidegger's eyes, the "rationalistic" tradi-
tion inaugurated by Plato finds its deathbed in our "calculative
thinking. "33 Thus, if the attempt to grasp that-which-is in thought,
which Plato makes possible, culminates in the Schelling-Hegel dictum,
"What is real is knowable and what is knowable is real," our age
might well proclaim "What is real is verifiable and what is verifiable
is real."
Holderlin, like the other prescient spirits of the nineteenth century
-Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and Arnold, to name only
a few-experiences his age as an age of transition. It is an age in
which the old gods have ceased to hold sway over man, and the
new gods have yet to appear. Amid this estrangement Holderlin's
poems shine forth not in a Cassandra-voice prophesying doom, but
as "a shrine without a temple. "34
Heidegger selects Holderlin for a reflection upon the essence of
poetry rather than "Homer or Sophocles ... Vergil or Dante ...

32 Martin Heideggers Eintluss aut die Wissenschatten, ed. C. Astrada (Bern,

1949), pp. 122-144.
33 Was heisst Denken? (Tiibingen, 1954).
34 Erliiuterungen zu HOiderlins Dichtung (Frankfurt, 1951), p. 7.
258 MAGNUS

Shakespeare or Goethe"35 because "Holderlin is in an extraordinary

sense the poet's poet. "36 That is not to say that the essence of poetry
is not more fully realized in the works of others, but Holderlin is the
poet's poet in that his poetry is the poetic expression of what it is
to create poetry. Stated differently: Holderlin's poetry may be read
as poetry's own self-reflection.
Heidegger immediately takes note, at the outset of On the Essence
of Poetry, that to arrive at the essence of poetry a comparative analy-
sis is, normally, thought to be required. He states, however, that
a comparative analysis can give us only what is universally valid,
"which thus applies to every particular. "37 Here, again, we have
a theme which is only clear in connection with the "truth" problem.
For Heidegger, what is "universally valid" is always "indifferent,
that essence which can never become essential."38 If we keep in
mind that truth, in its fundamental sense, means-for Heidegger-
the revelation of man's making-present that-which-is (founding a
world) in the clearing of Being, then "comparison" can have meaning
only for that-which-is. Arriving at "essences," i.e., what is univer-
sally valid, can have meaning only when it is forgotten (lethe) that
that-which-is is only because man has let it be. The search for the
universally valid is, from this view, forgetting that whatever is might
not be. Truth, in the Heideggerian sense, becomes possible only
when we leave the universally valid, that which applies in every
case, just as truth emerges in philosophy only after reason experien-
ces a shipwreck in which propositional correctness makes room, and
bows, before the mystery of Being. Thus, Holderlin is selected be-
cause the essence of poetry may be grasped in what he reveals about
man's belonging-together with Being, in a world (that-which-is)
which he has let-be.
Poetry is, for H61derlin, "that most innocent of all occupations. "39
Its "material" is language, but language is, in turn, "the most dan-
gerous of possessions."4o The apparent innocence of poetry is only
an illusion, for "language is not simply a toolawhich manJPossesses
among many others: Language, on the contrary, lattords the possibility
of standing in the openness of that-which-is (Seiendem)."41 Here the

35 Ibid., p. 31.
36 Ibid., p. 31.
37 Ibid., p. 32.
38 Ibid., p. 32.
39 Ibid., p. 31.
40 Ibid., p. 31.
41 Ibid., p. 35.
HEIDEGGER ON TRUTH 259

fundamental theme which unites poetry with philosophy, through

language, emerges.
It will be recalled that, for Plato, legein allows the world to ap-
pear to us as a world, i.e., the object appears before us in speech.
Thus, we can speak of a world, a subject and an object, man and
Being, only because language actualizes that-which-is. "The pre-
sence of the gods and the appearance of the world do not come into
being as a consequence of language, rather they are contemporaneous
with it."42 Language and the founding of that-which-is are one and
the same historical event. Thus, the innocence of poetry, which is
the innocence of philosophy as well, is that it is the shepherd of
language-that most insubstantial thing. But it must also be re-
called that "language is the house of Being, "43 which makes it the
most dangerous of possessions.
Poetry, in its revelatory essence, lives in the "Between."44 It
dwells Between man and the gods in that it sees man's remoteness
from the Holy. Absorbed in the cares of his time, man no longer
experiences the wonder, the joy, and the sacredness, that that-which-
is is. As a man who is already outside of his time, the poet perceives
the absence of the holy and in that absence rejoices and prepares
for its return. The poet does not herald a new age, rather, he expe-
riences the remoteness of Being (the Holy) and prepares, resolutely,
for its return. He prepares for the utterance of the "essential" word,
which reveals the light of the Holy in that-which-is.
The essence of poetry is realized, in the final analysis, when the
poet names or withholds the naming of the Holy. In either case
he alone remains attuned to the belonging-together of man and
Being long after Being has fallen into oblivion.

CONCLUDING NON-EXPOSITORY POSTSCRIPT

That Heidegger's re-interpretation of Being land Truth is daringly

original both in intensity and scope is beyond dispute. What remains
for any serious student of I-Ieidegger is a dual problem. First, does
the failure of discursive (truth-veiling) language condemn us to a
more primordial, opaque, and illusive language, which points rather
than analyzes? Second, what kind of conception of the philosophic
enterprise is implicated in Heidegger's quest for Being?

42 Ibid., p. 37.
43 PIa ions Lehre von der Wahrheit, p. 53.
44 Erliiuterungen zu Hoiderlins Dichtung, p. 43.
260 MAGNUS

Neither question can be answered with finality, in part because

Heidegger's thought itself has never ceased to probe new directions.
This obstacle notwithstanding, certain tentative directions may be
indicated.

Failure of Discursive Language

That Heidegger is unhappy with the apparent surrender of phi-

losophy to poetry, implicit in his writings, is evident from his latest
writings. Although he had begun to write poetry himself (e.g., Hebel
-der Hausfreund) he soon acknowledged that poetry in itself affords
no clearer insight toward the revelation of Being than does his own
expository prose. In so far as language fails, poetry and philosophy
confront the same obstacles.
This realization called for what might appear to be a shift in strat-
egy. Whereas the earlier Heidegger (from Sein und Zeit to Platons
Lehre von der Wahrheit) had stressed, primarily, the act of forgetful-
ness, he now stressed the epochal and eschatological nature of Being.
The nature of Being was now seen, somehow, to determine the pro-
gress of philosophical inquiry itself. In short, it no longer seemed
to be a question of simply seeing and choosing the appropriate
language. Increasingly, the failure to reveal Being was placed as
much on language as it had been on the thinker working within a
language. And, characteristic of this later phase of his writing, the
failure to reveal the Being of that-which-is was now no longer seen
as a failure of metaphysics ("rationalism"), but was analyzed, rather,
as the failure of Being to reveal itself. Strangely and suddenly Heideg-
ger had begun to read the history of philosophy as the fate of Being,
and had begun to read Being as the history of philosophy. In his
last publication, the first major volumes since 1927 in terms of sheer
bulk, the two-volume Nietzsche study is reminiscent of the later
Hegel. Like Hegel, Heidegger sees philosophy reaching its culmi-
nation and beginning in his own writings. The history of philosophy
forms an inevitable dialogue (as and about Being) reaching its
fruition in him. This culmination is, of course, a new beginning
leading to the-as-yet-unknown.
The confusion caused by this gradual transformation is best re-
flected in the history of the critical literature on Heidegger. Karl
Lowith's excellent little book, Heidegger: Denker in diirftiger Zeit,
insists time and again that Heidegger had changed his mind about
pursuing his Daseinsanalysis after Sein und Zeit, had altered course
HEIDEGGER ON TRUTH 261

and worked his way into an insoluble dilemma. However poignant

this criticism might appear to be, Heidegger had had adequate
time to reflect on the consequences of his magnum opus and had
stated, without reservation, that he was not an existentialist. Having
seen at least one possible interpretation of his position, he rejected
Sartre's "existence precedes essence" formula in his Brief iiber den
Humanismus.
The rejection of existentialism and philosophical anthropology,
two movements stemming directly from the analysis of human exist-
ence in Sein und Zeit, forced Heidegger into a serious attempt to
clarify his position.
Rather than clarifying his intent, Heidegger's short essays (analyzed
above) appeared to some as the bizarre rantings of a gnostic mystic,
while to others they were seen as confirmation of Lowith's thesis-
Heidegger had reached the end of the line.
Thomas Langan's The Meaning of Heidegger is the best example
of the later attempt to bridge the gap of Heidegger's seemingly dichot-
omous interests. It was Langan who forcefully stressed the "be-
longing-together" dimension of man and Being. In fact, he suggested
the daring thesis (anti-Lowith) that Heidegger's thought is perfectly
consistent. He argued, in part, that Heidegger's periodic essays were,
in fact, continuations of the never completed Sein und Zeit. In
Langan's view, the attempt to illuminate Being from an existential-
phenomenological perspective constituted a natural bond with, and
completion of, Sein und Zeit.
That Professor Langan's thesis is more faithful to Heidegger's at-
tempt is clear. However, it never satisfactorily disposes of the re-
lationship between thought and poetry (although an attempt is made).
The soundness of Mr. Langan's thesis and scholarship notwith-
standing, he hardly prepares us for some of the startling post-1959
essays. An essay entitled Das Ding (The Thinq), for example, lapses
into such a self-conscious obscurantism that, finally, only the rhyth-
mic patterns convey a sense of meaningfulness.
The third, and final, phase of Heidegger criticism is reflected in
Vincent Vycinas' Earth and Gods. Here the Hegelian drama reaches
its conclusion in so far as one may read this book as the synthesis
of tendencies inherent in the earlier studies. In Earth and Gods, the
"belonging-together" of man and Being is celebrated and explored
out of the depths of Heidegger's latest prose. Heidegger's explora-
tion of the unity of earth, heaven, man, and the divinities is the
crown of his accomplishment, from this point of vantage.
262 MAGNUS

The question at stake, here, is not one of choosing a congenial

interpretation. I would suggest that it is entirely irrelevant which
interpretation we select, beyond L6with's, for the direction pointed out
by all Heidegger critics indicates that he has failed, in part, to resolve
the very questions he raised.
It should be noted that Heidegger (1) has not overcome metaphys-
ics, although (2) he may have overcome the "rationalism" implied
by the tradition from Plato to Nietzsche. In so doing Heidegger (3)
has landed in a deeper subjectivism than that of the classical tradi-
tion in occidental metaphysics. On the positive side, it has been
assumed throughout that (1) contemporary metaphysical discourse
cannot afford to ignore Heidegger, and it is further suggested (2)
that there are interesting unexplored directions implied by Heideg-
ger's work.

Nature ot the Philosophic Enterprise

Heidegger has blamed the failure to overcome metaphysics, to

illuminate Being, on language itself. Although he has illumined the
temporal, anthropological context, in which Being discloses itself,
he has given no unequivocal answer to several crucial questions.
It is not clear, for example, why the Being of that-which-is will
reveal itself to authentic human beings. For Heidegger, man may
live sacredly by living through the awareness of finitude, aware of
death as the condition of freedom and conscious of the intentional
structure of time as a projection of self-choices. Yet, why these
commitments, as opposed to "unauthentic" ones, should reveal
Being is left unclear. It is true that "the They" ("Das Man") will
flee into the distractions of the everyday. But this does not justify
the assertion that unauthenticity is excluded from the revelation
of Being. Such an assertion may be maintained only after we under-
stand what Being is, and that of necessity Being will shed its light
only on those committed to Heidegger's position. Why Heidegger's
commitments to Being are significantly closer to the truth of Being
is questionable, especially for those who experienced Germany's
recent past from a non-Heideggerian perspective.
This is not intended as an ad hominem argument. It merely seems
to me that if one can dwell in the neighborhood of Being to the
exclusion of a deep concern for the relationship between man and
man, then this "authenticity" becomes suspect. Stated differently:
If you grant (as Heidegger does) that you have not gone beyond
HElD EGGER ON TRUTH 263

that-which-is but insist that you are pointing in that direction, that
is a reasonable claim. But, if you further argue that I cannot go
beyond that-which-is unless I select a certain path (Sein und Zeit),
namely your path, then I for one would like to know why you hold
that this path alone is leading to the goal. Mter all, you have not
wandered to the end of the path, by your own admission. It is at
this point that Heidegger's existential ontology becomes ethically
relevant.
Even granting that Heidegger has not overcome metaphysics, the
fact that he has robbed speculative reason of its claim to exclusivity
is his most dramatic contribution to contemporary metaphysics.
His existential-phenomenological analysis of temporality has revealed
two crucial things. First, time is of the utmost importance for any
system. Second, a presuppositionless philosophy is impossible due
to the intentional structure of human existence. The notion that
somehow we can begin sub specie aeternitatis, even through the
logical analysis of language, is without foundation. In so far as time
and finitude are a priori existential data, they form the bases for any
conceptualized ontology. However, the cardinal epistemological-
ontological position which this analysis was to overcome, subjectiv-
ism, Heidegger has not transcended.
Heidegger's analysis of truth, as unconcealedness, had struck a
direction away from subjectivism of any sort as it is commonly un-
derstood. Not only was idealism severely challenged along with
traditional Husserlian phenomenology, but even an epistemology
which presupposes the correspondence theory of truth was seen
equally to harbor internal assumptions which were not explicable
within the system itself. Thus every system was limited in scope
to the extent to which its assumptions went unanalyzed. And, the
dangers implicit in treating language without ontology were also
exposed by Heidegger.
It is all the more lamentable that Heidegger should then be ship-
wrecked on his own form of subjectivity. As was stated above, there
are no cogent reasons binding us to Heidegger's analysis of Dasein
beyond the force of his own exposition. One can adopt Heidegger's
general description, indeed even be sympathetic to his entire attempt,
without following him in detail. In fact, that is precisely what
several theologians have done. No one can deny, with justification,
the profound effect which Heidegger has had on minds as divers
as Buber, Bultmann, and Tillich. In short, if we are to accept Hei-
degger's program as more than a profoundly revelatory analysis,
we are still left with vital decisions not resolved for us in advance.
264 MAGNUS

We might want to abandon this quest for the Being of that-which-

is entirely. Surely it could be argued that the re-orienting of
truth along epistemological lines, accomplished by Plato, is the sole
legitimate philosophical perspective. If we select this option we
would have to argue that Heidegger's "truth of Being" is essentially
mystical, intuitive, and inaccessible to rational scrutiny. Whether
this option offers an alternative to the contemporary metaphysician
from the sober, legitimate, but frequently trivial "analytical met-
aphysics", is a question we would then have to confront.
If, on the other hand, we want to struggle with Heidegger's prob-
lems, the following directions suggest themselves. Is it not possible
to perform an analysis of language along lines other than those sug-
gested by Heidegger? I am not suggesting that we eliminate Hei-
degger's insight into the nature of language, but merely that we
supplement it with other types of analyses. Surely we can accept
Heidegger's "ontologizing" of truth without giving poetry a claim
to exclusivity. If language is indeed the house of Being in the sense
that the world is made present in language, why can't more inclusive
languages be analyzed? If truth is the founding of that-which-is
in Being, let us analyze the types, modes, structures, and commit-
ments concealed within every type of language. I am not suggesting
a comparative anthropology akin to the work of Professor Sapir.
What I am suggesting is that every language, natural and artificial,
implies ontological commitments, if Heidegger's analysis of truth
and language is correct. Even logic implies ontological "moves," wheth-
er it presupposes a coherence or correspondence frame of reference.
Broadly conceived, then, this type of analysis reverses the move-
ment of traditional ontology. It transforms ontology into logoi-ontos.
That is, it would see its task as the successive unveiling of levels
of being implicated in each formal language group. And, while
transforming the emphases implicit in Heidegger's work, it nonethe-
less remains faithful to its insights.
As a formal program it might proceed along the following lines,
although revision of even these heuristic concepts would be assumed
as an integral part of the actual investigation. We might want to
pursue a phenomenological analysis of the language of reason, myth,
and ordinary (natural) language. All three are to be understood in
their most inclusive sense. We would then be in a position, hopefully,
to determine the types of "worlds" founded by each: science, art, reli-
gion, and the myriad worlds in between. It is further hoped that
such an undertaking would disclose what is gained and lost through
each "language" within the Being of that-which-is.