SUNY series in Contemporary French Thought

Truth and Justice

Rozemund Uljée

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781438478821
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Tracing the relationship between truth and justice as articulated by Heidegger and Levinas, Rozemund Uljée presents the relation between the two thinkers as a subtle, profound, and complex rapport, which includes both their proximity and radical difference. This rapport is conceived not as a confrontation, but rather as a transformation, as Levinas's notion of justice does not renounce Heidegger's account of truth and its deployment. Thinking Difference with Heidegger and Levinas shows how the ethical relation transforms the essence and task of philosophy in its entirety, since it shifts the orientation of philosophy and the task of thinking from its concern with truth as ground or foundation to a question of justice. As a result, philosophy is no longer riveted to Being and its truth, but answers to the call for justice and must be conceived of as infinite commencement, where its impossibility to totalize meaning ensures that it remains open to the alterity of transcendence.

ONE

CONSIDERING BEING AND TRUTH IN HEIDEGGER’S SEIN UND ZEIT

INTRODUCTION

This chapter is an exploration of Heidegger’s project of a fundamental ontology as articulated in Sein und Zeit [Being and Time]. The main aim of this chapter is to show how Heidegger develops the question of the meaning of Being. My starting point is a clarification of Heidegger’s need to restate the fundamental question of the meaning of Being and I show why for Heidegger a “new beginning” in the history of philosophy is required. I describe why this new beginning embraces the phenomenological method and has Dasein—the being for whom Being is an issue as its point of departure.

In the second section, I investigate how what Heidegger calls the “existentiality” of Dasein’s existence leads to the possibility of comprehending Dasein ontologically as care, which reveals the disclosing and disclosedness as belonging to Dasein. The concept of care allows for an understanding of the primordial phenomenon of truth, as, for Heidegger, the truth of Being can only be the meaning of it as disclosed to Dasein. An implication of this is that the traditional conception of truth as found in the history philosophy is derived from the primordial phenomenon of truth. This is the subject matter of the third section. In the fourth section, I explain Heidegger’s notion of resolution as the object of care. I make clear how resolution, as revealed through an analysis of Dasein’s Being-toward-death, allows for the disclosedness in which Dasein, as a potentiality-for-Being, can be “in the truth.” I show that resolution is a responsibility for Being in which Dasein is brought before its primordial truth of existence.

The last two sections of this chapter will be dedicated to an investigation of Heidegger’s understanding of temporality, An analysis of the primordial meaning of temporality in terms of anticipatory resoluteness will show the meaning of the disclosedness in which Dasein, as a potentiality-for-Being, can be in the “most primordial truth” of existence. It means that the temporality revealed in anticipatory resoluteness is a projecting and recalling which is the ontological meaning of care. Presence is found by Heidegger to be the coming together of past present and future in the comprehension of Dasein, who is always and already outside of itself. This shows that temporality is temporalizing itself through which Dasein is opened to its possibility as questioning into the direction of Being. Here, finite temporality serves as the transcendental horizon for this question. In the temporalization of temporality, presence occurs, but temporality itself cannot be reduced to the present. Resoluteness as a present allows for a vision that reaffirms the meaning of Being as irreducible to presence and as such makes possible a “making present.” It is here that Dasein discloses the authentic “there” as being in the truth of its existence, a truth that is always historical, as will be shown in the final section of this chapter.

BEING AND THE ENTITY

In this first section, I begin with clarifying Heidegger’s fundamental question and, consequently, I explain why this led him to argue that a “new beginning” in the history of philosophy is a necessity. I demonstrate why this new beginning embraces the phenomenological method and has the human for whom Being is an issue as its starting point.

According to Heidegger, the history of philosophy has from Plato to Hegel attempted to think Being in terms of presence and as the demonstration of a foundational entity.1 Being, that which every entity in the world possesses, was itself thought as an entity, according to Heidegger. When thinking Being in this manner, Heidegger finds that the history of philosophy is really only answering another—ontical, and not yet ontological—question of essence, which provides a ground or foundation for the totality of entities. Therefore, for Heidegger, the history of philosophy is a history of metaphysics. The question that has been asked by this history is concealing the ontological question of the meaning of Being, which the history of metaphysics has accepted as its foundation.

Heidegger’s claim seeks to disrupt the very structure of the history of metaphysics: Being, that which brings all beings into presence, cannot itself be a being. This ontological difference between Being and beings provides the theme for Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit [Being and Time]. In this influential work, Heidegger endeavors to put forth the foundation for both posing the question of the meaning of Being, as forgotten and concealed by the history of metaphysics, and the resolution to this question, which would be the possibility of the comprehension of Being. As its title already suggests, Heidegger seeks to comprehend the meaning of Being in and by temporality, which implies that the meaning of Being itself is characterized by time.

Why time? Aristotle had already posed this question.2 He addressed the question of time in two parts: first, whether time is a being, and second, he asked after the nature (as phusis—Being) of time. Heidegger’s problem with Aristotle is that he finds that Aristotle engages in thinking of time as a series of “now-points” that measures movement between a “before” and an “after”; in so doing, Aristotle presupposes that time represents a series that lets itself be measured. As such, the “now” or “instant,” as a modality of presence, would constitute time itself, and the presence of the instant provides the horizon in which the Being of time is comprehended. Therefore, Being is presence for Aristotle.3 Heidegger, however, finds a circularity in this articulation: in posing the question of the meaning of Being, it is discovered that Being refers to time. The Aristotelian conception of time is founded on the supposedly ontological positing of time as resting on Being in terms of the present instant. This makes the present the name of Being. This understanding of Being reduces Being to the status of an entity. Heidegger now claims that the entire history of philosophy has followed the Aristotelian conception of Being as presence: According to Heidegger, Aristotle and the entire history of philosophy have been incapable of thinking the ontological difference between Being and the entity.

Sein und Zeit in its entirety can be read as the exposition of the circularity introduced by Aristotle and inherited from the history of philosophy. It is Heidegger’s aim to articulate a thinking capable of thinking beyond or before this history. To do this, Heidegger departs from what he regards as the understanding of time as articulated by Aristotle and as deployed by the history of philosophy. However, this does not mean that he renounces this history altogether, as will be shown. As noted, the meaning of Being is concealed by the history of metaphysics. Heidegger writes: “If the question of Being is to have its own history made transparent then this hardened tradition must be loosened up, and the concealment which it has brought about must be dissolved.”4 The project of surpassing the history of metaphysics is by no means a negation or renouncing of this history. But in order to reveal another, hitherto unthought meaning within this very history, it is necessary to de-build or to deconstruct its theoretical prejudices from inside out. For Heidegger, this gesture marks a “new beginning” in the history of philosophy. The way in which this “new beginning” in thinking can take place is, according to Heidegger what he calls a “more radical questioning.” It means that the starting point of this questioning is the place or space of the very condition of possibility of the comprehension of Being. This condition of possibility is denoted by the term Dasein:

Thus to work out the question of Being adequately, we must make an entity—the inquirer—transparent in his own Being. The very asking of this question is an entity’s mode of Being; and as such it gets its essential character from what is inquired about—namely Being. This entity which each of us is itself and which includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its Being, we shall denote by the term Dasein.5

Dasein is, according to Heidegger, the entity capable of defining itself in its nearness to Being, since it is questioning in the direction of Being itself. According to Heidegger, Dasein, whose essence it is to question Being, allows for the uncovering of the fundamental temporality of Being. This means that temporality is longer conceived as articulated by the history of metaphysics in terms of a series of Aristotelian now-points.

Dasein, literally, the “being-there,” is understood as the “ek-sistent,” as residing already outside of itself. Dasein is radically open to Being. This entails that Dasein is not simply an entity, existing among other entities, but it is ontically distinguished because in its very being, that Being is an issue for it. Or, in other words: Being is disclosed through and with Dasein. Dasein’s being outside of itself, as Being-in-the-world is not to be understood as a property, which could somehow be attributed to Dasein, but as a basic state for it, and thus as the access to existence as such.6 As a consequence, what Heidegger calls fundamental ontology must be grounded in an analysis of human existence.

What does such an analysis look like? Heidegger states that this analysis must take into account the assumption that the Being of Dasein is in each case its own. “These entities, in their Being, comport themselves towards their Being. As entities within such Being, they are delivered over to their own Being. Being is that which is an issue for every such entity.”7 First of all, this means that the essence of Dasein lies in its existence.8 Second, this implies that Dasein “is in each case mine.”9 Dasein has always and already made a certain decision regarding the way in which it is. “That entity which in its Being has this very Being as an issue, comports itself towards its Being as its ownmost possibility. In each case Dasein is its possibility.”10 Dase...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter One Considering Being and Truth in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit
• Chapter Two Being and the Possibility of Transcendence
• Chapter Three Totality Interrupted: Levinas’s Totalité et infini as Response to Hegel
• Chapter Four Thinking the Question of Presence in Heidegger
• Chapter Five The Question of Metaphysics and Being’s Justice in Heidegger’s Nietzsche
• Chapter Six The Time of Justice
• Conclusion
• Works Cited
• Index
• Back Cover