SUNY series in Contemporary Italian Philosophy

Gaetano Chiurazzi, Robert T. Valgenti, Robert T. Valgenti

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781438466460
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della filosofia

What does it mean to say that something is true? In this book Gaetano Chiurazzi argues that when we say that something is true, we do not say something merely about a state of affairs, but also about ourselves. Truth is not just the fact of "what is out there, " but a mode of existence that shapes and transforms human understanding. Supported by an original reading of Aristotle's theory of judgment and Heidegger's hermeneutical theory of truth, Chiurazzi also engages the work of Nietzsche, Gadamer, Putnam, and Rorty to challenge the rising tide of theories that dismiss the importance of human experience to the idea of truth.

CHAPTER 1

BEFORE JUDGMENT

JUDGMENT AND TRUTH

A discussion of the problem of truth cannot avoid beginning with the problem of its relation to judgment, traditionally considered the very locus of truth. The question is posed by Heidegger in §44 of Being and Time. In this section, Heidegger attempts to “destruct” the traditional definition of truth, an operation that is one of the fundamental stages of the complex strategy that guides the research on the meaning of being in general, the aim of which, as explained in §6, is to loosen a consolidated tradition, “until we arrive at those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature of being—the ways which have guided us ever since.”1 In the case of truth, Heidegger’s argument moves first from its traditional definition as adequatio intellectus et rei, which is articulated in three theses:

(1) that the “locus” of truth is assertion (judgment); (2) that the essence of truth lies in the “agreement” of the judgment with its object; (3) that Aristotle, the father of logic, not only has assigned truth to the judgment as its primordial locus but has set going the definition of “truth” as “agreement.”2

The destruction of these theses is a complex procedure in which the destructuring return converges with the recovery of the authentic Aristotelian understanding of truth. The result of this return leads to a real overturning, an inversion of the first of the three theses, which Heidegger tries to confirm in Aristotle himself: judgment is not the locus of truth, but rather truth is the locus of judgment. For Heidegger, this antepredicative truth coincides with being-in-the-world, namely, with the disclosedness of Dasein.

Here we should not be interested in the consequences of this Heideggerian argument as regards the conception of truth as correspondence, but rather with its premises, by trying at the same time to follow the thread of its legitimacy that Heidegger claims to have rediscovered in Aristotle. It cannot be denied that at first glance the claim “the judgment is in truth” appears to be contrary to the Aristotelian text, and in particular to the definition of apophantic discourse in De Interpretatione 4,17a 1–3, to which most traditional interpretations typically refer. In this passage from De Interpretatione Aristotle in fact claims: “Every sentence has meaning (not as a tool but, as we said, by convention), but not every sentence is a proposition—only those in which there is truth or falsity (en ô tò aletheúein è pseùdesthei hypárchei).” To the letter, so it seems, Aristotle says precisely that the true and the false are in discourse. Heidegger nevertheless insists that the discourse is in truth, and thus that discourse presupposes aletheúein and pseúdesthai, namely, as it translates when respecting the verbal character of these expressions, that discourse presupposes disclosure and concealment as attitudes of Dasein. Truth is thus the ontological condition of judgment.

How is such a claim possible? Does it not risk being philologically incorrect, or even completely arbitrary? The thesis I would like to put forward is that Heidegger’s claim has its own legitimacy, and I will try to show (1) its correspondence to the authentic meaning of Aristotle’s claim; and (2) the reason for this inverse formulation. Rather than follow the phenomenological analyses through which Heidegger tries to justify his interpretation,3 I will instead attempt to justify it based on Aristotle’s definition of apophantic discourse, by trying to understand the meaning of the expression en ô tò aletheúein è pseùdesthei hypárchei, and in particular, the meaning of the construction en ô hypárchei, which articulates the relation between truth and judgment.

HYPÁRCHEIN EN TINÍ: ONTOLOGICAL ANTECEDENCE

The expression hypárchein en tiní appears in many places in Aristotle’s works. One of the more important instances is in the Categories, precisely where he addresses the distinction between primary and secondary substances. Here Aristotle writes:

The species in which the things primarily called substances are (en oîs eídesin hypárchousin), are called secondary substances, as also are the genera of these species. For example, the individual man belongs (hypárchei) in a species, man, and animal is a genus of the species; so these—both man and animal—are called secondary substances.4

The translations found in the principal European languages confirm the idea that the construction hypárchein en tiní alludes to “being contained in something.”5 What this might mean is not at all clear. We can above all take note that Aristotle distinguishes here two forms of inclusion:

1.inclusion in a subject (eînai en tiní);

2.inclusion in a second substance or predicate (hypárchein en tiní).

They are incompatible, since in the first case the predicates are in their subjects, while in the second case the subject (primary substance, which on the other hand cannot be other than the subject) exists in its substantial predicates (secondary substances). The primary substances therefore exist in their secondary substances, but, as subjects, include their accidents.

The primary substances are thus “in” the secondary substances, but not as these latter are in subjects: in fact, Aristotle writes, “It is a characteristic common to every substance not to be in a subject (mè en hypokeiménō eînai).”6 And a bit later he reaffirms:

We need not be disturbed by any fear that we may be forced to say that the parts of a substance, being in a subject (the whole substance), are not substances. For when we speak of things in a subject (hōs en hypokeiménois ónta) we did not mean things existing [my italics] in something as parts (tà hōs mérē hypárchonta én tini).7

There are therefore two ways of “being in,” distinct through a terminological differentiation: eînai is used for the accidental relation, hypárchein for the substantial relation. The meaning of inclusion is also different: the accidental predicates are in their subjects, while the primary substance (that can only be subject) exists (as the Italian translation conveniently states) in its substantial predicates (the secondary substances). Why didn’t Aristotle use the verb eînai for this second way of “being included”? Probably because in this case the relation defined as hypárchein en tiní would have been reduced to a predicative relation, which Aristotle clearly wanted to avoid.

The difference between eînai and hypárchein is fundamental and therefore distinguishing: C. H. Kahn observes that in contrast to eînai, hypárchein carries a temporal connotation of antecedence, the sense of a “being before,” as with a principle (although not in the causal sense).8 Hypárchonta are the circumstances, the conditions, the resources or means that they have at their disposal because something happens; it its impersonal use, hypárchei means “is given, the fact is.” Originarily, hypárchein in fact signifies “to begin” or “to take initiative” or “to make the first attempt” in completing something. This connotation is particularly clear in its absolute use:

In this absolute use hypárchō means not “to make a beginning” (in doing something) but “to be a beginning,” “to be on hand (from the beginning, at the start).” In this use hypárchō is practically a synonym for páreimi “to be present with,” “to be available for.” In the most natural and typical cases, the temporal sense of “previously,” or “already, at the start” is clearly implied.9

As a variant of árchein (“to command, to order, to begin”) with the prefix hypó (“under”) added, hypárchein thus alludes to an implicit or underlying principality that introduces a relation of dependence or of subordination.

“Being present from the beginning” is thus not so much a relation of spatial inclusion, but a relation of condition/conditioned: whatever hypárchei (is given) must be there because something happens, but that does not mean that what happens follows due to the simple fact that there is that something. It therefore constitutes a necessary but not sufficient condition. By speaking of primary substances, Aristotle in fact says that without them neither the secondary substances nor any other thing would exist.10 The primary substances “are” already in the secondary substances in the sense that they precede them from an ontological point of view. The substantial predicates (but the discourse could easily be generalized to every type of predicate) do not exist in themselves, but exist only because the primary substances already exist (this is the core of Aristotle’s polemic against the separate existence of the ideas maintained by Plato).

HYPÁRCHEIN TINÍ: THE ESSENTIAL ANTECEDENCE

Aristotle, however, uses the verb hypárchein also to express another type of relation: this deals with the expression found above all in the Prior and Posterior Analytics, “tò B tô A hypárchei,” normally translated as “B (namely, the predicate) belongs to A.” Such a form is thus considered equivalent to the copulative form “A is B,”11 where it expresses a necessary connection, such that it is convertible with it, even though the opposite is not possible:

The conversion of an appropriate name which is derived from an accident is an extremely precarious thing; for in the case of accidents and in no other it is possible for something to be true in a certain respect and not universally. Names derived from definition and property and genus are bound to be convertible; e.g. if being a two-footed terrestrial animal belongs to something (hypárchei tinì), then it will be true by conversion to say that it is a two-footed terrestrial animal. Likewise, also, if derived from the genus; for if being an animal belongs to something, then it is an animal.12

Hypárche...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Before Judgment
• Chapter 2 Verbum Consignificat Tempus
• Chapter 3 The Experience of Truth as the Experience of Time
• Chapter 4 Truth and Transformation
• Chapter 5 More Than the Real
• Chapter 6 The Sense of Truth
• Chapter 7 A Non-alienated Conception of Truth
• Notes and Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover