Phenomenological conception of truth

and philosophy of M. Heidegger

Truth is regarded as obviousness in phenomenology. But what can be considered as obvious? If we turn to the external world, the first thing we realize is that something exists. That is the first truth is the truth of the existing of a thing (if it really exists). This is the so-called ontic truth. If something exists, we can reflect it in our knowledge according to the correspondent conception of truth. The latter turns out to emerge as a consequence of the ontic truth. I. e. an object exists (the ontic truth) and a knowledge of it (the correspondence truth ─ if this knowledge corresponds to the object) does. The problem, however, is that we are within the knowledge and don’t touch the object itself. The task of phenomenology (that is of the quite obvious philosophy) consists in coming to the being itself (when no question of it arises). The being is hidden from us under the dualism of being and the knowledge about it. Disclosing it, when it appears unhidden before us, we get the final truth. Thus the final truth is the unhiddenness (openness, appearance) of the being. This is the so-called ontological truth.

Here a certain elucidation is necessary. We are within the flux of our consciousness phenomena and can’t exit it. The flux is vague and non-evident. The search of truth means looking for a clearness and obviousness inside of the flux, i. e. within us. So we look through the different levels of obviousness which are the ontic, correspondent and ontological truths correspondingly. Further explanations may be made on the example of Heidegger’s philosophy. Heidegger proceeds from the point that truth is the unhiddenness of the being and the being is hidden under the layer of the existing[27]. The being is understood as the absolute that is thanks to and through itself and needs no foundation for its existence. The rationalism concerns namely the problem of the being (because, as still Parmenides said, it’s possible to ponder only on the being and impossible on the non-being). The decay of rationalism and its ideal in the time European culture is caused by the oblivion of the problem of the being. The oblivion throws a human into the hostile empirical world where a human forgets himself and his being. He lives by conditioned and temporary values and doesn’t think of the absolute. It’s like a dream where a human doesn’t remember reality.

The awakening according to Heidegger is possible when a human gets into a boundary situation on the edge of the being and non-being. The encounter face to face with the non-being evokes the state of terror in a human. This state is quite irrational and shouldn’t be confused with that of fear. Fear is always concrete, before something perceptible but terror has no visible cause, the single cause of it is the feeling of the non-being. In this state, being on the edge a human realizes his being, i.e. its real essence or existentia (ability to be or not to be itself). Or simply speaking, a man lives in usual state without realizing his true nature and sense of the being. He lives in oblivion, being occupied with some alien ideas forced upon him by parents, teachers, society etc. He doesn’t see their strangeness. But in extreme situations (when a threat to his life occurs) this all suddenly disappears and the man having rejected the alien ideas and values starts gazing his true nature and becomes himself.

The being (Germ. Sein) is realized as a presence or the being here and now (Germ. Dasein ─ presence, here-being). For example, a tale. A man was running away from a tiger and leapt down into an abyss. He didn’t fall to the bottom but seized for a bush growing from the slope. Being suspended so he saw another tiger down. The bush was delicate and infirm and even more a mouse appeared from its hole and started gnawing it. The man looked around and saw two berries nearby. He stretched out his hand, picked up and ate them. No future, only now and here exist.

Here Heidegger gets in touch closely with another philosophical 20th century trend such as existentialism. He himself, however, negates his any connection with it [1, p. 222 – 224].

Date: 2014-12-21; view: 1105