Introduction to Philosophy
Instructor: James
Ransom
May 31, 2013
FINAL EXAMINATION
In a well-organized essay which draws upon your
philosophical training, consider, compare and critique the relative merits of the
insights into the nature of truth proposed by Bacon and Heidegger.
Francis Bacon, Of
Truth (1601)
But it is not only the difficulty and labor,
which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it
imposes upon men's thoughts, that bring lies in favor; but a natural though
corrupt love, of the lie itself.
One of the later school of the Grecians examines
the matter, and [can’t understand why] some men love lies where they neither make
for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for
the lie's sake. But truth is a naked and open day-light, that does not show the
masks, and mummeries, and triumphs, of the world, half so stately and daintily
as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that shows
best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond, or carbuncle, that
shows best in varied lights.
A mixture of a lie always adds pleasure. Does
any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds, vain opinions,
flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like,
but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of
melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?
One of the fathers, in great severity, called
poetry vinum doemonum, because though
it fills the imagination, it is only with the shadow of a lie. But it is not
the lie that passes through the mind, but the lie that sinks in, and settles in
it, that does the hurt. But, however these things are in mens’ depraved
judgments, and affections, yet truth, which only judges itself, teaches that
the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it; the knowledge
of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the
enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.
The first creature of God, in the works of the
days, was the light of the sense; the last, was the light of reason; and his
sabbath work ever since, is the illumination of his Spirit. First he breathed
light, upon the face of the matter or chaos; then he breathed light, into the
face of man; and still he breathes and inspires light, into the face of his
chosen. The poet…says it well: It is a pleasure, to stand upon the shore, and
to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure, to stand in the window of a
castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure
is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to
be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the
errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below; so always
that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling, or pride. Certainly, it
is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence,
and turn upon the poles of truth.
To pass from theological, and philosophical
truth, to the truth of civil business; it will be acknowledged, even by those that
practice it not, that clear and round dealing, is the honor of man's nature;
and that mixture of falsehoods, is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which
may make the metal work the better, but it embases it. For these winding, and
crooked courses, are the goings of the serpent; which goes basely upon the
belly, and not upon the feet.
There is no vice, that so covers a man with
shame, as to be found false and perfidious. Montaigne…inquired, why lying
should be such a disgrace, and such an odious charge? He says that to say that
a man lies, is to say that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men.
For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood,
and breach of faith, cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it
shall be the last peal, to call the judgments of God upon the generations of
men; it being foretold, that when Christ comes, he shall not find faith upon
the earth.
Martin Heidegger, On the Essence of Truth (1933)
Our topic is the essence
of truth. The question regarding the
essence of truth is not concerned with whether truth is a truth of practical experience
or of economic calculation…or even the truth of thoughtful reflection or of
cultic belief. The question of essence
disregards all this and attends to the one thing that in general distinguishes
every “truth” as truth.
Yet with this question concerning essence do we not soar too
high into the void of generality that deprives all thinking of breath? Does not the extravagance of such questioning
bring to light the groundlessness of all philosophy? What use is the question
concerning the essence of truth, this “abstract” question that disregards
everything actual? Is not the question
of essence the most unessential and superfluous that could be asked?
No one can evade the evident certainty of these
considerations. But what is it that
speaks in these considerations? “Sound”
common sense. It harps on the demand for
palpable utility and inveighs against knowledge of the essence of beings, which
essential knowledge has long been called “philosophy.”
Common sense has its own necessity; it asserts its rights
with the weapon peculiarly suitable to it, namely, appeal to the “obviousness”
of its claims and considerations.
However, philosophy can never refute common sense, for the latter is
deaf to the language of philosophy. Nor
may it even wish to do so, since common sense is blind to what philosophy sets
before its essential vision.
What do we ordinarily understand by “truth?” The true, whether it be a matter or a
proposition, is what accords, the accordant, as in the traditional definition
of truth: veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus [truth is the
correspondence of the intellect to the thing].
But is there any further need at all for a special unveiling of the
essence of truth? Is not the pure
essence of truth already adequately represented in the generally accepted
concept, which is upset by no theory and is secured by its obviousness?
But we speak of accordance in various senses. We say, for example, considering two
five-mark coins lying on the table: they
are in accordance with one another.
Furthermore, we speak of accordance whenever, for example, we state
regarding one of the five-mark coins:
this coin is round. Now the relation
obtains, not between thing and thing, but rather between a statement and a
thing. But wherein are the thing and the
statement supposed to be in accordance, considering that the relata are
manifestly different in their outward appearance? The coin is made of metal. The statement is not material at all. The coin is round. The statement has nothing at all spatial
about it. With the coin something can be
purchased. The statement about it is
never a means of payment.
Correspondence here cannot signify a thing-like
approximation between dissimilar kinds of things. The essence of the correspondence is determined
rather by the kind of relation that obtains between the statement and the thing. The relation of the statement to the thing is
the accomplishment of a disclosure, an “opening up,” a free disclosure of the
essence of the thing. What is thus
opened up, solely in this strict sense, was experienced early in Western
thinking as “what is present” and for a long time has been named “being.”
Thus, the essence of
truth is freedom. Nevertheless, in
the concept of freedom we do not think truth, and certainly not at all its
essence. The proposition that the
essence of truth is freedom must consequently seem strange.
To place the essence of truth in freedom—does not this mean
to submit truth to human caprice? Can
truth be any more radically undermined that by being surrendered to the
arbitrariness of this “wavering reed”?
Metaphysics regards truth as imperishable and eternal, which can never
be founded on the transitoriness and fragility that belongs to man’s essence. How then can the essence of truth still have
its subsistence and its ground in human freedom?
But here it becomes evident that freedom is the ground of
the inner possibility of truth only because it receives its own essence from
the more original essence of uniquely essential truth. Freedom was first determined as freedom for
what is opened up in an open region. How
is this essence of freedom to be thought?
That which is opened up, that to which a proposition correctly
corresponds, are beings opened up in an open comportment [accord]. Freedom for what is opened up lets beings be
the beings that they are. Freedom now
reveals itself as letting beings be.
To let be is to engage oneself with beings. To let be—that is, to let beings be as the beings
which they are—means to engage oneself with the open region and its openness
into which every being comes to stand, bringing that openness, as it were,
along with us. Western thinking in its
beginning conceived this open region as ta
alethiea, the unconcealed. If we
translate aletheia as “unconcealment”
rather than “truth,” this translation is not merely more literal; it contains
the directive to think back to truth as the disclosedness and disclosure of
beings.
Freedom is not merely what common sense is content to let
pass under this name: the caprice,
turning up occasionally in our choosing, of inclining in this or that
direction. Prior to all this, freedom is
engagement in the disclosure of beings as such.
Thus, freedom, understood as letting things be, is the fulfillment and
consummation of the essence of truth in the sense of the disclosure of beings.
The essence of truth therefore reveals itself as
freedom. Freedom is disclosive, letting
beings be. Letting beings be, which is
an attuning, a bringing into accord, prevails throughout and anticipates all
the open comportment that flourishes in it.
