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On Tugendhat's Analysis of Heidegger's Concept of
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International Journal of Philosophical Studies

Vol. 15(2), 207–223

International Journal of Philosophical Studies

ISSN 0967–2559 print 1466–4542 online © 2007 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

DOI: 10.1080/09672550701383491

On Tugendhat’s Analysis of

Heidegger’s Concept of Truth

Rufus Duits

Taylor and Francis

RIPH_A_238238.sgm

10.1080/09672550701383491

International Journal of Philosophical Studies

0967-2559 (print)/1466-4542 (online)

Original Article

2007

Taylor & Francis

15

2

0000002007

RufusDuits

[e-mail]

Abstract

This paper responds to Tugendhat’s well-known and influential critique of
Heidegger’s concept of truth with the resources of Heidegger’s texts, in partic-
ular §44 of

Being and Time

. To start with, Tugendhat’s primary critical argu-

ment is reconstructed. It is held to consist firstly in the charge of ambiguity
against Heidegger’s formulations of his concept of truth and secondly in the
claim that Heidegger’s concept of truth is incompatible with an adequate
concept of falsehood. It is shown that the supposedly ambiguous meanings
are, on the one hand, in fact clearly distinguished by Heidegger and, on the
other, that they merely amount to different extensions of the same meaning of
truth. It is then shown how this concept of truth is indeed compatible with an
adequate, albeit post-metaphysical, concept of falsehood. Finally, the grounds
of falsehood in the untruth of the existential of

Verfallen

are pursued and

further objections are dismissed.

Keywords:

Heidegger; Tugendhat; truth; Verfallen; phenomenology;

metaphysics

My task in this paper is to defend Heidegger’s concept of truth from
Tugendhat’s well-known critique in his

Habilitationsschrift

of 1965,

Der

Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger

(henceforth,

WHH

).

1

I aim to

demonstrate the way in which this critique fails to understand Heidegger’s
claims and his intentions, and to show the sources of these misunderstand-
ings, abstracting my argumentation solely from Heidegger’s texts. In this
way the import and meaning of Heidegger’s concept of truth and the extent
of its break with the traditional concept should be revealed.

Of course, Heidegger produced many analyses of truth throughout his

philosophical career, presented in different sorts of philosophical language,
and perhaps even with essentially different intentions and grounds. Any
interpretation of Heidegger faces the problem of specificity. Although there
is no space here to support it with sufficient argumentation, it is my opinion
– and it will here remain a background assumption – that Heidegger’s
concept of truth, whilst it may be articulated in very different ways in later

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208

texts, does not receive any philosophical import other than that which it was
given in Heidegger’s analyses in

Sein und Zeit

(henceforth,

SZ

). In any case,

for the purposes of this paper, I shall restrict myself for the most part to a
consideration of its presentation in this early work, since that is also the
focus of Tugendhat’s critique, which takes it as exemplary for Heidegger’s
consideration of truth in general. It is accepted that, whilst many of the
important texts that we now have which deal with the question of truth were
not available when Tugendhat was writing, one may not wish to subscribe
to this focus.

Tugendhat’s book has had a significant impact on the understanding and

critique of Heidegger’s thinking as a whole, especially in Germany. Apart
from the book’s obvious merits, this is no doubt due to the fact that
Heidegger’s questioning concerning truth is not at all a peripheral concern
of his thinking, one incidental to the project of raising the question of
being. It is rather the necessary preparation of this question, the

Vorfrage

through which access is first gained to the fundamental ontological prob-
lematic, as Heidegger insists here in

Beiträge zur Philosophie

: ‘Die Frage

nach der Wahrheit … ist für uns

die

Vorfrage, durch die wir zuerst

hindurch müssen.’

2

That this is so is emphasized also in the lecture

Vom

Wesen der Wahrheit

, first given in 1930, where the question of the essence

of truth is shown to prepare the question of being insofar as it illuminates
the path out of the categorical constellation of metaphysical thinking. Once
this is borne in mind, the philosophical significance of

SZ

’s discussion of

truth begins to emerge: since the existential analysis has the intention of
overcoming the metaphysico-epistemological perspective of philosophical
questioning, the explicit examination of the concept of truth is not one
more analysis in addition to the many others, as a cursory reading might
suggest; it is rather the case that the entire existential analysis, as the inter-
pretation of being-in-the-world as disclosure, of

Dasein

as

Erschlossenheit

,

is only to be understood properly as an analysis of the phenomenon of
truth. The moment of Heidegger’s overcoming of metaphysics is accom-
plished precisely as his reformulation of the concept of truth, beyond its
traditional representation and in re-appropriation of its original Greek
root. The question of truth is therefore inseparable from the question of
being. And thus the acceptance of Heidegger’s entire philosophical enter-
prise depends upon an agreement with his thematization of truth. Indeed,
if one refuses to accept Heidegger’s critique of the traditional schema of
truth, and his demonstration of its derivation, then one has contested not
merely the philosophical primacy of the question of being, but also its very
possibility – the possibility of retrieving the meaning of being from its
concealment beneath the metaphysical conceptual edifice.

Tugendhat’s critique is articulated primarily in §15, on which we shall

focus here, and begins with the clear programmatic claim that Heidegger is
justified in taking as the starting point of his analysis the most familiar

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209

understanding of truth, namely, that pertaining to the proposition, since
the affirmation of the existence of a more original truth can only be justi-
fied insofar as it makes the status of the common and most generally recog-
nized conception of truth clear. ‘Daß ein Wahrheitsbegriff auf die
Aussagewahrheit paßt, ist die Minimalbedingung, die er erfüllen muß,
wenn er überhaupt ein Wahrheitsbegriff sein soll.’

3

Whilst this captures

Heidegger’s initial intentions well, it also marks out the domain of
Tugendhat’s critique. Tugendhat will claim that Heidegger’s conception of
truth is untenable just to the extent that it does not accord with the mean-
ing usually assigned to the word truth. In which case, Tugendhat’s opening
claim functions as a basic premise within his argument. This premise,
however, while it is perhaps not immediately controversial, at least not on
the face of it, is nevertheless not defended. Whilst the new concept of truth
that Heidegger develops is indeed intended to make the standard or tradi-
tional conception understandable in its ontological genesis, it is neverthe-
less in essential respects incongruous with it as the basic determination of
the concept of truth.

The standard conception of truth as propositional truth predicates truth

of the proposition which corresponds to the object to which it refers. The
problem of truth, and therefore the central problematic of epistemology
and thus metaphysics in general, concerns the possibility of this relation of
correspondence. Now, in the first instance, Heidegger’s claim in regard to
this conception is not, as is often suggested, that it belies an inadmissible
phenomenology of relation, but rather that the mode of being of this corre-
spondence, its ontological determination, remains unquestioned by the
metaphysical tradition. Thus when Tugendhat’s critique sets off immedi-
ately with the claim that in his pencil sketch of correspondence theories of
truth Heidegger does not manage to incorporate all such theories, indeed
that he only manages to incorporate the weakest, and that most notably he
fails to incorporate Husserl’s account, in which the correspondence is held
to pertain between two ideal contents rather than between an ideal content
and a real thing

4

– then Heidegger is already misunderstood; for Husserl as

much as any other theorist leaves the ontological determination of the
correspondence unthematic. The primary claim of §44 is that once the mode
of being of the relation of the proposition to its object is put into question
phenomenologically, the relationality as such is revealed to be dissimulated,
belying an ecstatic movement or process of unconcealment, discovering.
Husserl’s phenomenological account is just as much subject to this critique
as the medieval

veritas est adaequatio intellectus ad rem

.

Tugendhat’s basic critical argument is focused on the way in which

Heidegger reaches his first positive statement of his concept of truth by
way of a series of formulations, which, on the face of it, appear to be equiv-
alents, but which conceal, according to Tugendhat, essential equivocations
that Heidegger makes no attempt to make explicit or justify. According

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210

to Tugendhat, Heidegger suggests that the following propositions are
equivalent:

1

On p. 218, Heidegger writes: ‘Das gemeinte Seiende selbst zeigt
sich

so

,

wie

es an ihm selbst ist, das heißt, dass

es

in Selbigkeit so

ist, als wie Seiend

es

in der Aussage aufgezeigt, entdeckt wird,’

5

which is abbreviated by Tugendhat to: ‘Die Aussage ist wahr,
wenn sie das Seiende “so” aufzeigt, entdeckt, “wie es an ihm selbst
ist”.’

6

2

‘Die Aussage

ist wahr

, bedeutet: sie entdeckt das Seiende an ihm

selbst.’

7

This second formulation leaves out the phrase ‘so, wie es an ihm selbst

ist’. Nevetheless, it is allowed by Tugendhat to count as equivalent to the
first formulation insofar as the ‘so, wie’ is included or incorporated in
‘selbst’. Whilst this may be acceptable, it is nevertheless the case that by
leaving aside in this second formulation the aspect, the ‘so–wie’, Heidegger
emphasizes the fundamental thought that the proposition is not to be
conceived as uncovering its object in terms of a representation of it in the
‘how’ of its being. Whilst Heidegger has already made himself explicit on
this point, it remains ambiguous in the extrapolation that Tugendhat
presents above. The purpose of this second formulation is once more to
bring this point to the centre.

8

It is, however, the third formulation, accord-

ing to Tugendhat, which takes the decisive step.

3

‘

Wahrsein

(

Wahrheit

) der Aussage muß verstanden werden als

entdeckend-sein

.’

9

This step is decisive for Tugendhat insofar as Heidegger no longer formu-

lates his position in terms of

how

an object is uncovered, but rather in terms

of uncovering as such, uncovering without regard to the

how

of that which

is uncovered. ‘The

how

of that which is uncovered’ – this is ambiguous: it

might refer to the how of the entity uncovered as it is independent of this
uncovering, or it might refer to the how of the entity within its uncovered-
ness, how it is uncovered. It is precisely the distinction and the relation
between these that, Tugendhat claims, is essential to the concept of truth as
such. Insofar as this distinction is left aside or covered over, so that the
relata of the relation lose their definition, Heidegger takes his analysis,
according to Tugendhat, beyond the sphere in which it remains meaningful
to speak of the concept of truth.

Tugendhat himself locates the ambiguity in the word

Entdecken

, and

claims that it is used to form a bridge which allows Heidegger to cross,
apparently innocuously, the essential gap between the second and third
formulations above. On the one hand, Tugendhat claims, the word

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TUGENDHAT ON HEIDEGGER’S CONCEPT OF TRUTH

211

Entdecken

corresponds to the Greek

apophainesthai

, and is equivalent in

meaning to the German

Aufzeigen

, to point out, which, it should be

recalled, is the primary concept Heidegger used to characterize the mode of
being of the proposition in §33 of

SZ

. On the other hand,

Entdecken

is used

in such a way as to correspond to the Greek

aletheuein

, to uncover or reveal

what is true. Whilst on the first meaning every proposition will count as an
uncovering, the false as well as the true, on the second meaning only a true
proposition will count as an uncovering; the false proposition will instead
amount to a covering up.

Tugendhat’s worry might be expressed in terms of a concern with the

question of falsehood. How is it possible for truth conceived simply as
uncovering to incorporate or at least accord with an adequate concept of
falsehood? He claims that the word truth only receives its determination
through possible contraposition to its opposite, falsehood, that it is opposi-
tionally defined: ‘Es ist aber gerade diese Differenz [zwischen einem unmit-
telbaren, gleichsam vordergründigen Gegebensein … und der Sache selbst],
aus der das Wort “Wahrheit” überhaupt erst seinen Sinn gewinnt.’

10

And

thus if it turns out that the conception of truth which Heidegger arrives at in
§44 is incapable of being intelligibly opposed to falsehood, then no further
grounds are needed for rejecting it.

This is the essential import of Tugendhat’s critique. Before considering

whether Heidegger’s characterization of propositional truth as uncovering
can incorporate an adequate conception of falsehood, which will require a
thematization of Heidegger’s fundamental concept of untruth and its
grounds, I shall first consider whether Tugendhat is justified in charging
Heidegger with ambiguity. Are the two meanings of uncovering elaborated
above really to be distinguished? On the face of it, it appears so.

Uncovering conceived as a function of any and every (meaningful) prop-

osition, whether true or false – does that not amount to Heidegger’s basic
ontological concept of disclosure? One should not forget that language
constitutes, albeit not by itself alone, the disclosure of

Dasein

. Of course,

Heidegger characterizes the proposition as a derivative mode of interpreta-
tion, of understanding, but nevertheless, despite this determination, it
retains the basic trait of language as such, its revelatory function. One
cannot say that the disclosure which the proposition effects is merely
grounded in the ontologically fundamental disclosure that is

Dasein

itself if

language makes this disclosure first possible.

On the other hand, in §44 Heidegger writes: ‘die Entdecktheit des inner-

weltlichen Seienden

gründet

in der Erschlossenheit der Welt’.

11

The partic-

ular disclosure of inner-worldly beings of the (true) proposition is here
claimed to be grounded in the basic disclosure of

Dasein

. It would seem then

that Heidegger in fact explicitly distinguishes the two meanings contrasted
by Tugendhat. In this case, Tugendhat’s argument, despite his own presen-
tation, should not be construed as charging Heidegger with ambiguity, but

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212

rather in terms of the claim that the derivative manoeuvre, which Heidegger
apparently presumes to perform, the bridge across which Heidegger slips
between the two formulations above, the

grounding

of the specific uncov-

eredness of propositional truth in the original truth of disclosure as such, is
unjustified, at least in the terms of the text. But should there be a movement
of derivation here? Does Heidegger slip between the two? If disclosure

as

such

is understood, not as a state of affairs, or as a fact of the matter, or as

of the mode of being of

Vorhandenheit

, but rather as a happening, or as a

process, as the ontological event of emergence from concealment into
unconcealment, then these two ostensibly different characterizations of
truth – considered purely with regard to this determination – are not in fact
distinguishable. And Heidegger insists that it should be so understood inso-
far as he equates the

ecstatic

being of

Dasein

with it: ‘Erschlossenheit aber

ist die Grundart des Daseins, gemäß der es sein Da

ist

.’

12

Rather than having

two different concepts here, we have two different employments or exten-
sions of the same concept, distinguished by their target domain – one ontic,
one ontological. Both extensions refer to the simple happening of emer-
gence from concealment to unconcealment.

Is not Heidegger then to be charged at least with inconsistency, or even

contradiction, since the talk of a grounding function is incompatible with
holding the revelatory function to be singular? The distinction here is
between the ontological and the ontic. The grounding function concerns
understanding. Ontic understanding, according to Heidegger, is grounded
in ontological understanding. The determination of the horizon of world is

Dasein

’s unthematic understanding of being, which is so long as

Dasein

is.

Upon this horizon, inner-worldly beings are first disclosed in their particu-
larity. The ontic understanding of inner-worldly beings is thus grounded in
the ontologically prior understanding of being. Nevertheless, the revelatory
function as such, which accords with these forms of understanding, is the
same. The grounding concerns ‘levels’ of understanding, but the form of
disclosure proper to each is the same – the process of unconcealment.

Tugendhat’s mistake is to conceive uncovering, not as a process, but as a

factum

, a stasis, according to the traditional categories of constant presence.

He then finds it necessary, in order to make sense of §44, to distinguish two,
as it were, ‘levels’ of manifestation of this stasis, one as propositional truth,
one as disclosure as such, and consequently finds no legitimation given in
the text for moving from one to the other whilst using the same name for
both. Once uncovering is conceived, as Heidegger conceives it, as ecstatic,
as a process or happening, there is no longer any ground on which they
might be separated: both are the fundamental ontological happening of
unconcealment ecstatically constitutive of the being of

Dasein

. Whilst one

may distinguish two different domains of application, the event of uncover-
ing is the same in both. Heidegger would not be slipping between two mean-
ings attributed to the word

Entdecken

, but between two applications of the

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213

same meaning. Thus, granted that propositional truth is to be understood as
uncovering, then, insofar as this process of uncovering is the ontological
event of

Dasein

as such, Heidegger is justified in claiming the latter, disclo-

sure in general, under the banner of original truth. Uncovering is an onto-
logical determination.

It seems, then, that the ambiguity Tugendhat professes to find in Heideg-

ger’s analysis of truth in §44 is illusory, and appears as such only from the
standpoint of the traditional conception of truth – which is precisely that
which

SZ

as a whole is intended to overcome by laying bare its ontological

genesis. Nevertheless, this meets only part of Tugendhat’s critique. It
remains to question whether this conception of truth as uncovering is capa-
ble of supporting a phenomenologically adequate concept of propositional
falsehood, or indeed of untruth in general.

According to Tugendhat, if propositional truth is to be understood as

uncovering, then the false proposition is also to be understood as uncover-
ing, namely, as uncovering its object in a way other than it in fact is, and in
this sense amounts at the same time to a

Verdecken

, an en-covering. For

him, this implies that truth conceived as uncovering cannot do without the
qualification ‘as it in fact is’, or some equivalent, and thus that the third
statement of truth as uncovering formulated above is inadmissible as it
stands as a candidate for the thematization of truth. As I have just shown,
however, Heidegger’s thesis concerning ontological truth is not thrown into
doubt by this last point. Heidegger too speaks of the false proposition as
uncovering:

Das Entdeckte und Erschlossene steht im Modus der Verstelltheit
und Verschlossenheit durch das Gerede, die Neugier und die
Zweideutigkeit. Das Sein zum Seienden ist nicht ausgelöscht, aber
entwurzelt. Das Seiende ist nicht völlig verborgen, sondern gerade
entdeckt, aber zugleich verstellt; es zeigt sich – aber im Modus des
Scheins. Imgleichen sinkt das vordem Entdeckte wieder in die
Verstelltheit und Verborgenheit zurück.

13

That the false proposition is also an uncovering, and that the event of

uncovering is primordial truth, implies that truth incorporates falsehood
within itself, that the false is part, an element, a mode perhaps, at least a
determination, of the true, rather than standing in stark opposition to it.
This is the thought which decisively distinguishes Heidegger’s concept of
truth from that of the tradition, and accomplishes the phenomenological
step that Tugendhat is no longer prepared to follow. That this is so is given
testimony by the incredulity with which Tugendhat writes, for example:

Was hätte [Heidegger] in diesem Fall dazu veranlassen können, gerade
das Wort ‘Wahrheit’ zu gebrauchen? Etwa daß die Erschlossenheit der

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214

Wahrheit ‘zugrunde liegt’? Und das berechtige sogar, sie als
‘ursprünglichere Wahrheit’ zu verstehen? Aber dann könnte man sie
mit demselben Recht auch als ursprünglichere Falschheit bezeichnen.

14

But what does it mean to conceive falsehood as integral to truth?

Suppose the person with her back to the wall in Heidegger’s example had
said falsely: ‘the picture on the wall is not hanging crookedly’. Now, if one
remembers that the angle at which Heidegger attempts to enter the prob-
lematic of truth, the context in terms of which he presents his illustration,
has to do with

Ausweisung

, with proof, with the establishment of truth and

falsehood, then it is not difficult to see here that the falsehood of the prop-
osition also consists in uncovering: in order that the person can turn
around and establish that her proposition is false, falsehood must also be
established by the uncovering of the picture itself. The false proposition,
just as much as the true, must be directed immediately as an unconcealing
function towards the picture itself. But then one might wonder why
Heidegger characterizes falsehood in terms of

Verdecken

,

Verstellen

,

Verschlossenheit

,

Entwurzelung

,

Verborgenheit

, and even

Entdecken im

Modus des Scheins

, etc., rather than simply in terms of uncovering. But this

would indicate a misunderstanding of the normative asymmetry proper to
the structure of truth and falsehood. The uncovering that establishes the
proposition to be false is precisely the uncovering as the truth of the
matter. Establishment concerns uncovering as truth. Only therefore does it
also concern falsehood. Insofar as the false proposition is immediately
directed towards (a being-towards) its object, it is to be conceived in terms
of an uncovering function.

15

What marks it out from the true proposition is

the fact that it dissimulates its object in its statement of it and in this sense
is at the same time an en-covering, a concealing function. The essential
point is that uncovering–encovering belong together; that is, the encover-
ing, as dissimulation, is always at the same time an uncovering. One cannot
argue then that one must at least have recourse to a relationality of corre-
spondence, or rather non-correspondence, in the case of the false proposi-
tion, a non-correspondence between the object as it in fact is and the
object as it is represented in the proposition, a non-correspondence of two
beings of the mode of being of

Vorhandenheit

. As an immediate being-

towards the object, the falsehood of the false proposition does not consist
in the comparison of two presentations of the entity, but rather in the
dissimulation or en-covering within its uncovering function. The false
proposition is uncovering insofar as it is a being-towards, but as this uncov-
ering it is dissimulated insofar as the being that it is towards is proposed
differently from its genuine unconcealment.

Indeed, falsehood can only stand in an opposition to truth as disclosure

because both are determined fundamentally as uncovering. One could
construe truth and falsehood as configuring the structure of truth. In this

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215

case, truth as unconcealment, as uncovering, is the possibility of this struc-
ture. Heidegger’s argument in §44 would then move from a determination
of truth as it appears in contrast to falsehood to a determination of that
which makes both truth and falsehood possible. As we have seen, this does
not ground any ambiguity since truth as that which makes both truth and
falsehood possible is not something additional to the determination of truth
and falsehood themselves. Both ‘truths’, if one is allowed to put it this way,
are ecstatic uncovering, unconcealment, disclosure. But this should not hide
the fact that it is precisely insofar as falsehood is taken up into the essence
of truth that original truth can be articulated beyond the reach of metaphys-
ical categories. It should also not be forgotten that equally fundamental to
the movement overcoming metaphysics is the claim that propositional false-
hood is only one mode of what Heidegger calls untruth, and indeed an onto-
logically insignificant mode at that. In the rest of this paper I shall offer a
reading, far from comprehensive, of Heidegger’s concept of untruth as it is
articulated in

SZ

.

16

In the first place it should be noted that, whilst it may not be brought out

thematically in §44, nevertheless it is made clear in

SZ

, in particular in the

fourth chapter of the second part (

Temporality and Everydayness

), that all

unconcealment is at the same time a concealment. Disclosure is the play of
disclosure and closure, revealing and veiling. Every unconcealment is at the
same time a concealment of all that is not unconcealed. One must not forget
that unconcealment is always partial – that is what makes history possible.
Indeed, whilst there is no ontological priority here, concealment is that
which holds sway in general, first and foremost, that which determines the
being of Dasein always already.

The structure of concealment–unconcealment is, of course, an ontologi-

cal determination of Dasein, being configured within the basic ontological
structure of temporality. Structured according to the three temporal
ecstasies, Dasein’s being is correlatively determined by the three
moments of the structure of Sorge, care: facticity, existentiality, Verfallen.
Verfallen denotes the rigidifying of the temporal dynamic amongst the
beings of the world, that Dasein first and foremost understands itself in
terms of the static mode of being of the beings constantly present in the
world around it. Verfallen thus denotes the congealing of the temporal
horizon, which blots out above all its own movement of exclusion; it
denotes the closure of the essential openness which is the temporal
ecstasy, that is, its existential determination – which is to say it denotes
the restriction of disclosure, the concealment within unconcealment. It
therefore functions as the existential or ontological ground of the untruth
proper to the essence of truth, the ground of concealment. Yet it also
designates the existential correlative of the temporal ecstasy of the
present. Presence itself is the site of concealment, and openness itself
initiates closure; and it is on the basis of the primordial absence of the

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216

ecstatic future that the unconcealment or disclosure of projective under-
standing is first possible.

Verfallen is therefore the ground of false propositions, but also, as

Heidegger makes clearer in Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, of all other modes of
error: ‘Jedes Verhalten hat gemäß seiner Offenständigkeit und seinem
Bezug zum Seienden im Ganzen je seine Weise des Irrens. Der Irrtum
erstreckt sich vom gewöhnlichsten Sich-vertun, Sich-versehen und Sich-
verrechnen bis zum Sich-verlaufen und Sich-versteigen in den wesentlichen
Haltungen und Entscheidungen.’

17

Error is here to be understood as the

ontological or existential ground of all ontic or existentiell erring in general,
of which the false proposition is only a relatively insignificant instance. The
possibility of error is grounded in the constitution of the being of Dasein as
Verfallen; Verfallen is the formal possibility of error. In order to defend this
reading, which differs markedly from the accounts of many commentators,
we shall consider the existential of Verfallen in more detail.

Verfallen is to be understood in terms of the inauthenticity of Dasein.

Inauthenticity is, for its part, to be grasped as one of two basic modes of
temporality, indeed as its all-pervasive mode. In this temporal modality, the
future is awaited and the past forgotten in an enmeshment within a non-
ecstatic present. Correlative with the structure of care with Verfallen as its
pivot, original temporality dissimulates itself through the ecstasy of the
present, through the understanding of being as presence (Anwesenheit).
Being the breakdown of the dynamic whole into discrete, articulated units,
inauthenticity is only determinable, despite being the all-pervasive mode of
temporality, in terms of an original ecstatic being of Dasein, in which
Dasein’s being is disclosed to itself on the dreadful horizon of death. The
former mode of being is given the terminus inauthenticity precisely because
it covers over, conceals, the being of Dasein. For Heidegger, all understand-
ing of inner-worldly beings, all ontic or existentiell understanding, presup-
poses an understanding of existential possibility, that is, of the being of
Dasein. Only thus is understanding projective. Inauthenticity therefore
names the ontological error by which the being of Dasein, existence, is
dissimulated, the ontological error that makes ontic understanding inevita-
bly prone to error, to misrepresentation, misunderstanding, falsehood, etc.
Being is dissimulated from the bottom up, as it were. Uneigentlichkeit is
essentially connected with untruth. On the other hand, by the obverse argu-
ment, authenticity, as the mode of temporality in which the truth of Dasein’s
being as such is disclosed, as the mode in which ontological truth functions
as the basis of projection, is the ground of the possibility that ontic under-
standing is first of all not subject to the dissimulations and concealments of
error. It is the mode in which the structure of care coincides, accords, or
even corresponds with the self-temporalization of temporality as such. This
coming into coincidence is the clearing away of the dissimulations of inau-
thenticity, the opening of the clearing for truth. Grounded in the revelatory

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projection of being as such, authenticity makes genuine unconcealment first
possible.

Heidegger analyses the existential of Verfallen, and hence inauthenticity,

in terms of three interrelated concepts, which develop the preceding analy-
ses of the being-in constitutive of being-in-the-world: das Gerede (chatter),
die Neugier (curiosity), die Zweideutigkeit (ambiguity). The task of these
concepts is to capture the existential and existentiell consequences of the
‘transformation’ (the quotation marks indicating here, of course, that
despite the analytical exigency of speaking of an ontological transformation,
in fact Dasein is always already in the mode of being of inauthenticity, and
indeed that authenticity is not at all a distinct mode of being, but is rather
itself a modified mode of inauthenticity) of the original disclosure of Dasein,
through the dissimulative function of its ontological-structural moment of
Verfallen – and therefore, let it not be forgotten, as a function of its inter-
course with other Daseins – into a closure, a concealment, a dissimulation.
Rede (speech or talk), for example, which is held to be constitutive of disclo-
sure, flattens out into Gerede, chatter, in which the sayings, expressions,
vocabulary, etc. of das Man predominate and close off a genuine and origi-
nal, or better, an inceptual relationship to that about which one speaks, and,
indeed, to language itself. On the other hand, in the case of curiosity, which
denotes the inauthentic encounter of Dasein with inner-worldly beings
presented to or for it, the proper understanding of beings, their original
disclosure, is shut down and Dasein considers them or is interested in them
just insofar as they suggest novelty – a flattening out and up-rooting of exis-
tential interest, of the project in general. Nothing, therefore, is really or
genuinely encountered at all; no inceptive relationship with inner-worldly
beings is fashioned. Inner-worldly being as such is dissimulated. Together,
curiosity and chatter determine the ambiguity of the disclosure of Dasein in
the mode of being of inauthenticity. Nothing, no experience, is definitive;
nothing is essentially decided; nothing is determinate; the lines or contours
of existential activity are blurred so that nothing really matters, nothing is
really grounded. For Dasein is not in a position to care genuinely about its
inner-worldly being – and thus allows the existentiality of das Man to take
over and determine it.

In general, the movement of Verfallen can be understood to imply two

basic ontic characteristics for disclosure. On the one hand, the possibility of
original or inceptive disclosure, the possibility of a genuine relationship to
things, is cut off by the predomination of the opinions and the chatter of das
Man. On the other hand, this characteristic is itself concealed by the
predominating opinion that das Man knows everything already, has under-
stood everything already, has already made all the important decisions, and
has answered all significant questions. Taken together, it is not difficult to
see the essential connection of Verfallen with untruth. Das Man remains in
the world, within the clearing of disclosure; only it never generates an

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authentic, grounded being-towards anything. How can it if the original
being-towards-death of Dasein, the genuine understanding of possibility, of
being, is shut off? Inner-worldly beings in general are dissimulated, since
only the genuine understanding of existence can ground something like the
care by which the experience of inner-worldly beings can be brought to
genuine unconcealment.

Tugendhat shares my conviction that Verfallen is in the first place to be

understood purely formally: ‘Das “Verfallen” soll aber nicht eine bestim-
mte konkrete Tendenz des Daseins sein, sondern steht lediglich für die
formale Struktur der Verdeckungstendenz überhaupt.’

18

But this claim

stands in immediate contradiction with his critique of Heidegger’s concept
of truth. If Verfallen, constitutive of the being of Dasein, itself the possibility
of disclosure, is the formal condition of covering-up in general, then
concealment–unconcealment must configure the structure of truth, given
that truth belongs to the being of Dasein. Every characteristic of Dasein is
only to be understood in terms of a concealing–revealing function. If
Tugendhat claims that truth cannot be so conceived, and if he wishes to
uphold the concept of truth as such, then he thereby rejects not only
Heidegger’s concept of truth, but also the existential analysis in its entirety.

Nevertheless, his account of Heidegger’s concept of Verfallen demon-

strates the same misunderstanding as his account of Heidegger’s concept of
truth. Tugendhat distinguishes Verfallen as Verdeckungstendenz from
Dasein’s possibility of Sichverschließen. ‘Diese Verdeckungstendenz ist von
der Möglichkeit des Sichverschließens klar unterschieden.’

19

In the first

place, parallel to the case of disclosure, it can be pointed out that the
concealing function of closure and covering-up is the same in each instance.
Every process of concealment bears the same ontological determination.
Again we have two different applications of the same basic concept, one
ontic, one ontological. Further, it must be remembered that the covering-up
function of Verfallen just is a self-concealment, a closing oneself off, namely,
from the dreadful disclosure of Dasein’s genuine ontological constitution.
The two are correlative. It is precisely in terms of a closure of the original
dis-closure of existence that Dasein flees to the familiarity of a mode of
being in which the truth of its comportment is not put into question.

It may pertinently but briefly be recalled at this stage that Tugendhat had

claimed the necessity of Heidegger’s concept of truth being congruous with
the traditional conception in order that it count as a concept of truth at all.
Without entering into the details of Heidegger’s derivation of the traditional
concept of truth from truth as disclosure, one may note that insofar as this
traditional concept is grounded in the mode of being of Verfallen, it will be
essentially grounded in untruth. Of course, put as baldly as this, Heidegger’s
argument appears circular, but nevertheless this consideration at least
throws into relief the requirement that Tugendhat argue for, rather than
simply presuppose, this basic premise of his discussion.

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One may object that this categorical homology of truth and authenticity,

untruth and inauthenticity, is contrived and too formal, and cannot possibly
do justice to the multifarious phenomena of daily life. Surely, one thinks,
despite the dissimulation of beings in the world, inauthentic Dasein is capa-
ble at least of uttering true propositions. Heidegger’s illustration in §44 does
not necessarily thematize an authentic Dasein’s utterance. Similarly, is it not
plausible to imagine that authentic Dasein is capable of making mistakes of
one kind or another, and therefore of erring? Even resolute authentic
Dasein does not have complete control over its corporeality and is subject
to the basic finitude of existence. Indeed, typically perhaps the person
whom we should like to call authentic is quite hopeless at making her way
in the world – she falls down wells, fails in the economic system, is socially
inept, etc., whilst the inauthentic person, she who is continually adapting
herself to the exigencies of circumstance, to her society and company, who
is always willing to deceive, to be disingenuous and dishonest, is precisely
the one who ‘succeeds’.

20

Such criticisms ought not to be simply dismissed as irrelevant to the

fundamental ontological enterprise. This enterprise must remain faithful to
the phenomenology. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that Dasein
is a structure, the structural possibility of disclosure – temporality – and that
the various analyses of SZ are structural analyses or analyses of structural
possibilities of the being of Dasein.

21

Conceived as the structural, and that

means formal, possibility of untruth, Verfallen may not appear wholly
congruous with the apparent facts whilst retaining fundamental ontological
explanatory value. Of course inauthentic Dasein is capable of uttering true
propositions. As we have already noted, inauthenticity and authenticity are
not at all factically mutually exclusive. They are structural possibilities –
abstractions, even – within a dynamic whole, and at the same time, authen-
ticity is only a modification, itself a mode of inauthenticity. Dasein is always
inauthentic. Untruth in its various forms thus remains a permanent possibil-
ity of its being, just as truth never fully emerges into the clearing within the
darkness of concealment.

The analysis of Verfallen attempted to show that inauthentic Dasein is cut

off from an original and thus genuine relation to beings insofar as, in accor-
dance with its structural constitution, it conceals its own being and thus exis-
tential possibility as such. But only a genuine relation to beings grounded in
a revelatory relation to being as such, authenticity as resoluteness,

22

could

guarantee the truth of one’s utterances, the correctness of one’s decisions,
the proper use of one’s time, remembering, etc., in general: the avoidance
of error. Nevertheless, it can be pointed out that this does not preclude inau-
thentic Dasein from, as it were, uttering true propositions fortuitously. This
would not conflict with the analysis, since there we have to do with a formal
grounding of the possibility of truth, for which truth cannot remain merely
something fortuitous. Indeed, if there is to be an existential analysis at all, if

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philosophy in general, the thinking of being, is to be possible, then truth
must be able to be guaranteed, whether or not this guarantee is hermeneu-
tically conditioned. The normativity of truth would tolerate no arbitrari-
ness. And insofar as authenticity, as a mode of inauthenticity, is a
permanent possibility of Dasein, truth is also its permanent possibility, even
if, as it were, it will always remain a partiality; Dasein never has the whole
truth. The formal possibility that is the guarantee of truth is the creation of
original ontic relationships through the fundamental ontological relation-
ship that is the determination of authentic Dasein. Only authentic Dasein
can, properly speaking, be certain. Conceived as formal conditions of possi-
bility of truth and untruth, it is no argument against the analysis of the being
of Dasein in terms of authenticity and inauthenticity that Dasein is always
capable of standing within truth or within error. Authenticity and inauthen-
ticity are permanent structural possibilities of its temporal being.

As regards the existential ineptitude of authentic Dasein, this would

concern the inauthentic judgement of das Man, who has already decided
what is important and what is not, who has already decreed the criteria of
success, and for whom the projection of authentic Dasein may be unintelli-
gible. Untruth can only be judged, in the last place, from the perspective of
the disclosure of being as such, which grounds understanding at the ontolog-
ical level.

There is no ontological primacy within the structure of truth, no hierarchy,

only an essential normative asymmetry, as we noted above. Concealment is
only possible on the basis of unconcealment, and unconcealment is always
an overcoming of a prior concealment. Withdrawal (Entzug) is the essence
(Wesen) of being as presence. Conceived in this way, the horizon of the ques-
tion of truth is no longer metaphysical – no longer are the categories of objec-
tive presence determinative, no longer is truth conceived solely in essential
static, isolated, and fixed contradistinction to its opposite, falsehood. The
fundamental flaw in Tugendhat’s critique is first of all his refusal to take
the decisive step onto that horizon where the possibility of a fundamental-
ontological, post-metaphysical critique of Heidegger’s concept of truth
would first be available.

Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany

Notes

1 2nd ed (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1970).
2 Beiträge zur Philosophie, Gesamtausgabe Bd 65, 2nd edn (Frankfurt am Main:

Vittorio Klostermann, 1994), p. 345: ‘The question concerning truth … is for us
the prior question, which we must go through first.’ All English translations in this
paper are my own, except where otherwise indicated.

3 WHH, p. 331: ‘That a concept of truth accords with propositional truth is the

minimum condition it must fulfil in order to count as a concept of truth at all.’

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4 For the Husserl of the Logische Untersuchungen truth is ‘the ideal adequation of

a relational act to the corresponding adequate percept of a state of affairs’ (trans.
J. N. Findlay), or in general the absolute adequation that obtains in the unity of
coincidence between the epistemic essences of an intention and a fully given
state of affairs or object. See Vol. II, §39.

5 ‘The being intended itself shows itself as it is in itself, that is, that it is in sameness

just as it is indicated to be in the proposition.’

6 WHH, p. 332: ‘The proposition is true if it indicates, uncovers, the being as it is

in itself.’

7 SZ, p. 218: ‘The proposition is true means: it uncovers the being in itself.’
8 There are two German words that can be translated with the English ‘as’: als

and wie. Prior to §44, Heidegger has given his well-known analysis of what he
calls the Als-Struktur, which is found in the context of discussions of interpreta-
tion and the proposition. Whilst Heidegger does not incorporate this figure
once more into the explicit argument of §44, nevertheless it is clearly of rele-
vance to the determination of propositional truth in terms of a wie. Heidegger
distinguishes two nomenclatorial meanings of Als: the existential-hermeneutic,
which is primordial and concerns the projection of interpretation onto the
determining horizon of world; and the apophantic, derivative of the latter,
which concerns the determination of the propositioned being in the mode of
being of Vorhandenheit. The discussion of propositional truth in §44 obviously
has in the first place to do with the latter. The determination of something as
something requires primordially, for Heidegger, the structure of projective
understanding. The explicitation of understanding through speech is clearly
structurally homologous. Language is to be conceived existentially. The as that
accords with any uttered proposition is thus relative to the given understanding
or interpretative projection as part of which the proposition is uttered. This
means that the determination of any proposition is relative to an existential
scheme, which in turn precludes propositional truth from being thematized in
terms of universal validity, a notion decisive for both the Husserlian and the
neo-Kantian theorizations of truth. Although this is not the primary focus of
Tugendhat’s critique, it is nevertheless of relevance to it. The as-structure can
be seen to deprive all determination of any intrinsic character: there is no deter-
mination, no meaning in-itself, that is, outside all existential reference.
Tugendhat’s insistence on the concept of truth maintaining reference to an ‘as it
is in-itself’ can, consequently, be understood as an attempt to retain the essen-
tial connection between truth and universal validity.

9 SZ, p. 218: ‘The being-true (truth) of the proposition must be understood as

being-uncovering.’

10 WHH, p. 335: ‘It is, however, precisely this distinction [between an immediate

and, as it were, ostensible givenness … and the thing itself] in terms of which the
word “truth” first receives a meaning at all.’

11 SZ, p. 220: ‘The uncoveredness of inner-worldly beings is grounded in the disclo-

sure of world.’

12 SZ, p. 220: ‘Disclosure is, however, the basic character of Dasein, in virtue of

which it is its “there”.’

13 SZ, p. 222: ‘Through chatter, curiosity and ambiguity, that which is uncovered

and disclosed stands in the mode of dissimulation and closure. Being towards
beings is not extinguished but is uprooted. Beings are not fully concealed, rather
they are precisely uncovered, but they are at the same time dissimulated, they
show themselves – but in the mode of apparentness. At the same time, that which
was previously uncovered sinks back again into dissimulation and concealment.’

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14 WHH, p. 336: ‘What could have induced Heidegger to use the word “truth” in

this case? Perhaps that disclosure “grounds” truth? And that even justifies its
being understood as “original truth”? But then with the same justification one
could also refer to it as original falsehood.’

15 It can be no argument against this thesis that the objects of false propositions

often are not, since that can also be true of true propositions: ‘The holy Roman
Empire no longer exists’, for example. The logical problems of non-referring
terms are well known, and I should only add that insofar as Heidegger’s most
basic philosophical categories are presence and absence (Anwesenheit and
Abwesenheit), he himself outlines a new logic of absence, of non-being, of the
nothing.

16 Although at this point, it might be considered fair to pause in order to contextu-

alize, to some extent at least, the motivation and precedent behind the critique
issued here by Tugendhat. Earlier work of his (in particular his doctoral disser-
tation, Ti Kata Tinos (Freiburg im Breisgau: K. Alber, 1958)) had taken issue
with Heidegger’s interpretations of Greek philosophy, specifically of Plato and
Aristotle and their particular doctrines of being and truth. As is well known,
Heidegger considers the origin of the metaphysical understanding of being –
being as presence, Anwesenheit – to lie at the very beginning of philosophy, with
the pre-Socratics. He points out that the Greek word that we translate with
‘truth’, aletheia, meant, literally conceived, un-concealment, and not simply
correctness. It is not difficult to imagine that the determination of being as pres-
ence – for the Greeks, phusis – and the determination of truth as unconcealment
are conceptually implicatory – being is, after all, ‘that’ which is true. The change
in the conception of truth, from aletheia, or unconcealment, to correctness – that
is, to the metaphysical conception – which goes hand in hand with a change in the
way being is understood, took place, according to a relatively early essay of
Heidegger’s, in Plato’s philosophy. Heidegger later came, at least in a certain
sense, to retract this consideration of a change in what he termed the essence of
truth, but at the time Tugendhat was writing his dissertation the claim was gener-
ally held to be a key thesis of Heidegger’s philosophy of the history of being.
Tugendhat, however, gives both the pre-Platonic concept of truth and the
Platonic concept of truth a different determination and thereby contests Heideg-
ger’s thesis concerning an essential change. For Tugendhat, aletheia, before
Plato, meant unconcealment, but unconcealment that excludes from itself all
concealment, that has left all concealment behind itself; simple revealedness
(schlechthinniges Enthülltsein (p. 9)); it did not mean, as per Heidegger’s early
contention, an un-concealment that includes or incorporates the moment of
concealment, that carries with it, precisely in and through its unconcealment, an
oblivion. On the other hand, Plato’s doctrine of forms, in which being as such is
newly cast as presence before or for apprehension or perception, does not
initiate a change in this conception of aletheia, but rather simply amounts to a
precise determination of it. Being as presence for perception again implicates
truth as simple unconcealment – and subsequently as the correctness of the
perception. It is not that the moment of concealment was driven out of the
concept of truth by Plato’s doctrine of forms, and thus it is not, as for Heidegger,
that truth’s determination was essentially modified.

Our task in this paper is restricted to Tugendhat’s critique of Heidegger’s own

concept of truth, and therefore differences in the reception of Greek philosophy
are not immediately relevant to our discussion. Nevertheless, it is significant to
note that here the charge against Heidegger takes a similar form: Tugendhat
wants to drive a radical wedge between truth and falsity, and cannot accept that

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truth and untruth are inseparable. His most basic diagnosis of Heidegger’s
deception also occurs in his dissertation. The characterization of the metaphysi-
cal understanding of being as presence (Anwesenheit) contains a vital ambiguity.
On the one hand, it is true that presence corresponds to that which all metaphys-
ical theory understood as being in its authentic sense – the intelligibility of the
intelligible; in fact, that which is super-sensuous. On the other hand, it also corre-
sponds to that which metaphysical theory considered to be precisely not being in
its authentic sense, namely, appearance, the phenomenal, mere seeming. For
Heidegger, the characterization of being as presence has the virtue of capturing
both of these determinations; for Tugendhat, in contrast, it is precisely this ambi-
guity, or the forgetting of this distinction, which distorts Heidegger’s conception
of truth. But here it again becomes clear to what extent Tugendhat remains
within a metaphysical conceptuality.

17 Wegmarken, 3rd edn (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996), p. 197:

‘All comportment has its own manner of erring, according to its openness and its
relation to beings as a whole. Error extends from the most ordinary wasting of
time, making mistakes, miscalculating, to going astray and venturing too far in
essential attitudes and decisions.’

18 WHH, p. 326: ‘“Verfallen” should not, however, be a particular concrete

tendency of Dasein, but rather stands simply for the formal structure of the
tendency for covering up as such.’

19 WHH, p. 314: ‘This tendency for covering up is to be sharply distinguished from

the possibility of self-closure.’

20 Of course, in general, failure is only to be determined within the configuration of

an existential projection. The phenomenon of regret is particularly illustrative. It
is only possible to regret something that is incongruous with some current
project. Insofar as authenticity and inauthenticity determine essentially different
projective horizons of possibility, their respective understandings of regret or
failure will be incommensurable.

21 Thus, it must, it seems, always be re-emphasized that Dasein is not simply a

synonym for ‘human’. Dasein is best perhaps understood as the structure which
determines the essence of the human to be disclosure of being. Or simply: Dasein
is the structural possibility of disclosure.

22 From Latin resolutus, past participle of resolvere, to unbind, loosen, open. The

etymology of Entschlossenheit, meaning originally Aufschließen, to unlock, is
essentially the same.