Heidegger on Truth: Unveiling, Normativity, and the limits of Phenomenology

Heidegger on Truth: Unveiling, Normativity, and the limits of Phenomenology

Deborah Moreira Guimarães

The problem of truth is directly related to Heidegger’s project of a hermeneutic-phenomenological ontology, which confronts the philosophical tradition by challenging different conceptions of truth as adequacy, evidence, and consistency. Heidegger’s engagement with Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and Dilthey’s historical hermeneutics leads him to the conception of truth as unveiling (ἀλήϑεια). Later, the truth as topology of being represents the consolidation of Heidegger’s turn, which can be summarized by the understanding of language as Dasein’s original foundation. In this case, the normativity of phenomenology would be present, therefore, in the intersubjective experience itself, manifestation of the antepredicative character of the existential understanding. This implies that what is presumed in any judgment finds its foundation in its own being, that is, it is a matter of investigating if and to what measure such transcendental tradition sought to normalize the experiences outside the space-time flow where the structure of the hermeneutische alstakes place. Beyond disruptions and dialogues with the metaphysical tradition, we attempt to investigate how Heidegger’s thought contributes to a history of the concept of truth. Following some repercussions of the debate proposed by Heidegger, we expect to point out in what extent there would be an insufficiency in his questioning of truth, and in which sense that could mean limits for hermeneutical phenomenology.