Date:          Fri, 10 Jul 1998 16:09:43 EST
Subject:       Re: truth



>> We are asking the question of truth.  The customary determination
>>  of truth runs:  truth is the correctness of a representation, the 
>> correspondence of an assertion (a proposition) with a thing.  
>> Although in the course of the history of Western thinking, 
>> various opinions about knowledge and representation have 
>> arisen and have again and again debated each other and 
>> intermingled with each other, yet the same conception of truth 
>> as correctness of representation remains the standard. ... 
>>
>> But in this self-evident determination  of truth as correctness 
>> there lurks something worthy of questioning:  that multiple-unitary 
>> openness of the things, of the region between things and humanity, 
>> of humanity to itself, and each to the other.  If it were not for this 
>> openness, there could never occur a representing that conforms 
>> to a thing.  For this conforming to...does not first create the openness 
>> of the things and the openness of humanity for what it might encounter.  
>> On the contrary, it settles into an openness already holding sway and 
>> does so, as it were, each time anew.  This openness is therefore the 
>> ground of the possibility of correctness and as this ground it is something 
>> worthy of questioning and inquiry.  At first it is unclear what it really 
>> is that we are referring to here and are calling openness.  And that could 
>> only be one more reason to abandon the inquiry into what we say is 
>> worthy of questioning, especially if we recall that for two thousand 
>> years Western history has been satisfied with the ordinary 
>> conception of truth.
>>
>> _Basic Questions of Philosophy_, pp22-23  
>> [sec. 9, recapitulation 2]
>



Michael Eldred:
	_alaetheia_.

>The granting of the openness that is the truth of being has itself remained 
>withdrawn into encryptedness for over two thousand years. The granting itself, 
>which also goes under the name of propriation, has not affected Western 
>thinking. Only today does an inkling begin to stir which allows an other issue 
>for thinking to emerge from its lethic shelter.
>


Thanks,  Michael, the elegance with which you express the thinking on the
inkling is gratefully appreciated.  During the last few weeks of flurries on this 
list I easily forget the ontological difference, the openness,
I am too often seduced by the entrapment
of representation.  

As we perhaps circle back around to this region of the ongoing conversation
I am hoping others can express their thinking about the 'ground'-- openness--

alaetheia, propriation

Jim, Anthony, Michael S, Steven, Rafael, George, Alan
TMB, (& welcome back Herr Scheetz) --et al-- where do you
"stand" on the "openness" in which representaitonal truth
must appear?  

Sorry to have shut down the flurry...
kindest regards,
henry



     --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---