Heidegger and Epistemology II

Posted on July 28, 2010
Filed Under Heidegger, Peirce, Philosophy | Leave a Comment

Quick quote from that thesis, “The Status of Epistemology in the Thought of Martin Heidegger,” I mentioned earlier today. Here Bartels is speaking of knowing as bringing out of concealment – an important notion in Heidegger. The idea is that knowledge isn’t merely propositional knowledge or awareness but a kind of know-how for revealing something. Which if you think about how you know makes a lot of sense. When I take a final to illustrate what I know what counts is my ability or know-how for revealing answers to myself such that I can then give them to the professor. When you think merely in propositions and justifications (which can themselves be treated propositionally) then it’s hard to make sense of what goes on during testing. (One of the first reasons I started to become dissatisfied with epistemology in college)

Anyway, here’s the quote. It seems relevant to my earlier musings on epistemology.


Such knowing has little to do with seeking or finding answers. Rather it is most purely expressed in the act of creative questioning itself. Heidegger frequently says that knowing is an ability to learn, and this ability to learn means an ability to inquire. Heidegger also says that knowing is willing to know, and willing to know is questioning. Indeed, the kind of knowledge Heidegger seeks is only possible through “creative questioning and shaping out of the power of genuine reflection.”

Another term Heidegger applies to knowing as this bringing forth out of concealment is techne. This techne is called “that knowledge which supports and guides every human irruption into the midst of beings.” Its nature is further spelled out by Heidegger when he says that techne is a looking out beyond the merely given; it is the ability to put into work the Being of any particular entity. Techne seems to be a kind of insight that one has into Being itself, an insight which one can bring to expression in some concrete work. In other words, by remaining open to new possibilities, by constantly questioning anew even that which seems most beyond question, in striving to give shape and form to any insights thus gained by embodying them in a creative work — through all of this one has experienced the kind of knowledge of which Heidegger speaks. (171-2)

While the way this is considered is almost always in terms of art, it seems to me that one can see it in the kind of reasoning one conducts even in analytic philosophical investigation of epistemology. For Heidegger truth as unconcealment is art. Art as typically discussed by Heidegger is poetry (although not always). Poetry is language. It’s interesting that Peirce makes a somewhat similar move (albeit without the more metaphoric and poetic thrust Heidegger uses). There is a move towards a general sense of language extended as semiotics. Semiotics is logic and epistemology is ultimately a kind of rules of what reasoning is permitted. It’s about language conceived broadly and generally. And conceived of in a game-theoretic mode. Much of what Heidegger discusses in truth as unconcealment can be found in Peirce’s notion of abduction as one of the three forms of logical reasoning. (The others being deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning)

The problem typically raised with respect to the later Heidegger is how truth as art is related to truth and knowledge as traditionally considered. It is an expansion or broadening of phenomenological insight into an artistic insight. However for both Peirce and Heidegger phenomenology describes what is given regardless of whether it is true or not (in the sense of representation). Even if we move from phenomenology into artistic thinking this problem remains. The problem of the lie. Epistemology is the attempt to grapple with this and it seems necessary even within the horizon of the latter Heidegger. (Interesting relative to Peirce one definition of semiotics is that with which it is possible to lie – the place of deception is key)

In Peirce we can make the move of accepting what is given via abduction but which we then test as part of inquiry via induction and deduction. (Roughly the scientific method — although that can be somewhat misleading) Put an other way, we take the insights of artistic thinking and engage with them via a hermeneutics of suspicion.

Related posts:

  1. Heidegger and Epistemology
  2. Heidegger and Science
  3. God, Dasein and Omniscience
  4. Levinas, Heidegger & Objects
  5. Heidegger’s Transformations of Husserl
  6. Heidegger vs. Levinas

Comments

Leave a Reply