Perspicuous Representation: A Wittgensteinian Interpretation of Martin Heidegger’s View of Truth

Abstract

Martin Heidegger criticizes the representational view of language and truth from the perspective of phenomenological ontology. Primarily he criticizes the presupposition that the content of an idea is an object it stands for and that judging is related to having a representation of an object in our minds, in our consciousness. Heidegger’s critique of the representational theory of truth and language goes hand in hand with his critique of modernity. He thinks that in the West, thought about thinking resulted in a discipline of logic gathering special knowledge concerning a special kind of thinking, which is called logistics. Logistics is considered to be the only possible form of strict philosophy because it is integrated with the technological universe, which exercises power over other disciplines in our era. As a result of this, thinking is transformed into one-track thinking generating an absolute univocity. In this paper, I concentrate on Heidegger’s critique of the representational view of language and truth by correlating it with that of Wittgenstein, and by focusing on what sense Heidegger’s critique of the representational theory of truth is related to his critique of modernity. The first part of the article discusses the critique of the representational theory of truth, the second part of the article presents Heidegger’s alternative and the third part deals with his critique of modernity.