Object, standpoint, and partial truth: Sartre, Heidegger, and Hegel on consciousness, human being, and the absolute

Partial Truth;Philosophers and their Predecessors;History of Philosophy

Garcia Plazaola, Iker

关键词: Partial Truth;    Philosophers and their Predecessors;    History of Philosophy;   

Others  :  https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/44315/Iker_Garcia%20Plazaola.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

美国|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

This dissertation is an attempt to make sense of why (sometimes) philosophers reject pasttheories of x (reality, knowledge, morality, etc.) while they acknowledge at the same time thatthe theories being rejected contain philosophically interesting truth about x (philosophers willtypically say things like: “Theory θ gets things wrong about x, but there’s a grain of truth (aboutx) in it,” “Philosopher Φ is mistaken about x, but he’s on to something,” and so on). The answer Iwant to explore is partial truth, construed not intensionally, i.e., as truth “in part,” butextensionally, i.e., as truth of a part (of an object). A description of the Statue of Liberty, forinstance, that goes: “It’s a tabula ansata, that is, a tablet evoking the law; on it is inscribed thedate of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, (and so on)” can be bothrejected and acknowledged to contain interesting truth; the former, because only a part of theStatue of Liberty is being described, not the Statue of Liberty simpliciter; and the latter becausethat is a part of the right object (i.e., the Statue of Liberty and not, say, the Eiffel Tower). Isuggest that something analogous, in a more complex way, can be seen to (sometimes) happen inphilosophy. If this view is correct, I argue, an interesting explanation can be given of why(sometimes) philosophers have rejected past theories of x while acknowledging at the same timethat the theories being rejected contain philosophically interesting truth: because thosephilosophers have believed the theories being rejected were partially true in the sense justsketched. As examples, I propose J. P. Sartre on previous theories of consciousness, M.Heidegger on previous theories of human being, and G. W. F. Hegel on previous theories of theAbsolute (God). I conclude by suggesting that my model can be extended to additional figures inthe history of Western philosophy, and that my model of partial truth can tell us interestingthings about the nature of philosophy as a theoretical enterprise.