Thesis (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2001. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Gadamer's hermeneutical philosophy is an enlightenment of consciousness that intends to correct a false consciousness concerning the power of reason and methods. His concept of the Wirkungsgeschichte presents his hermeneutical philosophy in a nutshell and demonstrates that understanding is more being (Sein) than consciousness (Bewuïstseins. The Wirkungsgeschichte is constituted by three perspectives on the understanding of meaning from three different regions that escape the controlling procedures of method. The first is the experience of art where the concept of play functions as model; the second is the experience of tradition where the concept of dialogue functions as model; the third is the experience of speaking where the concept of translation functions as model. These three perspectives on understanding of meaning together constitute the concept of the Wirkungsgeschichte and their relation is like three concentric circles with the art perspective as the inner circle. The Wirkungsgeschichte transcends the subject-object dichotomy and demonstrates the understanding of meaning as a single event. It is here where Gadamer's concepts of hermeneutics and truth crystallize. Gadamer's concept of truth is not truth as mirror in the way in which it functions in science as the correspondence of correct judgment and reality. The kind of truth he is concerned with, is truth as claim awareness (Angesprochenheity or truth as rock that carries and orientates us. One reaches truth as mirror only approximately and only after methodical procedures; while truth as rock is something that carries us, it is the claim awareness that constantly accompanies us and sweeps us along since we participate in it all the time. Hermeneutics that reflects on understanding is, according to Gadamer, part of Practical Philosophy because understanding, like Aristotle's concept of phronesis, is orientated on the general that must become concrete in the particular. Understanding is, like phronesis, not theoretical, but practical; the conclusion of understanding is also not a theoretical judgment, but a decision on orientation and action as part of the ongoing dialogue that we are. Phronesis as the concretization of the Wirkungsgeschichte functions also fruitfully in Gadamer's response to criticism from the perspectives of text interpretation, theory of science and critique of ideology. The contribution of this dissertation, is to place Gadamer's claim to universality in perspective and typify his one-sidedness as a prophetic appeal. Gadamer does not provide a new method, nor rejects methodical procedures; he simply demonstrates what happens before and while we approach reality methodically. His hermeneutical philosophy is an enlightenment of consciousness which he typifies as part of the Third Enlightenment. As Third Enlightenment his Wirkungsgeschichtliche BewuDtsein helps to ask critical questions to science, and especially to technocracy. In this way Gadamer's hermeneutics becomes Practical Philosophy and the Wirkungsgeschichte is concretized in phronesis as the prudent and sensible concern with life in its striving to deepen humaneness. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Gadamer se hermeneutiese filosofie is bedoel as 'n bewussynsverheldering waarby 'n valse bewussyn oor die mag van die rede en metodes gekorrigeer word. Sy begrip van Wirkungsgeschichte vat sy hermeneneutiese filosofie in 'n neutedop saam en toon aan dat verstaan meer syn as bewussyn is. Die Wirkungsgeschichte word gekonstitueer uit drie perspektiewe op die verstaan van sin vanuit drie onderskeie gebiede wat die kontrole van metodes ontglip. Die eerste is die ervaring van kuns waar die begrip spel as model funksioneer; die tweede is die ervaring van die tradisie waar die begrip gesprek as model funksioneer; die derde is die ervaring van spreke waar die begrip van vertaling as model funksioneer. Al drie perspektiewe op verstaan van sin konstitueer gesamentlik die begrip Wirkungsgeschichte en hulle verhouding is soos drie konsentriese sirkels waar die kunsperspektief die binneste sirkel vorm. Die Wirkungsgeschichte deurbreek die subjek-objek diehotomie en toon die verstaan van sin as 'n eenheidsgebeurtenis. Hieruit kristalliseer Gadamer se begrippe van hermeneutiek en waarheid. Die begrip waarheid by Gadamer is nie waarheid as spieël soos dit funksioneer in die wetenskappe as die ooreenstemming tussen die juiste uitspraak en die ding nie. Die soort waarheid waaroor hy dit het is waarheid as aangesprokenheid of waarheid as rots wat jou dra en oriënteer. Waarheid as spieël bereik jy eers min of meer en voorlopig na metodiese prosedures; waarheid as rots is dit wat jou dra, dit is die aangesprokenheid wat jou voortdurend begelei en meesleur en waaraan jy van meet af aan deel het. Hermeneutiek wat nadink oor verstaan is vir Gadamer deel van die Praktiese Filosofie aangesien verstaan, soos Aristoteles se begrip van phronesis, gerig is op 'n algemene saak wat in die besondere situasie gekonkretiseer moet word. Verstaan is, net soos phronesis, nie 'n teoretiese aangeleentheid nie, maar prakties; die slotsom van verstaan is ook nie 'n teoretiese uitspraak nie, maar 'n besluit tot oriëntering en handeling te midde van die voortgaande gesprek wat ons is. Phronesis as die konkretisering van die Wirkungsgeschichte funksioneer dan ook vrugbaar in Gadamer se reaksie op die kritiek vanuit teksinterpretasie, wetenskapsteorie en ideologiekritiek. Die bydrae wat hierdie proefskrif lewer, is om Gadamer se universele aanspraak in perspektief te plaas en sy eensydigheid as 'n profetiese appél te tipeer. Gadamer poog nie om 'n nuwe metode tot stand te bring of om die metodiese benadering af te wys nie, hy probeer ons bloot bewus maak van wat gebeur vóór en wanneer ons die werklikheid metodies benader. Sy hermeneutiese filosofie is 'n bewussynsverheldering wat hyself tipeer as deel van die Derde Aufklárung. As Derde Aufklarung wil sy Wirkungsgeschichtliche Bewusstsein help om kritiese vrae aan die wetenskap, en veral aan die tegnokrasie, te stel. In hierdie sin gaan Gadamer se hermeneutiek oor in Praktiese Filosofie en vind die Wirkungsgeschichte sy konkretisering in die begrip van phronesis as die verstandige omgaan met die lewe ter wille van groter menslikheid.

I argue that satisfaction and reference—and therefore, truth—are multiply realizable properties. I advocate a novel approach motivated by a commitment to the robustness and fruitfulness of truth-theoretic approaches to natural language semantics. DEFLATIONISM: Philosophers keen on deflating the metaphysical pretensions of truth theories claim that we need not appeal to a substantive truth-property. Recently, however, some philosophers have sought to combine deflationism about truth with the view that our concept of truth or the truth-predicate can play an important role in natural language semantics. TRUTH-THEORETIC SEMANTICS: The goal of a formal semantic theory of a natural language is to provide both the semantic values of that language’s lexically primitive items as well as the semantically significant modes of combining those basic elements into meaningful and more complex expressions. Most approaches have in common a commitment to finite stateability and compositionality as well as a commitment to something like Davidson’s “Convention T.” PLURALISM: Pluralists about truth argue that different areas of discourse have different truth-properties. Can pluralism successfully be combined with a commitment to truth-theoretic semantics? OPEN SEMANTIC FUNCTIONALISM: The pluralist approaches to truth are unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons. The only option, I argue, is to regard truth as multiply-realizable. Specifically, we should view the set of truth’s realizers as possessing non-actual members—as being “open.” Truth is defined in the usual way in terms of reference and satisfaction, but these latter two relations are to be understood as multiply realizable but open. The property of truth can be specified using the Ramsey/Lewis method. My final view—Open Semantic Functionalism—respects compositionality and finite stateability, avoids triviality, handles plurality, and fits with robust, explanatorily significant natural language semantic theories.

Is truth valuable? In addressing this question, one must parse it into questions that are more manageable. Is the property of truth only instrumentally valuable, or is it both instrumentally valuable and noninstrumentally valuable? Is the normativity of the concept of truth an intrinsic or extrinsic property of the concept? In addressing the first of these questions, I show that certain arguments are flawed, arguments that purport to show that truth is not valuable in any kind of way. After establishing that it is reasonable to think that the property of truth is valuable, I show how inflationists and deflationists can agree that the property of truth is noninstrumentally valuable. In addressing the second question, I rely on the distinction between semantics and pragmatics and the resources of moral semantics to claim that the normativity of the concept of truth is an extrinsic feature of the concept. I conclude that the property of truth is both instrumentally and noninstrumentally valuable and that the normativity associated with the concept of truth is an extrinsic property of the concept. In doing so, I suggest that beginning with an investigation about the value and normativity of truth has important ramifications for theories of truth in general.

This essay presents an emerging conception of truth and shows how it appropriates Herman Dooyeweerd’s conception. First I compare my “critical hermeneutics” with other reformational models of critique. Then I propose to think of truth as a dynamic correlation between (1) human fidelity to societal principles and (2) a life-giving disclosure of society. This conception recontextualizes the notion of propositional truth, and it links questions of intersubjective validity with Dooyeweerd’s emphasis on “standing in the truth.” While abandoning his idea of transcendent truth, I seek to preserve the holism and normativity of Dooyeweerd’s radical conception.

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The central problem of the dissertation concerns the possibility of a distinction between truth-evaluable and non-truth-evaluable utterances of a natural language. The class of truth-evaluable utterances includes assertions, con. ectures and other kinds of speech act susceptible of truth evaluation. The class of non-truth-evaluable utterances includes commands, exhortations, wishes i.e. utterances not evaluated as being true or false. The problem is placed in the context of radical interpretation theory and it shown that it is a substantial problem of Davidson‘s early theory of radical interpret at ion. I consider the possibility of distinguishing between locutionary and illocutionary act in uttering a sentence and its significance in the present project. I discuss the suggestion that the mood of the verb of the sentence signifies the required distinction between truth-evaluable utterances and non-truth-evaluable ones. I argue that no criterion for the distinction based on the mood of the verb is adequate. The solution that I propose to the problem of classifylng truth-evaluable utterances appeals to mental states. The view that grounds this line of inquiry is that the truth-evaluability of an utterance is a characteristic of it exclusively relevant to the doxastic dimension of the speaker’s mind. I discuss the constraints that the nature of radical interpretation puts upon the way we construe the notion of belief. I propose that a possible classification of mental states into doxastic and non-doxastic that would result in a classification of utterances into truth-evaluable and non-truthevaluable ones can be given by an elaborated version of a decision theoretic scheme. I suggest that a decision theoretic scheme based on a decision theory that, like Savage’s theory, grants independence axioms is a better candidate to offer a solution to the central problem of the dissertation than a scheme based on a non- standard decision theory such as Richard Jeffrey’s. I conclude by showing that the proposal I make satisfies the constraints I have considered and that it can be accommodated by a radical interpretation theory.

Sous ce titre, nous proposons une lecture de cette œuvre – et en particulier des cours au Collège de France de l’auteur – qui s’articule à trois problèmes. Le premier : comment penser, à même les montages historiques l’opération d’historisation caractéristique de la généalogie foucaldienne. Ensuite, quelle place cette généalogie fait-elle à la vérité dans l’histoire comme dans cette pratique? Enfin, peut-on dire, et en quel sens, qu’il y a une histoire foucaldienne? Nous mettons alors en évidence le rôle fonctionnel de la vérité dans l’histoire, un rôle que nous qualifions – pour le niveau du discours et de l’impact de ceux-ci sur les vies possibles des hommes – d’eugénisme historique. Nous tentons par ailleurs, face à cet eugénisme et pour caractériser l’opération généalogique foucaldienne, de penser celle-ci comme une histoire partisane, et de saisir les conséquences de cette pratique sur la nature de la philosophie. / With this PhD, I propose a reading of Foucault – and particularly the « Cours au Collège de France » which deals with three questions. First, how to think through the historic work of Foucault, the operations which characterize that work and its fictional dimension? Second, what kind of importance do foucaldian “genealogies” carry for Truth in History and their way of practicing historical studies? And last, can we say that there is a foucaldian history? My work demonstrate that, in Michel Foucault’s thinking, Truth – and the way we write the history of Truth in Western Thought – organizes History, a role which has been described in the thesis as “eugenics” because of its consequences on the order of discourses, in science and, consequently, on real and possible ways of living for human beings. We try to think, therefore, against that eugenics and to characterize the way Foucault practiced history, and to understand the consequences of this practice on philosophy?

In contemporary formal theory of truth, model-theoretic and non-classical approaches have been dominant. I rather pursue the so-called classical axiomatic approaches toward truth and my dissertation begins by arguing for the classical axiomatic approach and against the others. The classical axiomatic approach inevitably leads to abandonment of the nave conception of truth and revision of the basic principles of truth derived from that nave conception such as the full T-schema. In the absence of the general guiding principles based on that nave conception, we need to conduct tedious but down-to-earth eld works' of various theories of truth by examining and comparing them from various points of view in searching for satisfactory theories of truth. As such attempt, I raise two new criteria for comparison of truth theories, make a proof-theoretic study of them in connection to the foundation of mathematics.

The meaning of this work is an explanation of Heideggers notion of the truth from the early fundamental ontology, demonstration of its limits and the interpretation of its intensification in the concept of the truth from the texts Vom Wessen der Wahrheit and Platons lehre von der Wahrheit. The explanation of the truth of being from the fundamental ontology is primarely lead by the regard on the distinction between handy being and the being that just occurs and their respective modifications of understanding: handling and gazing. The explanation of Heideggers notion of the truth from the early thirties should refer to deeper level of research, where the basic distinction of being and understanding not yet appears. On this deeper degree finds Heidegger the notion of the truth as the exposure to the being in the openness of relating. This conception of the truth should be introduced as an avoidance of the problematic dualism in the fundamental ontology and as a deeper point of view, in which the truth is not derived from the understanding of existence, but from the ek-sistential exposure to the being, which let itself to be led by it.

According to some logicians and philosophers, future contingent propositions pose a specific problem. Many of those who look into this problem now and those who looked into it (even hundreds) years ago, refer to Aristotle. Nevertheless not in agreement. Our aim is to give an overview of traditional and non-traditional interpretations of the part of Aristotle's work which deals with this issue. On the basis of their comparison we will try to uncover what causes the variety of readings. That will allow us to assess whether the truth of future contingent propositions really is a specific problem and what is its actual nature.