Heidegger, Tugendhat, Davidson - University of New Mexico

Tugendhat contrasts contemporary “language-analytic philosophy” with an “object-orientated”
conception typical of the modern philosophy of consciousness in both its (Cartesian) epistemological
and (Kantian) transcendental modes. On this object-oriented position in either of these modes, the
primary question for a philosophical discussion of objectivity to address is that of the way in which
objects are given or made accessible to conscious subjects. In particular, while in the first (Cartesian)
mode of the philosophy of consciousness, this question of accessibility is primarily conceived as the
question of the certainty with which I can know external objects on the basis of internal presentations,
on the second (Kantian) mode the accessibility of objects is regarded as transcendentally constitutive of
their objecthood, so that (as in the famous Kantian statement) “the conditions of the possibility of
experience … are at the same time conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience.” (pp. 58-
59).
Although Tugendhat’s main focus in these lectures is not on Heidegger or on ontology in Heidegger’s
specific sense, he nevertheless treats Heidegger as continuing the object-oriented conception of the
philosophy of consciousness in its transcendental mode, albeit while “substituting” for the older,
narrower, concept of consciousness the “broad concept of consciousness” that he characterizes as
“disclosedness.” 44 He then contrasts this transcendental mode of philosophy in general to the languageanalytical
one, which seeks to answer all of the relevant questions about the categories and givenness of
objects on the basis of an investigation of the structure of language, and in particular finds in the
analysis of linguistic structure an alternative to the Kantian conception of the synthetic a priori. From
the analytic perspective, Tugendhat argues that the idea of a “pre-linguistic” basic relationship of
consciousness to objects must be rejected as illusory. In the tradition, the idea of such a relationship
depends upon a representational model based ultimately on sensuous awareness, and even Husserl’s
sophisticated conception of intuition (including the possibility of non-sensuous “categorial” intuition) is
ultimately founded on the idea of such a direct consciousness-object relation. 45 However, Tugendhat
argues, all of the supposedly non-propositional or pre-propositional types of relationship of this sort can
in fact be shown to be logically dependent on “propositional modes of consciousness” involving
attitudes toward propositional contents. In this way, all forms of the object-directed philosophy of
consciousness, including the transcendental one that Heidegger continues, on Tugendhat’s account, can
44 Tugendhat recognizes (p. 60) that Heidegger at least attempts to broaden this concept beyond one simply
characterizing the consciousness of objects. He does so, according to Tugendhat, by allowing the “broadened”
concept of disclosedness to include the specifically non-objectual phenomena of the disclosedness of world and
Dasein as co-constitutive of the disclosure of objects. Nevertheless, according to Tugendhat, Heidegger falls back
into an object-oriented position because of his neglect of the specific structure of sentences:
“In contrast to the disclosedness which is expressed in sentences [Heidegger] sought to exhibit a pre-logical, prelinguistic
disclosedness as more basic (but for the analysis of which he nonetheless took the statement-structure –
the ‘as’, ss. 32 – as his clue). This exclusion of sentences from the core-area of the analysis which results from the
rejection of the logical contradicts the central importance which Heidegger attributed to language (‘Language is
the house of being’). In his statements about language Heidegger therefore reverted to the level of the most
primitive theories of language, in that he emphasized the significance of the word for the disclosedness of beings.
Because Heidegger restricted the notions of objecthood and objectification to the level of statements, objects
could once more gain access through the backdoor of another terminology (that of ‘beings’ and ‘things’) and take
up a dominant and analytically uncontrollable position.” (p. 415)
45 Pp. 62-63.
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