Abstract

In The Quest for Measure I employ Heidegger's hermeneutical method in order to interpret his own concept of truth. My attempt to "think Heidegger through" seeks to unfold and appropriate the inexplicit, yet sense-giving horizon of Heidegger's thought as a whole: namely, his experience of truth as measure. The goal of my exposition is to open up the genuine questionability of the phenomenon of measure as a binding concern of philosophical inquiry. ;My dissertation is constructed in two distinct stages. Part I unfolds the basic elements of Heidegger's phenomenological method. Part II applies that method to his concept of truth. ;Heidegger's concepts of phenomenology and truth evolved out of his examination of the thought of Husserl. By thinking Husserl through, Heidegger transformed both the self-understanding of phenomenology and its epistemological foundation: the concept of truth as evidence. As a result of this radicalization, phenomenology became the analysis of the ontological ground of givenness. The explication of the "how" of givenness of any phenomenon, however, is propaedeutic to the inquiry into the ontological standard of that explication itself. Such standards not only prescribe how objects of interpretation can present themselves, but also reflect the phenomenologist's inexplicit understanding of the measure of philosophy as such. Accordingly, phenomenology must raise the question of the measure of its own thought. ;The examination of Heidegger's concept of truth demonstrates that ontic evidence presupposes the givenness of an ontological standard which measures the correspondence of intentio and intentum. However, this categorial understanding of Being is grounded upon an understanding of the Being of existence. Man "proportions" his world through the projection of categorial standards upon his objects of concern. Nevertheless, such projection is only possible because Being "apportions" itself as the binding measure of historical existence. ;This exposition of the phenomenon of measure corresponds to the various dimensions of Heidegger's truth concept. The dissertation, however, miscarries, if the technical explication of the phenomenon of measure does not "turn" and pose itself as a question: as the question of the specific measure of our own thought--and the question of the arrogance losigkeit) of thought as such.