Heidegger on Truth

Heidegger’s On the Essence of Truth, acrylic, 2007 

I spent a lot of time reading Heidegger in the 1990s and at one time made a diagram to help myself understand one of his more difficult essays, “On the Essence of Truth”. I had managed better with his more familiar aesthetic writings like “The Thing” and “The Origin of the Work of Art” so it was really frustrating not being able to grasp this one any better. The diagram gave me an anchor as I went along, though it’s hard to see now how it can have provided a holistic image of Heidegger’s ideas. At any rate the intersecting fields and multidirectional arrows convey something of the overlaid complexity of his thinking. In 2007 I finally had an opportunity to turn the diagram into a wall painting.