What Is Truth? Approaches to Anton Friedrich Koch's Three Aspects Theory

Abstract

Koch’s three-aspect theory of truth is a central element in his most important publications and appears again in his hermeneutic realism. He understands the latter as a contribution to the tradition of dialectical materialism in the wake of Adorno. Hermeneutics is developed in recourse to negative dialectics as a procedure of working interpretatively on the raw materiality of the external world, whereby thinking’s force of negativity, which Adorno emphasized, acquires central importance. Does this mean that Koch’s three-aspect theory of truth ought to be counted as a dialectical-materialist theory of truth? This article develops the thesis that this is not the case. Koch neglects an important moment of truth that contemporary dialectical materialists like Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek emphasize: truth stands for a disruptive force that like an event opposes established spaces of experience and established forms of knowledge.