8 - Truth as alētheia and the clearing of beyng

Summary

The Greek word alētheia is typically translated as “truth”. Once this translation is in place, interpretations of alētheia trade on the meanings primarily associated with “truth”. The traditionally dominant meaning in this regard is correctness (the correctness of a thought or assertion) and, in fact, as early as Homer, a cognate of correctness, homoiōsis, served as a synonym for alētheia. Thus the correctness (orthotes) of a thought or assertion tends to be understood in terms of its agreement or correspondence (homoiōsis) with a state of affairs. Nevertheless, Heidegger takes exception to the interpretation of alētheia as correctness or correspondence alone, regarding it as a derivative notion of truth. This sort of interpretation overlooks the fact that alētheia has a much richer significance that notions of correctness presuppose. Alētheia in that more basic sense signifies the “unhiddenness” (Unverborgenheit) of what is asserted. For example, “The tree is sprouting” is true, that is, correct, only if the tree shows sprouts. Since what is hidden is hidden from someone, truth as the unhiddenness of “things” also entails their actual or potential presence to someone, someone with an understanding of them. The unhiddenness signified by alētheia is accordingly irreducible to either subjects or objects. Not surprisingly, so taken were certain Greek thinkers with this sheer manifestness or presence of things that they identified it as a principal way of saying of something that it exists.