THE FOUR STAGES OF THE OCCURRENCE OF TRUTH


But is all this really to be found in the fourth stage? Or have we violently inserted it? Plato does not speak anywhere of hiddenness, the word does not occur here at all. Nor is there any extensive treatment of the shadows as illusion [Schein]. Could it be that Plato was unaware that untruth is opposed to truth? Not only did he know this, but the great dialogues he wrote immediately after the Republic have nothing else but un-truth as their theme.

But untruth is surely the opposite of truth!? Certainly. But this untruth: can we simply call this hiddenness? The hiddenness of beings is not yet untruth qua falsity, incorrectness. It does not follow from the fact that I do not know something, from the fact that something is hidden and unknown to me, that I know something false, untrue! Hiddenness and concealing are ambiguous here. On the other hand we see that the shadows or appearances, which are just the opposite of true beings, by their own nature show and announce themselves, i.e. they are manifest, unhidden. What is peculiar here is that the hidden is not without further ado the false - while illusion, the false, is always and necessarily something unhidden, therefore in this sense true. How does all this fit together?

The essence of ἀλήθεια is not clarified, so that we come to suspect that Plato does not yet grasp it, or no longer grasps it, in a <ι>primordial manner. Yet was it previously grasped in such a way?

In what kind of labyrinth do we find ourselves! It remains this way today. We see in any case that even if Plato had treated expressly of shadows and illusion in the fourth stage, unhiddenness would not have been grasped in its full essence. But if hiddenness is not grasped primordially and totally, then un-hiddenness certainly cannot be grasped. And yet Plato treats of ἀλήθεια in its antagonism to illusion! This can only mean that the cave allegory does indeed treat of ἀλήθεια, but not such that this comes to light in its primordiality and essence, i.e. in its antagonism, characteristic of φύσις (being), to the κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ, thus to hiddenness as such and not just to the false, not just to illusion. If this is so, however, then in Plato the fundamental experience from which the word ἀ-λήθεια arose is already disappearing. The word and its semantic power is already on the road to impoverishment and trivialization.

How could we venture such a weighty assertion? However, before we can decide about this suspicion, we must first bring our whole interpretation of the cave allegory to the conclusion demanded by its content, i.e. we must take up the question of how the idea of the good relates to the essence of truth, and what it means for Plato in general.


[92-94]

67


Martin Heidegger (GA 34) The Essence of Truth