4
Introduction [19-21]

of truth in order to give significance to the word. A special consideration is first needed if we are to introduce ourselves into the realm of meaning of the word "truth." "Unconcealedness," though, is different in appealing to us immediately, even if also here we first probe uncertainly for what is properly meant.

Second, the word "unconcealedness" indicates that something like a suspension or cancellation of concealedness belongs to the Greek experience of the essence of truth. The prefix "un-" corresponds to the Greek ἀ-, which grammar calls "a privativum." What kind of privatio, deprivation, and taking away is at stake in a privative word-formation depends in each case on what it is that is exposed to the deprivation and impairment. "Un-concealedness" can mean concealedness is taken away, cancelled, evicted, or banned, where taking away, cancelling, evicting, and banning are essentially distinct. "Un-concealedness" can also mean concealedness is not allowed at all, that. although possible and a constant menace, it does not exist and may not arise. From this multiplicity of meanings of the prefix "un" it is easy to see that already in this respect un-concealedness is difficult to determine. And yet it is precisely here that a basic feature of the essence of un-concealedness comes to the fore, which we must expressly hold in view in order to experience the primordial Greek essence of "truth." This opposition resides in un-concealedness itself. In the essence of truth as un-concealedness there holds sway some sort of conflict with concealedness and concealment.


Recapitulation


2) The question of the name of the goddess and how to translate it. The essence of truth as opposed to concealedness, according to the first two directives. Un-concealedness and Un-concealedness.


The first passage we are clarifying belongs to Fragment I and begins with verse 22: καί με θεὰ πρόφρων ὑπεδέξατο, ... "And the goddess received me with sympathy ... "

The goddess appearing here is the goddess Ἀλήθεια. We ordinarily translate: the goddess "truth." This goddess greets the thinker upon his arrival at her home and reveals to him what he has to experience henceforth; it will be for this thinker the to-be-thought and will remain from now on in the history of truth what is primordially to be thought. We can easily discern, if only in broad outlines, that the essence of this goddess "truth" decides everything about the thinker and the to-bethought. Therefore, prior to the formal clarification of the individual


Martin Heidegger (GA 54) Parmenides