2) What is worthy of questioning in the determination of truth hitherto (truth as the correctness of an assertion) as compelling us toward the question of truth.
The question of truth, as it has been treated hitherto, is a “problem of logic.” If from this “problem”—i.e., from the moribund question—a living question is to arise, and if this is not to be arbitrary and artificial, but necessary in an original way, then we have to strive for a genuine experience of what is compelling us toward the question of truth.
The determination of truth up to now, and still valid everywhere in the most varied trappings, runs as follows: truth is the correctness of a representation of a being. All representing of beings is a predicating about them, although this predication can be accomplished silently and does not need to be pronounced. The most common form of predication is the assertion, the simple proposition, the λόγος, and therefore the correctness of representation—truth—is to be found there in the most immediate way. Truth has its place and seat in λόγος. The more precise determination of truth then becomes the task of a meditation on λόγος, a task of “logic.”
What can now compel us to turn the usual definition of truth as correctness of representation into a question? This can indeed only be the circumstance, perhaps still hidden, that the unquestioned determination of truth as correctness contains something worthy of questioning which by itself requires being put into question. It could be objected that not everything questionable needs to be made the object of a question. Perhaps; therefore we want to examine whether and to what extent there is in the usual determination of truth as correctness something worthy of questioning in the first place, and whether, furthermore, it is of such a kind that we cannot pass over it unheeded and unquestioned — supposing that we claim to be informed about the truth, in accord with others and with ourselves.
§6. The traditional determination of truth as correctness.
We say that an assertion, or the knowledge embedded in it, is