to which all commission and omission and all judgments about things are connected in advance, that to which our historical humanity is attached. The true means for us here that for which we live and die. This true is “truth.”
Already from these brief reflections we can infer that the word “truth” is not univocal. It means the true, first of all whatever is at any given time correct in knowledge and in action and disposition, and then, more emphatically, that upon which everything depends and from which everything is ruled and decided.
But even if we heed this plurivocity, in the context of speaking about the true and truth, we can nevertheless claim, and indeed rightfully, that in this seeking of the true–even if we mean what is decisively true–we are still not yet raising the question of truth: that is, insofar as we consider truth that which makes something true true and determines every single true thing to be the true thing it is. Just as cleverness is what distinguishes all clever people as such, so truth, rigorously thought, means what determines all that is true to be so. For ages, that which universally determines every individual thing has been called the essence. Through it, anything and everything is delimited in what it is and is delineated against other things. Truth means nothing but the essence of the true. Truth comprises that which distinguishes something true as such, just as speed indicates what determines speedy things as such. Thus to raise the question of truth does not mean to seek a true or the true but to seek the essence, i.e., to define the universal properties of whatever is true. Thereby we encounter for the first time the decisive ambiguity in talk of the “question of truth.”
§11. The question of truth as a question of the essence of the true: not an inquiry into the universal concept of the true.
‘To raise the question of truth can mean: (1) to seek the true, (2) to delimit the essence of everything true. It is easy to discover which of these two ways of raising the question of truth is the more urgent and the more important. Obviously, it is the search for the true and above all in the sense of the true that rules and decides everything. In comparison, it appears that the question