Chapter Three
§20. The absurdity of attempting to found an essential statement about truth as correctness by having recourse to a factual statement.
Our concern is the founding of the essential determination of truth as the correctness of an assertion. The statement “Truth is the correctness of an assertion” can be sufficiently proven only by the exhibition of an actual correct assertion, a true statement, as a fact, e.g., the statement we gave about the lecture hall. This statement is a true one. Through it, as a true statement, the essence of the truth must be demonstrable:
| This lecture hall with the lights on | (Fact) |
| ↑ ↓ | |
| Factual statement about it | (Factual statement) |
| This itself as a correct assertion, a fact | (Fact) |
| ↓ ↑ | |
| Truth is the correctness of an assertion | (Essential statement) |
| — Essential determination |
But we must have already realized that the appeal to the fact of a single correct assertion can never demonstrate that the essence of truth is the correctness of an assertion. At most, it is the other way around: we could get the idea of offering a particular assertion