name this standard determination of the essence of truth as correctness. And when in the process of recasting the Greek way of speaking, i.e., in the transformation of the Greek way of thinking and basic attitude toward beings into the Roman and later Western modes, ἀλήθεια was translated as veritas, then not only was the established conception of truth as correctness transmitted, but, at the same time, through the translation of ἀλήθεια as veritas every resonance of the original essence of truth as ἀλήθεια, unconcealedness, was destroyed. This resonance is also completely suppressed by our word “truth.” Ἀλήθεια henceforth means, according to the essential determination of truth, the same as the correctness of an assertion. What the Greeks once saw and experienced as the original essence of truth no longer has any effect; it has been submerged. (Verum nominat id in quod tendit intellectus.... Veritas principaliter est in intellectu.)1
This process had a still further consequence: to the extent that later centuries up to the most recent times recalled the philosophy of the Greeks and took pains to present their doctrine of truth, truth was then of course grasped in the sense of veritas, as the correctness of an assertion of judging reason. This later determination of the essence of ἀλήθεια as the only valid one was then sought within Greek philosophy, even where a conception of truth as correctness was foreign, i.e., where the original experience of truth as unconcealedness still prevailed. This led to the ludicrous contention that the early Greek thinkers were dabblers and incapable of clearly conceiving the essence of truth and the “problem” of knowledge and judgment, and that only Plato and Aristotle succeeded in doing so.
Thus everything was stood on its head. And this inversion still rules the ordinary scholarly presentation of Greek philosophy. But still more essential than this inverted scholarship itself is the fact that it has blocked our access to the original essence of truth. How so? From what we have said, do we not merely need to get used to translating the Greek word ἀλήθεια with our word “unconcealedness” instead of “truth” in the sense of correctness?
1. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, vol. 1, question XVI, article 1. In Opera Omnia, Parma, 18532. [“The true names that towards which the intellect tends . . . Truth is principally in the intellect” —Tr.]