Chapter Four
§27. The turning of the critical question of truth toward the beginning of the history of truth as a leaping ahead into the future. Ἀλήθεια as experienced by the Greeks though not interrogated by them.
First of all, do our previous discussions of the question of truth contribute toward exhibiting the necessity of that question? To be sure. Thus the elucidation of the Greek concept of truth was in no way superfluous.
1. It showed that the Greeks were already acquainted with two senses of truth: first as unconcealedness (openness of beings) and then as the assimilation of a representation to beings (correctness).
2. This observation protects us from the preposterous claim of having raised a “new” question with our initial critique of the ordinary concept of truth. If a recognition of the greatness of Greek thinking keeps us, at the very outset, free from such preposterous notions and from the desire for novelty, our discussion of the Greek notion of truth will then have a special significance for our inquiry, and everything comes down to this:
3. Our critical questioning back from the ordinary concept of truth as the correctness of an assertion to the openness of beings