sense but is the absolutely correct (intellectus divinus). A still deeper foundation for this is the evidence that all traditional ontology determines the ens qua ens under the guidance of the act of thinking and its truth, i.e., correctness.
If the Greeks experienced truth as a characteristic of beings, then this truth must be founded in beings themselves. Or should we not rather say here that the truth as a characteristic of beings belongs to these beings? Should the truth as experienced by the Greeks characterize the essence of beings themselves, i.e., of beings themselves as understood by the Greeks? These are not questions posed to empty possibilities; they are well warranted, for precisely where another conception of truth (as the correctness of an assertion) had already developed and established itself in Greek philosophy, namely in Plato and Aristotle, beings and truth were always mentioned together: ἀλήθεια καὶ ὄν—“unconcealedness: that is to say, beings as such.”1 Beyond a doubt, we are to understand καὶ here as an explication, in the sense of “and that is to say,” for often instead of even mentioning ὄν, they said simply ἀλήθεια or τὸ ἀληθές.
It goes so much against our habits to think of unconcealedness, with complete decisiveness, as characteristic of beings as such that even when we have gained insight into the distinction between the unconcealedness of beings and the correctness of an assertion, we still too readily conceive of unconcealedness as detached from beings, as if it were an addition, accessory to beings.
But why did the Greeks not inquire into ἀλήθεια as such, if it does indeed belong to beings themselves, and if in fact the question of beings as such was the primordial and constant question of the Greek thinkers? Why did ἀλήθεια remain precisely the unquestioned? Why did it not become the most worthy of questioning? And when ἀλήθεια was interrogated explicitly, why did the very way of questioning turn ἀλήθεια as unconcealedness into ἀλήθεια as correctness? We today are hardly able to measure the full consequences of this determination and are likely to take them, in spite of everything, as historiographical subtleties relating to what is long past and gone, rather than as directives to a decisive event which is still decisive over us; nevertheless, we must put this questioning aside now and attempt a first answer.
1. Cf. Plato, Republic VI.