dependencies on one another, but philosophy itself does not thereby make an appearance, for no real question is asked —and that is because, as ones who have come later, and specifically as people of today, we can claim to know better, and already do know everything much better, than these old thinkers did.
The recollection of the first shining forth of ἀλήθεια, as we require it and which we hold to be possible only on the basis of the question of truth, may be articulated in five levels of reflection:
1. The unexpressed flaming up of ἀλήθεια in the pronouncements of Anaximander.
2. The first unfoldings of ἀλήθεια, though not ones explicitly directed to a foundation, in Heraclitus, Parmenides, the tragic poets, and Pindar.
3. The last glimmering of ἀλήθεια within the question of beings (τί τὸ ὄν) as the basic philosophical question in Plato and Aristotle.
4. The extinguishing of ἀλήθεια and its transformation into ὁμοίωσις (correctness).
5. The mediate and mediated transition from ἀλήθεια to ὁμοίωσις on the by-way over incorrectness (falsity — ψεῦδος).
For the purpose of these lectures, we will follow only the middle of these five levels, the third, and even then only the last glimmering of ἀλήθεια in Plato. We will do so, of course, not in the mode of an empty survey of Platonic philosophy but by participating in Plato’s philosophizing. All of his dialogues, indeed nearly every fragment of his dialogues, direct us mediately or immediately to the question of ἀλήθεια. We will choose, however, a pre-eminent fragment from a dialogue, which not only deals explicitly with ἀλήθεια, but also displays a pre-eminent character in the very way of dealing with it, insofar as Plato there, as we say, speaks in an “allegory.”