Martin Heidegger
Pentecost, the feast of the Spirit, the Power, and the Truth, demands for its celebration that we not act arbitrarily and discuss whatever we like. Not doing whatever we please is in an original sense that urgent issue toward which Dasein of itself necessitates us. Dasein possesses an intrinsic pull that draws us to truth. But truth is an aim that most properly belongs to science. The Academic Association has in fact not only a relation to the university. Inherent in its very being is the continual deliberation-on-the-sense [Besinnung] of the overt endeavor to cultivate a vital relationship with science and toward truth. Such an endeavor needs a guideline, a secure idea of the aim toward which all research and teaching is directed. The deliberation itself, however, in the sense of the actual confrontation of the individual and his relationship to academic study and the university, is not our topic of discussion here. There is also no need to predetermine it here. It must remain open and must be your very own affair, the affair of your community. Even the pregiven horizon against which such a confrontation takes place must remain open. In order to clarify this horizon somewhat, I have made it my task to clarify the essence of truth.
This requires that we get a better sense of the interchange of question and answer in the scientific conversation. The frigid air of cold deliberation and contemplation, the hardness and necessity of the concept are one thing. The sunny gaiety of play and dance, the free approximations and tentative moves of finding and giving oneself are another. Both are our Dasein. Both re-cover and secure [bergen] this feast and both sustain its celebration. Both must continue to be held in trust [verwahrt] and safekeeping by you as a symbol of your academic community.3
Our considerations are concerned with the essence of truth. This theme requires a more precise circumscription. Its underlying problem calls for a provisional characterization. The consideration itself requires an orientation of its course and a prefiguration of its sequence of steps. We ask about the essence of truth, that is, what truth itself is. This investigation of the essence of truth is accordingly not directed toward particular truths. We are not asking, for example, about a true and authentic life, or the truth of faith, or about the true propositions of the particular sciences. The question is rather concerned with what uniquely defines truths as truths. What is the sense of the truth of a true life? We are therefore investigating what is proper to the truth of a mathematical proposition, what is characteristic of the truth of faith. With such questions we seek no particular truths, but instead inquire into the truth character of these truths. We now require an understanding of the different forms of truth. What is a life-truth as such, a faith-truth as such, a mathematical truth as such? We are not asking about truths but about modifications of truth. When we thus ask about truth as such and its modifications, we then always presuppose the idea of truth as such, which is modified to practical, theoretical, and religious truths. What then makes truth to be what it is? We are searching for truth in general.
It is an extremely general question. Where and how can we find something like truth in general, where can something like it be apprehended, so that we can define it and demonstrate the rightness of the concept thus obtained?
The air gets thin when we discuss such a general question. But such questions have their own atmosphere and therefore also demand their own treatment and investigation. If the concept of truth is not to remain a phantom, an invention of philosophy, but is demonstrable from what truth is, there must be a way to work directly on truth itself and its essence. Which does not necessarily mean that we are taking the right path. What is essential here is that you see the whole of the question of truth in its principal traits.
We are asking about truth as such, as it is in its essence, and not yet about truths. Is the matter in fact ordered in this way? Are we not after all searching for truths, for true statements about the essence of truth itself, for criteria of true knowledge of the very idea of “truth”? Of course!
We are seeking truths, particular propositions, statements that give a revealing account [Aufschluss] about what is sought. But these philosophical truths that we seek do not in this deliberation of sense become a theme of the investigation; they become truth only to the extent that we remain underway in the investigation, which has the peculiarity of being referred to [bezogen auf], along with that about which it questions, the very questioning that is in search of truth. This peculiar “return reference” [Rückbezogenheit] has been called presupposing: In asking about the essence of truth we presuppose particular truths, philosophical truths, and also presuppose that there is something like truth. There are truths, there is truth. How do matters stand with this presupposition? Is it correct, is it in order? What does it mean to say that there is truth, “it gives” truth? What is the sense of this es gibt? Is it given like mountains or houses? How then is it given? In what way is truths, or are truths? Where is truth or truths domiciled, as it were, where is it “at home”? Deliberation- on-the-sense of the essence of truth includes the question of the be-ing of truth and the question of why it must be pre-supposed that there is truth, it gives truth, and what the sense of this presupposition is. The problem is thereby concentrated on two questions: What is truth? and How is truth?, in what way is it?
The problem of the presupposition of truth and of the sense of this presupposition has been touched upon by philosophy since antiquity in connection with the refutation of skepticism. But what gets completely overlooked is that the definition of truth in itself includes the question of the essence of truth. Skepticism is thus disclosed on a basis that is inadequate to the issue. This question itself makes clear why truth is such that it must always already be presupposed. The discussion of its kind of be-ing therefore necessarily belongs to the question of truth.
Philosophy and science in their beginnings did not ask about truth itself. It lies in the drift of everyday experience to ask about what is first available to it. An untypical return to searching and questioning themselves is therefore required. But this does not mean that they lack an understanding of truth. We thus find in the prosaic poem of Parmenides, for example, certainly not a theoretical but nevertheless a universal deliberation on the sense of truth. It is itself addressed as a goddess, as a guide on the path of research:
[Heidegger here reads the proem in German translation apparently at least into Fragment 5 and the goddess’s words on the ways of being and non-being].
The truth accordingly led Parmenides to the way upon which he made the most fundamental discovery that science has time and again made: Being is and non-being is not.
Plato discovered that even non-being is, that even the evil, untrue, and bad is. Although he at first resisted it, he had to become the murderer of his father and revise the thesis that being is and non-being is not. But what does that imply? Nothing less than that the goddess led Parmenides into untruth, or more precisely put, that she concealed from him that even the untruth as non-being is and that she herself as truth is at the same time the possibility of untruth.
There is accordingly something enigmatic about what we call truth. We will not try to resolve this enigma but rather to understand it.
Two Parts:
I. The Concept of Truth as Such
II. The Be-ing of Truth and the Necessity of Truth’s Presupposition
We shall proceed by way of a detour. We shall not begin directly with the characterization of the proper essence of truth, because such an approach would in its method exact demands that are too high. Our way out will be with the traditional concept of truth. We shall ask what from early on, and always with a measure of justification, is understood by truth. What is defined in the traditional concept of truth will be led back to more original fundaments in accord with which the sense of the traditional concept of truth becomes understandable [verständlich, “intelligible”]. The traditional concept of truth is a derivative modification of the original concept. The connection of the two must come to the fore.
1. The characterization of the traditional concept of truth
2. Return to its fundaments
3. The definition of the original concept of truth from its fundaments
4. The demonstration of the derivation of the traditional concept of truth from the original concept.
Two characteristics:
a) The place of truth is the assertion of something about something, the λόγος, or what in modern logic is called the judgment. And the judgments are “from their native home” [von Haus aus = by nature] true or false. It is in judgment that truth is domiciled, at home [beheimatet]. This thesis has become a commonplace. Everyone appeals to Aristotle, the father of logic, to support it.
b) Truth is the correspondence of the judgment with the object, correspondence of the knowledge with the being that is known. This was first formulated by Aristotle and transmitted in his formula, παθήματα τῆς ψυχῆς πραγμάτων ὀμοιώματα, the “lived experiences” of the soul, the νοήματα (“representations”), are assimilations approximating the things.4 Medieval philosophy, which in large measure provides the implicit basis for modern philosophy, received this tradition from Boethius and from the Arabs. It has become generally familiar in the Latin formula that defines truth as adaequatio intellectus et rei (Isaac Israeli’s 10th-century “Book of Definitions”). By way of the Arabs it comes to Thomas, who also uses correspondentia (correspondence) and convenentia (coming together) for adaequatio (agreement). The usual account tends to interject a break with Descartes. With the introduction of the principle of consciousness and the subject, a new philosophy purportedly begins with Descartes. Thereafter, the knowable includes only that which is given in consciousness and excludes the objects that are outside of consciousness. Knowing does not get beyond the bounds of consciousness itself. Only that which is in consciousness is knowable. Kant radicalized this starting point and thereby carried out the “Copernican revolution” in philosophy. Since Copernicus we know that the earth goes around the sun. In like fashion, Kant showed that knowing is directed not toward objects, but rather the reverse, that objects are oriented toward knowledge. The correct sense of the Kantian thesis cannot be explored here. But how does Kant understand the essence of truth? How does he define the essence of truth in the work that realized this “Copernican revolution,” in the Critique of Pure Reason? B82: “The venerable and celebrated question with which it was supposed that one might drive the logicians into a corner . . . is ‘What is truth?’ The nominal definition of truth, namely, that it is the agreement of knowledge with its object, will here be granted and presupposed.” And further: “If truth consists in the agreement of knowledge with its object, then this object must be distinguished from other objects; for knowledge is false if it does not agree with the object to which it is related, even if it should contain something that might well hold for other objects” (B83). And the introduction to the transcendental dialectic adds: “Neither truth nor illusion are in the object insofar as it is intuited, but rather are in the judgment about that object insofar as it is thought” (B350). Thus, Kant also adheres to the traditional concept of truth, so much so that he does not even bring it up for discussion but simply presupposes it.5
Knowledge (Judgment [Ur-teil]) = agreement with the thing.
What does such a “return” mean? It means that we are seeking to lay out and expose that upon which “truth as agreement of knowledge with the things” is based. What is necessarily intended and posited with that “as”? To see these fundaments, it is ever more urgent to characterize that which is here posited as truth. Truth: agreement of something with something (thing: Sache). Something is so . . . as (the subject matter itself ), thus the general character of a relation (of something to something, knowledge to the matter). Truth is a relation. But not every relation is an agreement. A sign, for example a road sign, indicates what is shown. This showing of the sign is a relation to the shown, but this showing as a relation is in no way an agreement (the road-pointing sign does not agree with the village that it points to). To say that truth is a relation is therefore basically to say nothing. What kind of a relation is agreement? Not every agreement is the kind that we mean by agreement (adaequatio, convenentia, correspondentia) of knowledge with the things. The number “6” agrees with “16 minus 10.” An agreement in the sense of equation with regard to the question “How much?” has taken place. Equality is agreement, but truth in an agreement of knowledge with objects is not equality!6 “This board is black”: this judgment agrees with the thing, but this agreement does not mean that the judgment is equal to the black board! What kind of an agreement is it then that lies before us in the relation of truth? Not equality or similarity or accordance [Entsprechung, co-respondence] or an appropriate fit, a fitting match [Angemessenheit], adaequatio? But even these terms are somewhat indeterminate. The key fits into the lock, it is a suitable match, it is in harmony [übereinstimmen] and agreement with it, but the harmonious key is as match to the lock not the truth about the lock, even though we do speak of a wrong (false) key or a right (true) one.
We will not come any further as long as we do not take a look at what the between of this relation of truth consists of. It is the relation between knowledge and object that characterizes the relation of truth. But when we reflect on that, we first arrive at the real difficulty. Knowledge, agreement, is a comportment of the soul, of the mind, of consciousness. It is something in the subject. The thing standing before us is the object outside of consciousness, beyond the inside of the soul. How can there be an agreement between the inside of the soul and the outside of the object?
The cognitive relationship between subject and object has often been interpreted in terms of copying, replication by way of a picture or image [Abbildung]. The true statement or true knowledge is a duplicate of the things outside. This copy theory is just as often refuted, to be sure only negatively and in terms of its consequences. This interpretation always presupposes the incomprehensibility of the truth relation. If I am to judge truly about a matter, come to an agreement with it so that the representations in the consciousness are the actual copy of the thing, then the copying cognition must itself already see what is to be copied, how it is, in order to draw the copy in accord with it. I must already know how the things outside look in order to copy them in the right way. What does it mean to say that “I must already know how the things outside look”? I must have a true knowledge of the being that is outside. A true knowledge of truth is then a copy? How is this copy itself demonstrated and identified as the truth? In this manner it is shown that the interpretation of truth as the duplication of things in representation is impossible. One tries to reject these things by means of a reductio ad absurdum.
However, the positive argument against the copy theory is different. Not by way of the consequences but in regard to the foundations, by laying out the grounds! On this issue it must be asked whether knowing has the character of a copy consciousness at all. “The board is black.” When I upon perceiving the board so judge, do I first have in my consciousness a copy which I relate to something outside? Not even a trace of it can be shown. The board itself is the copied being. The theory is not to be rejected because it leads to impossible consequences. It is instead constructively falsified by what must be laid down in advance, by the definition of the sense of the cognizing true judgment. This is what the copy theory misses.
How does it stand with the relation knowledge-agreement-object on the one side, and the relation knowledge-thing on the other side? Modern logic states that agreement is not the agreement of representing as a psychically real process with a real physical thing outside. Rather, the agreement persists between the stated content of the statement and the being, thus not with any representations floating around in my soul but with the content of the sentence: the board is blackness. The content of the sentence is the whole of meaning that it intends, the sense of the judgment. The being-black of the board agrees with the thing, the blackboard. It is therefore an agreement between sentence content = judicative sense and physical thing. The sense and the content of meaning of what is meant in the sentence: what precisely is that? It is something ideal, an ideal being. This ideal being, the being-black of the board is the same in all the real judgments that we now together at the same time make about this thing as well as repeat at various other times. The psychic development of the judgment is different in everyone, but the meant content of the statement is the same. This sameness of meant content is called the ideal sense of the judgment. It is supratemporal, eternal. It has been identified, with some justification, with the Platonic idea.
How is agreement between ideal being and real being possible? What sort of being does this agreement itself have? Is it something real or ideal? Or what is it? This question is probably insoluble because it comes from a reversed approach. We are asking about the state of affairs of the “true judgment.” How is it then, when I make the true statement “The board over there is black”? Am I directed toward a judicative content such that I demonstrate its agreement with a thing? In no way! No more than I am related to representations in my consciousness am I related in my statements to an ideal sense whose agreement I establish. In the statement, “This board is black,” I am only related to the board itself. The popular psychology says that when I do not see it, I merely have a representation of the board. What does that mean? It is a pure construction. That I merely have a representation which I do not see when I judge only means that I make the board present to myself, but what I intend is the board itself. Even in presentifying it, thus even in merely representing it, the being itself is intended. “The Freiburg cathedral is made of red sandstone.” I have a mere representation, but I mean the cathedral itself. When I judge from memory that the forest was then so and so, nothing is being judged about the agreement of a representation which has a certain disposition in my soul; rather, I mean the forest itself, the being as it was then! In the natural judicative comportment, I am from the start related and only related to the meant, judged, and known being itself.
When I make the attempt to demonstrate the judgment, it means that I must see the board itself. The demonstration consists in identifying, by seeing the board itself, what is intended in the presentification with what is now intuited. The demonstration and verification of a sentence thus consists of the following: On the basis of seeing the board itself, I bring into coincidence what is meant in the presentification with what is now intuited, I now apprehend it as the same being. But even in this bringing into coincidence, I am not related to representations in my consciousness. Instead, bringing into coincidence is carried out as an identification of the very same intended being itself. The stating, the comporting relating that we characterize as true, has the distinction of always already relating itself to the being itself. We thereby waive from the start a presupposition that is most often made in the discussion of the truth relation, which is also taken as a relation between subject and object, as if only the representation were first given in the consciousness within and then the consciousness would have to go out to the object, or one would have to explain the form of truth. This approach is a pure construction. I am always already outside with the beings, I am already always in a world. This is the basic state of the affairs: My own be-ing as human Dasein always grounds the phenomenon of truth. This is the fundament that we must now make present to ourselves with more precision.
Being-in-the-world is a basic character of Dasein, a unified basic definition of my Dasein. Insofar as there is at all a being that we call Dasein or living, it is in a world. This is where we must start in order to understand the traditional doctrine of lumen naturale [natural light]. Understood philosophically, we can say that human Dasein has the sort of being that sustains a light within itself; it is in itself “lighted” [gelichtet]. The chair is in the world differently. It does not have that in which it is as space. The ground that it touches is inaccessible to it, closed, while our way to be is such that we are in each instance, in accord with our essence, already in a world. Even a jellyfish already has, when it is, its world. Something like a world, a being that it itself is not, is revealed to it, uncovered. For the chair, however, a world is beyond any possibility of being discovered or concealed. The Dasein is therefore, inasmuch as it is according to its essence in the world, discovering. It has, in various degrees of distinction-and-articulation [Deutlichkeit], discovered the beings around it. The Dasein is, insofar as it is defined by being-in-the-world and in accord with its proper essence, discovering. Subject—Dasein—Being-in-the-world-discovering: It already sees and has already always sighted other beings that it itself is not. The Dasein is discovering: this is the authentic and proper sense of truth. Truth means nothing but being-discovering! It is not an arbitrary definition selected at random. The sense of truth as being-uncovering is nothing other than the sense of truth as the Greeks understood it ἀ-λήθεια, unconcealment (λήθη, the concealed). ‘Ο λόγος ἀληθεύει, “the λόγος is uncovering, it is true (today everyone says, “the judgment is true”!). This is the original sense of truth, as the Greeks already suspected but did not themselves overtly apprehend. It is the fate of Greek philosophy, and probably every philosophy, that it conceals what it is itself on the way to discover. They saw the essence of truth without comprehending its proper fundaments. They provided the inducement for taking truth as agreement and thereby for no longer regarding being-true as being-discovering.
How7 does the concept of truth in the sense of agreement come from the concept of being-true in the sense of uncovering? The Dasein is discovering, the world is disclosed to it, it understands its world within certain limits. But with the understanding of its world, Dasein at once understands its own be-ing, its beingin- the-world, its way of relating itself in the world and relating to itself. Already co-discovered and co-disclosed is my own Dasein with regard to its comportments and its possibilities to be. We therefore only arrive at the proper concept of truth when we see that being-discovering, disclosing other beings, co-originally also relates itself to the beings that have the kind of be-ing that Dasein has, other human beings. Dasein thus includes the disclosure of the world, one’s own being, and other human beings. I already understand the other in a certain way even when she is incomprehensible. Only because of this understanding can she be incomprehensible and remain so!
Dasein is, in accord with its essence, in the truth (truth as disclosedness). But Dasein is first of all and most of all everyday in a particular kind of truth. We busy ourselves in an everyday way with things, we get absorbed in all the things we have to do, we lose ourselves in what we do, one’s own Dasein is thereby forgotten. But there is always the possibility for Dasein to return to itself. The original kind of uncovering is not the statement about something but the primary comportments which we call seeing and hearing in the broadest sense. I hear a car: The psychologists say that I first have sensations of noise and sound which subsequently are apprehended as the noise of a car. But this is a pure construction. What I first hear is not a sensation of sound, I first simply hear the car. Hearing a pure noise requires an advanced experimental setup in the psychological laboratory. The statement only explicates what is already discovered.
The way of Dasein is to discover. Likewise, one’s own Dasein is not discovered through psychoanalysis and psychic sleuthing, but through the way of be-ing in which it itself resides, through action. Dasein is situated in action. Acting involves resolute openness toward something. Such an openness is the basic mode in which I find myself. Resolute openness toward what? Such an openness does not say what I am, in which it recounts something about my psychic constitution. It is rather related to a willingness to have a conscience, the resoluteness to not allow the conscience to be distorted, which would make it impossible for conscience to disclose the Dasein itself. This inner voice of conscience is what properly discloses the Dasein to me, to the extent that I am intimately with myself. This unique way of uncovering and disclosing that lies in the conscience and prescribes for me the temporally particular possibility of my be-ing, this mode of resolute openness has the character of keeping silent. The voice of conscience speaks in silence. Every other mode of uncovering expresses itself, becomes λόγος, comes to words and language. The basic constitution of Dasein has the intrinsic possibility of being called by itself through conscience and summoned to its proper be-ing. The resolve of willing to have a conscience, the conscience itself, is therefore the proper be-ing of Dasein. Truth proper is the conscience because Dasein itself is in the truth.
How do we get from disclosedness to the concept of truth as agreement? First of all, we make statements in our everyday preoccupation. What we know and can do has come to us largely from what we have heard and read. We ourselves have never seen much of what we know and can do. It is often enough for something to be said in order for it to be true. It has been said, so it must be! As the definition of a being, how it is, first shows itself in the statement about things, so in philosophy the λόγος, speech, comes to be regarded as the bearer of truth. The peculiarity of the everyday chatter of idle talk is that it intends beings without experiencing them and understanding them in their proper being. Everyone fixes upon what has been said. But what is meant in the speech merely has an empty relationship to us, and not an original one. What has been said itself becomes to some extent free-floating and detached, though it still has a certain relation to what it intends. Moreover, inasmuch as the statement takes what it talks about to en-close [bergen] and secure the truth within itself, but no one questions how this itself precisely is, but rather takes it as something that in fact occurs, one then construes the statement, and indeed talking itself, as an extant thing. The λόγος is composed of words, words are brought forward and form a unity, the verbal whole implicates a certain relation to the intended being itself. One has an extant something characterized by λόγος juxtaposed to a thing. Inasmuch as something is therein intended, we have a relation. This detachment of living speech from identifying demonstration results in having the question of truth set primarily in the free-floating λόγος itself. A world must then be constructed in conjunction with the λόγος and it is denied that the λόγος transcends the bounds of consciousness.
The truth does not have its original place in the statement. Rather, the statement is true and can uncover only because it is a relationship, and ontologically a mode of Dasein itself! The statement has its possibility-of-being in the truth itself, in the constitution of Dasein, in that it discovers. Be-ing true in the sense of uncovering and disclosing is a character of Dasein itself, the basic way of its be-ing. It is from its native home [von Hause aus] disclosive. We also designate the uncovered and disclosed itself as the truth, as the actuality [Wirklichkeit] that is apprehended just as it is, the uncovered as such. Then there is truth as genuineness, e.g., true gold, real gold. True gold is that which has the kind of being that corresponds to its idea, that is, to the pure possibility that is uncovered in the idea.
The idea of truth as disclosedness thus necessarily implies that truth is disclosedness of something and for something (properly for Dasein). Every truth is truth about and truth for! These relations are essential, they are inherent in the structure of truth itself. Essential to truth is its binding force, it is said: binding for all. Truth would be the highest truth, which is universally valid. Whether something is true or uncovered does not depend on how many agree with the proposition which formulates what is uncovered. The idea of the truth as a goal of science indeed includes objectivity.
But this does not mean that scientific truth must be accessible to each and everyone, binding for each purely and simply, acknowledged by everyone. The idea of scientific truth involves the claim to objectivity, that is, commensuration with the matters. When something is scientifically uncovered and the conditions of access are realized and can be repeated, then scientific truth is binding for each and everyone, regardless of what each personally intends for themselves and how they take their position to the matter. Science is objective. It can be objective only because it is relative, related to the conditions of access and the possibilities of the original ontological relationship to what must be uncovered in Dasein.
How8 is there truth, how is it given, how does “it give” truth?
Everyone says that truth exists in itself, and that it holds absolutely and eternally. Truth in the original sense is a definition of Dasein. There is truth, it gives truth, only when and as long as Dasein is. If we were to consider the possibility of a moment in which all human Dasein were obliterated, then there would no longer be truth. 2 × 2 = 4? Surely this proposition is true even when no human being exists? But it would be nonsense if truth means uncoveredness in a Dasein. This however does not mean that the state of affairs that is intended in a true proposition, in this case “2 × 2 = 4,” no longer continues to exist. When Dasein no longer is, the propositions do not need to become false. They can no more be false than they can be true! As long as Dasein is, there is truth. As long as we are, we are in the truth. We cannot say what there would then be and what there still is when Dasein no longer is. For then the sense of be-ing also no longer is. A being understood in its be-ing then no longer is. The world could then quietly continue to exist if there are no longer human beings.
Is truth not all relative then? Indeed, all truth is relative. But that does not mean to say that what is discovered in the truth would be subjective opinion; rather, precisely as discovered the being is so, just as it is! A being can only be discovered as discoverable and true. Therefore, that truth is and that there is truth is a peculiar kind of certainty, not an absolute one in the sense of a theoretical or a mathematical or a formally logical certainty, but rather a certainty of the fact of Dasein itself. That there is truth is just as certain as the fact that I will die. Only because Dasein is essentially in the truth and its world is already uncovered for it, while it itself by and large loses itself and forgets itself, only because Dasein is in this way, can it and must it be in untruth.
Co-original with truth factically there is also error. Error and untruth are not matters that are left out and, regarded as unsuitable surplus, left to the common sense for discussion. Untruth, error, insanity, illness are co-original with what we are calling Dasein. Only so do we sense the power and uncommon dedication that lie in the excellence of our be-ing, such that we may acknowledge this power and become free for the matters themselves.9
3. Das Ver-wahren der Wahr-heit, “holding truth in trust (troth, truth), safeguarding it,” was before 1926 (esp. in 1922; see chap. 14) frequently played upon by Heidegger to emphasize the conservative tendency of the habits of truth. Perhaps for the first time in this 1926 talk, bergen (to shelter) begins to take over the same function of secure safekeeping, bringing with it the added notes of “to cover, conceal, en-close” as in a covert “cove,” harbor, or valley sheltered by mountains (Berge). Around 1930, Heidegger coins the word entbergen (to take out of cover), and these two words along with the old word in this family, verbergen (to conceal) and their variants (e.g., Verborgenheit, “concealment,” “secrecy,” “retirement”; the one frequently used in Being and Time) will henceforth play the major roles in the later Heidegger’s accounts of the covert “essence of truth.” To preserve the truth means to provide a covering shelter for it (the academic community!?), to maintain its secrecy, to safeguard its mystery (e.g., of the Holy Spirit).
4. Aristotle, De interpretatione, 1.16a6. Compare BT, 214, in § 44a which is entitled “The Traditional Concept of Truth and its Ontological Fundaments” (BT, 214–19).
5. Compare BT, 215.
6. Compare BT, 215–16.
7. In comparison with the title of this subsection, § 44b in Being and Time is entitled “The Original Phenomenon of Truth and the Derivation of the Traditional Concept of Truth” (BT, 219–26).
8. In comparison with the title of this section, § 44c in Being and Time is entitled “The Mode of Being of Truth and the Presupposition of Truth” (BT, 226–30).
9. Our scribe notes that his transcription is especially incomplete in this abrupt close, missing “perhaps one or more sentences.” It appears to be a final allusion to the Pentecostal occasion, in view of the return to the themes of “Power” (Kraft) and “dedication” (Weihe, “consecration”) as well as the associative connection with the issues of “untruth, error, insanity, illness.” Heidegger the orator never comes to any discussion of the second theme announced for this concluding part, the necessity of the presupposition that “It gives truth” (compare BT, 227–29), which of course is introduced in some detail, e.g., in its relation to classical skepticism (BT, 229), in the opening remarks of this Pentecostal talk before the Academic Association.
Martin Heidegger - On the Essence of Truth (Pentecost Monday 1926)
Vom Wesen der Wahrheit - Vortrag gehalten von Prof. Martin Heidegger am Pfingstmontag
1926 in Marburg vor der Akademischen Vereinigung
Translated and edited by Theodore Kisiel.
Original PDF version from Becoming Heidegger.