(though one which still contains the character of a relation in itself) and, as such a property, is split up into an objectively present relation. Truth as disclosedness and as being toward discovered beings—a being that itself discovers—has become truth as the agreement between innerworldly things objectively present. Thus we have shown the ontological derivation of the traditional concept of truth.
However, what comes last in the order of the existential and ontological foundational context is regarded ontically and factically as what is first and nearest. But the necessity of this fact is again based in the kind of being of Dasein itself. Absorbed in taking care of things, Dasein understands itself in terms of what it encounters within the world. The discoveredness belonging to discovering is initially found within the world in what has been expressed. But not only is truth encountered as something objectively present, rather the understanding of being in general initially understands all beings as objectively present. If the "truth" that we encounter initially in an antic way is understood ontologically in the way closest to us, then the λόγος (statement) gets understood as λόγος τινός (statement about ..., discoveredness of ...), but the phenomenon gets interpreted as objectively present with regard to its possible objective presence. But because objective presence is equated with the meaning of being in general, the question whether this kind of being of truth, and its initially encountered structure, are primordial or not can not come alive at all. The understanding of being of Dasein which was initially dominant, and has still not been overcome today in a fundamental and explicit way, itself covers over [verdeckt] the primordial phenomenon of truth.
At the same time, we must not overlook the fact that for the Greeks, who were the first to develop this initial understanding of being systematically [wissenschaftlich] and to bring it to dominance, this primordial understanding of truth was, at the same ti.me, alive, even if pre-ontologically, and it even held its own against the concealment implicit in their ontology—at least in Aristotle.42
[226] Aristotle never defended the thesis that the primordial "locus" of truth is judgment. Rather, he says that the λόγος is the kind of being of Dasein which can either discover or cover over. This double possibility is what is distinctive about the being-true of the λόγος; it is the comportment which can also cover over. And since Aristotle never asserted this thesis, he was never in the position of "expanding" the concept of truth of λόγος to pure νοεῖν. The "truth" of αἴσθησις and of the seeing of the "Ideas," is the primordial discovering. And only because νόησις primarily discovers, can the λόγος, too, have the function of discovering as διανοεῖν.
42. Cf. Nichomachean Ethics Ζ, and Metaphysics Θ, 10.