of falsum (71). Verum also becomes here rectum understood as what rules (regere, das Regime) and what commands (iustum, 71). To express the extent of the transformation as succinctly and extremely as possible, one can say the following: concealment for the Romans is power and therefore truth, while unconcealment is vulnerability and therefore falsehood.
This does not mean that Heidegger now abandons his thesis that a transformation in the essence of truth already took place with Plato and Aristotle. Yet the thesis is certainly rendered more ambiguous and harder to defend. Heidegger still claims that the transformation in the essence of ἀλήθεια begins with Plato, but now adds that it takes place “above all [vor allem] through the thinking of Aristotle” (72). The location of the transformation primarily in Aristotle seems new and surprising. After all, the influential essay published by the time this course was given is entitled not “Aristoteles Lehre von der Wahrheit” but “Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit.” Yet there is a reason for giving central importance to Aristotle here. Heidegger now locates the transformation in the word ὁμoίωσις, indeed even asserts that this word becomes “as it were the authoritative [maßgebende] ‘representation’ of ἀλήθεια” (73); however, only in Aristotle can one find even an implicit association of this word with the conception of truth.1 In order to locate a transformation of the essence of truth in the word ὁμoίωσις, Heidegger must furthermore interpret this word as meaning “the uncovering [entbergende] corresponding [Entsprechen] that asserts [ausspricht] the unconcealed [das Unverborgene]” (72). In this way, and in this way only, can he see the Greek and Roman conceptions of truth as displaying a fundamental kinship despite the great difference already indicated. For what he can now claim to be the same in both cases is an understanding of truth in terms of correspondence, even if in the case of the Greeks “this correspondence [Ensprechung] still maintains itself and carries itself out fully within the space of the essence [Wesensraum] of ἀλήθεια as unconcealment” (72), while in the case of the Romans it ceases to do so. Specifically, Heidegger describes the kinship as follows: “The Greek ὁμoίωσις as uncovering [entbergende] correspondence [Entsprechung] and the Roman rectitudo as measuring-oneself-against [Sichrichten nach] . . . both have the character of an approximation [Angleichung] of the assertion [Aussage] and thinking [des Denkens] to the state-of-affairs that lies before and stays put [an den vorliegenden und feststehenden Sachverhalt]. Approximation [Angleichung] means adaequatio” (73). It is only by means of this claim that Heidegger can proceed to make the conception of truth as adaequatio intellectus ad rem, the adequation of the intellect to the thing, “metaphysics’ concept of truth”
1. Friedrich Ast’s Lexicon Platonicum (Berlin: Herman Barsdorf, 1908) lists only three occurrences in Plato of the word ὁμoίωσις, which Ast translates as similitudo: Epinomis 990d, Republic 454c, and Theaetetus 176b. None of these passages have anything to do with truth.