Truths—as much as things, events or relations—“are.” Regardless of whether propositions can be heard, [78] tasted, or touched, the essential thing about them (in our interpretation) is their thereness.
Validity has the ontological sense of the stable presence {ständiger Anwesenheit} of something, and Lotze claimed that it determined the kind of being of true propositions. Propositions = truths. Thus, Lotze attributed to truths the being that the Greeks attributed to the world and that they understood as the only and authentic being (since they geared the question of the meaning of being to beings as world). With that we have for the first time gotten down to the roots whence the questions and the answers in the critique of psychologism get their determining power. Truth and the meaning of the true qua proposition—this “true” is directly identified with being as validity.
But with that, the meaning of being is not discussed any more than its provenance and limits are. The question of truth is certainly not posed, and it is not shown why exactly propositions are and must be the proper concretions of truth.
Therefore, to return to the question that guides our endeavors: What have we gained from the interpretation of truth as validity for the authentic question about the essence of truth? Answer: Nothing. In fact, just the opposite. The logic of validity begins by deceiving itself when it thinks that by identifying truth and validity, it has acquired a clear and firm foundation. In any case, this thesis does provide an answer to the question about the kind of being that images have, which in a certain derived way can be true, and as true can have a kind of being that may be called validity. Of course, it requires a further interpretation with a different focus (cf. below)56 in order to show how that sort of thing is possible and to what degree truth can somehow have the kind of being of the φύσει ὄντα.
The logic of validity fails to show:
1. what truth is;
2. that propositions are the original and proper concretions [79] of truth, so that the being of truth could be determined primarily on the basis of true propositions;
3. why these propositions can have a kind of being based on the being of mere thereness;
4. that this meaning of being [viz., “thereness”] is the sole and primary meaning;
5. even less, why being must have such a meaning;
6. and why at all the question about truth is finally coupled with the question about being.
56. [Heidegger may be referring to his treatment of Kant’s schematism, in §31, below.]