as-structure, which we earlier characterized as the basic hermeneutical structure.
We may now summarize the three structural conditions of falsehood.
1. The orientation to the uncovering of things—the prior intending
and having of the subject matter.
2. Within this basic comportment of uncovering—in fact, dominated
and guided by it—there is the showing of the subject matter in terms of something else. Only on the basis of this structure is there any possibility of passing something off as something else.
3. At the same time, such showing-something-as-something-else is
based on the possibility of synthesizing something with something.
Before going on with our discussion, let’s take some examples of deception and the covering-over of beings. Say I am walking in a dark woods and see something coming toward me through the fir trees. “It’s a deer,” I say. The statement need not be explicit. As I get nearer to it, I see it’s just a bush that I’m approaching. In understanding, addressing, and being concerned with this thing, I have acted as one who covers-over: the unexpressed statement shows the being as something other than it is.
We can point out how the three conditions are present in this deception:
1. It is necessary that beforehand I already have something given to me, something coming toward me. If something did not al-ready encounter me from the outset, there would be no occa-sion to regard it as . . . Always already there is a priori disclosure of world.2. It is also necessary that, as I approach the thing, I take it as some-thing. In other words, in the field of everyday experience, I don’t just stand there, as it were, in the woods and have something simply and immediately in front of me. A situation like that is pure fiction. Rather, in an unexpressed way, I encounter some-thing that I already understand, something that is already articulated as something and, as such, is expected and accepted in my way of dealing with the world. [188] Only because I let what-ever encounters me encounter me on the basis of the act of envi-sioning something (say, a deer), can that thing appear as a deer.3. And the encountering-being can show itself to my act of envi-sioning “as this thing” and “in this way” only because, along with the encountering-being and the other things present in this world (particularly in the lived world of “forest”), some-thing like “a deer” can indeed be present among the trees. This