appear to be the time to consider once and for all that the counter-word to ἀληθές is not what seems to lie closest, ἀληθές or ληθές or some similar-sounding word, but ψεῦδος. This remark, however, does not completely reveal the enigmatic character of the opposition in question. The word ψεῦδος as the word for the "false" is in fact connected to something we do not find with respect to the word ἀληθές, namely a privative meaning formed on the same stem: το ἀψευδές—the unfalse. But that is exactly what is "without falsity" and hence is the true. At the outset of book Σ ( 18) of the Iliad, Homer tells us of the lament of Achilles and his mother Thetis over his fallen friend Patroclos. The Nereides, the goddesses of waterways, grieve with Thetis; among these goddesses is mentioned in Σ 46 ἡ ἀψευδές—the goddess "without falsity." Now we have only to write this name ἡ ἀψευδές under the name ἡ Ἀλήθεια in order to receive an important clue. If for the Greeks the counter-essence to unconcealedness is falsity and accordingly truth is unfalsity, then concealedness must be determined on the basis of falsity. If, in addition to this, concealednesσ permeates the essence of unconcealedness, then the enigma arises that in the Greek sense the essence of truth receives its character from the essence of falsity. This, however, might very well appear to be a singular mistake if we consider that the "positive" never springs forth from the negative, but, at most, conversely, the latter might stem from the former. Yet we know in the meantime that the Greek name for the essence of truth expresses precisely this enigma, according to which concealedness and the conflict with it are decisive for that essence. And it is precisely therefore that we could surely expect that in the counter-word to unconcealedness, concealedness would be named with an appropriate clarity. But instead of that we hear of ψεῦδος. The counter-words to ἀλήθεια arising from the stem λαθ seem to be missing.
But this is only seemingly so, above all because we translate a familiar Greek word of the stem λαθ, to which ἀλήθεια belongs, namely λανθάνομαι, in such a way that the essential is obliterated. According to the dictionary, λανθάνομαι means "to forget." Everyone understands what that means. Everyone experiences "forgetting" daily. But what is it? What do the Greeks think when they signify by the word λανθάνεσθαι what we call "to forget"?
First of all we need a clarification of λανθάνειν. Λανθάνω means "I am concealed." The aorist participle of this verb is λαθῶν, λαθόν. Here we find the counter-word to ἀληθές we have been looking for. Λαθόν is the being that is concealed; λάθρᾳ means "in a concealed way," "secretly." Λαθόν means what is concealed, what keeps itself concealed. Nevertheless λαθόν, the being that is concealed, is not the counter-word to ἀληθές, the "unconcealed"—that is, insofar as the