a) The intrinsically different meanings of ψεῦδος and "false." The essential domain of the counter-word ψεῦδος as letting-appear while covering up. Reference to Homer, Iliad, B 348ff. Dissembling concealment: the basic meaning of ψεῦδος. Τὸ ἀψευδές: the "dis-hiding," and the ἀληθές. Reference to Hesiod, Theogony, Verse 233f. The ambiguity of ἀληθές.
In order to clarify the essential relations the Greeks see in the essence of ψεῦδος, we should first consider briefly how we understand "the false."1
"The false" means for us, on the one hand, as in the case of "false money" or a "false Rembrandt," a falsified thing. Here the false is the non-genuine. An assertion, however, can also be "false." In that case, the false is the untrue in the sense of incorrect. We also tend to conceive an incorrect assertion as an erroneous one, to the extent incorrectness as error is opposed to correctness as truth. Nevertheless, not every false assertion is an erroneous one. For example, if someone in court makes a "false statement," he does not himself have to be in error. In fact, he precisely cannot be in error; he must rather know the "true state of affairs" in order to be able to make a false statement. Here the false is not the erroneous but the deceiving, the misleading. Consequently, on the one hand the false is the spurious thing; on the other hand, it may be an incorrect assertion; the latter, again, can be a wrong one, that is, an erroneous assertion, or it can be a misleading one. We also, however, call a man "false", we say, "The police have made a false arrest." Here the false is neither the falsified, nor the erring, nor the misleading, but the "wrong" man—not "identical" with the one being sought. This "false" man, as in fact he is, i.e., the wrong man, can, however, be entirely "without falsity." He does not at all have to be a "false" man in the sense of one who is, by cunning, generally inclined toward deception in his behavior and attitudes. Finally, the term "false," in the sense of the wily, is also applied to animals. All cats are false. The feline is the false, hence German speaks of false gold and silver as "cats' gold" and "cats' silver."
So it is clear that the false does not always have the same meaning. Nevertheless we surmise that the various senses of the false are somehow related to one same basic essence. But what this latter is remains undetermined.
Likewise the Greek ψεῦδος, which we readily translate with the word "false," means many different things. We notice that immediately if, e.g., we want to clarify what a pseudonym is. This foreign word is
1 Concerning the word "false," falsum, see pp. 35-38