the false is not itself something false. It is so far removed from that that the essence of the false might even participate in what is most essential to the essence of the true. It could indeed be so difficult to find the truth, and therefore we find it so rarely, because we do not know, and do not want to know, anything about the essence of the false. It could be that we are wandering about in an uncanny delusion if we believe the essence of the negative is itself something "negative." Who knows nothing of the essence of death lacks every trace of a knowledge of the essence of "life." The essence of death is not a non-essence. The essence of negativity is nothing negative, but neither is it only something "positive." The distinction between the positive and the negative does not suffice to grasp what is essential, to which the non-essence belongs. The essence of the false is not something "false."
Τὸ ψεῦδος—we usually translate "the false"—is, for Greek thought, "dissembling." Dissembling lets something it sets out and sets up appear differently than it is "in truth." In the "different than" resides the "not-such-as," which, experienced on the basis of "dis-hiding" and unconcealedness, brings about a concealment. Nevertheless, insofar as dissembling not only sets "something else" before—namely, before what is to be presented—but lets something appear otherwise than it is "in truth," dissembling also unveils and hence is a kind of disclosure. If ψεῦδος were altogether without this basic feature of hiding and "dishiding," and hence without the feature of concealing, then ψεῦδος could never arise as the counter-essence to ἀλήθεια, unconcealedness. "The false," in the Greek sense, has the basic feature of concealment. To keep immutably in our sight the primordial Greek experience of ψεῦδος, we need to clarify how the essence of the false is delimited beyond the Greek world and even beyond its historical time, though there too it is still understood in general in the shadow of the light of ancient Greece.
The word "false" is an un-German word and derives from the Latin falsum, which, as participle, pertains to fallere. Of the same stem is our word "fell," to bring about a downfall, and the Greek σφάλλω. We translate this Greek word by "deceive," but we must not forget that "deception," understood in the Greek way, is determined by ψεῦδος, by dissembling and setting-before, by hiding. In Greek thought, the word σφάλλω, "I deceive," names a consequence of the essence of ψεῦδος. In Latin thought, the word fallere as "to bring to a fall" denotes the ground of the essence of ψεῦδος. What is the basis for the priority of fallere in the Latin formation of the counter-essence to truth? It lies in this, that the basic comportment of the Romans toward beings in general is governed by the rule of the imperium. Imperium says im-parare, to establish, to make arrangements: prae-cipere, to occupy something in advance, and by this occupation to hold command over it, and so to have the occupied as territory. Imperium is commandment, command.