of the essence of truth in the Occident, rejoins an unfolding of the essence of truth that began already with the Greeks and that at the same time marks the inception of Western metaphysics.
d) The transformation of the essence of ἀλήθεια since Plato. The assumption of the "representation" of ἀλήθεια through ὁμοίωσις (as rectitudo of ratio) into veritas. Rectitudo (iustitia) of ecclesiastical dogmatics and the iustificatio of evangelical theology. The certum and the usus rectus (Descartes). Reference to Kant. The closing of the ring of the history of the essence of truth in the transformation of veritas into "justice" (Nietzsche). The incarceration of ἀλήθεια in the Roman bastion of ventas, rectitudo, and iustitia.
Since Plato, and above all by means of Aristotle's thinking, a transformation was accomplished within the Greek essence of ἀλήθεια, one which in a certain respect ἀλήθεια itself encouraged. Ἀληθές is first of all the unconcealed and the disclosing. The unconcealed as such can be disclosed for humans and by humans only if their disclosing comportment adheres to the unconcealed and is in agreement with it. Aristotle uses the word ἀληθεύειν for this comportment, to adhere to the unconcealed disclosively in the saying that lets appear. This adherence to and agreement with the unconcealed is in Greek ὁμοίωσις—the disclosive correspondence expressing the unconcealed. This correspondence takes and holds the unconcealed for what it is. To take something for something is in Greek οἴεσθαι. The λόγος, which now means assertion, is constituted by the οἴεσθαι This disclosive correspondence still adheres to, and is wholly achieved within, the essential space of ἀλήθεια as unconcealedness.1 At the same time, however, the ὁμοίωσις, i.e., the agreeing correspondence, as the mode of the execution of ἀληθεύειν, assumes, as it were, the definitive "representation" of ἀλήθεια. This is, as the non-dissembling of beings, the assimilation of the disclosive saying to the disclosed self-showing beings, i.e., it is ὁμοίωσις. From then on, ἀλήθεια presents itself only in this essential form and is taken only in that way.
Veritas as rectitudo, stemming from another origin, is now, however, in a sense created to assume into itself the essence of ἀλήθεια in the henceforth "representative" form of ὁμοίωσις. The rightness of an assertion is its adjusting itself to a right rightly instituted and firmly established [Die Richtigkeit der Aussage ist ein Sichrichten nach dem Errichteten, Feststehenden. Rechten]. The Greek ὁμοίωσις as disclosive correspondence and the Latin rectitudo as adjustment to ... both have the character
1 On ὀρθός and ὀρθότης, see below, p. 81.