word, in everything it denotes, exclusively in the Greek way. Ἀ-πάτη is the off-way and the by-way. For the Greeks, however, the basic feature of the way—ἡ ὁδός, ἡ μέθοδος ("method")—is that by conveying along the course, underway, it opens up a view and a perspective and hence provides the disclosure of something.
In connection with this remark on the essence of the way, we must recall the first verse we selected from Parmenides' "didactic poem," where the goddess greets the thinker arriving on a "way" and immediately reveals to him that it is his destiny to have to go along an extraordinary way ἐχτός πάτου, outside of, off, the path men usually tread. That means something else will show itself to the thinker on his way, a view the usual way does not offer to men. Since something extraordinary shows itself on the revealing way of the thinker, we have here a self-showing, i.e., a disclosing, in a "distinguished" sense. That is also why a larger fragment of the "didactic poem" speaks of σήματα, "signs." There exists an essential connection between the essence of the goddess Ἀλήθεια and the ways leading to her home, which are determinable on the basis of this home. "Way," as providing appearances by opening up a view and a perspective, belongs within the realm of ἀλήθεια. Conversely, ἀλήθεια and its holding sway require the ways. This essential correlation between ἀλήθεια and ὁδός later comes to be known only in a concealed manner, as far as its essential ground is concerned, i.e., in the "fact" that a "method" is necessary to obtain correct representations. The way, πάτος, πάτη, of the thinker does indeed go off the usual path of men. Yet we leave it open whether this "way off" is just a by-way. It could also be the reverse, that the usual way of man is merely a perpetual by-way ignorant of itself. A way off the path, however, does not have to be a by-way in the sense of what is "way out" and unusual. Even a by-way is again not necessarily an off-way. The latter, however, is called ἀπάτη. The views afforded by the off-way represent distortions of that which comes into view on the way leading straight to the thing. "To lead on an off-way" is to mix up the ways, it is a kind of dissembling and distorting, a kind of ψεῦδος, and hence is deception. Everything of this sort "runs" counter to unconcealedness, counter to truth, and is consequently a kind of untruth, or, put in the Greek fashion, a not-disclosing and hence a concealing.
The essence of ψεῦδος, thought as the Greeks understood it, receives elucidation from the essence of ἀλήθεια, from unconcealedness, i.e., from disclosedness. Ψεῦδος, as the counter-essence to ἀλήθεια, is then more clearly determined as dissembling concealment. Ἀλήθεια for its part emerges more determinately as disclosedness in the manner of a non-dissembling letting-appear. Unconcealedness is non-dissemblance.