consequently, the essence of the "soul" is determined by λόγος, and indeed in a way that is no less essential than the determination by the perceptual look, and if the latter occurs in the lighting of ἀλήθεια, then the λέγειν of the human soul must also be founded by the λόγος which in its essence is nothing else than ἀλήθεια.1
The primordial essence of truth is ἀλήθεια not because the Greeks were visual, but instead the Greeks could only be visual because it is ἀλήθεια that determines the relation of their humanity to Being. This and only this, namely that the essence of truth originates as ἀλήθεια, but precisely in such a way as to conceal itself forthwith, is the event of the history of the Occident.
According to this essential origination of ἀλήθεια, the Occident [Abendland] is the not yet decided or delimited landscape of the earth upon which an evening [Abend] is descending, which as evening essentially takes its beginning from the dawn and therefore harbors in itself the morning of this landscape. Because the essence of truth holds sway as ἀλήθεια, the open and lighted determines what appears therein and makes it comply with the essential form of the look that looks into the light. In correspondence to this appearing look, the disclosing perception and grasp of beings. i.e., knowledge, is conceived as a looking and a seeing.
The look of Being, which looks into beings, is in Greek θέα. The grasping look in the sense of seeing is in Greek ὁράω. To see the encountering look, in Greek θεᾶν-ὁρᾶν, is θεοράω—θεωρείν, θεωρία. The word "theory" means, conceived simply, the perceptual relation of man to Being, a relation man does not produce, but rather a relation into which Being itself first posits man.
To be sure, when later ages and we of today say "theory" and "theoretical," everything primordial has been forgotten. The "theoretical" is a product of the human representational subject. The "theoretical" is the "merely" theoretical. The "theoretical" must, in order to justify its "truth claims" first prove itself by "praxis." Without such proof a relation to "reality" is denied it. Even where, within certain limits, a significance proper to the theoretical is acknowledged, one is calculating that a day will arrive in which it could be applied "practically," a view of its usefulness that subsequently justifies the prior "merely" theoretical comportment as unavoidable. But it is the practical, i.e., success and performance, that is the standard and the justification of the theoretical. Already four decades ago the Americans established this doctrine as the philosophy of "pragmatism." By this "philosophy" the Occident will neither be redeemed nor saved. The Greeks, however, who alone
1 On the Logos of Heraclitus, see Gesamtausgabe Bd 55. pp 185-402, as well as the epilogue of the editor, II, p 405.