ON THE ESSENCE OF TRUTH

by the correctness of statements, then neither can untruth be equated with the incorrectness of judgments.

5· THE ESSENCE OF TRUTH

The essence of truth reveals itself as freedom. The latter is ek-sistent, disclosive letting beings be. Every mode of open comportment flourishes in letting beings be and in each case is :a comportment to this or that being. As engagement in the disclosure of beings as a whole as such, freedom has already attuned all comportment to beings as a whole. However, being attuned (attunement)¹² can never be understood as "experience" and "feeling," because it is thereby simply deprived of its essence. For here it is interpreted on the basis of something ("life" and "soul") that can maintain the semblance of the title of essence only as long as it bears in itself the distortion and misinterpretation of being attuned. Being attuned, i.e., eksistent exposedness to beings as a whole, can be "experienced" and "felt" only because the "human being who experiences," without being aware of the essence of the attunement, is always engaged in being attuned in a way that discloses beings as a whole. Every mode of comportment on the part of historical human beings - whether accentuated or not, whether understood or not - is attuned, and by this attunement is drawn up into [88 {GA 9 192}] beings as a whole. The openedness of beings as a whole does not coincide with the sum of all immediately familiar beings. On the contrary: where beings are not very familiar to humans and are scarcely and only roughly known by science, the openedness of beings as a whole can prevail more essentially than it can where the familiar and well known has become boundless, and nothing is any longer able to withstand the business of knowing, since technical mastery over things bears itself without limit. Precisely in the leveling and planing of this omniscience, this mere knowing, the openedness of beings gets flattened out into the apparent nothingness of what is no longer even a matter of indifference, but rather is simply forgotten.

Letting beings be, which is an attuning, a bringing into accord, prevails throughout and anticipates all the open comportment that flourishes in it. Human comportment is brought into definite accord throughout by the openedness of beings as a whole. However, from the point of view of everyday calculations and preoccupations this "as a whole" appears to be incalculable and incomprehensible. It cannot be understood on the basis of the beings opened up in any given case, whether they belong to nature or to history. Although it ceaselessly brings everything into definite accord, still it

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