The interpretation has no other task than to discuss the dialogue still once more as originally as possible.
b) The way of access: knowledge and truth. Ἀλήθεια.
Usually knowledge refers to a way of access and a way of relating which disclose beings as such and such and take possession of what is thus disclosed. The knowledge that discloses beings is "true." Knowledge which has grasped beings expresses itself and settles itself in a proposition, an assertion. We call such an assertion a truth. The concept of truth, i.e., the phenomenon of truth, as it has been determined by the Greeks, will hence provide information about what knowledge is for the Greeks and what it is "in its relation" to beings. For presumably the Greeks have conceptually analyzed the concept of "truth" as a "property" of knowledge and have done so with regard to the knowledge that was alive in their Dasein. We do not want to survey the history of Greek logic but are seeking instead an orientation at the place within Greek logic where the determination of truth reached its culmination, i.e., in Aristotle.
From the tradition of logic, as it is still alive today, we know that truth is determined explicitly with reference to Aristotle. Aristotle was the first to emphasize: truth is a judgment; the determinations true or false primarily apply to judgments. Truth is "judgmental truth." We will see later to what extent this determination is in a sense correct, though superficial: on the basis of "judgmental truth" the phenomenon of truth will be discussed and founded.
§3. First characteristic of ἀλήθεια.
a) The meaning of the word ἀλήθεια. Ἀλήθεια and Dasein.
The Greeks have a characteristic expression for truth: ἀλήθεια. The α is an α-privative. Thus they have a negative expression for something we understand positively. "Truth" has for the Greeks the same negative sense as has, e.g., our "imperfection." This expression is not purely and simply negative but is negative in a particular way. That which we designate as imperfect does not have nothing at all to do with perfection; on the contrary, it is precisely oriented toward it: in relation to perfection it is not all that it could be. This type of negation is a quite peculiar one. It is often hidden in words and meanings: an example is the word "blind," which is also a negative expression. Blind means not to be able to see; but only that which can see can be blind.