BEING AND TIME: INTRODUCTION AND DIVISION I
and outer objects, and it helps us focus on what Heidegger takes to be essential: the fact that things display themselves to us.57
One advantage of focusing on the fact that things show themselves is that it naturally leads to the question of how it is possible for things to show themselves. As we know, Heidegger's answer is that our own Being, care, makes this possible. Things can be "discovered" only because Dasein is primordially "disclosed", opened up, by care. Dasein is "in the truth" (263/221) thanks to the dimensions of care that Heidegger reviews on 264/221-2.
But Dasein is also "in untruth" (264/222), because falling generates hackneyed, superficial interpretations of the world. As we fall, we get wrapped up in the particular beings with which we are dealing, while the meaning of these beings becomes shallow and dull. For instance, I may be so absorbed in cleaning house that as I straighten out my Degas, I automatically treat it as just another pretty decoration, without suspecting its real artistic power. My everyday understanding of the Being of this work of art does uncover the entity, but only in an impoverished way. In other words, the entity shows itself to me, but in an overly restricted and misleading manner. The unconcealment that forms part of our existence is accompanied by concealment. In Division II we will see that authentic existence can refresh our understanding and "defend [unconcealment] against semblance and disguise" (265/222). However, the battle for truth can never be won once and for all; falling is a permanent tendency in our Being.
If it seems strange to claim that we are both in the truth and in untruth, consider that this claim can apply even to assertions. A statement can be illuminating, yet at the same time misleading. "My Degas is pigment and cloth, just like the upholstery on my old sofa." This statement illuminates a real parallel between the painting and the piece of furniture, but what it primarily expresses is a refusal to acknowledge what is unique to the painting as a work of art. The statement both uncovers and conceals. Dr P.'s description of a glove as "a continuous surface with five outpouchings" is another case in point: it is accurate, but it misses what is essential. In his later writings, Heidegger is fond of saying that such statements are "correct, but not true": that is, they do reveal something, but they shed no light on what is most important - they may even promote an attitude that covers up what matters most. If we extend this principle from the narrow domain of statements to all human practices, we can see that although beings are always manifest to us as we do things, they are usually manifest in superficial ways.
Pages 266-8/223-5 explain the origin of the conventional understanding of truth as correspondence. Once care has revealed things for us, we are capable of making illuminating statements that share these revelations with others. We can then be misled into thinking that the illumination, the truth, is somehow
57. A note on translation: Heidegger never speaks of "what one has in mind" when one makes an assertion (260/217, 261/218). The phrase was gemeint wird should be translated "what is meant". Heidegger always avoids suggesting that meaning is confined to a private subjective domain, such as a mind.
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