§44
EX-SISTENCE AND “TRUTH”

Prenotes

1. KINDS AND LEVELS OF ALĒTHEIA

Regarding alētheia, some important distinctions have to be made

1. between the act of dis-closing and the resultant state of dis-closure, viz.,
   • the act of dis-closing (cf. the verb alētheuein)
   • the resultant state of dis-closure (cf. the noun alētheia or adjective alēthēs)³⁶⁸
2. between immediate, non-discursive dis-closure (on two levels) and discursive-synthetic dis-closure (on three levels):
   • 2.1 immediate, non-discursive dis-closure on two levels:
     • Aristotle’s intellectual intuition (noēsis), which is always dis-closive of the being of something
     • sense experience (aisthēsis), which is always dis-closive of the object of sense
   • 2.2 synthetic-discursive dis-closure on three levels:
     • the a priori dis-closure (opening up) of the discursive field of intelligibility
       (alētheuein-1, alētheia-1)
     • the act of taking a thing as something or as for something
       (alētheuein-2, alētheia-2)
     • the act of taking something correctly as or as for something
       (alētheuein-3, alētheia-3).³⁶⁹

2. TRANSLATING ALĒTHEIA

In ¶21 Heidegger insists that “Wahrheit” (alētheia) should never be translated as “truth” unless it refers to alētheia-3.³⁷⁰ Nonetheless, throughout his teaching and writing Heidegger mostly disregarded his own directive. Only at the end of his career did he publish two retractationes regarding that error.³⁷¹

368. Nonetheless, Heidegger often uses alētheia when alētheuein would be more accurate.

369. At GA 97: 456.15–457.2 (nos. 1–3), Heidegger sorts out these three levels and then, with nos. 4–7, supplies four co-equal formulations of alētheia-1. He asserts that metaphysics articulated alētheia-2 and -3 but never knew of alētheia-1 (“kennt nicht einmals”; for a contrary view, see §28, Prenote 3.1, footnote 291). However, elsewhere he argues that some of the pre-Socratic thinkers knew about alētheia-1 but did not understand Existenz-qua-Ereignis (i.e., alētheuein-1) as correlative to it. Hence, in thematizing alētheia-1 and Ereignis, Heidegger is never simply repeating Parmenides and Heraclitus: “Mit dem Ereignis wird überhaupt nicht mehr griechisch gedacht”: GA 15: 366.31–32=61.4.

370. SZ 219.33–37=262.26–29; repeated at GA 45: 98.8–12=87.20–24. In 1964 Heidegger wrote to von Herrmann: “Alētheia als solche hat nichts mit ‘Wahrheit’ zu tun”: Heidegger Studies 39 (2023), 285.14.

371. GA 14: 86.16–20=70.2–5 and GA 15: 262.5–10=161.31–34.

Thomas Sheehan - Heidegger's Being and Time