et rei).30 This kind of truth can occur only when we make a claim about a state of affairs in a declarative sentence. I might claim (rightly or wrongly) that I am presenting something in speech just the way it appears “in reality,” just as it shows up in and of itself (i.e., “from” itself: ἀπο-ϕαίνεσϑαι, de-clarare), rather than expressing my feelings, intentions, and wishes about the thing (in the subjective or optative moods, expressing my attitude toward what I’m saying). The Greek name for a declarative sentence—one that makes such a claim—is λόγος ἀποϕαντικός or simply ἀπόϕανσις. If our claim conforms to the state of affairs, it is possessed of apophantic truth (correctness). If our claim does not hold up, we’re stuck with apophantic falsehood (incorrectness). I maintained that the spatula was in the drawer, and sure enough it was. I declared that it was a deer I saw in the forest at twilight, but on closer observation it turned out to be a bush.31 In other words, the fact that a sentence is apophantic (= is in the declarative mode) does not guarantee that it is true, only that it could be true—or false.
However, the state of affairs against which an apophantic claim is measured must itself be already disclosed to us in one way or another if our statement about it is to be either correct or incorrect. This means that apophantic truth or falsehood necessarily presumes a prior disclosedness qua intelligible availability of the subject matter of the statement. Therefore the possibility of correspondence truth depends on:
ἀλήθεια-2, which is the prior, pre-propositional (pre-apophantic) intelligibility of a thing or a state of affairs. This prior intelligibility, which is always already operative in our everyday world, is what Heidegger initially called “ontic truth.”32 However, that phrase can be misleading insofar as “ontic truth” might seem to imply that our pre-propositional awareness of things always discloses those things as what they “really” and “correctly” are. But that would be ἀλήϑεια-3. Yes, things are always disclosed meaningfully as something, even if the “something” turns out to be wrong (e.g., we see the bush as a deer). The ἀλήϑεια-2 of a thing is its unavoidable meaningfulness rather than its disclosedness as it “truly” and “correctly” is. And finally, at the root of ἀλήθεια-3 and -2, and making both of them possible, there is:
ἀλήθεια-1 (or ἀλήθεια-prime), the thrown-open/dis-closed “space” that ex-sistence itself is and that makes possible both the intelligibility of things
30. Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, quaestio 1, articulum 1, corpus. See SZ 214.26–36 = 257.24–35.
31. GA 21: 187.17–20 = 158.14–17.
32. GA 3: 13.15–16 = 8.40: “Offenbarkeit des Seienden (ontische Wahrheit).” GA 5: 37.17–18 = 28.10–11: “ ̓Αλήϑεια[-2] heißt die Unverborgenheit des Seienden.” Re ἀληϑής as the “disclosedness” (not the “truth”) of something, see above, chapter 2, note 136, on Augustine’s use of verum in De Genesi ad litteram.