Translated by Pete Ferreira
36
Now, summarizing Heidegger's considerations on the question of truth, we can say that through the interpretation of the Aristotelian texts he draws a 'topology' of the places of truth that can be reconstructed as follows: (1) true is first and foremost the entity itself as it has the character of being-discovered, of revealing (ὂν ὡς ἀληθές). (2) Then it is also true of being-there, the conscious life, as it has the character of being-discovering (ὡς ψῡχή ἀληθεύειν). But being-there may be discovering in two fundamental ways: (2.1) sensing, i.e. seizing directly, namely by αἲσθησις (which always refers to its ἴδιον and therefore is always true) or νοεῖν that captures its subject 'touching it' (θιγειν, θιγγανειν) and that cannot be faked, but it may simply not be acted on (αγνοειν); or (2.2) connecting, and precisely in non-linguistic discovering attitude, which can be practical (τέχνη, πρᾶξις) or theoretical (σοφία), or linguistic, whose most lofty form is predication (ἀποφαντικός λόγος).
If, on the one hand, with this differentiation of the concept of truth, Heidegger releases understanding from exclusively referencing predication, and makes it possible to achieve a wider ontological horizon from which it is possible to reconsider the issue, on the other hand, the question still remains open for him, the question of the foundations and of the assumptions on which it rests ultimately, even the very Aristotelian understanding of truth as a characteristic of being. The question Heidegger puts himself is: "What must being itself mean, and how does that let us understand uncoveredness as a characteristic of being, indeed as the most proper characteristic? And does it explain why beings must finally be interpreted, as regards their being, in terms of uncoveredness?"22.
Now, the task of a radical philosophical reflection for Heidegger is first that of questioning around this identification of being and truth and to "explain it in terms of the unexpressed presuppositions—the unexpressed, implicit understanding of being—in Aristotle and the Greeks." 23 In laying bare the roots of this un-thematized understanding of being, Heidegger poses at the same time the basis for interpretation of the history of metaphysics itself.
In fact, so that truth in the sense of being discovered, of revealing, may be classified as a characteristic of being itself, a being must be understood in a certain way, namely how it presences (Anwesenheit). Since only what is first determined as something present, can be taken then as something discovered, unveiled, that is true in the sense that Heidegger finds in the etymology of the Greek word ἀ-λήθεια.
22 GA 21, p. 190. [Logic: The Question of Truth, 161.]
23 Ibid, p. 191. [Ibid.]