104 | HEIDEGGER’S ONTOLOGY OF EVENTS
untruth in terms of the Greek ἀλήθεια and λήθη. Untruth or λήθη, is not falsity or the failure of truth, but a necessary, coessential dimension of it. Ἀλήθεια and λήθη structurally entail one another and together form an ongoing ontological dynamism. As the alpha-privative of ‘λήθη’, the word ‘ἀλήθεια’ (‘ἀ-λήθεια’) exhibits this correlation.
Two main stages of the a-lēthic account can be identified. The first is expressed in Sein und Zeit, where ἀλήθεια and λήθη are the ‘Unverborgenheit’ (‘unhiddenness’/‘unconcealment’) or ‘Entdecktheit’ (‘uncovered ness’/‘discoveredness’) and ‘Verborgenheit’ (‘hiddenness’/‘concealment’) of beings in a world.5 This is a phenomenological account of the nature of truth, since it describes the way beings become present as phenomena for Dasein and recede from that presence.6 Ἀλήθεια and λήθη are grounded in (and thus dependent upon) Dasein’s Erschlossenheit (disclosedness) and are co-extensive with the phenomenal world of beings disclosed by Dasein. Said differently, they are aspects of Dasein’s own existence in its constitutive correlation with a world of such beings.
The nature of truth, particularly its relation to logic, was a central concern in Heidegger’s early work before the 1927 publication of Sein und Zeit.7 Yet in the decade after, the problematic of truth takes on a prominent role in his treatment of the Seinsfrage itself. It is during the same period that ‘event’ rises to the forefront of his characterisation of being. In this period a second stage of the a-lēthic account of truth emerges, which is expressed well in ‘Vom Wesen der Wahrheit’. There, a shift occurs in Heidegger’s ontology: he recasts the elements of the essence of truth, placing them in a position diagenically prior to human existence. He begins to use the hyphenated ‘Da-sein’ to refer to the determinate field or finite world grounding human existence and understands ἀλήθεια and λήθη to provide the ontological structure of this field. With this shift, Heidegger begins to shed the properly phenomenological stage of his methodology required for the existential analytic of Dasein. His account of the essence of truth retains much of the phenomenological terminology but deploys it in increasingly structural rather than descriptive senses. In this picture, the a-lēthic essence of truth comprises correlated ontological structures or processes that enable beings to come to presence as part of a world, that is, to be. Truth or ἀλήθεια becomes understood as Freiheit (freedom), Offenheit (openness), or Lichtung (clearing), which designate an ontological structure that enables the movement of unconcealment, disclosure of beings, or origination of a meaningful world.8 Untruth or λήθη becomes originary Verbergung/Verborgenheit (concealing/concealment) or verbergenden Entzugs (concealing withdrawal), the ground enabling ἀλήθεια.9 In this account, truth as ἀ-λήθεια articulates at least three correlated things: (1) the terrain of beings or meaning constituting a world, (2) the genetic
5 SZ 219/262; alternative translations cited from the Stambaugh translation of SZ 210.
6 For more on Heidegger’s phenomenological conception of truth, particularly as it responds to Husserl, see Dahlstrom, Heidegger’s Concept of Truth chapter II.
7 Dahlstrom recounts this well in Heidegger’s Concept of Truth chapter I.
8 Heidegger, Martin, ‘Vom Wesen der Wahrheit’, in [GA9] Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1976), 177–202. English: ‘On the Essence of Truth’, trans. John Sallis, in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 136–54. 188/144, 201/154.