THE ESSENCE OF TRUTH
and should not, as the positive, be set over against un-truth as the negative.
2. Even if un-truth qua falsity is something negative, its essence cannot consist in mere negation, but must exercise its own power.
We remain, therefore, on the path we have chosen, and we inquire into untruth. We do not rely on having defined truth, and we do not believe that the essence of untruth can be conjured up by mere negation (i.e. without inquiring into it at all).
Although disposing of the indicated methodological reservation has not advanced our substantive understanding of the essence of truth and untruth, it has brought out an important point: truth and untruth (unhiddenness and hiddenness) are not simply opposites, i.e. opposing denials such that by adding the 'not' and the 'no' the other is already grasped. Instead, the 'not' and the character of the 'no' clearly belong to the essence of both, i.e. to truth as un-hiddenness, but also, in another way, to un-truth qua falsity, as something invalid (something that stands against truth). In the end it is precisely this 'not' which lends to truth, and in a different sense also to untruth, their characteristic power and powerlessness, but which also makes it so difficult to grasp the essence of both and the essence of their connection, so that already in the asking and at the outset we mostly go astray. Briefly put: un-hiddenness and hiddenness are bound up with what is null and invalid, not on the basis of a formal external differentiation of the two, but in themselves. In the question of the essence of truth the question of the 'not' and negation must play a special role.
We shall recapitulate Plato's path toward clarifying the essence of untruth by simply traveling along it. As with the interpretation of the cave allegory, we begin with certain preparatory considerations. In the former case we inquired first into the word for truth, ἀλήθεια, and its meaning. Likewise, we now inquire into the linguistic expression used by Plato and the Greeks to name the opposite of ἀλήθεια (truth). The Greek word for un-truth in this sense, which subsequently attains the status of a technical term, is τὸ ψεῦδος. We can gain some clarity about this term by comparing it with the word for truth.
At a purely linguistic level, we notice two things about this counter-word:
1. that this word has a quite different stem,