attribution then of course enables Heidegger to maintain his thesis that truth is here on the way to becoming mere correspondence and correctness. “The not-hitting-on [Nicht-treffen] is a missing [ein Verfehlen] of the appropriate predicate. The not-hitting-on is a missing of the right direction [der rechten Richtung]: a being-incorrect [Un-richtig-sein]. The self-mistaking looking-at [sich-versehende An-sehen] of what encounters (as Socrates) is an in-correct speaking-of [un-richtiges An-sprechen] what encounters. Incorrectness in the predicate means incorrectness of the asserting [Unrichtigkeit des Aussagens]. In this way Plato comes to grasp the essence of the ψεῦδoς as in-correctness of the λόγoς, of the assertion [Aussage]” (319). In this way the thesis of a transformation in the essence of truth is upheld.
Of course, a little question remains to be asked: on what basis does Heidegger suddenly and at the very end of the course attribute to Plato a conception of the ψεῦδoς as the failure to hit on the right predicate that corresponds to what is seen? The astonishing answer is that Heidegger does little more than assert that this is Plato’s view. As we have seen, he already abandoned earlier a careful exegesis of the text, and he does not return to such exegesis here. The only text he cites (319) in support of his interpretation is 194a3, where Socrates compares false belief to a bad archer who misses his target. Yet, as can be learned from the text, though not from Heidegger’s loose and very incomplete account of the text, the conception of false belief that underlies the archer example, that is, false belief as a mismatching of perception and thought, is explicitly rejected by Socrates as hopelessly inadequate. Furthermore, we have seen that Socrates’ discussion of the aviary example even rejects the characterization of false belief as a mismatching of thoughts with thoughts (ἡ τῶν ἐπιστημῶν μεταλλαγὴ, 199c10). Therefore, if the dialogue has anything to say about correspondence, it is that false belief cannot be adequately interpreted as a lack of correspondence between two things, whether thoughts or perceptions. Yet Heidegger forces precisely such an interpretation on Plato by ignoring the refutations and citing 194a3 with a complete disregard for its context.
Furthermore, even the account of false belief that emerges from the Wax Tablet Analogy does not support the account of false belief as a failure to hit on the right predicate. To make it do so, Heidegger must misinterpret the phenomena themselves, insisting that in order mistakenly to see Theaetetus as Socrates, I must have both Theaetetus and Socrates “in mind” (Vergegenwärtigung) (318–19). Yet this insistence is clearly mistaken: I could “mis-see” the man coming down the road as Socrates precisely because I have no prior acquaintance with Theaetetus and therefore do not know that there exists another person who looks so much like Socrates. This is precisely the kind of example Theaetetus adduces at 191b. If the example is dismissed there as impossible because resulting “in our knowing and not knowing the things