the transformation of truth into correctness and falsehood into incorrectness “blocked the insight that and how untruth belongs to the essence of truth” (320). Heidegger then sketches (320–21) the way Plato could have taken but did not take. He could have recognized that what is seen in Ver-sehen shows itself in such a way that it hides itself and that this “self-concealing [Sich-verbergen] in and through self-showing [das Sich-zeigen] is seeming [das Scheinen]” (320– 21). This seeming could then have been seen as an unconcealment [Unverborgenheit] to which concealment [Verborgenheit] essentially belongs (321). Yet it is precisely this relation between truth and untruth that cannot push its way through “under the domination [Vorherrschaft] of λόγoς (the transformation [Umbildung] of δόξα into ‘opinion’ [‘Meinung’])” (321). But why did Plato force truth and untruth under the domination of λόγoς instead of giving the relation between truth and untruth its due? Heidegger comments that Plato could have gone the way of seeing how truth and untruth belong together; why he did not do so “is in the end a mystery of the spirit itself [ein Geheimnis des Geistes selbst]” (320). Yet by now we should consider the true “mystery of the spirit” to be why Heidegger, against the evidence of the text, insists that Plato did not go the way of thinking truth and untruth together and instead subjected both to the assertion. Socrates, as noted above, explicitly identifies the falsehood he wishes to test in Theaetetus’s opinions with semblance as opposed to genuineness. Furthermore, all of the dialogue’s attempts to explain false δόξα independently of true δόξα fail, presumably because, according to the above suggestion, we are meant to see both as belonging together in the dialectical striving that characterizes the soul’s relation to being. To say that they belong together means that they are so entangled that they can be extricated only through the constant give-and-take of question and answer. Indeed, Socratic dialogue, as continually under the power and threat of semblance, illustrates especially well the belonging-together of truth and untruth. As for the subjugation of truth and untruth to assertion, a subjugation that would block insight into what is shown at work in Socratic dialogue itself, this has been seen to be nothing more than Heidegger’s invention. Plato not only could have pursued the way Heidegger describes, but actually did so. The mystery is why Heidegger refused to see this.
C. CONCLUSION: HEIDEGGER’S ORTHODOXY
With the critique of Plato for failing to think truth and un-truth as belonging together, Heidegger is only returning to the thesis with which he introduced his reading of the Theaetetus. There he argues that there is a discrepancy between the Greek conceptions of falsehood and truth, shown by the fact