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§4 [23-25]


This is objectivity correctly understood. The original sense of this concept of truth does not yet include objectivity as universal validity, universal binding force. That has nothing to do with truth. Something can very well have universal validity and be binding universally and still not be true. Most prejudices and things taken as obvious have such universal validity and yet are characterized by the fact that they distort beings. Conversely, something can indeed be true which is not binding for everyone but only for a single individual. At the same time, in this concept of truth, truth as uncovering, it is not yet prejudged that genuine uncovering has to be by necessity theoretical knowledge or a determinate possibility of theoretical knowledge—for example, science or mathematics, as if mathematics, as the most rigorous science, would be the most true, and only what approximates the ideal of evidence proper to mathematics would ultimately be true. Truth, unconcealedness, uncoveredness, conforms rather to beings themselves and not to a determinate concept of scientificity. That is the intention of the Greek concept of truth. On the other hand, it is precisely this Greek interpretation of truth which has led to the fact that the genuine ideal of knowledge appears in theoretical knowledge and that all knowledge receives its orientation from the theoretical. We cannot now pursue further how that came about; we merely wish to clarify the root of its possibility.


b) The history of the concept of truth.


Ἀληθής means literally "uncovered." It is primarily things, the πράγματα, that are uncovered. Τὸ πρᾶγμα ἀληθής. This uncoveredness does not apply to things insofar as they are, but insofar as they are encountered, insofar as they are objects of concern. Accordingly, uncoveredness is a specific accomplishment of Dasein, which has its Being in the soul: ἀληθεύει ἡ ψυχή. Now the most immediate kind of uncovering is speaking about things. That is, the determination of life, a determination which can be conceived as λόγος, primarily takes over the function of ἀληθεύειν. Ἀληθεύει ὁ λόγος, and precisely λόγος as λέγειν. Insofar now as each λόγος is a self-expression and a communication, λόγος acquires at once the meaning of the λεγόμενον. Hence λόγος means on the one hand speaking, λέγειν, and then also the spoken, λεγόμενον. And insofar as it is λόγος which ἀληθεύει, λόγος qua λεγόμενον is ἀληθής. But strictly taken this is not the case. Nevertheless insofar as speaking is a pronouncement and in the proposition acquires a proper existence, so that knowledge is preserved therein, even the λόγος as λεγόμενον can be called ἀληθής. This λόγος qua λεγόμενον is precisely the common way truth is present.


Martin Heidegger (GA 19) Plato's Sophist