Heidegger aletheia essay

As he puts it, "Only the essence of truth understood in the original Greek sense of aletheia--the unhiddenness that is related to the hidden (to something dissembled and disguised)--has an essential relation to this image of an underground cave.

For Parmenides, ἀλήθεια (aletheia,truth,disclosure) was a Adair 5 coming-forth out of Λήθη (lethe ,forgetfulness, hiddenness, concealment) into presence. 18 Heidegger sees in the Heraclitean logos a specific relationship that early Greek thinking had with aletheia. Heidegger suggests that for Heraclitus the unthought is aletheia, or disclosure.

Heidegger gave an etymological analysis of aletheia and drew out an understanding of the term as 'unconcealedness'. Thus, aletheia is distinct from conceptions of truth understood as statements which accurately describe a state of affairs ( correspondence ), or statements which fit properly into a system taken as a whole ( coherence ).

On both sides Heidegger draws extensively upon the ancient Greeks, on their understanding of truth as aletheia and their determination of the beginning of philosophy as the disposition of wonder. In addition, these lectures were presented at the time that Heidegger was composing his second magnum opus]