Martin Heidegger on Aletheia (Truth) as Unconcealment

Descartes's Definition of Truth (under construction)

Leibniz's Definition of Truth (under construction)

Martin Heidegger on Aletheia (Truth) as Unconcealment (Current page)

Selected bibliography on Heidegger's Interpretation of Aletheia as Unconcealment

 

"We come now to a decisive point in Heidegger's development. The effort to ground metaphysics (fundamental ontology) began as a search to illuminate the intrinsic correlation between the Being-process as such and the finitude of the being that comprehends it, sc. There-being. The first step (Sein und Zeit) was to analyse There-being phenomenologically in order to find in the pre-ontic comprehension of Being some means of discerning the sense of Being. Subsequently the author has become more and more preoccupied with Being itself, but chiefly in terms of the problem of truth, since the sense of Being is its truth. The growing importance of the problematic of truth is discernible in all of the works that followed SZ and culminates now in the essay "On the Essence of Truth," where Heidegger thematizes the problem, retaining as intrinsic to it the problem of finitude, sc. the negativity of truth which he calls "un-truth."

Although published late (1943), the text dates initially from 1930. The author admits to several subsequent revisions, which, however, left the point of departure, fundamental position and basic structure of the original work unchanged. Taking him at his word, we assume that the text represents his thought as of 1930, and, although the matter would be very illuminating, must leave to historians the task of disengaging what alterations were made when.

We are relatively well prepared for the study we are about to undertake and do not approach it in a vacuum. We know: that the truth of conformity (between judgement and judged) supposes a still more fundamental truth that resides in the being to-be-judged and enables us to discern whether or not the judgement is conformed to it; that this truth of the being-to-be judged is basically an un-hidden-ness, or open-ness, of that being to the knower; that beings become un-hidden to a finite knower because this knower has a comprehension of their Being- structure antecedent to his encounter with them; that this antecedent comprehension may be conceived as an open horizon, or domain of encounter, or the World (or, for that matter, Non- being), within which beings and There-being meet; that this sphere of open-ness is instituted by the transcendence of the finite There-being; that the transcendence of finite There-being is ontological truth, which, since it renders possible the encounter that occurs in There-being's comportment with other beings, enables the beings-to-be-judged to become manifest (ontic truth); that this transcendence liberates the beings which it encounters from the obscurity that initially enshrouds them by letting them be (manifest), hence must be called freedom; that this transcendence (freedom) is the primary sense of truth; that this transcendence is profoundly finite, therefore negatived, so that truth comports non-truth; that one consequence of the negativity of There-being as transcendence (freedom, truth) is that it is prone to become absorbed in its preoccupation with the beings that measure the truth of its judgements, and forget its true self; that it re-collects its self in re-solve, which thus becomes the eminent mode of truth." (pp. 211-212, notes omitted)

From: William J. Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1974.

"For Heidegger, the de-volution of Western thought began with Plato, for it was with him that νοείν ceased to have the sense of containing the advance of over-powering φύσις and began to assume the special relation to ίδέα, which evolved into what the tradition would call "reason" (Vernunft). We discern the transition best, however, by examining not Plato's use of νοείν but rather the implications of ίδέα, for it was thus that he understood the Being which his predecessors had understood as φύσις. It was Plato's conception of Being rather than of thought which was decisive in the birth of metaphysics. If we recall that φύσις (emergent-abiding-Power) was for the pre-Socratics the process of truth, then the transformation of φύσιςinto ίδέα may be discerned by examining what Plato understood by truth. This the author disengages by an essay upon the famous metaphor of the cave (Politeia VII, 514 a, 2 to 517 a, 7)." (p. 301)

(...)

In Plato metaphysics in the traditional sense takes its rise, for it is he who first conceives of thinking Being as a going "beyond" the beings of experience to their being-ness, which he conceives as their what-ness, their see-ableness, their Idea. Such a conception is possible only because a consequence of φύσις (process of shining-forth) is taken to be the essence of it. Hence φύσις itself becomes for him that-which-is-to-be-seen, a being (είδος). Being thus becomes conceived as a being. Likewise truth, no longer non-concealment, becomes correctness of view, conformity with the Ideas." (p. 308)

From: William J. Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1974.

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"Plato's Doctrine of Truth.(34) This text was composed, according to Heidegger's notes, in 1940 and first published in 1942. (*) Heidegger indicates in a note that the origin of this text is the 1931-32 lecture course on "The Essence of Truth," which contains a long interpretation, first, of the cave analogy in the Republic, then of a portion of the Theaetetus, principally the discussion of Theaetetus's second (though Heidegger calls it the "first") answer to the question of what is episteme, "knowledge is perception." The relationship between the published text, "Plato's Doctrine of Truth," and the lecture course is curious and deserves some initial comment. First, the lecture course contains the most careful, nuanced development of which I am aware of Heidegger's now well-known understanding of aletheia as "unhiddenness." Within its pages are careful, often rich reflections on certain implications both of the cave analogy and of the section of the Theaetetus that he treats." (p. 53)

(...)

Heidegger announces on the first page his guiding thesis: the "unsaid doctrine" that he will elicit in the cave analogy is "a change in what determines the essence of truth" (p. 155). That change, we discover, is from the more originary notion of truth as aletheia, "unhiddenness," to truth as "correctness of vision," a change which, as Heidegger tells us toward the end of the essay, puts us on the fateful path toward modern subjectivism. Let us trace the crucial steps of this change, as Heidegger develops it.

Heidegger's first point is to show, very convincingly, that aletheia in its originary sense of unhiddenness is still very much at work in the cave analogy. He notes that the deeply visual character of the analogy, the notion of moving from shadows to seeing the fire to moving outside the cave to see the things that are "more unhidden," makes sense only within a framework of truth as unhiddenness. 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. Wherever truth has another essence, wherever it is not unhiddenness or at least is not co-determined by unhiddenness, there an 'allegory of the cave' has no basis as an illustration" (p. 172). So truth as unhiddenness is still present in the cave analogy.

But no longer purely. Heidegger now announces that truth as unhiddenness is already infected, as it were, by another, different and more problematic conception of truth that is also at work here. "And yet, even though aletheia is properly experienced in the 'allegory of the cave' and is mentioned in it at important points, nonetheless in place of unhiddenness another essence of truth pushes to the fore. However, this also implies that unhiddenness still maintains a certain priority" (p. 172). This fateful other essence of truth is truth as "correctness of vision"." (pp. 57-58)

Notes

(34) Heidegger adds in a reference note that the “train of thought goes back to the Freiburg lecture course of winter semester 1930–31, “On the Essence of Truth.” It later was published as part of the collection, Wegmerken (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1967). Available in English as Pathmarks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. The essay is pp. 155–182, the “reference” note on p. 380. The essay is translated by Thomas Sheehan, whose translation I shall usually follow.

From: Drew A. Hyland, Questioning Platonism. Continental Interpretations of Plato, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004.

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"Heidegger's analysis of Plato attempts to show that a transformation occurs in the nature of truth in Plato's philosophy, as a consequence of which Being is subordinated to the correct perception of beings. This subordination, Heidegger maintains, characterizes the history of Western n philosophy as metaphysics.

Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit(31) is an interpretation of Plato's Republic, 514A - 517A; an interpretation of the allegory of the cave. It is a reflection upon the relationship between education (paideia), truth (alétheia) and the good (agathon), with the transformation of alétheia as the principal concern.

The allegory of the cave is, for Heidegger, an illustration of the nature and process of paideia. At each level of ascent -- within the cave to the light, and out of the cave to the sun -- the individual experiences a painful blinding. Each stage requires an adjustment and transformation in vision. This transformation in vision expresses the turning of the soul from what is disclosed in one region to what is disclosed within another. This is paideia, according to Heidegger. The relationship of paideia, in this new sense, to alétheia is not apparent because, as Heidegger sees it, we have not only misunderstood the nature of education but, more importantly, have misconceived the nature of alétheia by conceiving it as "truth." If paideia is a transition from one abode to another, affected by the soul's receptivity to what is disclosed within each region, then alétheia is disclosure itself: "At first truth meant what was wrested from a concealment. Truth, then, is just such a perpetual wresting-away in this manner of uncovering." (ibid. p. 32)

Unlike the case of the two distinct senses in which Heidegger employs the term "metaphysics," the two senses in which he employs the term "truth" are made very explicit. Truth, conceived as alétheia, is the plenary mode; truth conceived as a correspondence between an idea and the thing it represents is a derivative mode. Because Heidegger invariably assigns the correspondence concept of truth to "metaphysics," understood in the restricted sense in which it designates the history of Western philosophy, we have called it the "epistemological" concept of truth. "Ontological" truth, on the other hand, designates disclosure itself -- specifically, Heidegger's attempted disclosure of Being.

Heidegger's earliest systematic analysis of the epistemological concept of truth, as well as rejection of it, occurs in Being and Time.

Three theses characterize the way in which the essence of truth has 'been traditionally conceived and the way it is supposed to have been first defined: (1) that the "locus" of truth is assertion (judgment); (2) that the essence of truth lies in the "agreement" of the judgment with its object; (3) that Aristotle, the father of logic, not only assigned truth to the judgment as its primordial locus, but has set going the definition of "truth" as "agreement." (Sein und Zeit, 7 Aufl., Tübingen, 1953, p. 214).

In keeping with the original emphasis in Being and Time, Heidegger asserts the presence of this conception of truth in Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant, (rather than Plato and Nietzsche), before continuing with his explicit analysis of the "epistemological" concept of truth. In the course of his analysis several important points are raised. The problem underlying what we have called the "epistemological" concept of truth, Heidegger points out, is the nature of the agreement -- adequatio, correspondentia, convenientia -- between a judgment and its object: "Every agreement, and therefore 'truth' as well, is a relation. But not every relation is an agreement." (p. 215) Heidegger goes on to raise and answer in the negative the question whether the "agreement" can be conceived as a relation of equality. But "If it is impossible for intellectus and res to be equal because they are not of the same species, are they then perhaps similar?"(p. 216) With reference to similarity as a possible basis for the relation called "agreement," Heidegger points out that within the judgment itself we must distinguish between the psychical process and the ideal content of judgment. Any "similarity" relation of a judgment to its object (truth) must refer to the ideal content, rather than the psychical processes of judgment. But such a distinction merely raises an additional problem: "How is the relation between ideal being and real being to be grasped ontologically?" (ibid.)

To this question, Heidegger maintains, the philosophic tradition has no meaningful answer: "Is it accidental that no headway has been made with this problem in over two thousand years?" (pp. 216-217) In fact, Heidegger goes even further in the sentence which immediately follows the preceding one, by suggesting that this entire procedure -- trying to discern the nature of the adequatio which characterizes a truth relationship between rei et intellectus -- may be fruitless: "Does the perversion of the problem already lie in the approach, in the ontologically unclarified separation of Real and Ideal?" 38 It is of some importance to emphasize that Heidegger not only discussed and rejected the "epistemological" concept of truth, as early as Being and Time (1927), but that he regarded it the sustaining one to be found in Western ontology. And, of course he suggested an alternative as well. The alternative, which I have called "ontological" truth, remains in its essential features the basis for his later critique of Plato and the history of metaphysics.

Heidegger indicates that what "truth" means is not so much a correspondence as it is a disclosure.

(...)

It may be instructive to remember once again that the duality of truth, epistemological and ontological, occupied Heidegger's thought almost from the period immediately after the publication of Being and Time, 1927, until 1947: "The publication [on Nietzsche] when reflected upon as a whole, ought to offer an insight into the path of thought which I have travelled from 1930 to the Letter on Humanism (1947). For the two small lectures, Plato's Theory of Truth (1942) and On the Essence of Truth (1943), which were published during the aforesaid period, were already conceived during the years 1930--'31." 42 Heidegger's early concern with "truth" apparently led to a step backward in the history of metaphysics, from Aristotle to Plato, in locating the "decisive" stages in man's forgetfulness of Being, through the transformation of ontological into epistemological truth." (pp. 69-73 som notes omitted)

Notes

(31) A. Francke, Bern, 1947.

From: Bern Magnus, Heidegger's Metahistory of Philosophy: Amor fati, Being and Truth, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1970.

"Heidegger's way of understanding the originary phenomenon of truth is to "make clear the mode of being of the cognition itself." His starting point is a proposition that is not based on intuition. Someone says with his or her back to the wall: this picture hangs askew. The proposition embodies the claim to have discovered the picture (as a being) in the "how" (the mode) of its being. The proposition displays this "how" of being in language. In the attempt to verify the proposition by sensuous experience, the recognition, according to Heidegger, is directed only to the intended being (the picture) and not to the proposition. It is directed to the being itself (which is to be verified by perception) in its mode of uncoveredness (Entdeckt-heir), i.e., in its showing-itself. Confirmation (Bewährung) means this showing-itself of the being in the same way in which it is intended in the proposition.

A true proposition shows the being in its mode of uncoveredness. The phenomenon of "originary truth" does not have the character of correspondence. It is the ground of the concept of truth in the sense of correspondence and propositional truth. By unfolding the meaning of alétheia Heidegger shows us a more originary sense of truth as unconcealment (Unverborgenheit). He wants to show that this concept coincides with the first and originary concept of truth in Greek thinking. In this primary sense only the discovering human Dasein can be "true" while it is Being-discovering (Entdeckend-Sein). On the other hand, beings (Seiendes) that we can find in the world can only "be" in a secondary mode, i.e., as being-discovered (Entdecktsein). They can only make a claim to uncoveredness. Their fundament is the Being-discovering of the human Dasein. The being-true of a discovered being is only possible as being discovered by human Dasein as being-in-the-world.

The authentic Being of Dasein, the being-in-the truth, presupposes disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) of the world in states-of-mind (Befindlichkeiten), understanding, and discourse, i.e., the constitution of the being (Seinsverfassung) of human Dasein as thrownness (Geworfenheit) and project (Entwurf). The mode of being of Dasein is characterized equiprimordially (gleichursprünglich) by the possibility of both authenticity (being-in-the-truth) and the deficient mode (Verfallsform) of inauthenticity. In the mode of the "they" (das Man), of obstruction (Verstelltheit), of gossip (Gerede), Dasein is in untruth. Thus the being-in-the-world of human Dasein is determined at the same time by truth and untruth. We must always fight anew for the truth of Dasein (Being-discovering). Following Heidegger, the negative expression "a-létheia" expresses the fact that hiding itself is a main characteristic of Being. In the hiding-itself of Being, human Dasein is hidden for itself in the mode of untruth.

Heidegger wants to make evident how the transition from the originary concept of truth as alétheia to "correspondence" came about. He wants to make clear that correspondence is only a derived form of truth: in a proposition Being should be displayed in the mode of its uncoveredness. In the inauthentic forms of mere reproducing and hearsay, the proposition becomes itself something ready-to-hand (Zuhandenes). Thus we have to engage in the demonstration of the uncoveredness that is preserved in the proposition. In this way the relation between proposition and discovered being then itself becomes something present-at-hand (Vorhandenes) and can be understood as a correspondence of proposition and being (intellectus and res). The fact that we are used to disregarding the originary dimension of truth is an aspect of our forgetfulness of Being (Seinsvergessenheit).

The originary dimension of truth in human Dasein "is given" (gibt es) only as long as there is Dasein. All truth is relative to the being of Dasein. Thus the claim that there could be "eternal truth" seems to Heidegger to be "fantastic." Against the background of this relativity of truth to the being of Dasein, Heidegger asks anew: why must we presuppose that truth "is given"? His answer is that the possibility of truth (authenticity) and untruth (inauthenticity) belongs to the facticity of human Dasein. From the point of view of existential ontology, the being of human Dasein (its disclosedness) and truth are synonims." (pp. 711-712)

From: Dieter Lohmar, Truth, in: Lester Embree et alii (eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1997.

"alétheia and truth: Alétheia is Greek for 'truth; truthfulness, frankness, sincerity'. Aléthés is 'true; sincere, frank; real, actual'. There is also a verb, alétheuein, 'to speak truly, etc' (cf. GA XIX, 21ff.). The words are related to lanthanein, with an older form léthein, 'to escape notice, be unseen, unnoticed', and lithe, 'forgetting, forgetfulness'. An initial a- in Greek is often privative, like the Latin in- or the Germanic un-. (The 'privative alpha' occurs in many Greek-derived words: 'anonymous', 'atheism', etc.) Aléthés, alétheia are generally accepted to be a-léthes, a-létheia, that which is 'not hidden or forgotten', or he who 'does not hide or forget'.

We reach the 'essence of truth', the 'openness of the open', from two directions: from 'reflection on the ground of the possibility of correctness (adaequatio)' and from 'recollection of the beginning (alétheia)' (GA LXV, 338). The first procedure is characteristic of Being and Time and early lectures, the second of later works. But early on Heidegger says that alétheuein is 'to take out of hiddenness [Verborgenheit], to uncover [entdecken]' (GA XXII, 25. Cf. GA XXI, 131; Being and Time, 33, 219); alétheia is 'uncovering' (GA XXI, 162); and aléthes is 'unhidden [Unverborgen(es)]' (BT, 33, 219). This has three implications: 1. Truth is not confined to explicit assertions and discrete mental, primarily theoretical, attitudes such as judgements, beliefs and representations. The world as a whole, not just entities within it, is unhidden - unhidden as much by moods as by understanding. 2. Truth is primarily a feature of reality - beings, being and world - not of thoughts and utterances. Beings, etc. are, of course, unhidden to us, and we disclose them. Heidegger later coins entbergen; Entbergung; Entborgenheit, 'to unconceal; -ing; -ment', since unlike unverborgen, they can have an active sense: 'aléthes means: 1. unconcealed [entborgen], said of beings, 2. grasping the unconcealed as such, i.e. being unconcealing' (XXXI, 91). But beings, etc. are genuinely unconcealed; they do not just agree with an assertion or representation. 3. Truth explicitly presupposes concealment or hiddenness. DASEIN is in 'untruth [Unwahrheit]' as well as truth. In Being and Time (222, 256f.) this means that falling Dasein misinterprets things.

'Untruth' is not plain 'falsity', nor is it 'hiddenness': it is 'disguisedness [Verstelltheit]' of the truth (GA XXXI, 91). Later, 'untruth' is still not 'falsity', but 'hiding, concealing [Verbergung]' (GA LXV, 362). What conceals is no longer man, but being. There are two types of unconcealing: (a) of the open, the world or beings as a whole; (b) of particular beings within this open space. The first type (a) involves concealment: everything was hidden before the open was established, and concealment persists in that the open reveals only certain aspects of reality, not its whole nature. The second type (b) involves a concealment that we overcome 'partially and case by case' (GA LXV, 338f.). Plato errs in assimilating truth to light. We lose the idea of hiddenness and thus the privative force of a-létheia: the light is constant - never switched on or off - and reveals everything there is to anyone who looks. We lose the idea of the open, which must persist throughout our unconcealing of beings: a single light cannot account both for the openness of the open and for the unconcealing of particular entities (LXV, 339).

Plato's error was fateful. He - not Aristotle, who did his best to repair the damage (Nietzsche II, 228 / Nietzsche IV [English translation], 171) - initiated the decline of a-létheia into 'correctness' and truth as agreement (GA XXXIV, 21ff; Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, 201ff./ 215ff.). Alétheia was originally the basic feature of phusis (roughly, 'nature') and thus 'essentially rejects any question about its relation to something else, such as thinking' (LXV, 329). In Plato it 'comes under the yoke of the idea' (Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, 228). Idea, from the Greek idein, 'to see', refers, on Heidegger's account, to the visual 'aspect [Aussehen]' of entities. The ascent of the prisoners out of the cave is a progressive 'correction' of their vision of this idea and the entity whose idea it is. Hence alétheia is no longer primarily a characteristic of beings: it is 'yoked' together with the soul, and consists in a homoiósis, a 'likeness', between them. Homoiósis has since become adaequatio and then 'agreement', and since Descartes, the relation between soul and beings has become the subject-object relation, mediated by a 'representation', the degenerate descendant of Plato's idea. Truth becomes correctness, and its 'elbow-room [Spielraum]', the open, is neglected (GA LXV, 198, 329ff.)." (pp. 13-14)

Notes

"In references to Heidegger's texts, a slash separates the pagination of the German work from the pagination of the published English translation".

Heidegger Gesamtausgabe, Frankfurt: Klostermann 1975ss. = GA

From: Michael Inwoord, A Heidegger Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 1999.

"As Heidegger puts it elsewhere, in Plato and Aristotle beings with the gigantomachia, the struggle between Being and beings, for Being is now understood as the highest or first being (GA [Gesamtausgabe] vol. 33, pp. 24, 43-44; cf. The End of Philosophypp. 9-10). As he explains in his wartime Parmenides lectures, in and with the philosophical tradition's understanding of truth and falsehood, aletheia is opposed to pseudos, to falsehood in the sense of incorrectness, which displaces the inceptive Greek senses of unconcealing and concealing (GA Vol. 54, pp. 24-56). The translation of aletheia as veritas is related to the political-moral economy of ancient Rome, and therewith, Heidegger makes clear, to the manifold successors to Rome: medieval Christianity, modernity, Nietzsche, and--I agree with William V. Spanos on this point--National Socialism (pp. 57-72).(14)

The Latin falsum has the sense of "bringing to a fall" or "downfall," which is "only a subsequent effect [Wesensfolge] within the essential domain [Wesensbereiches] of dissembling and concealing which makes up the essence of psuedos" (p. 58).(15) "Imperium" and the "imperial" constitute the "essential domain" decisive for the "experiential domain" (Erfahrungsbereich) in, from, and for which "bringing to a fall" acquires its status as the designation for the counter-essence of "what the Greeks experience as alethes, the 'unconcealing' and the 'unconcealed.' " The experience of imperium is that of "command," of the taking over of a territory, which is ruled by commandment. "Command," then, is the "essential ground of sovereignty" (Wesensgrund der Herrschaft) and, moreover, describes the characteristic actions of the god of the Old Testament and the gods of Rome, but not those of Greece (p. 59). In a further specification, "command" determines Roman law and right, ius and iustum; iustitia "has a wholly other [ganz anderen] essential ground than that of dike, which arises from aletheia." "Being superior" (Obensein) belongs to "command" and is the "constant surmounting [Überhöhung] of others, who are thereby the inferiors [Unteren]." Surmounting requires the power to "oversee" (übersehen), which means, therefore, to "dominate" (beherrschen) (59-60). The "overseeing" of imperium requires constant "action," by which enemies or rivals will be brought to fall through " 'direct' attack" (Ansturm) or "subterfuge" (Hintergehen) or "trick," which, "not accidentally," is an "English" word (p. 60). Those who fall are not destroyed but rather "raised up" (aufgerichtet) within the boundaries established by those who rule; this "fixing" (Abstecken) is Roman peace. Indeed, the greatness of the imperial, Heidegger writes, lies in the subterfuge by which it secures its dominion. The expansion of early Rome through treaties and treachery shows this (pp. 60-61).

The "Romanizing" of the Greeks conditions not only all subsequent understanding of them in the history of the West but also the historical and metaphysical Auseinandersetzung of the modern world and antiquity. Even Nietzsche's metaphysics, as a modern attempt to recover antiquity, is conditioned by Rome and thus is ultimately "unGreek." The Roman experience of beings, encountered under the "Roman stamp" (der Romisch Prägung), reaches into Christianity and hence to the medieval and modern ages (pp. 64-72; cf. The End of Philosophy p. 13). "Romanization in the essential sense of the Greco-Roman historical domain," Heidegger writes, must be understood as a "change in the essence of truth and Being"; it is an "authentic event [Ereignis] in history" (p. 63). The transformations of aletheia and pseudos as correlates with the imperial experience mark an epochal boundary. "The imperial as a mode of Being of historical collectivities [Menschentums]," Heidegger explains, is not the ground for the essential change of aletheia into truth as correctness but is rather a following of the enfolding of truth into the meaning of correctness (pp. 62-63). Heidegger makes clear that there is something "make-shift" (Notbehelf) in the phrase "change in the essence of truth," which does not speak clearly enough of the way "in which it unfolds itself and history 'is' (wie sie selbst west and die Geschichte 'ist']" (p. 63). This process exhibits the inner connection of the coherent modes of action which ground Western history, and is not to be understood causally." (pp. 180-181)

Notes

(14) William V. Spanos, Heidegger and Criticism: Retrieving the Cultural Politics of Destruction, pp. 148-49, 291 n. 22. Cf. Véronique M. Fóti, "Aletheia and Oblivion's Field: On Heidegger's Parmenides Lectures," and especially Éliane Escoubas, "Heidegger, la question romaine, la question impériale: Autour du 'Touruant.' "

(15) Heidegger agrees with the Brothers Grimm, who understood falsch as an "un-German" word. He goes on to add verum to this list (G54 57, pp. 67-73). For other such words, see The Principle of Reason (e.g., p. 29).

From: James F. Ward, Heidegger's Political Thinking, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1995.