Heidegger begins pages 43-102 of Parmenides by continuing with his lecture on the essence of pseudos. He claims that there is much more to the oppositional nature of alathea than a mere positive and negative relationship. Rather, both truth and falsity must be thought in terms of a reciprocity with one another. He reiterates that pseudos is a dissembling that lets show something other than what is being concealed, and as such exists as a concealment that also unconceals.
Following this review of pseudos, Heidegger points out that the Latin falsum has since taken the place of pseudos. Behind falsum lies the notion of imperium, a domination. Alathea has become the Latin verum, and thus evolved into veritas, or “correctness.” Specifically, because verum is oppositional in nature to falsum, which resides in the domain of imperium, “correctness” has replaced unconcealedness. Verum is further convoluted into rectitudo and certum. Because of this conversion, “the false” becomes, simply, the wrong use of reason, or ratio, a “self-adjustment to what is correct.” (50) Such Roman thinking is behind Nietzsche’s “will to power,” which has the certainty of reason as its essence. Heidegger asserts that, even though veritas has skewed the essence of alathea in modern thought, the Latinization of the concept cannot fully envelope the full essence of unconcealedness; the concepts of veritas, rectitude, and certum “are what they are only in the wake of Alathea.” (54) After discussing this transformation, Heidegger points out the difference between history and historiography. History is the history of thought, or the happening of assignment. Historiography is the mere cataloguing of events. The history of the transformation of truth points to the fact that Being is misgrounded by such a transformation. After all, beings receive Being by the essence of truth.
Heidegger continues by questioning whether this term alone employs all possible opposition to truth. He mentions the idea of deception, only to conclude that deception is encompassed by pseudos, and is therefore not a new counter-word for alathea. Literally, for the Greeks, deception leads one off of the right “way.” This straightforward way leads to the unconcealed. The by-way, or off-way, shows what may not be present on the right way, thus exchanging what is concealed by not being on the right way for the unconcealedness of something else. This concept reinforces Heidegger’s claim that every hiding is also a revealing.
Looking for other words that indicate concealedness, Heidegger uncovers the concepts of sheltering and veiling. For the Greeks, the earth shelters the dead. Birth and death have their essence in bringing to light and concealing. For the Romans, the earth is simply terra, the land as distinguished from the sea; it has nothing to do with sheltering, veiling, or illuminating. Thus, it would follow that, for the Greeks, night and light allow being to emerge and to be veiled. It is this beginning that makes night and light part of mythos. Mythos is “that which reveals, discloses, and lets be seen;” it is the beginning. Claiming that mythos and logos are too readily placed in opposition, Heidegger embarks on a discussion of the word. Essentially, he claims that man can create by pointing to another being, and by using a word for that being, bring it into unconcealedness. For the Greeks, the word lets man’s essence emerge. However, the transformation of alathea has resulted in the idea that language is a possession of man rather than a feature of Being. The Romans made the word a function of technology instead of a bringing into being. Therefore, modern thought assumes that man has control over everything via reason, when it is actually Being that bestows the gift of word appropriation on man.
Perhaps most important in this discussion of counter-words to alathea is the emergence of lethe. Lethe is “oblivion.” Its domain includes forgetting, not as an everyday “lived experience,” but as the signless cloud of oblivion that comes over beings in their relation to each other and to themselves. Lethe is not as predominant explicitly as is pseudos, but that is because the essence of alathea, and thus lethe, pervade the Greeks’ every thought in a way over and above pseudos. When the Greeks do point to lethe, it is as mythos or logos. As “awe” comes before unconcealedness and disposes man to do, see, and think, it is sometimes covered over by oblivion. With awe drawn away from man, he is concealed from beings and himself.
Heidegger also reveals the polis as the place where beings are displayed, and around which all beings turn. It does not create beings, and it is nothing of the political. The polis is where man is encompassed by all that is assigned to him, and where history resides. If the assignment of man is to preserve Being via the word, then lethe has come over man and prevented him from coming into what he has been ordered. Man is drawn away from the right way by lethe. In practice, man acts through the hand to preserve the word. The typewriter, for Heidegger, has taken away from this by removing the word from the action of the hand, and thus belongs to the realm of lethe. In effect, modern thought has been drawn into oblivion by the misconception of alathea. Heidegger also raises the question of what exists around man in the polis after death. He asserts that man passes through being only to emerge again to fulfill another order, going from the “here” to the “there” before a transfer to a new “mortal course.” (96)
With this, one can draw some interesting relationships between Heidegger’s thinking and Voltaire’s Candide. In this satire of certain philosophers of the time, the reappearance of supposedly dead characters is a source of some absurdity. Candide’s lover Cunegonde is believed to be dead shortly after the story begins. She reemerges later, seemingly with a completely different assignment in life. It is as if her mode of being has changed and a “reincarnation” has occurred. Also interesting is the “way” that Candide starts off on in his journey. The philosopher Pangloss leads Candide on an optimistic off-way, where the tragedies that are unconcealed to him by the world reveal themselves in an exchange for what might have been more obvious on the straightforward way. It seems that the main characters think in terms of veritas in their certainty that this is “the best of all possible worlds,” willing themselves to take advantage of it.
Reference:
- Parmenides (Studies in Continental Thought (Paperback)) www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0253212146/myspace08-20/102-6138747-3972109?dev-t=D2W
