On the essence of truth

pp. 211-254

in: William Richardson, Heidegger, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1963

Abstract

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 (SZ) 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."