Aletheia orAlethia (/ælɪˈθaɪ.ə/;[1]Ancient Greek:ἀλήθεια) is truth or disclosure inphilosophy. Originating inAncient Greek philosophy, the term was explicitly used for the first time in the history of philosophy byParmenides in his poemOn Nature, in which he contrasts it withdoxa (opinion).
It was revived in the works of 20th-century philosopherMartin Heidegger. Although it is often translated as "truth", Heidegger argued that it is distinct from common conceptions of truth.
Aletheia is variously translated as "unconcealedness", "disclosure", "revealing", or "unhiddenness".[2] The literal meaning of the wordἀλήθεια is "the state of not being hidden; the state of beingevident."[citation needed] It also means "reality".[3] It is theantonym oflethe,[citation needed] which literally means "forgetting", "forgetfulness".[4]
InGreek mythology,aletheia was personified as a Greek goddess, Aletheia, the goddess of Truth. She was a daughter ofZeus. Her Roman equivalent isVeritas.[5]
In the early to mid 20th-century,Martin Heidegger brought renewed attention to the concept ofaletheia, by relating it to the notion ofdisclosure, or the way in which things appear as entities in the world. While he initially referred toaletheia as "truth", specifically a form that ispre-Socratic in origin, Heidegger eventually corrected this interpretation, writing:
Aletheia, disclosure ("Unverborgenheit"), regarded as the opening (Lichtung) of presence ("Anwesenheit") is not yet truth ("Wahrheit"). Is thereforealetheia something less than truth? Or is it more because it first grants truth asadaequatio andcertitudo, because there can be no presence and presenting outside of the realm of the opening? (…) To raise the question ofaletheia, of disclosure as such, is not the same as raising the question of "truth". For this reason, it was inadequate and misleading to callaletheia, in the sense of opening, truth.[6]
Heidegger gave anetymological analysis ofaletheia and drew out an understanding of the term as "unconcealedness".[7] 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). Instead, Heidegger focused on the elucidation of how anontological "world" is disclosed, or opened up, in which things are made intelligible for human beings in the first place, as part of aholistically structured background of meaning.
Heidegger began his discourse on the reappropriation ofaletheia in his magnum opus,Being and Time (1927),[8] and expanded on the concept in hisIntroduction to Metaphysics.[9] For more on his understanding ofaletheia, seePoetry, Language, Thought,[10] in particular the essay entitledThe Origin of the Work of Art, which describes the value of the work of art as a means to open a "clearing" for the appearance of things in the world, or to disclose their meaning for human beings.[11] Heidegger revised his views onaletheia as truth, after nearly forty years, in the essay "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking," inOn Time and Being.[12]
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