aletheia

{{Transliteration|grc|Aletheia}} is variously translated as "unconcealedness", "disclosure", "revealing", or "unhiddenness". The literal meaning of the word {{lang|grc|ἀλήθεια}} is "the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident."{{cite journal |last1=Wolz |first1=Henry G. |title=Plato's Doctrine of Truth: Orthótes or Alétheia? |journal=Philosophy and Phenomenological Research |date=1966 |volume=27 |issue=2 |pages=157–182 |doi=10.2307/2105357 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2105357 |issn=0031-8205|url-access=subscription }} It also means "reality".{{LSJ|a)lh/qeia|ἀλήθεια|ref}}. It is the antonym of {{Transliteration|grc|lethe}}, which literally means "forgetting", "forgetfulness".{{LSJ|lh/qh|λήθη|ref}}.

In Greek mythology, {{Transliteration|grc|aletheia}} was personified as a Greek goddess, Aletheia, the goddess of Truth. She was a daughter of Zeus. Her Roman equivalent is Veritas.{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionary-of-classical-mythology/page/18/mode/2up |page=18 |title=Dictionary of Classical Mythology |first=J. E. |last=Zimmerman |publisher=Harper & Row |location=New York |year=1964}}

{{Further information|World disclosure|Heideggerian terminology}}

File:Van-gogh-shoes.jpg.]]

In the early to mid 20th-century, Martin Heidegger brought renewed attention to the concept of aletheia, by relating it to the notion of disclosure, or the way in which things appear as entities in the world. While he initially referred to aletheia as "truth", specifically a form that is pre-Socratic in origin, Heidegger eventually corrected this interpretation, writing:

{{blockquote|Aletheia, disclosure ("Unverborgenheit"), regarded as the opening (Lichtung) of presence ("Anwesenheit") is not yet truth ("Wahrheit"). Is therefore aletheia something less than truth? Or is it more because it first grants truth as {{lang|la|adaequatio}} and {{lang|la|certitudo}}, because there can be no presence and presenting outside of the realm of the opening? (…) To raise the question of aletheia, of disclosure as such, is not the same as raising the question of "truth". For this reason, it was inadequate and misleading to call aletheia, in the sense of opening, truth.Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 69–70, translation amended. The original in Zur Sache des Denkens (Tübingen: Max Niemayer, 1969), p. 86. Cited in Nikolas Kompridis, Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, (Boston: MIT Press, 2006), p. 188.}}

Heidegger gave an etymological analysis of aletheia and drew out an understanding of the term as "unconcealedness".{{Cite web |title=Parmenides |last=Heidegger |first=Martin |publisher=Indiana University Press |location=Bloomington and Indianapolis |date=1992 |website=Internet Archive |url=https://archive.org/details/martinheideggerparmenides/page/n4/mode/1up |page=14 |access-date=8 July 2023}} 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 an ontological "world" is disclosed, or opened up, in which things are made intelligible for human beings in the first place, as part of a holistically structured background of meaning.

Heidegger began his discourse on the reappropriation of aletheia in his magnum opus, Being and Time (1927),Heidegger, M. Being and Time. translated by Joan Stambaugh, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1996, Introduction, Chapter II, §7b. and expanded on the concept in his Introduction to Metaphysics.{{cite book |last=Heidegger|first=Martin |title=Introduction to Metaphysics, Second Edition |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven & London |date=2014 |isbn=978-0-300-18612-3}} Chapter II, § 1. For more on his understanding of aletheia, see Poetry, Language, Thought,{{Cite book |title=Poetry, Language, Thought |last=Heidegger |first=Martin |publisher=Harper Perennial Modern Classics |date=2001 |isbn=978-0060937287}} in particular the essay entitled The 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.According to Heidegger, art "gives things their look, and human beings their outlook." From The Origin of the Work of Art. Heidegger revised his views on aletheia as truth, after nearly forty years, in the essay "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking," in On Time and Being.{{Cite book |title=On Time and Being |last=Heidegger |first=Martin |publisher=Harper and Row |date=1972 |location=New York}}

{{Portal|Philosophy}}

{{Columnslist|colwidth=20em|

• Alethiology
• Alethic modality and Alethic logic
• Alethic possibility
• Alethic relativism
• Anamnesis (philosophy)
• Epistemology
• Neorealism (art)
• Reflective disclosure
• {{slink|Truth#Ancient Greek philosophy}}
• 259 Aletheia

}}

{{reflist|25em}}

• {{Cite journal |last=Babich |first=Babette E. |title=From Van Gogh's Museum to the Temple at Bassae: Heidegger's Truth of Art and Schapiro's Art History |journal=Culture, Theory & Critique |volume=44 |issue=2 |year=2003 |pages=151–169 |doi=10.1080/1473578032000151067 |s2cid=170833785}}
• {{Cite journal |last=Krell |first=David Farrell |year=1975 |title=On the Manifold Meaning of Aletheia: Brentano, Aristotle, Heidegger |url=https://brill.com/view/journals/rip/5/1/article-p77_11.xml |journal=Research in Phenomenology |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=77–94 |doi=10.1163/156916475X00114 |issn=0085-5553|url-access=subscription }}
• {{Cite journal |last=Woleński |first=Jan |year=2004 |title=Aletheia in Greek thought until Aristotle |journal=Annals of Pure and Applied Logic |volume=127 |issue=1–3 |pages=339–360 |doi=10.1016/j.apal.2003.11.020|doi-access=free }}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20150609001038/http://www.ontology.co/aletheia.htm Aletheia and Other Terms for Truth in Ancient Greek]
• [http://www.ontology.co/aletheia-prephilosophical.htm Pre-Philosophical Conceptions of Truth: Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Alexandrine Poets, Thucydides]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20150626101634/http://www.ontology.co/heidegger-aletheia.htm Martin Heidegger on Aletheia (Truth) as Unconcealment]

{{Ancient Greek philosophy}}

{{Greek mythology (deities)}}

{{Martin Heidegger}}

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Category:Concepts in metaphysics

Category:Philosophy of Martin Heidegger

Category:Truth

Category:Personifications in Greek mythology