The Essence of Truth

in Platonic terms, the word ‘soul’ simply means striving for being.

However, the soul is not any kind of thing, to which a relationship can now be attached; instead, it is itself the relationship to . . . To be such a relationship is to be soul.

Καλὸς γὰρ εἶ ὦ Θεαίτητε, καὶ οὐχ, ὡς ἔλεγε Θεόδωρος, αἰσχρός.
‘Why, you are beautiful, Theaetetus, and not, as Theodorus said, ugly.’

What is so extraordinary about every Platonic text is that each ‘and’, ‘but’, and ‘perhaps’ is set in a quite definite unambiguous position, i.e. these words are not just idle.

progress is inessential to philosophy. It is always the beginning that remains decisive.

The driving force and restlessness of this history is the liberation of man to the essence of being: spirit, world-projection, worldview, a fundamental reality and mode of thought in which there is light and space for epic, development of the state, tragedy, cult architecture, sculpture, philosophy. Truth begins with the beginning of this history, and with this beginning man steps into un-truth in the most profound sense of not truth, i.e. hiddenness of beings. History is nothing in itself, but exists precisely and only where something is manifest; its limit and definiteness is precisely the hidden. What unhiddenness is can only be shown from hiddenness.

Λήθη, in the genuine Greek sense, is not a ‘lived experience’ (the Greeks, thank God, knew no such thing), but is a fateful occurrence that overtakes human beings, an occurrence, however, that pertains to all beings: they fall into hiddenness, they withdraw, they are simply absent.

While I do not advocate working with mere translations, I must also warn against thinking that command of the Greek language by itself guarantees an understanding of Plato or Aristotle. That would be just as foolish as thinking that because we understand German we already understand Kant or Hegel, which is certainly not the case.

The proper and original meaning of ἀγαθóν refers to what is good (suitable) for something, what can be put to use. ‘Good!’ means: it is done! it is decided! It does not have any kind of moral meaning: ethics has corrupted the fundamental meaning of this word.

Only in the rigour of questioning do we come into the vicinity of the unsayable.