But that is not what we find at first. For just as soon as the word ἀληθές is spoken, so is its counter-word, τὸ ψεῦδος. One might then be tempted to conclude finally that the essence of truth is in no way determined on the basis of unconcealedness and concealment. But perhaps this is an overly hasty conclusion. We stand too uncritically under the prejudice of the opposition between truth and falsity taken for granted a long time ago, and we do not take offense at the plurality of names signifying it, which we constantly and without much thought use as formulas to discriminate our judgments and decrees. Perhaps we are not simply being premature when we conclude that, due to the priority of ψεῦδος, the origin of the essence of truth cannot be unconcealedness and concealment. Perhaps there is in fact no room at all for "conclusions" here; instead, this is a domain requiring us to open our eyes and to see—to see with clear vision. In such "foresight" we see that in the experience and speech of the Greeks the counter-word to ἀληθές, and more generally, the word from which this privative formation is derived, is not missing at all. Ἀλήθεια is tied to the verbal stem λαθ-, which means "concealing." To the stem λαθ- pertains the verb λανθάνω. "I am concealed"; the aorist participle. λαθῶν, λαθόν, means "being concealed." Yet at first this is only the observation of a linguistic fact What is decisive is to see which relations among beings are expressed by the word λανθάνω They are of such a kind that we are hardly capable of repeating them, and instead, by our way of translating the Greek word, we cover them over completely.
Homer says of Odysseus in Θ (VIII), 93: ἐλάνθανε δάκρυα λείβων. We translate in "correct" German: "He (Odysseus) shed tears, unnoticed by the others present." In Greek experience the word of Homer says: "He (Odysseus) was in concealment as the one shedding tears." Correspondingly, we translate the famous Epicurean admonition λάθε βιώσας as "Live unnoticed"; thought in the Greek way, it says, "Be in concealment as one conducting his life." It could be observed with regard to these examples that we have here a really interesting linguistic fact, that compared to our German modes of expression the Greek language expresses itself in a reverse manner. But what we see here is more than just "interesting." It is decisive—namely, for an understanding of the primordial essence of truth, whose Greek name, ἀλήθεια, is related to the word λανθάνω, the use of which is now starting to dawn upon us. For precisely the way λανθάνω, in the examples just referred to, is the ruling word tells us that what is named in this word, the "concealed," has a priority in the experience of beings, and, specifically, as a character of beings themselves it is a possible "object" of experience. In the case of the weeping Odysseus, the Greeks do not consider that the others present, as human "subjects" in their subjective comportment, fail to notice the crying of Odysseus, but they do think