Excerpt
Having reached this point, we shall attempt to establish the connection
with the other assertion according to which the vast majority
of aestheticians believe that poetry, as fiction, may disregard truth
as correspondence with reality, and consequently may also disregard
the world and reality themselves as Imaginative possibilities. As we
have already indicated, this assertion is broadly correct and contains
a certain apparent degree of veridicality (sic!); nevertheless, it is fundamentally
false. This falsehood stems, specifically, from a mistaken
understanding of the notion of truth–an error perpetuated ever since
Aristotle and finding its definitive expression in the Thomistic formula
adequatio rei ad intellectum.
It is no longer a bold claim to state that Europeans employ the
concept of truth in a manner that might be regarded as arbitrary,
totalizing, and one-sided. Over time, the Thomistic definition has
gained increasing ground, eventually imposing itself almost completely.
In this respect, the example of the sciences is more than revealing.
As a consequence, we now think of truth only formaliter, that
is, as the correspondence of the intellect to the thing, to empirical
factuality and objectively available reality. Yet truth must instead be
thought on the basis of that which is true. Our discussion of this
concept will begin with the Greek word Aletheia, drawing support
from Heidegger’s interpretation, in which Aletheia is understood as
unconcealment, the state of being disclosed.
Is it necessary to reactivate the Greek philosophical concepts
concerning truth? “Not at all. A reactivation, even if such an impossibility
were to become possible, would be of no help. For the hidden
history of Greek philosophy consists from the very beginning in the
fact that it turns away from the essence of truth–which announces
itself in a flash through the word aletheia–and finds itself increasingly…
