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 Heidegger and Unconcealment
Truth, Language, and History

This book includes ten essays that trace the notion of unconcealment
as it develops from Martin Heidegger’s early writings to his later
work, shaping his philosophy of truth, language, and history.
Unconcealment is the idea that what entities are depends on the
conditions that allow them to manifest themselves. This concept,
central to Heidegger’s work, also applies to worlds in a dual sense:
first, a condition of entities manifesting themselves is the existence of
a world; and second, worlds themselves are disclosed. The unconceal-
ment or disclosure of a world is the most important historical event,
and Heidegger believes there have been a number of quite distinct
worlds that have emerged and disappeared in history.
Heidegger’s thought as a whole can profitably be seen as working
out the implications of the original understanding of unconcealment.

Mark A. Wrathall received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the

University of California, Berkeley, and is currently professor of phi-
losophy at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of
How to Read Heidegger (2005) and the editor of numerous collections,
including A Companion to Heidegger (2005), Religion after Metaphysics
(2003), and A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism (2006).
Heidegger and Unconcealment
Truth, Language, and History

MARK A. WRATHALL
University of California, Riverside
For Amy, Hannah, Damon, Madeline, and Nicholas
 Contents

Acknowledgments page ix
Credits xi

Introduction 1

PART I TRUTH AND DISCLOSURE

1 Unconcealment 11
Appendix on Tugendhat 34
2 The Conditions of Truth in Heidegger
and Davidson 40
3 On the “Existential Positivity of Our Ability
to be Deceived” 57
4 Heidegger on Plato, Truth, and Unconcealment:
The 1931–1932 Lecture on The Essence of Truth 72

PART II LANGUAGE

5 Social Constraints on Conversational Content:

Heidegger on Rede and Gerede 95
Appendix 116
6 Discourse Language, Saying, Showing 118
7 The Revealed Word and World Disclosure: Heidegger and
Pascal on the Phenomenology of Religious Faith 156

PART III HISTORICAL WORLDS

8 Philosophers, Thinkers, and Heidegger’s Place in the

History of Being 177

vii
viii Contents

9 Between the Earth and the Sky: Heidegger on Life After the
Death of God 195
10 Nietzsche and the Metaphysics of Truth 212

Works by Heidegger 243

Index 247
 Acknowledgments

Reflecting on the genesis of this book, it is rather humbling to realize how

many people have contributed to its development over many years. My
greatest debt is to my intellectual mentor and friend Bert Dreyfus. Bert has
generously read every draft that I have sent him, and unfailingly responded
with his characteristic vigor and candor. His suggestions, insights, and hard
questions have propelled my thinking on Heidegger. While we don’t always
agree, I always profit from our discussions. I have discussed the ideas
contained in this book with a number of philosophers in a variety of
settings, including my students and colleagues at Brigham Young
University and the University of California, Riverside; at meetings of the
International Society for Phenomenological Studies, the American Society
for Existential Phenomenology, the Parlement des Philosophes, the Martin-
Heidegger-Forschungsgruppe, the British Society for Phenomenology
Summer Conference, the American Comparative Literature Association;
and at universities around the world, including: the University of Califor-
nia, Berkeley; Brigham Young University, Idaho; Essex University; the
University of Exeter; Georgetown University; Chengchi University;
National Sun Yat-Sen University; Utah Valley University; the University of
Nevada, Reno; Claremont Graduate School; the University of Montana,
Missoula; and Södertorn University. I am grateful to all of those institutions
for providing me with the opportunity to present my work and, more
importantly, to learn from the people in attendance. I couldn’t possibly
list everyone who has helped me along with questions or suggestions in
these settings – not just because the list would be very long, but also
because in many instances I don’t know their names. With apologies to
those whom I will inevitably overlook, however, I would like to specifically
thank Bill Blattner, Dave Bohn, Albert Borgmann, Taylor Carman,
Dave Cerbone, Simon Critchley, Steve Crowell, Jim Faulconer, Charlie
Guignon, Béatrice Han-Pile, Piotr Hoffman, Stephan Käufer, Sean Kelly,
Cristina Lafont, Jeff Malpas, Wayne Martin, Lenny Moss, Mark Okrent,

ix
x Acknowledgments

Robert Pippin, Richard Rorty, Hans Ruin, Charles Siewert, Hans Sluga,
Charles Taylor, Iain Thomson, Ari Uhlin, and Julian Young. Finally, I
am grateful to Beatrice Rehl, Emily Spangler, and Luane Hutchinson
at Cambridge University Press for their patience, encouragement, and
professionalism.
 Credits

Chapter 1 was originally published in A Companion to Heidegger, ed.

Mark A. Wrathall and Hubert L. Dreyfus (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005),
pp. 337–57. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell.
Chapter 2 was originally published in The Monist 82, no. 2 (1999): 304–23.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher. © 1999 THE MONIST: An
International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry. La Salle,
Illinois, USA 61301.
Chapter 3 was originally published in The Philosophy of Deception, ed. Clancy
Martin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 67–81. Reprinted by
permission of Oxford University Press.
Chapter 4 was originally published in Inquiry 47, no. 5 (2004): 443–63.
Inquiry can be found online at http://www.informaworld.com. Reprinted
by permission of Taylor and Francis.
Chapter 5 was originally published in Philosophical Topics 27 (Fall 1999):
25–46. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Chapter 7 was originally published in The Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology 37, no. 1 (January 2006): 75–88. Reprinted by permission
of the publisher; © 2006 The British Society for Phenomenology.
Chapter 8 was originally published in Appropriating Heidegger, ed. James
E. Faulconer and Mark A. Wrathall (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), pp. 9–29. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University
Press.
Chapter 9 was originally published in Religion After Metaphysics, ed. Mark
A. Wrathall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 69–87.
Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.

xi
 Introduction

“Unconcealment,” “Unverborgenheit,” was a term that first entered Heidegger’s

philosophy as a translation for the ancient Greek word alêtheia. The
more standard translation of alêtheia is “truth” (Wahrheit in German), but
Heidegger elected to go with a literal translation: a-lêtheia means literally
“not-concealed.” He did this because he believed the early Greeks thought
of “truth” as primarily a matter of “making available as unconcealed, as
there out in the open, what was previously concealed or covered up” (see
GA 63: 12).
Heidegger eventually came to believe that the Greeks themselves had
failed to grasp what was essential to the notion of unconcealment, what he
had initially thought was hinted at in their word alêtheia. He thus set to
the task of thinking the original notion more originally than anyone had
before (see GA 9: 237–8). Heidegger’s thought can profitably be seen as
working out the implications of the original understanding of unconceal-
ment. To think unconcealment as such is to reject the idea that there are
entities, we know not what, existing as they are independently of the
conditions under which they can manifest themselves. Unconcealment is
an event – it happens, and it only happens “with human beings” through
“the creative projection of essence and the law of essence” (GA 36/37:
175). The thought of unconcealment also rejects the idea that there are
uniquely right answers to questions like what entities are and what is being.
Instead, it holds that we encounter entities as being what they are only in
virtue of the world within which they can be disclosed and encountered.
But these worlds are themselves subject to unconcealment – they emerge
historically and are susceptible to dissolution and destruction. Thus being
itself must be understood not as something determinate and stable, but in
terms of the conditions for the emergence of entities and worlds out of
concealment into unconcealment.
Unconcealment is a privative notion – it consists in removing conceal-
ment. Consequently, concealment is in some sense to be given priority

1
2 Heidegger and Unconcealment

in understanding entities and worlds. But “concealment has,” Heidegger

observes, “a dual sense: 1. having no awareness of, and 2. no possible
context” (GA 36/37: 188). Sense (1) describes a superficial form of conceal-
ment, where something is, but we lack a sense for it. Sense (2) points to the
more profound and fundamental form of concealment. According to
Heidegger, for an entity to be is for it to stand in a context of constitutive
relations. The lack of any possible context is thus an ontological conceal-
ment – the absence of the conditions under which the entity in question
could manifest itself in being. Thus there is a duality or productive ambiguity
built into the core notion of unconcealment: unconcealment consists in
bringing things to awareness, but also creating the context within which
things can be what they are.
The core notion of unconcealment functions as a methodological prin-
ciple throughout Heidegger’s work. By methodological principle, I mean
that unconcealment was in Heidegger’s approach to philosophy the guide-
line for discerning the role and constitutive structure of the elements of
ontology. One can see this by considering how it is that Heidegger defined
the ontological features of his thought – for instance, the existentialia of
Being and Time (Heidegger’s ontological categories for the human mode of
being), Ereignis, earth and world, language and the fourfold. All of these
notions were understood in terms of the role they played in opening up a
world, and disclosing us and uncovering entities on the basis of the possibil-
ities opened up by a particular world projection. Heidegger’s ontology was
grounded in this way in the notion of unconcealment. The question in
individuating and understanding ontological structures was always “what
does this contribute to opening up a world and letting entities show up as the
things they are?” Put differently, “what disclosive function does it perform?”
The same methodological principle is crucial to Heidegger’s understand-
ing of the main themes of study in this book: truth, language, and history.
What is essential about each is the way it contributes to unconcealment. His
focus on ontological structures and functions leads Heidegger to a rather
idiosyncratic use of terminology. Heidegger uses words like language, truth,
and history in what he sometimes calls an “ontologically broad” sense.
Indeed, the very first rule of thumb for interpreting Heidegger is to remind
oneself constantly that Heidegger tends to use his terms in a way quite
distinct from the ordinary, everyday sense in which they are used. Indeed,
this practice is so common that he typically alerts the reader when, for a
change, he is using the word “in the usual sense” (im gewöhnlichen Sinne; im
üblichen Sinne) or in the contemporary sense (im heutigen Sinne). Heidegger
sees words in their familiar or everyday sense as an ontic and thus derivative
(abgeleitet) use of words, which are properly understood in their more
authentic, ontological sense.
A complete analysis of Heidegger’s use of terms would address his dizzy-
ing array of different kinds of sense or meaning for a term. These include
 Introduction 3

(and this is a nonexhaustive list): the formal sense (der formale Sinn), the
original sense (der ursprünglichen Sinn), the authentic sense (der eigentlichen
Sinn), the essential sense (der wesentlichen Sinn), and the ontological sense
(der ontologische Sinn). It would be worthwhile to tease out the subtle distinc-
tions between each of these different senses, but for present purposes we
must summarize.
Heidegger defines sense in general in the following way:
Sense is that within which the intelligibility of something holds itself, without itself
expressly and thematically coming into view. “Sense” means the “onto which” of the
primary projection, from out of which something can be grasped as that which it is
in its possibility. Projecting opens up possibilities, which is to say that it makes
possible. (GA 2: H. 151)

Projecting is Heidegger’s term for the way that we understand something by

seeing how it relates to other things and activities. I understand a knife, for
instance, by knowing in advance what a knife will do when brought into
contact with all manner of things – butter and meat and onions and granite
and so on. Or by understanding what place the knife plays in tying together
a whole network of activities in, say, a kitchen. In understanding the knife,
I project, that is, I am led or directed to other entities and activities, and grasp
a certain pattern the knife makes in the world. The sense of the knife is the
pattern of those activities or possibilities for use toward which I am oriented
when I understand what the knife is and into which I am led when I use the
knife. It is thus from out of or on the basis of some set of projected relations
that I understand what anything is.
There are, of course, different kinds of things that we can project onto.
We can project the perceptual properties of an entity onto sensorimotor
contingencies. We can project an entity onto its possibilities of use, as with
our knife example. Or we can project something onto the ontological
structures that allow it to be the kind of entity it is – for instance, projecting
a knife onto the structures of equipmentality and the equipmental functions
that allow it to be equipment, or projecting a human life onto the care
structure that allows it to be a human form of life. This last form of projection
shows us the being-sense (Seinssinn, often translated as “meaning of being”).
One arrives at the being-sense of something, then, by discovering what
ontological structure most fundamentally shapes the possibilities that con-
stitute that something as the thing it is. The “broad sense” (weiten Sinne) of a
term applies it to everything that shares the same being-sense.
The way Heidegger usually proceeds is to examine the ontological struc-
ture and function of whatever is picked out by a term in its normal, narrow
sense. That is, he asks what the thing to which we normally refer contributes
to unconcealment, and what structural elements allow it to make that con-
tribution. He then uses the term in such a way that it includes in its extension
everything that shares the same ontological structure or function.
4 Heidegger and Unconcealment

For example, we normally predicate truth of propositional entities like

assertions or beliefs. But we can grasp a proposition as potentially true or
false only to the extent that we can understand how to use it to uncover or
make salient a fact or state of affairs. So we could say that the being of truth
resides in uncovering. Thus Heidegger takes uncovering in a broad sense –
lifting into salience – to be the ontological function of truth. He then applies
the term in a broad sense to anything that uncovers. So, for instance, if I drive a
nail into a board, I am uncovering the way a hammer is used. In this broad
sense, my action, for Heidegger, is true – in hammering, I lift into salience
what a hammer is and how it is used. Or if a building like a medieval cathedral
supports the faithful in their efforts to inhabit a world opened up by God’s
grace, the cathedral is also true in the ontologically broad sense – it works by
lifting into salience what is essential or most important about such a world, and
supporting the disclosive practices of that world’s inhabitants.
Now, if one does not keep firmly in mind that Heidegger is using his terms
in a sense that is ontologically broad, it leads to terrible errors in interpreting
what he has to say. For example, it makes a complete mess of things if (a) one
thinks that truth is propositional truth (full stop), (b) one reads Heidegger
discussing how swinging a hammer shows the truth about a hammer, and
then (c) one concludes from this that Heidegger thinks swinging a hammer
is true in the same way that a proposition is true, that it somehow must be
cashed out in terms of a series of propositions the hammer-swinger knows
about hammer-swinging.
So when Heidegger uses terms like truth, language, and history in a broad
sense or a being sense (and he almost always does use them in these ways),
the terms do not have the sense they do in ordinary discourse. And if they do
refer to what we ordinarily refer to with these terms (along with a broader
range of phenomena), they only do so insofar as they are picking them out as
having a particular ontological structure or function, as playing a particularly
important role in unconcealment. One might say Heidegger’s terms func-
tion to pick out what is ordinarily referred to by those terms “under an
ontological description,” and, consequently, they also pick out other things
that are not ordinarily referred to by those terms.
This book consists of ten essays that try to trace out the pattern that
the logic of unconcealment makes in Heidegger’s thought about truth,
language, and history. Although some chapters are more focused on
Heidegger’s earlier writings, and some are more focused on his later essays,
they cover the entire span of Heidegger’s work. In my view, Heidegger’s
thought develops less in starts and stops and dramatic turnings, and more as
a gradual recognition of the implications of pursuing an ontology of uncon-
cealment. This gradual recognition unfolds as Heidegger explores different
ways or paths of thought (Denkwege). His appreciation of unconcealment
expands and deepens over time. But Heidegger’s ways of describing uncon-
cealment are constantly changing too. The deepening and enriching of his
 Introduction 5

thought of unconcealment cannot be separated from the expanding and

shifting vocabularies he has for talking about unconcealment. Indeed, a
central feature of Heidegger’s approach to philosophy is his experimental-
ism – that fact that his philosophy is always under way.
“Everything lies on the way,” Heidegger said. By that, he meant a couple of
things. First, that there was no final goal or destination to his thought, that it
was not possible to arrive at a point where everything was clear, where all
problems were solved, where we have definitive answers to philosophical
problems. The reason for this lies in the nature of unconcealment itself –
there is no right way to be human, no uniquely right way to be an entity, no
right way for the world to be organized, no single way that world disclosure
works. As a result, all we can hope for in philosophy is an ever renewed and
refined insight into the workings of unconcealment.
On this view of philosophy, progress consists in seeing and describing the
phenomena of unconcealment more perspicuously, and communicating
these insights more successfully. A philosopher’s task is to keep his or her
thought constantly under way, trying out new ways to explore productively
the philosophical domain, remaining on them as long as profitable, but also
abandoning them and setting off in a different way when the former way is
exhausted. The aim is to participate in unconcealment, bringing it to our
awareness, heightening our sensitivity and responsiveness to it. In his dia-
logue “From a Conversation on Language,” Heidegger penned the following
exchange:
JAPANESE: One says: you have changed your standpoint.
INQUIRER: I left an earlier standpoint, not in order to exchange it for another, but
rather because even the prior position was merely a stopover while
underway. What is enduring in thinking is the way.
(GA 12: 94)
Or elsewhere:
The ways of reflection constantly are changing, according to the station along the way
at which the journey begins, according to the distance along the way that it traverses,
according to the vision that opens up while underway into what is question
worthy. (GA 7: 65)

What matters most in reading Heidegger is travelling at his side along his
ways, letting him guide us through the philosophical landscape until we
begin to discern the phenomena and understand the philosophical issues
posed by the phenomena. His philosophy is meant to afford us an appren-
ticeship in seeing and describing unconcealment.
Heidegger’s account of unconcealment emerged from his efforts to think
through the essence of truth, as well as the conditions that make truth
possible. The essays in the first section explore Heidegger’s account of
propositional truth and his argument that propositional truth necessarily
depends on unconcealment. Chapter 1 looks at the various facets of
6 Heidegger and Unconcealment

unconcealment that emerge as Heidegger works his way from propositional

truth to the ontological sense of truth that is unconcealment. This culmi-
nates in his thought of a clearing, understood as something distinct from the
unconcealment of entities and even of being.
The notion of unconcealment had, for much of Heidegger’s career, an
intimate connection with truth. This is not because Heidegger thought truth
as typically conceived in contemporary philosophy – that is, the success of
assertions or beliefs or other such propositional entities in agreeing with the
way things are – had a special role to play in unconcealment. Rather, it is
because he thought that unconcealment was an essential condition of there
being truth in this narrower contemporary philosophical sense:

Alêtheia means, translated literally: unconcealment. Yet little is gained with liter-
alness . . . . Alêtheia does not mean “truth,” if by that one means the validity of
assertions in the form of propositions. It is possible that what is to be thought in
alêtheia, speaking strictly for itself, does not yet have anything to do with “truth,”
whereas it has everything to do with unconcealment, which is presupposed in every
determination of “truth.” (GA 15: 403)

Because unconcealment was an ontological presupposition of truth, but not

the other way around, it is a mistake to take Heidegger as transferring to
unconcealment the properties possessed by truth as it is ordinarily under-
stood. A failure to realize that Heidegger was using the word truth in a broad
or ontological sense proved for many in Heidegger’s day (and many still)
an insuperable obstacle to understanding what Heidegger meant with
his account of unconcealment. As the appendix to Chapter 1 explores,
Heidegger used truth as a name for unconcealment, despite the risk of
misunderstanding, because he believed that the German word for truth,
Wahrheit, still bore the traces of an insight into what is at the core of uncon-
cealment. Heidegger calls unconcealment Wahrheit, truth, because he hears
in the German word for truth, Wahrheit, the verb wahren, to preserve, to
safeguard, to maintain and protect and look after. The truth of an entity,
what the entity really or truly is, is its essence. And, Heidegger argues,
“‘essence’ (Wesen) is the same word as ‘enduring’ (währen), remaining”
(GA 7: 44). The true entity is what, having been brought into unconceal-
ment, can be stabilized and maintained so that it endures in presence: “we
think presence as the enduring of that which, having arrived in unconceal-
ment, remains there” (GA 7: 44). Preserving and holding things in uncon-
cealment, Heidegger argues, forms the ontological sense of truth as we
ordinarily think of it. The German word for truth still contains an echo or
resonance of this connection between the truth of entities and maintaining
or preserving things in unconcealment.
Chapter 2 compares Heidegger’s approach to truth to Donald
Davidson’s, and helps to clarify the sense in which Heidegger believes that
unconcealment is “presupposed in every determination of ‘truth’.” The
 Introduction 7

third chapter explores how a phenomenology of unconcealment thinks

through deception as a counterconcept to unconcealment. The final chap-
ter in this section explores Heidegger’s 1931–2 lecture course on The Essence
of Truth. It argues that Heidegger read Platonic ideas, not only as stage setting
for the Western philosophical tradition’s privileging of conceptualization
over practice, and its correlative treatment of truth as correctness, but also as
an early attempt to work through the fundamental experience of unconceal-
ment. Several of Heidegger’s more famous claims about truth, for example
that propositional truth is grounded in truth as world disclosure, or his
critique of the self-evidence of truth as correspondence, are first revealed
in his powerful (if iconoclastic) reading of Plato.
In the second section, the focus is on the relationship between language,
unconcealment, and disclosure. Heidegger argues that the ordinary use of
language needs to be understood as based on unconcealment: “unconceal-
ment is not ‘dependent’ on saying, but rather every saying already needs the
domain of unconcealment.” He elaborates:
Only where unconcealment already prevails can something become sayable, visible,
showable, perceivable. If we keep in view the enigmatic prevailing of Alêtheia, the
disclosing, then we come to the suspicion that even the whole essence of language is
based in dis-closing, in the prevailing of Alêtheia. (GA 9: 443)

The first chapter in the second section, Chapter 5, explores the sense in
which, in Being and Time, Heidegger thinks of linguistic meaning as depend-
ent on a socially disclosed world. The next essay explores the meaning of one
of Heidegger’s most famous assertions – “language is the house of being” – as
a way of understanding how Heidegger’s account of language develops but
always remains closely tied to a notion of unconcealment. This chapter
chronicles how Heidegger moved from using the word language in the
ordinary sense to an ontologically broad use of the term in his later works
to name the structure of gathering significations that characterizes any
particular world disclosure. The final essay in the section can be thought of
as a particular application of this account of originary language, drawing on
both Heidegger and Pascal to explore a phenomenological account of the
role the Bible plays in opening up the Christian world. By focusing on
the Christian world, this essay also serves as a transition to the final section
of the book, which looks at Heidegger’s understanding of history as a series
of epochs of unconcealment.
The first essay in the history section of the book offers an overview of the
idea that history should be thought of in terms of unconcealment and thus as
a sequence of different world disclosures. The history that interests
Heidegger is a history of different ways in which entities are able to show
themselves. The “essence of history,” Heidegger explains, shows itself in
the “separation of the truth of entities from possibilities of essence that
are kept in store and permitted but in each case not now implemented”
8 Heidegger and Unconcealment

(GA 69: 162). From the perspective of unconcealment, then, historical ages
are understood as the establishment of a “truth of entities” – a truth about
what entities really are – which is secured in its truth by separating off one set
of possibilities from other admissible sets of possibilities, sets of ways to
understand and use and relate the entities.
On this view, different entities show themselves in different historical
ages, because each age is grounded in a different unconcealment of being,
with correspondingly different possibilities showing up as definitive of enti-
ties. The transition from one age to another thus poses a danger that entities
will be denied the context within which they can show what they once were
(or could be). This happened, for instance, when God was drawn into a
world that understands constitutive relations in terms of efficient causality:
In whatever manner the destiny of disclosing may prevail, unconcealment, in which
everything that is shows itself at any given time, holds the danger that human beings
mistake themselves in the midst of what is unconcealed and misinterpret it. In this
way, where everything presencing presents itself in the light of connections of cause
and effect, in our representations of him even God can lose all that is high and holy,
the mysteriousness of his distance. In the light of causality, God can be degraded to a
cause, to the causa efficiens. He then even becomes the God of the philosophers,
namely that which determines the unconcealed and concealed according to the
causality of making, without ever considering the origin of the essence of this
causality. (GA 7:30)
Heidegger was particular concerned that the technological age, our con-
temporary age, was closing off possibilities that allow us to realize the “high-
est dignity of our essence as human beings.” Our highest dignity, and thus
what we are engaged in when we are most fully realizing what it is to be
human, is “to guard over the unconcealment of every essence on this earth”
(GA 7: 36). Chapter 9 explores Heidegger’s hope that we could escape from
the technological age by means of a new disclosure of the world, one opened
up by our relationship to the fourfold of gods, mortals, the earth, and the sky.
Chapter 10 draws the book full circle by using Heidegger’s critique of
Nietzsche’s account of truth to illuminate how Heidegger understands our
current historical age, as it reviews Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche
as the thinker of this technological epoch. It also outlines how Heidegger
thinks of the history of philosophy as a history of metaphysics, and explores
his account of metaphysics in terms of the truth of entities.
The chapters in this book span the last ten years of my own engagement
with Heidegger’s thought. Like Heidegger himself, I have experimented
with different ways to approach the matter to be thought. These essays
manifest a variety of approaches to understanding and expressing his
views. For this collection, I have made some changes to these essays. But I
also have tried to be tolerant of the fact that I would no longer express many
of these ideas in the way I did when I first set out on the trail of
unconcealment.
 part i

TRUTH AND DISCLOSURE

 1

Unconcealment

TRUTH AND UNCONCEALMENT

During the two decades between 1925 and 1945, the essence of truth is a
pervasive issue in Heidegger’s work. He offers several essay courses devoted
to the nature of truth, starting in 1925 with Logik. Die Frage nach der
Wahrheit, (GA 21), and continuing with Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Zu Platons
Höhlengleichnis and Theätet (Winter Semester 1931–2, GA 34), Vom Wesen der
Wahrheit (Winter Semester 1933–4, GA 36–7), and Grundfragen der
Philosophie. Ausgewählte “Probleme” der “Logik” (Winter Semester 1937–8,
GA 45). He also includes a significant discussion of the essence of truth
in virtually every other lecture course taught during this period.
Particularly notable in this regard are the Parmenides lecture course of
1942–3 (GA 54), Einleitung in die Philosophie (Winter Semester 1928–9,
GA 27), and Nietzsches Lehre vom Willen zur Macht als Erkenntnis (Summer
Semester 1939, GA 47).
Heidegger’s writings during this period also reflect his preoccupation
with truth. In addition to the essay “Vom Wesen der Wahrheit” (GA 9),
many of his other works include extended discussions of the essence of
truth. These include Being and Time (GA 2), essays like “Vom Wesen des
Grundes” (GA 9), “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes” (GA 5), and “Was ist
Metaphysik?” (GA 9), and unpublished works like the Beiträge (GA 65) and
Besinnung (GA 66).
After 1946, by contrast, there are few extended discussions of truth in
Heidegger’s writings. Indeed, in the last few decades of his work, Heidegger
rarely even mentions the essence of truth (des Wesen der Wahrheit) or the
question of truth (die Wahrheitsfrage; although other locutions like the truth
of being, die Wahrheit des Seins, persist, albeit infrequently, right to the end;

Research for this chapter was funded in part by the David M. Kennedy Center for International
and Area Studies at Brigham Young University.

11
12 Truth and Disclosure

see, for example, the 1973 “Seminar in Zähringen,” GA 15: 373). But this
should be seen as a merely terminological shift. For Heidegger, the essence
of truth is always understood in terms of unconcealment, and Heidegger
never stops inquiring into unconcealment. Indeed, one is hard-pressed to
find any work in Heidegger’s vast corpus that does not have some discussion
of unconcealment.
The terminological shift from talk of truth to unconcealment is a result
of his recognition of the misleadingness of using the word truth to name
unconcealment – a recognition brought about by the gradual realization
that the metaphysical tradition’s blindness to unconcealment is largely a
result of a rather narrow notion of truth. “In the beginning of metaphysics,
it was decided that the essence of truth as alêtheia (unconcealment and
revealing) would henceforth retreat before the determination of truth as
likening (homoiôsis, adaequatio), . . . a determination that was first rooted in
truth as unconcealment.” From that point on, Heidegger argues, truth’s
“character of opening up and revealing sinks unquestioned into oblivion”
(GA 6.2: 286). And as he explains in 1949:
In its answers to the question concerning entities as such, metaphysics operates
with a prior representation of being necessarily and hence continually. But meta-
physics does not induce being itself to speak, for metaphysics does not give thought
to being in its truth, nor does it think such truth as unconcealment, nor does it
think this unconcealment in its essence. (GA 9: 369/280)

From this point on, Heidegger speaks and writes consistently of the essence
of unconcealment, rather than the essence of truth. It is also clear that,
despite using the word truth to name the subject matter of his thought, his
primary interest was always unconcealment. As he notes self-reflectively
during the “Heraclitus Seminar” (1966–7), “Alêtheia as unconcealment
occupied me all along, but ‘truth’ slipped itself in between” (GA 15: 262).
But while he is occasionally critical of his own earlier views of the essence
of truth (see, e.g., GA 65: 351–2), his view of it remains unchanged in its
fundamental outline.
The fundamental outline, or what I call the platform, of Heidegger’s
view of truth forms the basis both for his critique of the metaphysical
tradition of philosophy, and for his own constructive account of ontology
and the nature of human being. It includes the following planks.
1. Propositional truth (correctness, Richtigkeit). An assertion or proposi-
tion is true when it corresponds with a state of affairs.
Heidegger understands correspondence (Übereinstimmung) as the condition
of being successfully directed toward the world in a propositional attitude:
What makes every one of these statements into a true one? This: in what it says, it
corresponds with the matters and the states of affairs about which it says some-
thing. The being true of an assertion thus signifies such corresponding. What
 Unconcealment 13

therefore is truth? Truth is correspondence. Such correspondence exists because

the assertion orients itself [sich richtet] according to that about which it speaks.
Truth is correctness [richtigkeit]. (GA 34: 2)

But this correspondence or agreement, Heidegger argues, cannot be

understood on a representational model of language. He argues instead
that correspondence exists when our orientation to the world allows what is
to show itself in a particular way, and thus it can be understood as a
bringing out of concealment.
2. The truth (uncoveredness or discoveredness, Entdecktheit) of entities.
An entity is true when it is uncovered, that is, made available for
comportment.
Propositional truth (1) is grounded in the truth of entities, because a true
assertion can only correspond or fail to correspond with the way things are
if entities are available as the standard against which the assertion or
proposition can be measured. Only because an entity is unconcealed,
Heidegger argues, “can we make assertions about it and also check them.
Only because the entity itself is true can propositions about the entity be
true in a derived sense” (GA 27: 78).
The truth – that is, the uncovering or making manifest – of entities can
be brought about through an assertion or a theoretical apprehension,
but it normally occurs in our practical involvements with things in the
world. “Ontic manifesting . . . happens in accordance with an attuned
[stimmungsmäßigen] and instinctive finding oneself in the midst of entities,
and in accordance with the striving and moving comportment to entities
that is grounded along with it” (GA 9:131).
3. The truth of being. There is an unconcealment (Unverborgenheit) of
being when an understanding of the being or essence of everything
that is shapes all the possibilities for comportment in the world.
Ontic truth (2) is grounded in the truth of being. Heidegger argued that
entities are constituted as the entities they are by the relationships they bear
to things, people, activities, and so on. Nothing is what it is without these
relationships. There are then two sides to being as the constitutive ground
of an entity. First, there must be more or less enduring relationships for the
entity to inhabit. Second, it must be possible to distinguish between those
relationships that are essential to the being of the entity, and those that are
not. The unconcealment of being involves both those two sides:

(a) The disclosure (Erschlossenheit) of Dasein and of the world. The idea is
that entities can only be available for comportment on the basis of a
prior disclosure of the world as the meaningful relational structure
within which entities can show up as what they are. In addition, since
entities are uncovered in terms of their availability for comportment,
14 Truth and Disclosure

their uncovering requires the prior disclosure of Dasein as an acting

and understanding being. In Being and Time, Heidegger expressed
this idea as follows: “the uncoveredness of entities within-the-world
is grounded in the world’s disclosedness. But disclosedness is that
basic character of Dasein according to which it is its ‘there.’
Disclosedness is constituted by disposedness (Befindlichkeit), under-
standing, and discourse, and pertains equiprimordially to the world,
to being-in, and to the self” (GA 2: H. 221).
(b) The truth of essence. Entities can be manifest in their truth, that is,
as what they really are, only if they are unconcealed in their essence –
which means, they (come to) have an essence. Heidegger’s
catchphrase for this is: “The essence of truth is the truth of essence”
(GA 9: 201; see also GA 45: 95; GA 65: 288; GA 5: 37). This means
that the unconcealment of beings requires first an unconcealment of
the most fundamental, essential aspect of entities that makes them
what they are. This works not by being thought about, but by disposing
us to encounter entities in a particular way, as having a particular
essence. We encounter entities, in other words, on the basis of “an
original view (form) that is not specifically grasped, yet functions pre-
cisely as a paradigmatic form for all manifest beings” (GA 9: 158/123).

What both (3a) and (3b) have in common is the insight that entities can
only be manifest on the basis of a prelinguistic understanding of and affec-
tive disposedness to what makes something the being that it is.
Heidegger eventually comes to believe that the truth of being depends on:

4. Truth as the clearing (Lichtung). There is a clearing within which an

understanding of being or essence can prevail while incompatible
possibilities of being are concealed or held back.
This is the most fundamental form of unconcealment. Unconcealment,
when understood as the clearing, does not name a thing, or a property or
characteristic of things, or a kind of action we perform on things, or even
the being of things. It names, instead, a domain or structure that allows
there to be things with properties and characteristics, or modes of being.
This is not a spatial domain or physical entity, or any sort of entity at all.
It is something like a space of possibilities.
Planks 1–3 give us possibilities for different experiences of entities and
different actions with entities, for different goals to be pursued, or forms of
life to be lived. These possibilities are the possibilities opened up by the
understanding of being and essences. But what is the space that allows
those possibilities to be actual possibilities – that is, to be the possibilities
that actually shape a given historical existence? This is to ask “what, given
that there has been a progression of different truths of being in history,
allows any particular truth of being to prevail?”
 Unconcealment 15

Heidegger’s answer is the clearing. The clearing is that some truth of

being prevails because other truths of being do not.
I call 1–4 planks in Heidegger’s platform for thinking about truth. The
metaphor of a platform is meant to emphasize that these elements of his
view stand next to each other in the sense that no single plank encom-
passes all the others. Each plank or element, in other words, involves
specific features that distinguish them from one another. They are linked
together in such a way that they provide each other with mutual support,
and they could not function independently of each other. But they also
cannot be reduced to each other. They are different modes or ways of
unconcealment, and together they provide the basis for our engagement
in the world. The platform describes Heidegger’s considered view on truth
and unconcealment. This is not to say that he is clear about the relation-
ships between 1, 2, 3, and 4 at every stage of his career. Indeed, as I discuss
in the next section, he is quite critical of his own earlier works on uncon-
cealment for their failure to recognize plank 4.
In what follows, I want to try to explain more clearly what each plank in
the platform consists in, and how each plank is linked to the next one. The
first step is to say something about what holds them together. Heidegger
proposes that each plank is a kind of truth, only because it involves
unconcealment. So, we might ask, what, in general, is unconcealment?
We will then be in a position to explain each plank in more detail.

UNCONCEALMENT IN GENERAL

The word that is generally translated as unconcealment or unconcealed-

ness is Unverborgenheit. This, in turn, is Heidegger’s preferred, and rather
literal, translation for the Greek word alêtheia, itself ordinarily translated as
truth. Heidegger uses truth (Wahrheit) and unconcealment interchange-
ably for much of his career, well aware that this practice invites several
contrary misunderstandings.
The first misunderstanding is to think that Heidegger defines propositio-
nal truth as unconcealment; the second is to transfer to the notion of
unconcealment features present in our ordinary understanding of truth
(see the Appendix to this chapter). Because the analysis of unconcealment
is an analysis of the ground of propositional truth, it should be clear that
unconcealment is not to be taken as a (re)definition of propositional truth.
Heidegger was emphatic about this both early and late; compare, for
instance, comments from the 1931 lecture course on the essence of truth:
the meaning of the Greek word for truth, unconcealment, initially has absolutely
nothing to do with assertion and with the factual context, set out in the customary
definition of the essence of truth, with correspondence and correctness (GA 34:11)
with the 1964 essay “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking”:
16 Truth and Disclosure

the question concerning alêtheia, concerning unconcealment as such, is not the

question concerning truth. (GA 14: 76)
One could also compare the observation in Being and Time that
to translate this word [alêtheia] as ‘truth’, and, above all, to define this expression
conceptually in theoretical ways, is to cover up the meaning of what the Greeks
made ‘self-evidently’ basic for the terminological use of alêtheia as a pre-philosophical
way of understanding it (GA 2: H. 219)
with the very late 1960 essay “Hegel and the Greeks”:
if the essence of truth that straightaway comes to reign as correctness and certainty
can subsist only within the realm of unconcealment, then truth indeed has to do
with Alêtheia, but not Alêtheia with truth. (GA 9: 442/334)
Hence, it is essential to see that the analyses of the unconcealment of
beings and the clearing of being are not being offered as definitions of
propositional truth. And, just as importantly, propositional truth cannot
account for the unconcealment of beings and the clearing of being: “it
is not the case and never the case that an assertion as such – be it ever so
true – could primarily reveal an entity as such” (GA 29/30: 493).
In addition, Heidegger’s argument for the dependence of propositional
truth on the unconcealment of entities, being, and the clearing does not
hang in any way on his etymological analysis of alêtheia. Nevertheless, his
argument for the dependence relationship is often confused with his
perhaps questionable etymology.
Finally, Heidegger’s warnings to the contrary, it is perhaps understand-
able that readers often confuse unconcealment with what we ordinarily
think of as truth. In any event, in response to criticisms from Friedländer
about his etymology of alêtheia, and from Tugendhat regarding the natural
conception of truth (see the Appendix to this chapter), Heidegger even-
tually disavowed the practice of calling unconcealment truth (GA 14: 76).
But since Heidegger himself had never confused unconcealment with
propositional truth, the disavowal should not be taken to mean that he
gave up on the platform or any of the planks of the platform. On the
contrary, to the extent that the platform was obscured by the tendency to
think of truth only in terms of correspondence, Heidegger hoped to make
clearer his commitment to it.
More important than changes in Heidegger’s use of the word truth, but
less remarked upon, are changes in his use of the word unconcealment.
Before 1928, Heidegger never spoke of the unconcealment of being or
connected unconcealment with a clearing. In Being and Time, for example,
the word unconcealment only appears in one passage, and it is introduced
only to be equated with uncoveredness (Entdecktheit) (GA 2: H. 219). It was
only starting in the 1928 lecture course Einleitung in die Philosophie that
Heidegger adopted unconcealment as a term for anything other than the
 Unconcealment 17

uncovering of entities (see GA 27: 202–3). Between 1928 and 1948,

Heidegger wrote of both the unconcealment of being and the unconceal-
ment of entities – a practice of which his marginal notes were later quite
critical (see GA 9: 132–3; also GA 5: 60, 69). This self-criticism is probably
a result of the fact that, by 1948, Heidegger came to believe that the
metaphysical tradition had only ever thought about the unconcealment
of entities, and thus that an important step toward overcoming the
metaphysical tradition consists precisely in understanding the unconceal-
ment of being (see, e.g., GA 67: 234). In any event, after about 1948,
Heidegger seldom writes of the unconcealment of entities. Instead, from
that point on, the term unconcealment is used almost exclusively with
regard to planks 3 and 4 of the platform.
Unconcealment in general involves, then, making a variety things avail-
able to us in our dealings in the world (true assertions, entities, human
being, understandings of being, worlds, and the clearing itself). What we
want to know, however, is why Heidegger uses unconcealment to point out
very different elements contributing to our overall engagement with the
world, or of different ways that things are made available to us in our
dealings. What makes unconcealment and related terms1 applicable to all
these cases is the privative nature of the phenomenon of letting something
be encountered.
Something is privative when it can only be understood and specified
in relation to what it is not. For example, imperfection can only be under-
stood by reference to perfection – if you do not know what it would
be for something to be perfect, then you could not know what is at
stake in calling it imperfect. The name for a privative aspect need not
itself incorporate a semantic marker like “in-” or “un-.” To use one of
Heidegger’s own examples, reticence is a privative aspect in that reticence
is not simply not making any noise. Something is only reticent insofar
as it could speak but does not. So what it is to be reticent is to be understood
by way of what the reticent person is not doing. Similarly, a stone can be
sightless but it is not blind. To be blind requires that one be in the sight
game – that one shows up as appropriately thinkable as capable of sight.
Nietzsche’s famous account of the good/evil distinction is yet another
example. There, evil functions as the positive term – the one that is defined
first and more clearly. Good then gets its meaning as a negation of each
of the properties associated with evil.2
Thus, given that privative aspects are specifically understood in relation
to what they are not, having a privative aspect is different than merely

1
These include discoveredness (Entdecktheit) and uncoveredness (Unverdecktheit); disclosedness
(Erschlossenheit), unveiledness (Enthülltheit), and disconcealedness (Entborgenheit).
2
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (Douglas Smith, Trans.). Oxford, England:
Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 13.
18 Truth and Disclosure

lacking a certain quality. Heidegger’s notion of unconcealment applies to

things that are privative in just this sense and, he believes, the Greek
language’s use of a privative word form to name truth shows that the
Greeks too were aware of the privative nature of material and propositional
truth. “The awakening and forming of the word alêtheia,” he writes, “is
not a mere accident . . . and not an external matter” (GA 34: 127).
Unconcealment is meant to be understood like blindness or reticence.
That is, what it is to be unconcealed is determined in relationship to a
privative state – here, whatever kind of concealment that does prevail in
what is to be unconcealed. With respect to each plank in the platform,
then, concealment is the positive term, and needs to be understood before
we can become clear about what unconcealment amounts to.
So far, this discussion is very formal. I now try to give it some pheno-
menological content by looking at each plank in the platform in turn.

THE PLANKS OF THE PLATFORM

1. Propositional Truth
One typically thinks of truth as a property of things that have as their
content a proposition – things like assertions and beliefs. The truth of
propositions is, for Heidegger, the right starting point for thinking about
unconcealment, because truth or unconcealment (alêtheia) has often been
understood exclusively as a property of propositions, but also because in a
phenomenology of propositional truth, we quickly discover that the truth
of propositions depends on the uncovering of entities. Thinking about
propositional truth thus leads to an inquiry into more fundamental forms
of unconcealment.
Heidegger accepts that many propositions are true by corresponding to,
or agreeing with, the way things are. But recognizing this fact, for Heidegger,
is less an explanation of truth than a basis for further inquiry into its nature.

The old received definition of truth: veritas est adaequatio Intellectus ad rem, homoiôsis,
measuring up, conformity of thinking to the matter about which it thinks – is
indeed basically (im Ansatz) correct. But it is also merely a starting point (Ansatz)
and not at all that which it is commonly taken to be, namely, an essential determi-
nation of truth or the result of an essential determination of truth. It is merely the
starting point . . . for the question: in what in general is the possibility of measuring
up to something grounded? (GA 29/30: 497)

If we admit, in other words, that true assertions agree, measure up to,

correspond with the way things are, still we need to be able to explain what
makes such a relationship between an assertion and a proposition possible.
By considering this problem, however, Heidegger believes that we are led
to a view of truth as uncovering.
 Unconcealment 19

The difficulty for the correspondence view is explaining in an illumi-

nating way what a correspondence relationship consists in. There has been
a tendency to explain correspondence as a relationship between mental
representations and facts or states of affairs in the world. Heidegger, by
contrast, argues that truth “has by no means the structure of a correspon-
dence between knowing and the object in the sense of a likening of one
entity (the subject) to another (the object)” (GA 2: H. 218–19). If we are
to make sense of the idea of correspondence, he believes, we first need to
jettison the idea that it consists in a relationship between a representation
and things in the world. Instead, Heidegger suggests that correspondence
is a characteristic of our orientation to the world – in particular, of our
“assertative being toward what is asserted” (GA 2: H. 218). Our beliefs
and assertions correspond not by representing some state of affairs just as
it is, but by giving us an orientation to things that lets the state of affairs
appear just as it is (GA 21: 9–10). True beliefs and assertions are true
because they make possible a perceiving that “lets what is itself be encoun-
tered as it is” (GA 21: 167). A phenomenological description of cases
where we confirm the truth of an assertion, Heidegger believes, shows us
that this is in fact how we ordinarily understand the truth of the assertion.
“To say that an assertion ‘is true’,” Heidegger argues, “signifies that it
uncovers what is as it is in itself. It asserts, it points out, it ‘lets’ what is
‘be seen’ (apophansis) in its uncoveredness. The being-true (truth) of the
assertion must be understood as being-uncovering” (GA 2: H. 218, trans-
lation modified). A true assertion uncovers a state of affairs by elevating it
into salience or prominence, thus allowing it to be seen: “the basic
achievement of speech,” Heidegger argues, “consist[s] in showing or
revealing that about which one is speaking, that concerning which there
is discussion. In such revealing, the thing that is addressed is made
manifest. It becomes perceivable, and, in discussion, the thing perceived
gets determined” (GA 21: 6).
We are now in a position to see why Heidegger believes that proposi-
tional truth is a kind of bringing out of concealment. Concealment reigns
in a nonassertoric dealing with the world in the sense that, in such pre-
predicative comportments, the world is experienced in a way that lacks
determinacy, that is, propositional articulation. This means that the world
is not available for thought, for the discovery of inferential and justificatory
relationships between propositional states and worldly states of affairs.
Heidegger believes that, in our everyday dealings with things, we
experience the world in precisely such a propositional concealment (see
GA 21: 111). In our prepredicative experience of the world, things are
understood as the things they are in terms of our practical modes of
coping with them. Such practically constituted things are implicated in a
complex variety of involvements with other objects, practices, purposes,
and goals, and are understood immediately as reaching out into a variety
20 Truth and Disclosure

of involvements. In assertion, by contrast, our experience undergoes an

explicit restriction of our view, and we dim down the whole richly articu-
lated situation in front of us to focus on some particular feature of the
situation (GA 2: H. 155). The “assertoric determining of a thing,”
Heidegger suggests, must be understood as a “levelling-off of the primary
understanding within [everyday] dealings” (GA 21: 156). He notes that
when we make an assertion about what we perceive in our fluid coping
with the world, the “assertion makes certain relations stand out from the
matter, which is at first apprehended directly and simply in its unarticu-
lated totality” (GA 20: 76–7).
In natural perception, then, we ordinarily perceive a whole context that
lacks the logical structure of linguistic categories. When we apprehend
things in such a way as to be able to express them in an assertion, however,
the act of perception now is brought under the categories of the under-
standing. The assertion, Heidegger writes, “draws out” or “accentuates” “a
state of affairs,” thus allowing the entity to “become expressly visible
precisely in what it is” (GA 20: 86). In doing this, the assertion “discloses
anew” what is present at first in a nonconceptually articulated fashion,
so that these things “come to explicit apprehension precisely in what
they are” (GA 20: 84). Thus the assertion manifests things differently
than they are given to natural perception. In it, things are defined or
determined “as such and so” – as having a particular property or character-
istic (see, e.g., GA 21: 66, 133–4). Those properties or characteristics
were present in the entity before, but through the assertion they are
isolated and cut off from their context, thereby being highlighted or lifted
into prominence. This allows us to see an object with a thematic clarity
that is not present in our natural perception of it, but we are no longer
able to deal with it naturally – for that, we need to see it in its immediacy
(GA 21: 141–7).
Thus the dimming down or leveling off that occurs when we suspend
our everyday dealings with things is what first makes it possible to give
something a conceptual character by uncovering the kind of determinate
content that allows one to form conceptual connections, draw inferences,
and justify one occurrent intentional state on the basis of another. The
prepredicative is a nonconceptual way of comporting ourselves toward the
things in the world around us. Rather than a conceptual or a logical
articulation, the prepredicative manifestness of things is articulated along
the lines of our practical comportment. In such an articulation, things show
up as what they are but in the whole complexity of their involvements.
This makes propositional truth, on Heidegger’s view, a privative con-
cept – it is defined relative to the richer, more primordial givenness of the
world, which is lost in propositional articulation. Because propositional
modes of comportment (believing, asserting, and so on) function by
determining and highlighting certain elements of our prepropositional
 Unconcealment 21

experience of things, they are a derivative form of comporting ourselves

toward things in the world, yet a form of unconcealment all the same.
We will explore the prepropositional experience of things in more
detail in the next section. Before going on, however, we can summarize
Heidegger’s views in the following way. Our most fundamental forms of
comportment are practically rather than conceptually articulated. On the
basis of this practical articulation, things show up as calling for certain
responses from us, and constraining how we can use them. Through
language, we are able to orient ourselves to objects in a way that is
conceptually rather than pragmatically articulated. When our orientation
allows us to see a state of affairs just as it is – when it uncovers an object in
its condition – we say that it corresponds to the facts or the state of affairs.
Thus we can understand assertions and propositions to be measured in
terms of the positive/privative pair “concealing/unconcealing (a fact or
state of affairs in the world).” That means that the proper basis for judging
the success of a linguistic act is whether it makes manifest a fact toward
which we can comport ourselves. The act will fail to the extent that it leaves
a state of affairs in concealedness – that is, leaves it unavailable to thought,
or leaves thought out of touch with the world. Correspondence, conse-
quently, needs to be rethought in terms of Heidegger’s account of how to
assess the success or failure of linguistic acts like, for example, assertion.
An assertion most genuinely succeeds if it brings a state of affairs into
unconcealment for thought (which may well go with a correlative conceal-
ing of the practical world).
Like all elements of unconcealment, then, propositional truth is a form
of making something available toward which we can comport. It finds its
specificity as a mode of unconcealment in the way it makes something
available – by providing it with the kind of content that lets us grasp the
state of affair “just as” it is. Truth as correspondence is a super-agreement,
an Über-einstimmung in German, achieving a very precise and definite
orientation to states of affairs.
What we now need to understand is the ground of propositional truth –
what makes it possible for an assertion to uncover in this way? The answer
is a prior uncovering of entities.

2. The Uncoveredness of Entities

We have seen that the concealment removed by propositional truth is the
unavailability of the world for a certain kind of comportment – namely,
thought about the conditions of entities in the world. Propositional truth
is, consequently, a specific form of a broader kind of unconcealment where
what is at issue is the availability of entities for comportment in general.
The uncoveredness of entities makes entities available for comportment. The
specific form of concealment that is removed by the uncoveredness of
22 Truth and Disclosure

entities consists in entities not being available as that toward which or with
which we can comport.
Comportment (Verhalten) is a very broad term that is meant to include
every instance in which we experience something, and everything that we
do. Excluded from comportment, then, are physiological or merely causal
events or behaviors. When I grow hair or hiccup, there is no sense in which
I am comporting myself. Unlike such causal events or behaviors, comport-
ments have a meaningful structure. But comportment is broader than the
class of deliberate actions (although, naturally it includes them), because
comportment involves things I do or experience without an occurrent
mental state in which I intend to do it or register the experience. Thus
comportment includes automatic reflexes, for example, which reflect a
responsiveness to the meaning of a situation.
All comportments involve relationships to entities. When I swat at a fly,
I am comporting myself toward the fly. When I hear a symphony, I am
comporting myself to the symphony (as well as all the instruments, musi-
cians, the conductor, etc.) An entity is concealed, then, when I cannot
comport myself toward it – when it is not available as something toward
which I can direct myself in a basic intentional comportment or when it
plays no role in setting the meaningful structure of the situation I am in.
The opposite of uncoveredness, Heidegger says, “is not covering up, but
rather lack of access for simple intending” (GA 21: 179). The fly is
concealed in a sense when I cannot find it to swat at it. And yet even
then, it is uncovered to some extent, given that the situation I find myself
in is structured by my desire to swat the fly. A more radical concealment
of the fly, then, would obtain if I do not feel motivated in any way to react
to it. Similarly, the symphony would be concealed if I lacked an under-
standing of symphonic form (that is, I might be able to hear beautiful
music, but I could not hear it as a symphony). The contrast of comport-
ments with behaviors allows us to see that something can be concealed,
even if it is physically operative on my body. But because comportment is
broader than intentional action, something is not necessarily concealed,
even if I have no awareness of it whatsoever – there is a sense in which it
is unconcealed as long as it figures meaningfully in my overall comport-
mental stance.
The unconcealment of entities, then, will be a privation of the state of
affairs in which something is unavailable for comportment. But, as I have
been suggesting, there are a variety of different ways in which something
can be unavailable for comportment:
For that which is unconcealed, it is not only essential that it makes that which
appears accessible in some way or other and keeps it open in its appearing, but
rather that it (that which is unconcealed) constantly overcomes a concealedness of
the concealed. That which is unconcealed must be wrested away from concealment,
 Unconcealment 23

it must in a certain sense be stolen . . . . Truth is thus in each case a wresting away in
the way of revealing. What is more, the concealment can be of various kinds: closing
off, hiding away, disguising, covering up, veiling, dissimulating. (GA 9: 223)

Thus the unconcealment of entities occurs in all the different ways we have
of making something available for comportment. But, Heidegger believes,
in order to understand uncovering, the primary mode of comportment to
focus on is that in which we have a practical mastery of things. It should be
obvious that this sort of uncovering does not require the mediation of
language. I can learn to deal with things without any explicit instruction in
them or even any names for them, simply by picking them up and starting
to manipulate them, or by being shown how they work. Heidegger writes:
The predominant comportment through which in general we uncover innerworldly
entities is the utilization, the use of commonly used objects (Gebrauchsdingen): deal-
ing with vehicles, sewing kits, writing equipment, work tools in order to . . . equip-
ment in the widest sense. We first get to know the equipment in dealing with it.
It is not that we have beforehand a knowledge of these things in order then to
put them to use, but rather the other way around . . . . The everyday dealing with
innerworldly entities is the primary mode – and for many often the only mode – of
uncovering the world. This dealing with innerworldly entities comports itself – as
utilization, use, managing, producing and so forth – toward equipment and the context
of equipment . . . we make use of it in a “self-evident manner.” (GA 25: 21–2)

Indeed, Heidegger believes it is constitutive of our human mode of being

that we always already encounter ourselves in the midst of a world that is
uncovered in just such practical terms.
But now how does the idea that we always already find ourselves in the
midst of uncovered entities square with the claim that the state of being
covered up has some kind of priority in understanding our dealings with
entities in the world? Heidegger insists upon both ideas: “when Dasein
comes to existence, beings within the range of its existence are already
familiar, manifest. With it a certain concealedness has also already
occurred” (GA 28: 360). Every uncoveredness of the world, in other
words, occurs together with a concealing of entities. Moreover,
Heidegger insists that the default state of entities in the world is being
covered over – he even has a slogan for this idea: truth, understood as
uncoveredness, is robbery. “The factical uncoveredness of anything is, as it
were,” Heidegger claims in Being and Time, “always a robbery” (GA 2: H.
294). This is not just a passing claim – he repeats it and elaborates on
it often: “If this robbery belongs to the concept of truth, then it says that
the entity must first of all be wrested from concealedness, or its concealed-
ness must be taken from the entity” (GA 27: 79; see also GA 19: 10–11;
GA 28: 359; GA 29/30: 44; GA 34: 10,126; GA 9: 223). This seems like
an odd thing for him to say, however – if entities are always already
uncovered, why is our uncovering them a kind of robbery?
24 Truth and Disclosure

The basic reason is that entities are independent of us and our wishes,
desires, intentions, and purposes for them, as well as our beliefs about
them. This fact gives rise to a fundamental concealment in at least two
ways. First, it means that uncovering an entity – making it something with
which we can comport easily and transparently – demands something of
us. It requires us to struggle to foster and develop the right skills, attitudes,
and bodily dispositions for dealing with it, that is, those skills that will let
it show itself in its own essence. Heidegger illustrates this through the
example of walking into a shoemaker’s workshop. “Which entities are
there and how these entities are available, in line with their inherent
character, is unveiled for us only in dealing appropriately with equipment
such as tools, leather, and shoes. Only one who understands is able
to uncover by himself this environing world of the shoemaker’s” (GA
24: 431). This means that, for most of us, the entities in the workshop
are not fully uncovered, and could only become uncovered as we acquire a
shoemaker’s skills. What holds of the shoemaker’s shop, of course, holds
for the world as a whole:
it is only in the tiniest spheres of the beings with which we are acquainted that we
are so well versed as to have at our command the specific way of dealing with
equipment which uncovers this equipment as such. The entire range of intra-
worldly beings accessible to us at any time is not suitably accessible to us in an
equally original way. There are many things we merely know something about but
do not know how to manage with them. They confront us as beings to be sure, but
as unfamiliar beings. Many beings, including even those already uncovered, have
the character of unfamiliarity. (GA 24: 431–2)

There is a tendency on our part, however, to cover over this unfami-

liarity. In point of fact, Heidegger believes that we always inherit an under-
standing of and disposition for the world that tends to conceal from us
the fact that we cannot practically uncover most things. The understand-
ing, dispositions, and skills that Dasein has in the first instant are the
banalized understandings, dispositions, and skills of the one (das Man).
Thus entities are initially manifest but nevertheless concealed in what
they most authentically are. “Because the movements of being which
Dasein so to speak makes in the one are a matter of course and are
not conscious and intentional, this means simply that the one does not
uncover them, since the uncoveredness which the one cultivates is in fact a
covering up” (GA 20: 389). Authenticity by contrast, consists in Dasein
learning to “uncover the world in its own way . . . this uncovering of the
‘world’ [is] . . . always accomplished as a clearing away of concealments
and obscurities, as a breaking up of the disguises with which Dasein bars
its own way” (GA 2: H. 129).
A second consequence of the independence of entities from us is that
there is always more to entities than we can deal with. No matter how
 Unconcealment 25

skillful we get in dealing with entities, Heidegger argues, there will always
be something about them that we cannot focus on or pay attention to:
“each being we encounter and which encounters us keeps to this curious
opposition of presenting, in which it always holds itself back in a conceal-
ment” (GA 5: 40/BW 178). But this concealment “is not in every case
primarily and merely the limit of knowledge,” rather, it is precisely what
makes it possible for us to deal with the thing in the first place: it is “the
beginning of the clearing of what is cleared” (GA 5: 40/BW 178–9). We
get a grip on entities in the world, in other words, by generalizing, by
dealing with them as instances of a known type. This leads to the possibility
that established ways of dealing with things will make it harder to uncover
other possible ways of dealing with them. When “what is familiar becomes
known,” Heidegger notes, “with that the concealedness of the unfamiliar
deepens, and all that is not-known becomes more insistent in its conceal-
ment” (GA 28: 361).
That our familiarity depends on getting a certain more or less familiar
grasp on things leads to the possibility that we treat something as an instance
of the wrong type – that is, that based on a superficial similarity between a
strange thing and a familiar thing, we take the strange thing as something
it is not (or, as Heidegger puts it, “a being appears, but presents itself as
other than it is”; GA 5: 40/BW 179). Thus something can be uncovered
in one sense but covered over in another sense.
To recap, the specific nature of the unconcealment involved in the
uncoveredness of entities needs to be understood as a privation of the
fundamental covered-up-ness of entities. They are covered up to the extent
that we lack the skills necessary to allow them to figure in the overall grasp we
get on a situation. We uncover them by fostering a receptivity to them, a
receptivity that helps us secure our practical grasp on the situation.

3. Unconcealment of the Being of Entities

In understanding the unconcealment of being, let’s start again by under-
standing the positive state of concealment of being. When being is con-
cealed, an entity cannot possibly be uncovered as an entity. In the
concealment of entities, of course, entities were not uncovered either. But
they could be uncovered, if only we had the right skills, or if our purposes
or activities were the sort that would make them salient, or if they were no
longer obscured by other entities. In the concealment of being, by contrast,
the entity cannot under any circumstances be uncovered because there is
no place for it in the world we inhabit.
Our ability to uncover practically, reflectively, and linguistically the way
things are requires that entities make themselves available to our thought
and talk, and that our thought and talk holds itself open to and responsible
to the entities in the world around us. The unconcealment of beings is
26 Truth and Disclosure

what lets us encounter entities toward which we can be directed in our

thought and talk – entities about which we can successfully get it right or
fail to do so. Heidegger explains: “if our representations and assertions are
supposed to conform to the object, then this entity . . . must be accessible
in advance in order to present itself as a standard and measure for the
conformity with it” (GA 45: 18). The unconcealment of being is what
secures the accessibility of entities.
On Heidegger’s account, something can only be uncovered on the basis
of our skillful ability to inhabit a world, because we uncover something only
by knowing how it works together with other entities in a context (see
GA 2, Division I, chapter 3). Thus the uncoveredness of entities (plank 2)
is dependent upon the disclosedness of a world and ways of being within
the world (plank 3a). Until it is given at least some minimal foothold in
our world by taking a place within a context of involvements, Heidegger
argues, the object can at best appear as something that resists our way of
inhabiting the world.
But entities do not simply show up as involved with other things in a
temporary configuration. They appear, rather, as things that have a more
or less stable and enduring presence through a variety of possible situa-
tions and contexts of involvement. It is our ability to distinguish between
relations that are essential to the entity, and those that are not, that
permits us to uncover such stable and enduring entities. Thus the uncov-
ering of entities depends on things having an essence. Truth as uncovered-
ness, in other words, depends on truth as the disclosure of being or
essence. This leads us to plank 3b.
This disclosure of the world – plank 3a – was the focus of Heidegger’s
discussion of disclosedness in Being and Time (GA 2: H. 221–2). It was also
to this that Heidegger refers in passages like the following from the 1928
essay “On the Essence of Ground”:

Human Dasein – a being that finds itself situated in the midst of beings, comporting
itself toward beings – in so doing exists in such a way that beings are always
manifest as a whole. Here it is not necessary that this wholeness be expressly
conceptualized: its belonging to Dasein can be veiled, the expanse of this whole
is changeable. This wholeness is understood without the whole of those beings that
are manifest being explicitly grasped or indeed “completely” investigated in their
specific connections, domains, and layers. Yet the understanding of this wholeness,
an understanding that in each case reaches ahead and embraces it, is a surpassing
in the direction of world . . . . World as a wholeness “is” not a being, but that from
out of which Dasein gives itself the signification of whatever beings it is able to
comport itself toward in whatever way. (GA 9: 156/121)

What this transitional work added to Heidegger’s account in Being and

Time, however, was the claim that an important contribution of the world
to unconcealment consists in the way that “through the world,” Dasein “gives
 Unconcealment 27

itself an original view (form) that is not explicitly grasped, yet functions
precisely as a paradigmatic form for all manifest beings” (GA 9: 158/123).
Heidegger subsequently develops this idea in terms of the truth of
essence – plank 3b) In the 1929–30 lecture course on The Fundamental
Concepts of Metaphysics, Heidegger argues that the world should be under-
stood as the prevailing of a “pre-logical manifestness” of beings “as such
and as a whole” (GA 29/30: 512–13). But any sufficient inquiry into the
origin of the “as” in the “as such” and “as a whole” – that is, that as that entities
show up – “must open up for us the whole context in which that, which
we intend with ‘manifestness of beings’ and with the ‘as a whole’, comes
into its essence (west)” (GA 29/30: 435–6). A comment is in order here
on the way that Heidegger thinks of essences.
For some reason, most translators and many commentators are hyper-
sensitive about Heidegger’s use of Wesen (essence) and related neologisms
like Wesung (essencing) and wesen with a small “w” – that is, wesen as a verb,
meaning “to essence” or “to come into its essence.” These commentators
have really taken to heart Heidegger’s warning that he does not mean to
use Wesen in the traditional sense – so much so that they seem to translate
the word randomly (as, e.g., perdurance or presence or, my favorite
example from the translation of the Beiträge, essential swaying). All such
choices avoid any metaphysical baggage, but at the cost of confusion or
incomprehensibility. I think it is better to translate Wesen in the straight-
forward way as essence but then explain how Heidegger thinks of essences
(as hard as that might be).
As I understand it, Heidegger’s disagreement with many views of es-
sences are that they define what a thing is in terms of some necessary
property that all X things must have, or some universal property that all X
things in fact have. In the “Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger calls this
kind of essence the unimportant/indifferent essence (das gleichgültige
Wesen) or the unessential essence (des unwesentliche Wesen). The traditional
way of thinking of an essence, Heidegger notes, thinks of it in terms of the
common features in which all things that share an essence agree.
The essence gives itself in the generic and universal concept, which represents the
one feature that holds indifferently for many things. This indifferent essence (essen-
tiality in the sense of essentia) is, however, only the unessential essence. In what does
the essential essence of something consist? Presumably it lies in what the entity is
in truth. The true essence of a thing is determined from out of its true being, from
the truth of the given entity. (GA 5: 37/BW 175–6, translation modified)

The idea is, I believe, relatively straightforward: the essence of a thing is

given by that in the light of which it is brought into unconcealment. This
way of approaching the issue makes room for something being essentially
determined by an aspect or trait that, in fact, it lacks. For example, suppose
that the essence of human being is to be rational. If we buy the unessential
28 Truth and Disclosure

essence view of essences, than puzzles arise whenever we encounter a

human-like thing that happens to lack rationality – say a baby or a person
in a vegetative state. There might well be a way around such puzzles if the
essence of a thing is treated as a property that all X things possess, or an
abstract concept that they instantiate; that does not matter for present
purposes. The point is simply that, in light of such puzzles, a natural
alternative is to say that the essence is fixed not by the property that an
entity now possesses or an abstract type that it presently instantiates, but
by that in the view of which we take it as that thing it is. So even a person
in a vegetative state is a human if she is understood in terms of the essence
of being human (in particular, she is understood precisely as failing in
some way to measure up to what it is to be human). A person could be a
human on this view, even if, in fact, it is factually impossible for her to be
rational.
Another example to illustrate how this works for Heidegger is his
account of technological entities – the standing reserve. To be a standing
reserve, for example, is not a matter of possessing an aspect or trait such
as being always on call. Instead, it is to be experienced in terms of enfram-
ing – that is, in terms of the challenging forth that unlocks, exposes, and
switches things about ever anew. Because everything is experienced in
terms of enframing, particular things are experienced as in a state of
privation when they are not always on call as standing reserve. This means
that they can have the essence of enframing, even if they are not standing
reserve yet. Their essence is determined technologically because they are
seen as being defective when they are not always ordered and on call.
Now, the problem with essences so understood is that they present
something of a paradox. Heidegger demonstrates this by comparing
these two assertions:
(A) The lights in this lecture hall are on now
(B) Truth is the correctness of an assertion
where assertion (B) is intended to specify the essence of truth (GA 45: 77
ff/69 ff). The truth of assertion (A) seems in a straightforward and unde-
niable fashion to consist in its relating to a particular fact or state of affairs –
namely the condition of the lights in the lecture hall right now.
How about the truth of assertion (B)? Heidegger makes two important
observations about such assertions. First, while it might well correspond
with the facts (the relevant facts would include all particular truths), its
correspondence with the facts is not what makes it true. Rather, its being
true is what guarantees that it will correspond with the facts. We can see
this if we think about what facts we could possibly adduce for (B) to
correspond to. If the notion of a fact or a state of affairs is meaningful, it
must be some actual (whether past, present, or future) condition of an
object or a state of affairs. But essential claims go beyond any claim about
 Unconcealment 29

past, present, or future conditions to include all possible conditions. This is

because the essence of a thing is not picked out by a mere empirical
regularity but must also be maintained in the face of counterfactual sit-
uations. If I were to claim that (part of) the essence of a table is to be a
wooden item of furniture, for instance, it would not establish this claim to
merely show that all past, current, and future tables are wooden items of
furniture (even if I could, in point of fact, be certain that there is not,
never had been, and never would be such a plastic object). It would, in
addition, have to be the case that a plastic object with exactly the same
shape, resistance, function, and so on would not be a table. This means
that for essential definitions, correspondence to the facts is a necessary but
not sufficient condition for their being true.
Second, facts come too late for essential definitions, since we need to
assume that the definition is true in order definitively to identify the fact or
facts to which it corresponds. To get a feel for this, compare two other
essential definitions, this time for gold:

(C) Gold is the noblest of the metals

(D) Gold is an element with atomic number 79.

When it comes to definitively founding simple factual statements like

(A), we begin by finding the fact to which it corresponds, and we can do
this by first finding the object referred to in the subject phrase – the lights –
and then checking their condition. How about (C)? It seems like we would
start by locating the object referred to in the subject phrase – gold. In
fact, if (C) is an essential definition, the only way we can determine that
gold is the noblest of the metals is by first finding some gold, and we do
this by looking for instances of the noblest metal. Thus we see that in order
to establish the truth of the essential specification, we first have to assume
that it is true. And that means that we are never in a position to prove
empirically that it is right.
Suppose, for example, we are trying to decide between (C) and (D).
The advocates of (C) would round up all the noblest metals to test their
definition. The advocates of (D) would round up all the elemental stuff
with atomic number 79 to test theirs. Neither camp could ever persuade
the other that their essential definition was correct, because, on the basis of
their respective definitions, each would reject exactly those particular
substances that the other took as decisive evidence in favor of his or her
definition. As Heidegger summarizes the situation, “every time we attempt
to prove an essential determination through single, or even all, actual and
possible facts, there results the remarkable state of affairs that we have
already presupposed the legitimacy of the essential determination, indeed
must presuppose it, just in order to grasp and produce the facts that are
supposed to serve as proof” (GA 45: 79).
30 Truth and Disclosure

It seems that both definitions cannot be right. Even if it so happens that

(C) and (D) agree in their extension, we could imagine cases or possible
worlds in which the definitions apply to some substance differently. That
means that we would have reason to believe that they name, at best, an
accidental property of gold.
Such considerations show us that being cannot be disclosed in the same
way that an entity is uncovered. But if the facts give us no basis for deciding
which of the competing essential definitions is right, then perhaps we have
to conclude that there are no genuine essences in the world. Instead, what
we find in the universe is what we (arbitrarily) project into it. And if we
conclude that, then we also might be forced to conclude that there is no
way that the universe is independently of the way we conceive of it, because
it seems that we are free to carve it up in any way that we want. The
unconcealment of being seems, then, to be a purely subjective projection
on our part.
Our ordinary experience of things belies this, however. We do not
think, for example, that one is free to decide arbitrarily whether to treat
the atomic number of gold as its essential property. To us, the atomic
number seems to pick out something more essential about gold than any
of its other properties.
We can summarize the situation in the following way. It seems that our
ability to have truly uncovering comportments and true beliefs and make
true assertions about the world – comportments and beliefs and assertions
that get at the way things really are – depends on things having an essence,
a way that they really are. However, if an understanding of essences consists
in a grasp of a propositional definition, then nothing in the world can
make the essential definition true, because nothing in the world could
establish one definition as opposed to any other.
Heidegger, in fact, rejects this argument because he denies that our
understanding of essences consists in a grasp of a propositional definition.
The “knowledge of essence,” he claims, “cannot be communicated in the
sense of the passing on of a proposition, whose content is simply grasped
without its foundation and its acquisition being accomplished again”
(GA 45: 87). This is because the knowledge of essence he is interested in
is a way of being attuned to the world; for that, we have to be introduced
to the practices that will eventually teach us to have a particular sensibility
and readiness for the world. Thus “the knowledge of the essence must be
accomplished anew by each one who is to share it” (GA 45: 87). It is this
latter understanding of our knowledge of essences – seeing it as consisting
in being attuned by the world to consider certain properties or features
of things as definitive – that, Heidegger believes, allows us to see our way
clear of antiessentialism and antirealism. The unconcealment of being is
precisely the way a certain precognitive understanding of essences comes
to prevail in an attunement. Through the unconcealment of being,
 Unconcealment 31

Heidegger says, “human comportment is tuned throughout by the opened-

ness of beings as a whole” (GA 9: 193/147, translation modified).
So, the first thing to say is that our disclosure of essences is not an
explicit grasp of what the essence is, nor is it a particular experience or
comportment with a particular entity. “Addressing something as some-
thing,” Heidegger notes, “does not yet necessarily entail comprehending in
its essence whatever is thus addressed. The understanding of being (logos in a
quite broad sense) that guides and illuminates in advance all comportment
toward beings is neither a grasping of being as such, nor is it a conceptual
comprehending of what is thus grasped” (GA 9: 132/104). Heidegger
illustrates this point: “we are acquainted with the ‘essence’ of the things
surrounding us – house, tree, bird, road, vehicle, man, etc. – and yet we
have no knowledge of the essence. For we immediately land in the uncer-
tain, shifting, controversial, and groundless, when we attempt to determine
more closely, and above all try to ground in its determinateness, what is
certainly though still indeterminately ‘known’: namely, house-ness, tree-
ness, bird-ness, humanness” (GA 45: 81). As a result, “the essence of
things,” Heidegger notes, is ordinarily something “which we know and
yet do not know” (GA 45: 81). The essence is “not first captured in a
‘definition’ and made available for knowledge” (here, Heidegger is speak-
ing specifically of the essence of truth; GA 45: 115). This is because, as he
explains, the knowledge of essences is originally manifest in the way “that
all acting and creating, all thinking and speaking, all founding and pro-
ceeding were determined by and thoroughly in accord with the unconceal-
ment of beings as something ungrasped” (GA 45: 115).
We can say, then, that the disclosure of being consists in our being
disposed in a particular way for the world. An understanding of being is
concealed when it is not operative in our experience of the things in the
world. What distinguishes each historical age from another, Heidegger
claims, is that each has a different style of “productive seeing,” of perceiving
things in advance in such a way that they are allowed to stand out as
essentially structured (see GA 45, section 24).
We can illustrate this by going back to the gold example above. The fight
between medieval and modern conceptions of gold is based ultimately in
different ways of picking out salient entities in the world – that is, different
ways of responding to some evident property or properties that they possess.
One way of being disposed might lead us to find the true being of a thing in
the extent to which it approaches God by being like Him. Another way of
being disposed might lead us to find the true being of a thing in its ability to
be turned into a resource, flexibly and efficiently on call for use. When
someone disposed to the world in the first way uncovers a lump of gold, and
subsequently defines gold as such and such a kind of thing, what she takes to
be an essential property will be driven by her background sense that what is
most essential in everything is its nearness to God. When someone disposed
32 Truth and Disclosure

to the world in the second way uncovers it, she will take the essential
properties to be whatever it is about it that allows us to break it down into
a resource, and flexibly switch it around and order it, since our background
sense for technological efficiency shapes our experience of everything.
In fact, there is, in principle, an indefinite if not infinite number of
ways to characterize the properties of any particular thing. A piece of
gold, for instance, has a color and a weight and a texture and a shape,
but also all sorts of other properties like being good (or bad) for making
jewelry, gleaming in a way that seems divine, being directly in front of my
favorite chair, and so on. When we decide what kind or type of thing this
particular object is, we will do it on the basis of just those particular
properties we are responding to, and these properties will be some subset
of an indefinite or infinite set of properties we could be responding to.
Given that this is the case, before anything can show up as anything, we
must have some particular, prelinguistic disposition or readiness for the
world that leads us to see certain features as more important than others.
All understandings of what things are thus arise on the basis of a back-
ground disposition to the world. We disclose the essences that we do,
according to Heidegger, because the way we are moved by or disposed to
things allows a particular style of being “to be ascendent” (see GA 45: 129).
As a result, there is no longer any need to see (C) and (D) as incompat-
ible. There might be a culture whose sensibilities for the world lead it to
uncover an instance of gold as having just those essential properties speci-
fied in (D) – in fact, Heidegger would probably argue, those are just the
essential properties we would find in a lump of gold if we were oriented to
the world in a technological fashion. We do not need to see (D) as true a
priori, because whether it is true is up to the world. Instead, we will use our
technological disposition to pick out objects as instances of that kind of
resource; from there, it is an empirical matter which features of it make it that
kind of a resource. In our age, it seems plausible to say that gold’s essential
features (in the traditional sense) are found in its atomic structure, because
knowledge of the atomic structure gives us the best grasp on how to turn
gold into a resource. The possibility of truth is secured because there is a way
that the world opens itself up or is unconcealed, a coherent mode of being,
and thus the world can serve as a standard for our thoughts and words.
In summary, then, the unconcealment of beings is the “anticipatory
gathering” that lays out certain properties and relationships as salient
(see GA 45: 121). This means that essences are historical – they show up
differently as dispositions for the world change.

THE REVEALING – CONCEALING OF THE CLEARING

This brings us to the last, and most difficult, feature of Heidegger’s plat-
form of unconcealment. Because of the historical nature of the disclosure
 Unconcealment 33

of essences/understandings of being discussed under plank (3), Heidegger

was pushed to ask what makes it possible for any one of a plurality of
understandings of being or essence to prevail. Part of the answer he arrived
at was that there must be a clearing that allows one way of being disposed
to the world to come into operation, while withholding other potential
ways of being disposed for the world. I conclude with just a few words
about the unconcealment of the clearing.
The historical nature of essences leads one to ask how it is that changes
in historical understandings can arise. Heidegger in reflecting on this ques-
tion noted:
entities are reordered, and indeed not merely by an entity that is not yet accessible
to us, and perhaps never will be, but by something concealed which conceals itself
precisely when we, holding ourselves in the clearing, are left to the discretion of or
even captivated by, entities. From this we derive an essential insight: the clearing,
in which beings are, is not simply bounded and delimited by something hidden but
by something self-concealing. (GA 45: 210)

This is a phenomenological observation that Heidegger repeats often

in various forms, but without much clarification or argument. The idea
seems to be something like the following: the style of being that allows
things to show up as having an essence is most invisible when it is most
effective. That is, when everything is showing up to us in terms of flexibility
and efficiency, for example, we are captivated by things – we are wholly
absorbed in our dealings with them. That renders us unable to make
ourselves aware of the understanding of being that is shaping our experi-
ence of the world. Looked at another way, the ready availability of beings
to us depends on our losing sight of the fact that their availability is
grounded in a particular understanding of the essence of beings as a
whole. Thus “the concealment of beings as a whole . . . is older than
every manifestness of this or that entity” (GA 9: 193–4/148).
So a new understanding of being can establish itself, and a new ordering
of beings can become operative, only if there is something like a clearing
that conceals any other way of experiencing the world in order to allow this
particular way to come to the forefront. The upside to this is it allows us to
inhabit a world: the self-concealment of being “leaves historical human
beings in the sphere of what is practicable with what they are capable of.
Thus left, humanity completes its ‘world’ on the basis of the latest needs and
aims, and fills out that world by means of proposing and planning” (GA 9:
195/149). The downside is that, having lost sight of the concealment that
makes it all possible, we become convinced of the necessity and unique
correctness of our way of inhabiting the world: “human beings go wrong as
regards the essential genuineness of their standards” (GA 9: 196/149).
As I have noted already, the clearing should be understood as something
like a space of possibilities – it “grants first of all the possibility of the path to
34 Truth and Disclosure

presence, and grants the possible presencing of that presence itself” (GA 14:
75/BW 445). We will explore examples of this function of unconcealment
in the chapters on history (see Chapters 8–10), because Heidegger under-
stands the movement of history as a series of different modes of presence.
The clearing makes it possible for a certain understanding of being – a
particular mode of presence – to come to prevail among entities. For
possibilities to be live possibilities, however, it requires a space from which
other incompatible possibilities are excluded. The clearing maintains a
world by keeping back (concealing) possibilities that are incompatible with
the essence that is currently operative. In order for some possibilities to
shape our experience of the world, any other possibilities cannot be live
possibilities, they cannot be possible for us, they must be kept from us.
This might make it sound like the clearing is a gallery of possibilities –
that it keeps different determinate ways of being in the world locked in
the back room while exhibiting one at a time. But this would be to think
about it incorrectly – it would be to treat ways of being as if they were
themselves in being. But ways of being are not unless entities are consti-
tuted by them. So the clearing is not a hiding of other modes of being, any
more than a clearing in the forest is a hiding of trees. The forest clearing
does not work by keeping some particular trees or shrubs on hand but out
of the way. Rather, the forest clearing is nothing but the condition that
there are no trees or shrubs growing.
Similarly, the clearing makes some possibilities possible, not by putting
some determinate possibilities in cold storage, but by making it the case
that there are no other determinate possibilities available. For the available
possibilities to have authority as possibilities, moreover, we cannot be
aware that other possibilities are being ruled out or concealed from us.
Our experience of the natural world as resources, for example, could not
authoritatively shape our experience of the world if we were aware that
one would be equally justified in experiencing it as God’s creation. This
means that, paradoxically, the clearing only works as a clearing when it is
not uncovered – when it is not something toward which we can comport.
Thus the clearing does not only keep back other possibilities, but it keeps
back that it is keeping back other possibilities. The clearing conceals the
possibility of other understandings of beings. It is not “the mere clearing
of presence, but the clearing of presence concealing itself, the clearing of
a self-concealing sheltering” (GA 14: 79/BW 448).

APPENDIX ON TUGENDHAT

Perhaps the most influential critique of Heidegger’s account of proposi-

tional truth and unconcealment is Ernst Tugendhat’s, published in Der
Warheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger (Gruyter, 1967). Tugendhat’s argu-
ment consists of the following three claims:
 Unconcealment 35

1. Heidegger redefines propositional truth – the natural conception of

truth – as uncovering simpliciter. In doing so, he loses the specific
notion of propositional truth.
2. Heidegger extends his revised concept of propositional truth to
uncovering of entities and disclosure of being: “Heidegger handles
propositional truth and comes to the conclusion that it must be
understood as ‘uncovering’ (or – as Heidegger says later – unconceal-
ing). This finding then allows him to extend the concept of truth to all
that can be uncovered and to any disclosure.”3
3. Uncovering of entities and disclosure of being, however, lack the right
to be called truth, because they do not capture the specific notion of
truth contained in the natural conception of truth. (I’ll call this the
“rights” argument – that unconcealment in general has no right to
be called “truth”).
As I have shown above, Tugendhat was simply wrong about claim
1. Heidegger always saw propositional truth as being a specific kind of
unconcealment, one that consists in correspondence with a fact or state of
affairs. Thus propositional truth was neither redefined, nor did it lose
its specific sense. I have also shown that Tugendhat is wrong about claim
2. As we saw, Heidegger was quite clear that unconcealment of entities,
being, and the clearing could not be understood through propositional
truth. His approach was not to extend the account of propositional truth
to the other elements of the platform, but to explore the kind of uncon-
cealment proper to each feature of our engagement with the world.
Tugendhat’s defenders, however, maintain that in spite of Tugendhat’s
errors with respect to claims 1 and 2, claim 3 remains an important and
viable critique. (Indeed, they go so far as to insist that this was the real core
of Tugendhat’s argument all along – against, it seems to me, the weight of
Tugendhat’s book.) Thus, for example, Cristina Lafont argues in
Tugendhat’s defense that if we focus on these errors, “the central point
of Tugendhat’s critique is swept under the rug, namely, ‘What justification
and what significance does it have that Heidegger chooses ‘truth’, of all
words, to designate this other phenomenon [of unconcealment]?”4. And
William Smith argues similarly that “the real force” and “the essence of
Tugendhat’s critique” lies in the questions: “why call these conditions for
the possibility of correctness [i.e., the uncoveredness of entities and the
disclosedness of being] ‘truth’, be it qualified as ‘ontological’ or ‘primor-
dial’? Whether Heidegger ‘reduces’ truth to unconcealment, or alterna-
tively, whether Heidegger accepts truth as correspondence is irrelevant to

3
Ernst Tugendhat, “Heidegger’s Idea of Truth,” in Hermeneutics and Truth (Brice
R. Wachterhauser, Ed.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1994, p. 85.
4
Heidegger, Language, and World Disclosure, p. 116.
36 Truth and Disclosure

the question of whether unconcealment itself deserves the title of ‘truth’

at all.”5
In fact, I think it is not at all irrelevant to Tugendhat’s argument that
his first two claims are simply wrong, since much of the force behind
claim 3 derives from showing that by thinking of truth in terms of uncon-
cealment, Heidegger is forced to redefine illegitimately propositional truth
and then to extend, once again illegitimately, this redefinition to the
uncovering of entities and the disclosure of worlds. But once we see that
one can think of the “natural” conception of truth in terms of unconceal-
ment without losing its “specificity,” much of the impetus for Tugendhat’s
argument is lost. One is left simply to maintain a rather dubious linguistic
principle – that things either possess or lack a right to a specific name. But
why should we think that? Why should I accept the Lafont/Smith insis-
tence that only propositional truth has an inherent right to be called
truth? That flies, as Heidegger frequently remarked, in the face of our
ordinary linguistic practices. We predicate truth not just of beliefs and
assertion, but also people (true friends), Gods (the living and true God),
organizations, objects (true gold), activities (true aim), and so on. Lafont
announces as a principle that we are only justified in using truth to mean
uncovering” if “the ‘being-true of the statement’ could be translated with-
out loss as ‘being-uncovering.’”6 Would we say the same of these other uses
of the predicate true – that only if we could derive the “truth of the
statement” without loss from the meaning of the truth predicate as applied
to an object, only then would we be justified in saying that an object is
true? And with what right would such a principle be asserted? Since when
has it been a condition of the use of a predicate that it may only be used
when the definition of it in one of its applications can be transferred
‘without loss’ to all its other applications?
But perhaps the rights argument turns on a less demanding sense of
entitlement. Rather than demanding that the general understanding of
unconcealment apply without loss, thus capturing propositional truth in
all its specificity, perhaps the idea behind claim 3 is that there is some
core element of truth that is missing from unconcealment. Tugendhat,
Lafont, and Smith all emphasize the normativity involved in propositional
truth – the idea that assertions and beliefs succeed by being true and fail
by being false. Tugendhat suggests, again wrongly, that Heidegger is illegiti-
mately transferring the normativity of truth to world disclosure. But we
could still read the rights claim as asserting that discovery of entities and
disclosure of worlds lack the right to be called truth unless they possess
conditions of success or failure so that we can be in a position to say

5
“Why Tugendhat’s Critique of Heidegger’s Concept of Truth Remains a Critical Problem,”
Inquiry 50 (2007): 164.
6
Heidegger, Language, and World Disclosure, p. 123.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
ambition of Julius resulted in disgrace to himself, and humiliation to
the institution which he so eagerly sought to glorify.

A gentleman, one dark night, riding home through a wood, had the
misfortune to strike his head against the branch of a tree, and fell
from his horse, stunned by the blow. The animal immediately
returning to the house which they had left, about a mile distant,
found the door closed and the family retired to bed.
He then pawed at the door, till one of them, hearing the noise,
arose and opened it, and to his surprise found the horse of his
friend. No sooner was the door opened than the horse turned round,
and the man, suspecting there was something wrong, followed the
animal, who led him directly to the spot where his master lay on the
ground in a state of insensibility.
 Eccentric Characters

richard dickinson.

This man, though deformed by nature, as he is represented in the

picture, lived a happy life, amassed wealth, became a great favorite
with fashionable people, and at last acquired the title of Governor.
Dicky, as he was familiarly called, lived at Scarborough, a town in
Yorkshire, England, famous for mineral waters and sea bathing. It
has long been a fashionable resort in England, and in paying
attention to those who frequented the place, Dicky collected
considerable money. With this, he built several public houses, and as
he was now rich, and withal very facetious, he became quite a noted
character. The ladies patronized him; poets sung his praises, the
famous Hysing painted his portrait, and Vertue, no less celebrated,
engraved it. A large etching was executed, from which the above
sketch is taken, and to the likeness the following lines were
subjoined:
“Behold the governor of Scarborough Spaw,
The strangest phiz and form you ever saw,
Yet, when you view the beauties of his mind,
In him a second Æsop you may find.
Samos unenvied boasts her Æsop gone,
And France may glory in her late Scarron,
While England has a living Dickinson.”

Dickinson received the title of governor somewhat in mockery, but

he took it in good part. He flourished rather more than a century
ago.
 james whitney.

This notorious person, who was executed in 1694, for robbery,

was bred a butcher, and it is said that his first attempt at crime
consisted in an effort to steal a calf. He and a companion had
endeavored, in the course of a certain morning, to purchase the calf;
but as the owner demanded an exorbitant price, they determined to
steal it the next night.
It happened to be very dark, but, after some parley, Whitney
agreed to enter the stable and seize the animal, while his companion
watched without. He entered accordingly, and began feeling about
for his prey. He soon felt something rough, and taking it for the calf,
began tickling it, in order to make it rise. Suddenly, the animal
seemed to get upon its hind legs, and anon grasping Whitney with
its fore paws, gave him a most severe hug. In this posture, he was
forced to stand, lost in astonishment, unable to move, and afraid to
cry out, lest he should alarm the inn-keeper or some of the family;
the thief without, wondering all the time at his delay.
The latter, at length, putting his head in at the door, said, “What
is it that keeps you? Are we to be all night stealing a calf?” “A calf!”
exclaimed Whitney; “why, I believe it is the Imp himself, for he has
got his paws about me, and keeps me so close that I can’t stir a
step.” “Pooh!” cried the other; “what nonsense; but imp or no imp, I
should like to see him,—so make haste, and fetch him out at once.”
Whitney was too much alarmed to be pleased with this jesting
tone, and immediately rejoined, impatiently, “Oh, do be quiet, and
come to my assistance, for I don’t half like him.” The other
accordingly entered, and after a little examination, they discovered,
to their amazement, that they were deceived.
It seems that a muzzled bear, belonging to an itinerant showman,
having been accidentally placed in the stable during the day, the calf
had been removed to make room for him. By their joint efforts,
Whitney got relieved from the bear’s grasp, when both made off
with all speed, half resolved never again to try their hand at
thieving, since the trade had had so luckless a beginning.
Unfortunately, Whitney did not mind the warning conveyed by this
ill success. He soon after became an inn-keeper in Hertfordshire, and
connected himself with a set of people, called Gentlemen of the
road. These were robbers, who waylaid travellers, and robbed them
of their money, jewels, watches, &c.
These desperate men were in those days so numerous along the
great roads in England, that no persons who had money, thought of
travelling, unless they were sufficiently armed. Many of these
robbers became distinguished for their daring feats, and some of
them were almost as famous as Robin Hood. Whitney, at last,
became a leader among these men, and a great many wonderful
tales were told of his dexterity, boldness, and success. It seems that
he pretended to be a generous robber, and the following story is told
of him.
He once robbed a gentleman on Newmarket heath of a large
quantity of silver, tied up in a bag. When Whitney had got the
money, the gentleman remonstrated with him, saying, “that he
should be put to the greatest inconvenience, if he were obliged to
proceed on his journey without money.” Upon this, Whitney opened
the mouth of the bag, and told him to take what would pay his
expenses. The gentleman took out as much as his two hands would
hold, to which Whitney made no objection, only remarking, with a
smile, “I thought you would have had more conscience, sir.”
Whitney pursued his career of crime, but justice followed in his
track. He was finally betrayed by one of his companions in iniquity,
and being tried in London, received sentence of death. In the
presence of a vast crowd, he acknowledged his guilt, and, at the
early age of thirty-four years, was launched into eternity.
 henry wolby.

This individual inherited a large estate, was bred at the university,

and spent several years abroad in travelling. On his return, he
married a lady of great beauty, and became in the course of time a
man of great respectability, honored by the rich, blessed by the poor
and respected by all.
When he was about forty years old, he had a dispute with his
brother. He met him one day in the fields, and the latter snapped a
pistol at him, which happily flashed in the pan. Thinking this was
only done to frighten him, Wolby disarmed the ruffian, put the pistol
in his pocket, and thoughtfully returned home.
On examining the weapon, he found that it was loaded with
bullets. This had such an extraordinary effect upon his mind that he
instantly determined to retire from the world, in which resolution he
persisted to the end of his life.
He took a house in Grub street, London, and selected three rooms
for himself, one for eating, one for lodging, and the third for study.
He had no attendant but an old maid; and while his diet was set on
the table by her, he retired into his lodging room, and into his study
while his bed was making. Out of these chambers, from the time of
his entry into them, he never issued, till he was carried thence,
forty-four years after, on men’s shoulders; neither in all that time did
his son-in-law, daughter, or grand-child, brother, sister, or kinsman,
young or old, rich or poor, of what degree or condition, soever, look
upon his face, save the ancient maid, whose name was Elizabeth.
She only made his fire, prepared his bed, provided his diet, and
dressed his chambers. She saw him but seldom—never but in cases
of extraordinary necessity—and died not above six days before him.
“In all the time of his retirement, he never tasted fish or flesh. His
chief food was oatmeal gruel, but now and then in summer he had a
sallad of choice cool herbs; and for dainties, when he would feast
himself upon a high day, he would eat the yelk of a hen’s egg, but
no part of the white. What bread he did eat, he cut out of the
middle of the loaf, but the crust he never tasted. His constant drink
was four shilling beer, and no other, for he never tasted wine or
strong water. Now and then, when his stomach served, he did eat
some kind of sackers, and now and then drank red cow’s milk, which
his maid, Elizabeth, fetched him out of the fields warm from the
cow. Nevertheless, he kept a bountiful table for his servants, and
sufficient entertainment for any stranger or tenant who had occasion
of business at his house. Every book that was printed, was bought
for him, and conveyed to him; but such as related to controversy, he
always laid aside and never read.
“In Christmas holidays, at Easter, and other festivals, he had great
cheer provided, with all dishes in season, served into his own
chamber, with store of wine, which his maid brought in. Then, after
thanks to God for his good benefits, he would pin a clean napkin
before him, and putting on a pair of clean Holland sleeves, which
reached his elbows, cutting up dish after dish, in order; he would
send one to one poor neighbor, the next to another, whether it were
brawn, beef, capon, goose, &c., till he had left the table quite empty,
when giving thanks again, he laid by his linen, and caused the cloth
to be taken away; and this he would do, at dinner and supper, upon
these days, without tasting of anything whatsoever.
“When any clamored impudently at the gate, they were not
therefore immediately relieved; but when, from his private chamber,
he spied any sick, weak, or lame, he would presently send after
them, to comfort, cherish and strengthen them; and not a trifle, but
as much as would relieve them for many days after. He would
moreover inquire which of his neighbors were industrious, and had
great charge of children: and withal, if their labor and industry could
not supply their families, to such persons he would send, and relieve
them according to their necessities. He died, October 29, 1636, aged
eighty-four. At his death, his hair and beard were so overgrown, that
he appeared rather like a hermit of the wilderness, than the
inhabitant of one of the first cities in the world.”
 The Life of Columbus.
chapter iii.
Voyage continued—Land discovered—Going ashore—Other
discoveries—Columbus shipwrecked—He builds a fort.
Although, as I said, the hopes of the seamen were for a time
blasted, and they appeared sad and dispirited, the vessels still
continued their westward course. The weather was fine, the sea
tranquil and the wind favorable. By and by, new indications of land
cheered their hearts. Dolphins were seen playing about the ships,
and birds of various kinds hovered round them.
On the 7th of October, several on board the Santa Maria thought
they perceived land. This was made known to the Nina, which being
a good sailer, stretched forward with the hope of gaining the reward
of thirty crowns. It had been agreed that in case land was
discovered by either vessel, a flag should be hoisted at her mast
head and a gun fired. Not long after the appearances of land we
have mentioned, the signal was given from the Nina. But, as in
former instances, this proved a mistake, and the high hopes which
were again suddenly excited soon vanished away.
To Columbus himself, it now seemed strange that no land should
be made. They had reached a distance from home of more than two
thousand miles, and yet the prospect was no brighter than weeks
before. At this time, he determined to vary his course for a couple of
days south-west. He was induced to do this by the appearance of
flocks of birds which were proceeding in that direction.
The prospect still continued to be encouraging, and after the two
days, Columbus still pursued the same course. But on the setting in
of the third night, the murmurs of the crew were loud and
threatening. Finding mild and conciliatory language in vain,
Columbus at length assumed a tone of authority, and declared it to
be his unalterable intention to persevere until he had attained the
object of his search.
On the following day, the indications of land infused new courage
into every one’s bosom. Besides several other things, a thorn bush,
with berries on it, was picked up; also a board and a cane. The night
at length set in. It was a night of deep anxiety to Columbus. His
breast was alternately filled with hope and fear. Indications of land
were now so strong that he ventured to announce to the crews his
firm belief that the time of better things was approaching. “This
night,” said he, “I trust land will be found.” He now ordered a double
watch on the forecastle, and promised a reward of a doublet, or vest
of velvet, in addition to the thirty crowns, to him who should make
the important discovery.
That night, no one slept on board; all was animation, all was
hope; all watched with interest the most intense. To this general
animation there was one exception, and that one was Columbus
himself. He took a station on the top of the cabin. He watched in
silence the progress of the vessels—a deep anxiety pervaded his
soul.
About ten o’clock, he was startled by the glimmer, as he thought,
of a distant light. He hesitated—again looked—fancied he saw it—
believed that he saw it—yet he might be deceived. In this
uncertainty, he spoke to one of the crew, and pointed in the
direction of the light, and inquired whether he saw it. The man
declared he did. For a time it disappeared, but again and again it
was seen by them, and at length was announced to the crew, by
several of whom it was also descried. At two o’clock in the morning,
(October 12,) the joyful signal was given by a gun from on board the
Pinta. A seaman first saw the land. His name was Rodrigo de Triana.
When first discovered it was about six miles distant.
Satisfied that the long-sought-for object was found, the sails were
furled, and on the bosom of the tranquil deep, the vessels lay in
peace, and the crews, with eager impatience, waited for the dawn of
day. That at length arrived, and behold, outspread before them, lay
a beautiful island!
The feelings of Columbus I shall not attempt to describe. It may
well be supposed that his joy was intense. The crews were in
transports. They now thronged about Columbus. They embraced him
—solicited his forgiveness, and told him only to command, and
henceforth they would obey. Preparations were now made to land
and to take possession of the country in the name of the king and
queen of Spain. This was done with much form and solemn
ceremony.
Columbus dressed himself in a suit of scarlet, and as the boats,
well manned and armed, proceeded towards the shore, he bore aloft
a royal standard. On reaching the shore, Columbus kneeled, and
audibly returned thanks to God. All followed his example. This done,
Columbus drew his sword, and waving the standard, declared the
land to belong to the crown of Spain. He then required all present to
take the oath of submission to him as governor of the island.
From the light which Columbus had seen the night preceding, he
had concluded that the land, whatever it was, was inhabited. Before
landing, he found his conjectures to be true. Numerous bodies of
natives were seen running towards the shore, and appeared to be
lost in wonder and amazement. While the boats were getting ready,
the number of natives collected on the beach, continued to increase.
But as the Spaniards drew towards the shore, they fled in great
terror to the woods.
But after the landing was effected, finding the Spaniards quite
peaceable in their appearance, they began to venture nearer and
nearer, until at length, no longer afraid, they came and handled the
long beards of their new visitors. They appeared greatly to admire
their dress and the whiteness of their skins. They looked upon the
Spaniards as the inhabitants of the skies, but they could scarcely
imagine how they descended to the earth unless by means of the
clouds, or by the assistance of the sails of their vessels, which they
seemed to think were wings.
 These inhabitants were naked,—their color was of a copper hue.
They had no beards, and the hair of their heads was straight and
coarse. They were all painted, and in a manner which was hideous.
They appeared to be well shaped, had fine eyes, and in their
dispositions were very gentle. Columbus took every possible means
to secure their friendship. He distributed among them numerous
small presents, such as beads, bells, &c.
Having spent some time in examining the island, Columbus made
preparations to leave it. He gave it the name of San Salvador. By the
natives it was called Guanahani. In the maps of the present day it
goes by the name of Cat Island. This island belongs to a cluster,
known by the name of Bahamas, of which some say there are five
hundred belonging to the group. The southern limit of San Salvador
is in twenty-four degrees north latitude.
Leaving San Salvador, Columbus proceeded to visit several other
islands lying in the neighborhood. He found them all inhabited by
people strongly resembling the natives of Guanahani. The Spaniards
everywhere inquired, by signs, for gold and precious stones; but
they were uniformly given to understand, that to find these in
abundance, they must go farther south.
On the 28th of October, Columbus discovered the large island of
Cuba. The Spaniards were everywhere delighted with the
appearance of the islands. The groves were covered with the richest
foliage; flowers of endless beauty and variety were sending forth
their fragrance upon the surrounding air; birds of the most brilliant
plumage were sporting on the wing; and insects of every hue were
playing in the sunbeams. All appeared, to the weary navigators, like
an earthly paradise. Gold was now the great object of their search.
This only was wanting, and their joy would have been complete. But
in respect to this, they were disappointed. Leaving Cuba, Columbus
coasted southerly, but finding the wind unpropitious, he ordered the
vessels to return to Cuba. On the following morning, however, the
Pinta was nowhere to be seen. What was the meaning of this?
Columbus was satisfied that no misfortune had befallen her. She
must have deserted. But why? Was she about to return to Spain to
rob him of the honor to which he was entitled? At first, it was his
purpose to pursue her; but at length he thought better of it, and
proceeded to make still farther examination of the coast of Cuba.
Having spent some time longer near its shores, he stretched
southward, and soon after discovered the large island of Hispaniola.
On the coast of this, a most unfortunate occurrence took place. On
Christmas eve, as his vessel was in a calm and smooth sea, and
proceeding before a gentle breeze, Columbus retired to rest. Shortly
after he had lain down, the helmsman entrusted the pilotage of the
ship to a boy, and with the rest of the crew, was soon asleep. In the
meanwhile, the vessel fell into a current, and before any on board
were aware of the danger, she was driving rapidly upon a sand bank.
The noise of the breakers alarmed the boy, who now called for
assistance. Columbus was soon on deck, and was followed by the
crew. A boat was got in readiness, and the crew ordered to carry out
an anchor to a distance, with the hope of warping the vessel into
deeper water. Too much alarmed to attend to the directions of
Columbus, the men in the boat, instead of casting the anchor, rowed
off half a league to the Nina for assistance. But assistance came too
late. The vessel was firmly fixed upon the bank. All efforts to save
her were in vain.
Columbus and his men took refuge on board the Nina, and on the
following day, went on shore, which was only about a league and a
half distant. Here they were treated with great kindness by
Guacanagari, an old chief, and his subjects, and they found
considerable quantities of gold in possession of the Indians. The
Spaniards spent some time at this place, being at a loss what course
to adopt. The Santa Maria was now wrecked, and the Pinta had not
been heard from. The Nina was a small vessel, and many of her
crew were fearful that she might be lost on her return.
In these circumstances, and with these fears, several of the crew
begged Columbus to allow them to remain on the island. After a
little reflection, and finding the natives to be friendly, he consented
that a certain number should remain. For their comfort and security,
he determined to erect a fort from the materials furnished by the
Santa Maria. Accordingly she was broken up, conveyed to land, and
the fort commenced.
While this was in progress, some Indians arrived from the eastern
part of the island, with the news that a large vessel was in that
neighborhood. This was joyful intelligence to Columbus. It could be
no other than the Pinta. He immediately despatched one of his men,
with several natives, to ascertain the truth of the report. At the end
of three days, the messengers returned, but they had obtained no
intelligence to confirm the report. Notwithstanding this, it was still
believed that the Pinta had been seen, and some hopes were
indulged that she might yet be fallen in with.
The completion of the fort was now hastened. It was called La
Navidad, or The Nativity. This being finished, Columbus felt himself
under the necessity of discontinuing his voyage of discovery and of
returning to Spain. It might be that the Pinta had been shipwrecked.
Sailing in an unexplored sea, amidst islands, would greatly endanger
the safety of the Nina. He concluded it wise, therefore, to hasten his
departure before any accident should occur, which might forever put
it out of his power to return, and thus conceal the important
discoveries he had made, from the sovereigns of Spain and the
people of Europe.
 Jumping Rabbit’s Story.
chapter iv.

Hunting adventures.
Some time now passed without any remarkable event. After a
hunting or war expedition, the Indian men usually spend a large part
of their time in idleness. For several weeks after their return, the
warriors might be seen stretched at full length in their wigwams
upon the beds of skins, and often, during the day, upon the bare
ground, basking in the warm sunshine.
Thus they would repose day and night, sleeping a part of the
time, and dozing away the rest of the hours. When hungry, they
arose and ate the meal provided for them by the women, and then
returned to their rest. At this period, they seemed like mere animals,
such as wolves or foxes, idly slumbering in their caves, careless of
the past, the present and the future.
Once in a while these men would rouse themselves from their
indolence, and spend a night in a wild war-dance, or in other sports.
When excited in their amusements, they shook off their lethargy and
seemed totally changed from the stupid beings which they appeared
to be, a few hours before. Their black eyes would now flash with
fiery excitement; their parted lips would display their white teeth;
their long, black hair would stream in the wind; their hands and
arms would exhibit the most animated gestures, and their whole
form seem to be animated by intense excitement. After the sport
was over, these warriors would relapse into the same state of merely
animal existence, as if they had no minds, no cares, no plans, no
fears or hopes.
Thus some weeks passed away, but at last, it became necessary
that a supply of food should be obtained. It is true that some small
game was obtained by the boys, and some of the men, almost every
day. This consisted of the heath hen, which resembles the partridge
or pheasant of the Atlantic states; black and grey squirrels, rabbits
and hares, wild turkeys, raccoons, prairie dogs, &c. These creatures
were abundant, and I often accompanied the young Indians in
hunting them.
There were some guns and rifles in the tribe, but the chief
weapons were the bow and arrow. The boys and most of the young
men had no other. It was surprising to see with what precision and
force the arrows were thrown. I have often seen a squirrel, perched
upon the limb of an aged tree, and being nearly a hundred feet in
air, look down as if to laugh and jeer at the sportsman below; when
the arrow was sent from the string, and, striking him in the head,
brought him whirling and sprawling to the ground.
In these hunts I took a keen delight; and such was my enterprise
and success, that I soon became rather famous as a hunter of the
lesser game. My agility in pursuing a wounded bird or quadruped,
and the facility with which I threaded the tangled forests, gave me
the title of Jumping Rabbit, which long continued to be my name.
In these hunts, we seldom wandered to any great distance from
the encampment, and rarely remained out over night. In a few
instances, we were absent for two or three days, and extended our
excursions to the distance of twenty or thirty miles.
I recollect that in one of these expeditions, we came to a
considerable lake, entirely surrounded with dense forests. It was
difficult even to peep through the woods, for the trees stood very
close together, and the spaces between them were choked up with
dead trunks and branches, woven and wedged together, as if the
whole constituted one fabric.
With a great deal of labor, creeping and winding like serpents
through the openings, we made our way through the forest, and
came to the shores of the lake. Accustomed, as I then was, to
nature in her wild moods, the scene that then presented itself,
greatly surprised me. The forest that encircled the lake, consisted, to
a great extent, of lofty firs, which stood close to the water, and
formed, around its whole border, what seemed to be a dark green
wall, rising almost to the clouds, and thus bestowing upon the spot
an aspect of the most perfect protection and seclusion.
As if won to the place by its security and repose, myriads of
aquatic birds were there, some resting upon its bosom, some wading
in its depths, some standing along its borders, and thousands
winnowing the air above its surface. There were flocks of swans,
with arching necks and snowy bosoms; multitudes of pelicans, either
darting down upon their prey, or lazily digesting their food as they
stood upon the rocks along the shore; and wild geese, and ducks
almost without number. There was the pensive heron, standing half
leg deep in the water, and patiently waiting to snap up some luckless
frog or fish; there was the tall crane, with crested head, and spiteful
countenance, looking keenly into the mud for his meal; and red
flamingoes, standing in rows that looked like files of soldiers.
The scene presented the idea of a paradise for water-birds; a spot
unknown to man, and wholly secured to the use and behoof of its
feathered tenantry. The birds themselves seemed so to regard it, for
such were their habits of confidence, that when we approached
them, they hardly noticed us, or moved from us. We shot a few
arrows among them, and killed several, but this created no general
alarm. One of our party had a rifle, and taking aim at the leader of a
long file of swans that glided upon the water near us, he fired, and
the noble bird, uttering a faint scream, spread his wings for flight,
and fell dead upon the surface. His companions rose heavily from
the lake, and sweeping round and round in the air, settled again
upon the water, encircling their dead companion.
Loaded with game, we now set out for our return; but this
expedition was destined to be signalized by adventures. In our
progress homeward, we had occasion to cross a deep valley, through
which a small rivulet found its way. On the high rocky banks of this
stream our party sat down to rest themselves for an hour or two,
and then set forward. It happened that I had crept into the bushes
and fallen asleep; and when my companions went away, not
observing me, they left me soundly wrapt in repose.
They had been gone a considerable time when I was awoke by a
noise, and looking up, I saw a huge grisly bear at a little distance,
looking steadfastly at me. I knew that the next moment he would be
upon me, and seizing my bow and arrows, I sprang forward, and at
a single bound leaped over the high bank, into the stream. It was
not more than forty feet in width—and I had hardly crossed it, when
I heard the heavy plunge of the bear behind me. Clambering up the
opposite bank with the quickness of a wild-cat, I seized upon the
drooping branches of a tree, and rapidly mounted it. The fierce
beast came close upon me, and seizing the boughs with its claws
and teeth, tore them in a hundred pieces. By this time, however, I
had ascended beyond its reach.
The grisly bear is twice the size of the common bear, and from its
savage disposition and great strength, is altogether the most
dreadful beast of the American continent. But, happily for me, it
does not often climb trees. I therefore felt secure. Pausing on a large
limb of the tree, I looked down at my shaggy acquaintance below.
He had now got over his fury, and gazing in my face with a look of
the deepest interest, he seemed to think, if he did not say—“Oh how
I love you!”
After sitting upon the tree for some time, I began to grow
impatient to be released—but Bruin seemed to have no idea of
parting with me thus. He continued for several hours, sitting upon
his rump, in a kind of brown study, but occasionally looking at me.
At last, growing weary, I reclined against the trunk of the tree, and
my grisly jailer, as if to torment me, lay down upon the ground, and
putting his nose to his tail, seemed to say that he had made up his
mind to stay till I should come down. I waited for some time in
silence, to see if he would not fall asleep and allow me an
opportunity of escape; but the moment I moved a foot or hand, I
could see his keen eye twinkle, thus showing that the sentinel was
awake and watchful.
At last I got out of patience, and selecting a good arrow, I sent it
fiercely at his head. It struck him over the eye, and evidently gave
him great pain, for he growled terribly, and rubbed the wounded
place with his huge paw; and finally he looked up at me, at the
same time curling his lip and showing a set of teeth that made me
shudder. I could easily understand this pantomime, and I knew it to
mean something like this: “Sooner or later, my lad, you must come
down, and these teeth shall take due revenge upon you.”
Night at length came—and still the beast remained at his post. I
caught a little sleep, but I was too fearful of falling to the ground to
get any sound repose. In the morning I heard the call of my
companions, and now knew that they had missed me, and were
come to find me. I answered their shout with a cry that filled the
valley with echoes. The old bear seemed startled; he rose, shook his
shaggy coat, and gazed wistfully around.
Directed by my voice, my friends soon drew near; and when they
came to the opposite bank of the river, I told them my situation and
pointed out Bruin at the foot of the tree. In a moment the rifle was
levelled at my tormentor, and the ball entered his side. Stung with
pain, but not mortally wounded, the monster turned towards his new
enemy. Leaping into the stream, he began to swim across; but his
head being exposed, several arrows were aimed at him, some of
which took effect. As he ascended the rocky bank of the river, the
rifle being re-loaded, was again discharged, and, the ball passing
through his heart, he fell backward, and rolled with a heavy plash
into the stream.
But I have wandered a little from my track. I said that the
necessity of obtaining a supply of food, at last roused the men of the
encampment from their repose. After making due preparation, by
providing themselves with knives, bows and arrows, &c., about
twenty of them departed; and as I was now a tolerably expert
hunter, I was permitted to accompany the party. The events which
followed, will be described in the next chapter.

Always have a book within your reach, which you may catch up at
your odd minutes. Revolve in your mind what you have last been
reading.
 LITTLE LEAVES FOR LITTLE READERS.

Mamma’s Lessons.
I once knew two little children, who had a great deal of
knowledge, for their age, and yet they were not taught altogether by
books. They had a good mother, who took great pains with their
education, and she managed in such a way as to make her lessons
very pleasing.
I will tell you one method of teaching which she adopted—and it
was this. She would get her two children around her, and then would
ask them what creatures lived in the air? what lived in the water?
what lived on the earth, &c. The children would give such answers
as they pleased; if they were right, they were told so; if wrong, they
were corrected.
That you may understand how this affair went on, I will give you
a dialogue, which will set the matter clearly before you. You will
remember that the children were named Dick and Lydia.
 Mother. Now tell me, my children, what animals live in the air?
Dick. Birds.
M. Do all birds live in the air?
Lydia. No, mother; the ostrich is said never to fly, and it seems to
me that many other birds, such as hens, partridges, quails, and
others, rarely fly, and therefore cannot be said even to live in the air.
M. What birds live most in the air?
D. I should think the swallows, for they seem to me to be dodging
about from morning to night. And, mother, I have heard Ben
Halliard, the sailor, say that there is a sea-swallow that is always
flying; he declares that the creature never lights and that he hatches
his eggs under his wing!
M. The sea-swallow, or mother Cary’s chicken, is a bird that can
remain on the wing for a long time; but like all other birds, it goes
sometimes to the land. It builds its nest on the uninhabited islands
of the sea; many of them may be seen in the unfrequented rocky
islands near Florida.
L. Mother, it is said the birds of Paradise live always on the wing.
M. This is also an error; the sailors, who frequented the seas near
the Asiatic islands, where these lovely birds are often seen on the
wing, fancied them to be creatures of the air; and being always in
the spicy breath of those charming regions, they called them birds of
Paradise. But now, that we are better acquainted with the islands of
the Pacific we know that the birds of Paradise live chiefly on the
land, and sport, like others of the feathered race, amid the branches
of the trees.
L. Well, mother, I think there are other creatures that live in the
air, beside birds. I mean insects, such as butterflies, bees, wasps,
and other little flying creatures.
M. You should rather say, my dear, that these animals live a part
of the time in the air. It is with these insects, as with birds, that
though we see them often on the wing, they really spend but a part
of the time in flying. Let me now ask you to tell what animals live in
the water?
D. Fishes.
L. Beside fishes, there are other things; such as lobsters, crabs,
oysters, clams, and many other creatures.
D. Yes; but these are fishes,—are they not, mother?
M. They are called shell-fish, but they are quite distinct from
fishes, properly so called. The latter have no legs, and possess fins,
by which they push themselves along in the water. They have a long
skeleton, upon which the flesh is formed; whereas, in the shell-fish,
there is no interior skeleton, but the flesh and muscles are attached
to an exterior shell. Thus you see that the whole structure of the
proper fishes and of the shell fish are very distinct.
D. That is very curious, indeed; but there are some creatures that
live partly in water and partly on the land.
M. Yes; and these are called amphibious.
L. That puts me in mind of a story, mother. A traveller went once
to the Tower of London, to see the wild animals. There was a man
there who made it his business to show them and describe them.
Well, there was a young alligator among the animals, and when the
showman came to describe him, he said, “Here, ladies and
gentlemen, is a halligator, which came from Merriky, in the state of
Georgia; it was ketched in the great river Mississippi, which runs all
the way up hill. This creature is amphibious, which means that he
cannot live in the water and dies on the land; he is six feet and a ’alf
from the tip of his tail to the tip of his nose, and seven feet ten
inches from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. Like all
Merrikens, the halligator is fond of young niggers, and the night
afore he was ketched, he made his supper upon two of them!”
M. That story is absurd enough; though it is quite true that the
showman at the Tower of London, does tell some queer stories. If
he makes such mistakes and shows such prejudice, in respect to our
country, as the story represents, he is certainly like many English
travellers, who ought to know better. I think Mr. Dickens, who writes
such nonsense about our country, should be employed to show the
animals at the Tower. But let me now ask what class of animals live
entirely on the land?
L. Quadrupeds, or four-footed beasts.
M. That is right; most quadrupeds spend their time wholly on the
land; the only one of them that can fly, is the bat; and this creature
is formed almost as much like a bird as a four-footed beast. Some of
the amphibious animals, such as lizards, toads, frogs and tortoises,
are quadrupeds; and though these creatures live a part of their time
in the water, most of them still spend the greater portion of their
time on the land.