“What is truth?” This much-pondered question received a novel answer from Martin Heidegger, who was guided by the methods of phenomenology. Heidegger’s 1930 address “On the Essence of Truth” takes us on a pathway of thinking that starts from the standard “correspondence theory of truth” and moves into larger discussions on truth, along the way drawing in such timeless issues as the freedom of human conduct and choices.

Heidegger on Truth is a close reading of this address, and of the essay that Heidegger published under the same title years later – first in 1943, and then in 1949. In Part I of this book, Nicholson explores Heidegger’s movements of thought as they are presented in the original address. In Part II, Nicholson compares this lecture with its subsequent versions, uncovering the changes and detours in Heidegger’s conceptualization of “truth.” Part II also considers Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato, scholasticism, and the tradition of modern rationalism. Accessibly written, this book provides a thorough examination of Heidegger’s thoughts on the concept of “truth.”

Preface
Acknowledgments
Key to References

Introduction

1. Truth, Untruth, and Heidegger
2. Heidegger’s Texts on Truth

Part I: The Early Pathway of Thinking: Freiburg, December 1930

1. Heidegger’s Introduction: Questioning and the Public
2. Accordance of Statement and Thing: Section I(a) 
3. Truth Prior to the Statement: Section I(b) 
4. Freedom as Spontaneity: Section I(c)
5. Freedom as Letting-Be: Section II(a)(i)
6. Truth as Unconcealedness - The Greek Beginning: Section II(a)(ii)
7. Da-sein the Human Essence: Section II(a)(iii)
8. Truth and Concealedness - Attunement: Section II(b)(i) 
9. Concealment: Section II(b)(ii) 
10. Erring: Section II(b)(iii) 
11. The End of the Pathway

(A) From Erring to Philosophy: A Fourth Arc
(B) Philosophy and the Academic Disciplines

Intermission: Political Storms

Part II: Later Work: The Pathway Rectified

(A) Unconcealedness and Correctness

1. The Plato Lectures
2. The Phenomenology of 1949: Experience in WW 2
3. The Standard and the Directive: WW 2.4-3.1
4. Presence and Being: WW 2.2
5. Freedom and Letting-Be: WW 4.1-4.4
6. Unconcealedness in the Later Heidegger: WW 4.3-4.5

(B) Governance and Certainty

7. Medieval Philosophy and Its Continuing Influence: WW 1.5-1.6
8. The Rational World-Order
9. Attunement in WW 5

(C) The Present Age: En-owning and Mystery

10. A Reversal of Thinking
11. The Concealment of Ale¯theia: WW 6.1
12. The Truth of Being: The Clearing for Its Concealment - WW 8 and 9
13. Philosophy among the Disciplines

Conclusion: Against Self-Expression

Notes
Index