“Übersetzen” ἀλήθεια: in cammino con Heidegger verso la dimora della dea di Parmenide

How could the essence of truth be «a mere “concept”?» asks Heidegger. It is not and cannot be, he replies, because truth is a goddess, in the sense of the divine as understood by the Greeks. The present article endeavors to comprehend the influence exerted on Heidegger’s philosophy, particularly in regard to his interpretation of the Greek term ἀλήθεια (which played a pivotal role in his speculative journey), by the role he attributed to the anonymous goddess to whom Parmenides, one of the “primordial thinkers”, delivers his dictum at the dawn of Western thought. According to Heidegger, it is precisely in the μῦθος uttered by the Parmenidean goddess that the still-latent essence of the “truth of being”, as he understands ἀλήθεια, is enclosed and preserved, because she herself is that truth-though not in the sense that she is the “goddess of truth”, as if, on the one hand, there were a goddess and, on the other, a truth placed under her divine protection. Rather, it is ἀλήθεια itself that is the goddess Ἀλήθεια.