/lit/ - Literature

>>19393788
I've been thinking about this recently as I am going through Heidegger's lectures on thinking, following some discussions here.
I suppose the first question is "how significant is presence?" It seems that truth is not at all reliant on verification, certainty, nor even conclusion. "A conclusion from the possible to the actual is not valid." There is no necessity of a path, clearing, or field. In fact, a zone may be the precise opposite of a clearing of truth, in it there is only negative information, or a cursed falling away from truth. It is where not only one's thinking but the whole world has been " thrust up against a coarse lie." At most, the cataclysm of truth is only a possibility of return – it may be a strong, or even divine, possibility, but we know that man 's 'fear of truth follows his liking for it.'

In the myth, Prometheus is called away from his forming of Aletheia, the great vessel Truth. In his place, Dolus takes up the work and creates an exact copy of her. In this we see a strong relation to the myth of Epimetheus, who creates man as an afterthought, but through which great strength impels.
The test comes when Prometheus returns and gives the two statues life. Aletheia walks in fullness, with measured steps, while her copy, Mendacium, remained stuck in place. She had clay feet.

It would be all too easy to suggest that the message here is that of revealing. The lesson is really that distinction takes time, may only unfold where life is finally given, at that moment of judgement which creates everything or nothing – and where there is no in between. One may also wonder if Dolus has not performed some greater trick. Or perhaps Prometheus himself would see fit, since he too was a trickster and overthrower. In either case, in creation and the moment of revealing Aletheia is presented with an exact copy, before which thinking may only lead to a coarse lie, or perhaps a Third Copy – how those today all too commonly perceive Plato's forms.
Only a penetrating or patient vision could ever come to see the difference in Truth and its copy. And what is most significant is that Prometheus raises Truth up from the muck, same as with man. Insight is thus a gift of a material, or elemental, creation. It is raised up as a force in its own right; equal in every way to man and the living world itself.