THE PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION OF A TYPESCRIPT OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER’S TALK “BEING-THERE AND BEING-TRUE ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE”

Heidegger's Cologne address of 1924 is important in at least three respects. First, it represents the next stage in the genesis of Being and Time after the seminal text known as Natorp Bericht (1922). Second, it manifests a new landmark in Heidegger's rethinking appropriation of Aristotle's thought. This new synthesis includes, in particular, the groundwork on Aristotle's Rhetoric from the summer course of 1924. The annotations to the translation,—based on the texts from 1922–1924,—bring to light Heidegger's working his way to this synthesis. The preface specifically uncovers Heidegger's reading of Aristotle's doctrine of the “mean” and compares Heidegger's interpretation of Aristotle concept of ethical decision to an interpretation of it typical of modern Aristotle scholarship belonging to analytical tradition. Third, the Cologne address represents Heidegger's first thematic approach to the question of the essence of truth (which even after Being and Time for at least a decade remained among his guiding threads). In particular, it develops the thesis (barely outlined in Natorp Bericht) that (contrary to the dominant view which Daniel Dahlstrom appropriately dubbed “the logical prejudice”) the proper “place” of truth is not judgement, but the being indicated in a judgement by the copula and in a human act by the goodness that motivates it; and that speech, for the most part, conceals the truth originally sighted.