This is getting rather long, and it's now entirely philosophy - perhaps off-topic for this board. I wouldn't object if we gave Scott the last word and then cut it off. If others are fascinated by this sort of discussion I'm entirely happy to go on and on. But I don't want to overstay my welcome.

Don

Dear Don
Many thanks for your kind words and for being so gracious in offering me the ‘last word’ - unless others wanted to continue the conversation of course. I shall respond as briefly as I can to each of your 4 questions and answers, trying to participate in the spirit of aletheia.

1. ‘Uncovering’ or unconcealing as an aspect of aletheia is a difficult concept because as an activity or experience (rather than a method of verification) it simultaneously involves a concealing (i.e. ‘lethe’ is an intrinsic aspect of ‘aletheia’). What Heidegger means by this (I think) is that as we are involved in an uncovering from our perspective, our meaning comes to the foreground and the possible meanings that could be given by others recede to the background (i.e. becomes closed). Aletheia is phenomenological/hermeneutical in the sense that it involves one’s presence and that of the entity. Being phenomenological it avoids the macho/manly method (gendered as per Kierkegaard, Nietzsche & Heidegger) of bringing the “female disorder”(Spanos) of experienced entities into submission to our (certain) knowledge. Yes I agree with you that we do carry our perspective (horizon?) with us into our various encounters and so one cannot just make assertions without some grounding reference to how one understands the meaning of life more generally. To uncover rather than assert I would, I agree, need to reference a more in-depth discussion regarding how I understand the meaning of life. For the purpose of this exercise I have been somewhat brief (despite the length of these epistles). Uncovering requires us to remain open to the phenomena themselves, especially via further inquiries and trying to understand the views of others. This is somewhat akin to Dewey’s “suspended conclusions”.
So while uncovering involves significance, I agree with you that significance is indeed distinct from truth/aletheia. We can believe fervently in truth or out of truth. The difference then will be how we relate to our understanding, i.e. is it a matter of ‘it just is’ in an absolute objectivist sense or can we articulate the warrant for our belief in relation to our world of significance and enter into public dialogue to have it critiqued?
Aletheia might then be intimately connected with logos and some New Testament theology can also be involved here (Jesus was the logos and the aletheia – Heidegger, although initially trained as a Catholic was good friends with Rudolf Bultmann, a Protestant) as dialogic. Consequently the phrase “I am right, you are wrong” is not considered to be in the spirit of aletheia dialogue. An alternative could be “my meaning/perspective appears more valuable than yours for the following reasons…”, but one should remain ‘open’ for the other perspectives being revised. Hopefully our readers can see this in our discussion.

2. As I understand it, the belief that the earth was the centre could be true alethetically if the adherents to that belief were willing to remain open to public discourse and inquiry regarding the reasons/warrants for their belief, a willingness to examine them and re-evaluate their understandings in light of further inquiries. However, not all ‘truths’ are suitable for ‘objective’ validation or empirical observations, especially with regards to living a true life – how should one live and conduct oneself for example? This could be understood as an “impossible puzzle” perhaps. Nevertheless many seek some response to it through experiencing existential angst.

3a. Yes I believe free inquiry is legitimate on the grounds of human rights, i.e. state or religious authorities do not have a right to impose understandings (irrespective of the weight of evidence) upon a learner if in doing so it results in the learner becoming less of a human person who has equal value as a person as the teacher who is asserting the imposition. On a more practical level, indoctrination and fundamentalism are just not going to be sustainable on a global scale if terrorism and war are to be avoided. Hence UNESCO’s emphasis on democracy and human rights. Some views are certainly ‘better’/more valuable in the sense that they have been more thoroughly developed rather than being ‘blind’ or closed to other possibilities. Consequently this is not nihilism if nihilism is understood as ‘meaningless’ in the sense that Nietzsche described – “The aim (purpose) is lacking; ‘why?’ finds no answer.” Aletheia always has a ‘why’ – I don’t think objective facts, even though thoroughly supported by evidence, ever have a ‘why’ as such, because this can only be provided by the investigator him/herself.
Regarding your suggested answer, I am not sure if clear criteria are available that allows one to cease from further inquiry because the truth (certain and final answer) has been attained. I think from a pragmatic perspective that we cease from inquiry while our current understanding appears ‘adequate’ (rather than certain) to enable us to perform our tasks.

3b. I do apologise for misconstruing your Euclid example. Yes logic is important from the perspective of aletheia, but it is inadequate to address the nature of all phenomena to be investigated. May I suggest Jim Mackenzie’s article “Forms of Knowledge and Forms of Discussion” in the journal ‘Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol.30, no.1, 1998’ as further explanation to this (better than I myself am capable of explaining).
From the perspective of aletheia, logos is quite dialogical (phenomenological) in nature, and not just of the sort that is calculative of the first-order predicate calculus type. Logos can mean ‘letting something be seen’ and so is examined by Heidegger (in Being and Time) alongside aletheia. In this section (Introduction, section 7c) he does describe logos as having the function of ‘apophantic speech’ but also explains it as acquiring the meaning of relationship. So rather than being opposed to the sort of the logic you are suggesting, I think it would be inclusive of it and more, because not all phenomena lend themselves to being understood by logic alone, especially with regards as to how to make one’s understanding of one’s life more meaningful.

3c. I think your point here is really important as you are basically asking ‘so what?’ of Heidegger’s focus upon aletheia and what are we to gain from it? I think Heidegger was offering it as an alternative to the quest for certainty as per Descartes ‘methodological’ approach which sought mathematical certainty in our understandings of a whole range of phenomena. To summarize, I think what aletheia does offer is an approach to education which enables individuals to freely inquire into a whole host of phenomena, including those which are primarily to do with religion, morality and values. Such an approach to education is most valuable because it is able to confront political manipulation of the masses and also the fundamentalism (so widespread amongst humanity because our inclination is to assume ‘we’ are ‘right’ and ‘others’ to be ‘wrong’) in a constructive and hopeful manner. I think Dewey is clearer that Heidegger on this (see his book ‘Quest for Certainty’) and Richard Rorty also concludes that Dewey’s message is much more positive and hopeful than Heidegger’s.

4. Life can become more worthwhile I believe, when we have a clearer understanding of what the meaning and purpose of our own lives might be – existentially, by understanding that our decision (leap?) is propelled by what we feel to be significant rather than ‘objectively’ true. That is, a personal investment in a ‘big picture’ involving our ultimate concerns. If truth is understood as only ‘objective’ and is only attainable via rational logic as per Descartes quest for certainty, where do we find ourselves in ‘true’ relation to all of this and how do we find/make significance by which to live our lives? Yes I totally agree that some views are ‘better’/more valuable than others and logical rigor has a part to play in this – hence the purpose and manner of education. But in addition there should be a ‘why’ to address the sense of existential angst and nihilism that might (and does) strike many learners and this is where the potential value of aletheia might be.

PS I have found participating in this debate most enjoyable and enlightening and I thank you for your engagement with this. Sorry if my responses to your provocative questions have appeared so long-winded but I hope that our dialogue might offer something to others. Hopefully we shall have opportunity to dialogue in the future.
Kind regards
Scott

The "distinction" which Heidegger has drawn between aletheia and its Latin "successor" is the most important distinction Heidegger ever spoke of. While this statement may at first seem hyperbolic (and maybe even disagreeable to those familiar with Heidegger scholarship), it rests on the presupposition that once the genuine meaning of the distinction is glimpsed --even if only to be subsequently forgotten, it soon becomes apparent that this meaning is none other than what Heidegger has named Seinsgeschichte and indeed EREIGNIS. In other words, this supposedly linguistico-philological distinction between aletheia and veritas is not at all a matter of something like the "historical evolution of language" Quite to the contrary, Heidegger understands the inner movement of all of history as obedient to the essential decision transpiring in the manner in which aletheia is followed by veritas. Although there are many ways to initiate an answer to your question, perhaps a helpful point of departure can be found in a preliminary consideration of the manner in which the question of the transition between Greek aletheia and Latin veritas is related to the ordinarily assumed distinction between empirical and universal language. Put, succinctly: the distinction between empirical languages (e.g. "Middle English" or "Old High German" or "Modern Japanese" ) and universal language (i.e. the "sense" common to all languages, the conceptual universality which is mantled in highly particular, differentiated phonemic systems...in short, the noematic content behind the sounds) flat out blocks the way to ever obtaining an inkling of the meaning of the aforementioned transition ---indeed so much so that Heidegger would tell us that this empirical-universal comprehension of language is a thoroughly Latin one --i.e. one which has already in advance passed over the Greek understanding of language in the latter's latent possibilities. It is therefore imperative to an understanding of the transition between aletheia and veritas as Heidegger elucidates it that we are prepared to exmaine how this elucidated transition criticallly challenges the notion that the Greek language is simply one languge among others ---that it is, in other words an empirical langauge which can be situated comfortably underneath the umbrella of univeral language alongside all other regional languages of the world. For Heidegger is not at all interested in the historiography of ancient languages, and accompanying his scrutiny of the transition from aletheia to veritas, is the remarkable claim that the elusive mystery of language itself has broken out momentarily in the langauge of the Ancient Greeks, and that further, it belongs to this very mystery that it was only "momentary", i.e that it withdrew from and was covered over by Latin thought's translation of it.
If such a claim is granted, then it follows that the Greek language is for all thinking either the hidden bedrock which underlies it or it is the gateway, yet to be arrived at, which leads to what thinking still has yet to think. Why is this so? Why should we not consider the ancient Greek language as simply one more language, i.e. one more particular way of expressing universal conceptions? The reason lies in the manner in which language itself harbors within it the possibilities of thinking. This has been initially spoken of by the Heidegger of Sein und Zeit in the following way (and I paraphrase): All ontology is rooted in the ontic, i.e. in beings, and the realm of the ontic is made possible (not caused) by the pre-ontological understanding. Conversely, a pre-ontological understanding of Being is prior to all encounter with beings. This holds whether or not an encounter is pre-reflective or reflective, and indeed whether it is an encounter with a being other than myself (e.g. the sky) or not. That manner of inquiry called “ontology” is precisely the explicitation of the pre-ontological understanding hidden within the ontic realm.
This however, does not yet bring us to see how language harbors within itself the possibilities of thinking. To come to see this, it is necessary that we consider more carefully what “ontological” and “pre-ontological” here mean. In other words, why are we speaking of such a distinction? The answer lies in the place where we already are. We are approaching the distinction from one side: the ontological. For this reason we are naming the other side in reference to it, instead of vice versa: thus we say, “pre-ontological”. Why are we already on the side of the ontological? The reason is because we are inheritors of a long tradition of an ontological thinking that began in ancient Greece, a tradition which touches us first not in the efforts of our historical erudition but in the the manner in which it already constitutes our implicit, pre-ontological encounter with anything at all. The Western ontological tradition, since its ancient Greek inception, has couched itself in our pre-ontological understanding. In speaking of the "ontological" and the "pre-ontological", we are unwittingly drawing upon a pre-ontological understanding, and for that matter, one that is laden with prior attempts at ontology, the first of which taking place in ancient Greece and setting a precedent for all subsequent attempts (precisely by virtue of the way these subsequent attempts preontologically inherited the Greek attempt).
The point to take away from our present, seemingly circuitous examination of the words "ontological" and "pre-ontological" is that, by way of this examination we have sought not only to assert but to demonstratively indicate the manner in which the pre-ontological understanding of Being (from which all ontology takes its point of departure) springs up in our non-deliberate use of language, and can therefore be deliberately traced by way of such language. Thus for example I might say, when I am speaking to a friend of how I drove to the store to buy cigarettes an evening ago, that "at a certain point during the ride I found myself subconciously tapping on the steering wheel of the car in a certain pattern", even though I have never considered or explicitly confronted the reason why this event appeared to me in this way, namely Freud's much vaunted (and ultimately ontological) notion of the "subconcious". Or, to take one more example, when we hear someone in an everday situation use the word cause, e.g. "that car caused me to swerve off the road", we do not think twice to hear in the word "cause", the sense of "efficient cause", thanks to the ontology of modernity, even though we may have never read Newton or Kant or any other modern philosopher. Conversely it is shocking to discover, perhaps when studying Aristotle's Metaphysics, that "cause", "aition" can be heard in three other ways.
Taking all this into due consideration, it becomes apparent that the beginning of Greek ontology must have been extremely peculiar, and indeed, utterly unique. How so? Because Greek ontology was the beignning of all ontology, and therefore had no ontological predecessors to constitute inadvance its pre-ontological point of departure. Never before had being as such been explicitly solicited to come to language, never before had its articulation been striven after or even fathomed. The impetus and point of departure for Greek ontology was therefore the impetus and point of departure for ontology pure and simple, and that pre-ontological impetus and point of departure lies hidden IN and AS the Greek language. Therefore, not only is it the case that the possibilities of thought are, as it were, 'dictated' to thinking by language, but, even more radically, it is also the case that the possibility of that most explicit thinking known as "ontology" or "philosophy" finds its essential possibilities in the Greek language. On the strength of this recognition it can also be said that the mystery of language, namely that it hides Being itself, and therefore shelters the preontological, comes forth and is brought to utterance in the Greek language. Such is the peculiar and utterly unique richness of the Greek language.
It is here where Heidegger's constant pursuit of the Greek Aletheia and its translation come into sharp focus. What Heidegger sees in Aletheia is not only the name for the beginning of all ontology, all thinking of Being, but the enactment of this beginning. In other words, the implicit and hidden pre-ontological beginning of all explicit ontological clarification is itself brought to light in the word "aletheia", which may be translated as "the bringing to light of what is (priorly) hidden" or quite simply "unconcealment".
(I WILL FINISH THIS POSTING LATER)