Heidegger had an alternate
understanding of truth,
aletheia, which involves an "unconcealedness" of being. He illustrated
this concept by way of a discussion of Van Gogh's painting of a pair of shoes. The paper shows how this interpretation drew the criticism of art historian, Meyer Schapiro, who questioned whether the shoes are that of a peasant woman. This, in turn, triggered a response from Jacques Derrida about the subjective projections on both sides. This paper argues that what gets lost in the flurry of words is whether we have a mode of properly
understanding aletheia.