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to which that history has distanced itself from its fundamental roots up to the present day. All attempts to reform logic must remain merely arbitrary, unless they arise from an engagement with the core of this problematic. To make just one point: Philosophy today, for various reasons, is impelled toward dialectics, and toward a renewal of the dialectical method in the context of a renewal of Hegelian philosophy. Dialectics moves within a speaking—λόγος—and counter-speaking, thesis and antithesis. The possibility of one speaking, one λόγος, being opposed and counter to another λόγος, the ἀντικεισθαι of λόγος and λόγος, can be understood only if we know what the λόγος itself is. Only then can we know what dialectic is, and only then can we know whether dialectic is justified and necessary, or whether it is a stopgap measure, perhaps because it does not comprehend the problem of the λόγος. What is permitted today in philosophy and even in theology with respect to this problem exceeds all imagination.
We shall pursue only one thread from the problematic of the λόγος, so as to unfold the problem of the 'as' and the 'as a whole'. We arrived at the result that what is distinctive about the λόγος ἀποφαντικός is its ability to reveal or conceal. This possibility of doing one or the other constitutes the positive essence of this λόγος. We shall now ask about the ground of this essence. What is it that grounds this possibility of either revealing or concealing? How must the λόγος in itself be, in accordance with its innermost essential structure, if it is to have the possibility of revealing or concealing? Aristotle provides us with some information on this (at a point which is not insignificant with respect to the whole problem) in his treatise Περὶ ψυχῆς Γ6.7 This deals with the essence of life and the levels of living beings (cf. λόγον ἔχον—ἄλογον above). He does not provide this information within his theory of the λόγος ἀποφαντικός as such, then, although it is also mentioned there (see below). It is odd that there is talk of λόγος precisely in this treatise "On the Essence of Life." Yet it is not so odd as soon as we recall that Aristotle grasps the concept of life in a very broad sense that includes the being of plant, animal, and human. Book Three of this treatise deals precisely with living beings in the sense of man. The distinguishing feature of man is the λόγος. And this is why this treatise deals with the λόγος. At this particular point Aristotle provides us with information about what it is that grounds the possibility for the λόγος to be either true or false. He states: ἐν οἷς δὲ καὶ τὸ ψεῦδος καὶ τὸ ἀληθὲς, σύνθεσις τίς ἤδη νοημάτων ὥσπερ ἓν ὄντων:8 In the field of that in relation to which both what conceals and what reveals become possible, something like an assembling (a taking together) of whatever is apprehended has already occurred, and in such a way that whatever is apprehended forms
7. Aristotelis De anima. Ed. W. Biehl. Second edition, Ed. O. Apelt (Leipzig, 1911).
8. Ibid., Γ6, 430a 27f.