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§72 [462-63]

καὶ τὸ μὴ ὑπάρχον ὡς μὴ ὑπάρχον, καὶ περὶ τοὺς ἐκτὸς δὲ τοῦ νῦν χρόνους ὡσαύτως.16 Pointing out is a pointing toward and pointing away, and there are various possibilities here, which we shall not go into in detail now, but merely treat insofar as we can see a pervasive fundamental trait emerge here: Pointing out is pointing out what is at hand as not at hand, what is not at hand as at hand, what is at hand as at hand and what is not at hand as not at hand (formal negative judgement, formal positive as true positive and true negative judgement): what is at hand or not at hand as such or not as such. To put it in a more general way: Pointing out is letting what is at hand be seen as such. The being at hand of whatever is at hand, however, as presence, and indeed as constant presence, is what antiquity understood as the being of beings. ἀπόφανσις is letting beings be seen as beings, as what and how they are in each case. The assertion, however, is not limited in its pointing out to what is at hand right now. Rather the said possibilities of letting be seen also cover beings outside the time which is now in each case: they do not merely concern τὸ νῦν ὑπάρχειν,17 but also whatever is past and future.

I shall summarize once more the last steps of the interpretation we have just carried out. I provided a concise illustration of how the pervasive characteristic of the λόγος ἀποφαντικός lies in being true or false, or in the potential for being true or false. We then moved to the question of what grounds the possibility of being true or false. We heard that this possibility is grounded in the fact that the λόγος is in itself a σύνθεσις. We can best elucidate this connection by considering what Aristotle says about the dual structure of the λόγος, namely that every λόγος ἀποφαντικός is either a κατάφασις; or ἀπόφασις, i.e., a pointing out that points toward or points away. This has since received the not quite accurate designation of positive or negative judgement. Every pointing toward and pointing away is directed toward its connecting something with something else in advance, so that being true or false is grounded in σύνθεσις. Aristotle says in addition that we can also designate σύνθεσις as διαίρεσις. To be able to connect something together, I must simultaneously hold it apart, so that a σύνθεσις and a διαίρεσις lie in every pointing toward. It is not as though the pointing toward, the positive judgement: 'a is b', were merely constituted by a σύνθεσις and the negative judgement: a is not b by a διαίρεσις. The positive judgement is in itself connecting and holding apart, just as the judgement that points away is a holding apart and connecting, so that the inner structure of the λόγος goes back to σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις. We claimed that the latter in turn are linked to what we designated the 'as'-structure. After establishing the schema for the whole construction of the structure of the λόγος, we then proceeded to the question of


16. Aristotelis Organon, ibid., Hermeneutica (de interpretatione), Chap. 6, 17a 25ff.

17. Ibid., Chap. 3, 16b9.

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