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point to the same origin. In other words, the elucidation of the essence of the 'as' goes together with the question concerning the essence of the 'is', of being. Both questions serve to unfold the problem of world. We can already clarify this at this stage from our provisional formal analysis of the concept of world: manifestness of beings as such. This entails manifestness of beings as beings, i.e., with respect to their being. The 'as' and the relation that sustains and forms it makes possible a perspective upon something like being. The question of how things stand regarding being cannot be posed without asking about the essence of the 'as', and vice-versa. We have to ponder which question merits a methodological privilege on the level of factical exposition. The direct question concerning the 'as' and the relation sustaining it always led us straight into obscurity. Only a detour via the λόγος provided an insight into its manifold structures (why this is the case need not occupy us now). It thus seems appropriate to continue along this path, especially since it has led us to the question concerning being in the shape of the copula. It is now a matter of getting a view of the whole of the λόγος-structure and inquiring back into the ground of its possibility (σύνθεσις—διαίρεσις), and of doing so via the guiding thread of the 'is' pertaining to the λόγος-structure, the 'is' taken in the multiplicity of its initially undifferentiated meanings.

And yet—can we inquire back behind the assertion? Is it not something ultimate? On the other hand, however, we have heard about components of the λόγος—ὄνομα, ῥῆμα, the so-called parts of speech. The λόγος can thus be resolved into these parts of speech: subject-term, predicate-term, copula. Certainly, yet resolving it in this way precisely destroys the wholeness of the λόγος, so that even the connection becomes free-floating and cannot be what it is, namely binding. That which binds, according to Aristotle too, only has meaning if it can be related to συγκείμενα. After all, we are precisely not asking about individual parts of the λόγος, but about the ground of the possibility of λόγος as such taken as a whole, and are doing so via the guiding thread of the 'is' and its place in the λόγος-structure as a whole. Our inquiring back into the ground of the possibility of the λόγος must therefore be something other than resolving and splitting it into its parts. On the contrary, our inquiring back into the ground must attempt to maintain as a whole that whose ground and inner possibility we are asking about. This kind of inquiring back, this kind of analytic was first seen by Kant in all its peculiarity, even though he did not ultimately become aware of the extent of his insight in any detail. It is the kind of analytic that neo-Kantianism later called the question of the origin, though while making it shallow in a particular direction. To interrogate the λόγος as to its origin means to point out that from which it springs in each case as a whole, not factically, in its specific accomplishment, but in accordance with the inner possibility of its essence. Analytic and investigation of the origin