Before we pursue the problem we have indicated, let us recall the context of the problem once again. We concluded our initial interpretation of the copula using the example 'The board is black' by drawing attention to an essential meaning which we characterised and formulated thus: being equals being true. Such being in the sense of being true is inherently referred to in every statement, whether the statement expresses being in the sense of being at hand or of being constituted in such and such a way, or even in the sense of essential constitution. Such being true is bound up with the three previous meanings of being in a strange sense, so that there appears a peculiar unity of these meanings which intrinsically belong together. More precisely, we must ask why there is this polysemy of the copula, and where the ground of its unity is to be found. We recognized this polysemy of the copula quite generally as its positive essence, which is mostly expressed in the strange undifferentiatedness and universality that has given rise to various, inherently one-sided theories. Without seeing its polysemy, Aristotle traced the copula back to a σύνθεσις. The structural moments of the λόγος, which we considered before analysing the λόγος, namely κατάφασις and ἀπόφασις, ἀληθές and ψεῦδος, are likewise traced back to a σύνθεσις or διαίρεσις. We said that this σύνθεσις underlying the λόγος is presumably that relation in which the 'as' and the 'as'-structure we were asking about is grounded. If, however, according to Aristotle, being, the copula—now taken in its polysemy—is also grounded in a σύνθεσις, then we here see the possibility that the 'as' and being have a common root. This is already pointed to by the fact that, in our formal indication of the concept of world as the manifestness of beings as such as a whole together with our grasping beings themselves, we use the 'as' and do so in a distinctive sense. Perhaps that very relation in which the 'as' and the 'as'-structure is rooted is the relation that also makes it possible to get a view of something like being, so that the 'as'-structure and being intrinsically hang together in some sense. That this is so, is something we can only see if we also comprehend from our interpretation of the λόγος so far that the λόγος is not independent, but is grounded in something more originary. We shall only find this originary essence of the λόγος if, instead of positing it as constituted in this way or that, we keep the whole essential construction of the λόγος in view and inquire back into the dimension of its origin, i.e., into that which makes it possible in accordance with its inner possibility. In considering the origin of the essence of the λόγος, of the assertion, therefore, we are not to take the true positive assertion as the underlying primary example—as commonly occurs—but nor are we to take some other form of assertion as our basis. Rather what is at issue is to see that the deeper essence of the λόγος lies in the fact that it is the intrinsic possibility of this 'either/or' of the potential for being true or false, both in the manner of ascribing and of denying. Only when we orient the question concerning the ground of the possibility of the λόγος in such a way