grounded in a manifestness which, because it lies prior to predication and the assertion, we designate as pre-predicative manifestness, or better, as pre-logical truth. 'Logical' is here to be taken in a quite rigorous sense, namely having to do with the λόγος ἀποφαντικός in the form we have interpreted it. With respect to the latter, there is a manifestness that lies prior to it, prior to it in the distinct sense that this original manifestness grounds the possibility of the λόγος being true and being false, grounds it in preceding it.

We saw, furthermore, that the assertion is expressed—though not always in this linguistic form-in the 'is', being, and that such being at first and for the most part shows an undifferentiatedness and universality of meaning. We can now see that through the assertion, being is not first attributed to whatever the assertion is about, and that those beings with which the assertion is concerned do not first receive their ontological character through the 'is', but conversely that the 'is' in all its multiplicity and specific determinacy on each occasion only ever proves to be the expression of what, how, and whether beings are. The manifold character of the essence of being can therefore never be read off from the copula and its meanings at all. Instead, it is necessary to return to where every assertion and its copula speaks from, namely beings themselves as already manifest. Because the being of the copula-in each of its possible interpretations—is not what is originary, and yet the copula plays an essential role in the expressed statement and the expressed statement is commonly taken as the place of truth, we are faced with the necessity of a destructuring [Destruktion].

The ability we have characterized as the λόγος ἀποφαντικός accordingly points to a manifestness of beings as such which lies prior to all assertions. The question arises: Is this pre-logical manifestness of beings as such the originary ground of the possibility of that ability, and do we see in this ground that of which Aristotle already had an intimation in speaking of σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις? If this original manifestness of beings is more originary than the λόγος, and the λόγος is a manner of human comportment, where then is this originary manifestness? It is surely not outside man, but must be man himself in a deeper sense, man himself in his essence. We indicated this essence by way of a thesis: man is world-forming. Where is this manifestness situated, and what does it consist in?

For the moment, we can already see that if the λόγος ἀποφαντικός leads back to something more originary in respect of its inner possibility, and if whatever is more originary is somehow connected with what we call world and world-formation, then judgements and statements are not primarily world-forming in themselves, even though they belong to world-formation. The λόγος is an ability, characterized by the 'either/or' of revealing-concealing in pointing out. A being open for those beings themselves which the judgement is in each case concerned with must therefore already be possible in man, as the one who