We can now see more clearly that the assertion is neither originary nor independent. However, we still want to know precisely what it is that grounds it, what it is that we are calling man's pre-logical being open for beings.

Before inquiring any further into what we have now established as the second moment of the originary dimension of the assertion, let us summarize what we have hitherto seen of this originary dimension. We are interrogating the fundamental structure of the λόγος with respect to its inner possibility, with respect to that which the λόγος as λόγος springs from. This demands that we go back into the dimension of the origin. In doing so, we come across several things which, seen together in their unity, constitute what properly makes the λόγος possible, but also lead us back to what we called the formation of world. The first thing this path led us to see is the following: The λόγος is a λόγος that points out, which is to say: The manner and way in which it makes things manifest is not a primary or originary manifesting, as though a judgement or assertion in itself could ever make accessible that which the assertion is about. Rather all λόγος can only point out, i.e., take apart and examine, whatever is already pre-logically manifest. Yet not only this. In order for the λόγος to satisfy this fundamental function of pointing out, it must—in order to be able to point out—have the possibility of conforming to whatever it points out or else going astray in its pointing out. For it also has the possible potential to be false. The λόγος therefore in and for itself requires this leeway of possible conformity or nonconformity. To put it quite generally, it requires in advance something that provides it with the measure for all measurement. There is a comportment that already stretches ahead, in advance of all propositional comportment, in the direction of whatever the assertion is about, a comportment that has the character of holding oneself toward something binding, and it is from here that conformity and nonconformity, the ultimate meaning of adaequatio, are possible. The first moment that underlies the λόγος is this holding oneself toward something binding. We attempted to approach the second moment via the concrete analysis of a particular example: 'This board is badly positioned'. At first, we intentionally attributed importance to making sure of what was being referred to in the said property, and we did so by showing the following: what we here ascribe to the board is not merely a property pertaining to the board relative to us who observe and make judgements about it; rather this property is precisely utterly objective, i.e., a property that pertains to this specific object as such, if only we can see it explicitly in its true objectivity with regard to which we make the assertion in saying 'The board is badly positioned'. Insofar as we spontaneously utter this assertion without any construction or theoretical reflection, but in terms of our everyday being here, we do not have the board alone in view when making this assertion. Rather we have this room here as a lecture theatre in view—although not in the narrower sense of