and as what can be said again, preserves in each case the being that has been opened up. What has been said can be said again and passed on. The truth that is preserved in this saying spreads in such a way that the being that was originally opened up in gathering is not itself expressly experienced in each particular case. In what is passed on, truth loosens itself, as it were, from beings. This can go so far that saying-again becomes [142|194] mere hearsay, γλῶσσα. Everything that is asserted stands constantly in this danger (see Being and Time, §44b).96
This implies that the decision about what is true now takes place as a confrontation between correct saying and mere hearsay. Logos, in the sense of saying and asserting, now becomes the domain and place where decisions are made about truth—that is, originally, about the unconcealment of beings and thus about the Being of beings. In the inception, logos as gathering is the happening of unconcealment; logos is grounded in unconcealment and is in service to it. But now, logos as assertion becomes the locus of truth in the sense of correctness. We arrive at Aristotle’s proposition according to which logos as assertion is what can be true or false.97 Truth, which was originally, as unconcealment, a happening of the beings themselves that held sway, and was stewarded by means of gathering, now becomes a property of logos. In becoming a property of assertion, truth does not just shift its place; it changes its essence. From the point of view of the assertion, the true is attained when saying sticks to what it makes an assertion about, when the assertion is directed by beings.
96. This paragraph uses several words based on sagen (say): nachsagen (say again, repeat), weitersagen (pass on, spread about by saying), Hersagen (recitation, the repetition of hearsay), aussagen (assert). Heidegger also plays on wahr, “true,” when he speaks of die verwahrte Wahrheit, “the truth that is preserved.” Γλῶσσα, literally “tongue,” can also mean hearsay, word of mouth (see p. 193).
97. Aristotle, De Interpretatione, chap. 4.