But logos, φάσις, the saying in the sense of the assertion, decides so originally about the Being of beings that in each case where one saying stands against another, where a contra-diction occurs, ἀντίφασις, then the contradictory cannot be. In contrast, that which does not contradict itself is at least capable of Being. The old disputed question of whether the principle of contradiction has an “ontological” or a “logical” meaning in Aristotle is wrongly posed, because for Aristotle there is neither “ontology” nor “logic.” Both come about only on the basis of Aristotelian philosophy. Instead, the principle of contradiction has “ontological” meaning because it is a fundamental law of logos, a “logical” principle. Thus, the sublation of the principle of contradiction in Hegel’s dialectic is not in principle an overcoming of the dominance of logos, but only its highest intensification. [The fact that Hegel gives the title of “logic” to what is really metaphysics, that is, “physics,” recalls both logos in the sense of the locus of the categories and logos in the sense of the originary φύσις.]¹⁰⁰

In the form of the assertion, logos itself has become just another thing that one comes across. This present-at-hand thing is something handy, something that is handled in order to attain truth as correctness and establish it securely. So this handle for attaining truth can easily be grasped as a tool, ὄργανον, and the tool can easily be made handy in the proper way. This is all the more necessary the more decisively the original opening up of the Being of beings has been suspended, with the transformation of φύσις into εἶδος and of λόγος into κατηγορία. The true as the correct is now merely spread about and spread afar by way of discussion, instruction, and prescriptions, thereby becoming ever more leveled out.

100. In parentheses in the 1953 edition.