The name we give this whole formal structure of just-as is “correspondence” or in Latin, adaequatio. For now let us be satisfied with this preliminary determination of the formal structure of the true. Later we will have to deal more deeply with the question of this remarkable structure of just-as: what its source is, how it is possible as such—in a word, the ground on which truth as such rests.
From what we have said, it is clear that from the very beginning, philosophical reflection took λόγoς (speech) primarily as expressedspeech; and within that, it took λόγoς in what appeared to be its simplest manifestation: the statement, where “uttering” and speaking take the linguistic form of sentences in the form of statements such as, “The sky is blue.” [11]
The more this form of speech obviously presents the most basic form of theoretical-scientific knowledge, the more it imposes itself on logical reflection. Any definitive study formulates its conclusions in propositions, especially insofar as they are statements about the world. Formulated as simple “propositions,” statements about the world that reflect on and determine the world, came to be the simplest, most general, and likewise the most basic form of speech. Even the determination of truth now gets oriented, primarily and in principle, to this kind of speech, the propositional statement. The act of un-covering things in statements is what is true, and so the truth of theoretical-scientific knowledge has become the basic, original form of truth as such. The truth of [propositional] knowledge attains a universal primacy. To the degree that any other forms of truth enter the field of reflection, they are measured against the standard of the truth of [propositional] cognition and are understood as derived from it, as modifications of it.
It is far from evident, however, that theoretical-cognitive truth, or even the truth of statements, is the basic form of truth in general. Philosophy’s first determination of truth, and the tradition of logic that follows from it, are oriented in terms of this idea of truth; but so too is linguistic usage, which is bound up with them in a certain way. So in its decisive origins logic was already oriented toward this truth of theoretical apprehension and cognitive determination. From that point until now, this orientation of logic and philosophy has remained fundamentally in place.
We will see that this primacy of theoretical truth within logical investigation is not accidental. But we must also make it clear that understanding the project of logic and questioning it more radically requires that we go back to this naïve beginning of logic and shake it to its roots. In other words, it is far from settled which kind of “true”—the theoretical or the practical—is original and authentic. Instead, the question about [12] the originally and authentically “true”—i.e., the question of the primary