A request does not have the sense of uncovering or covering-over.7
* * *
So uncovering and covering-over are what determine the λόγος as indicative showing-something-as.8 A sentence gets its determination as a statement by uncovering and covering-over. The essence of a proposition is ἀποφαίνεσθαι—showing a thing ἀπό: in terms of itself. The meaning of an assertion as a form of speech is to show (δηλοῦν) something as. That λόγος is ἀποφαντικός whose distinctive possibility as an act of speech is to show something as, whose mode of expression can bring something into view—that is, only if it is an ἀπόφανσις, a “statement,” or more exactly, an “indicating . . . as.” However, we will stick with the more normal word “statement,” but will give it the meaning that is contained in the phenomenon of this kind of λόγος. What a statement says about something is drawn from that thing itself, so that in this kind of speech, what the speech is about comes into the clear, becomes available for comprehension. In the expressed statement, therefore, the very thing it indicates has become accessible and, as it were, preserved [verwahrt]. This sense of statement must be kept in mind in the future as the primary sense.
In our understanding, what is asserted in a statement is: “the chalkboard in its being-black.” But in addition and above all, a “statement” is understood only as “predication,” that is, asserting that a “predicate” belongs to a subject. A subject is that to which we give a determination. In this instance, therefore, “statement” has the meaning of “an act of determining.” A statement in this sense has an essential relation to statement in the first sense: an act of determining is always an act of showing something as, and it is possible only as such. Whether every statement as such also determines, is a question that we shall have to leave open. It is a question that we will [134] explain in the following paragraphs, when we investigate the full structure of ἀπόφανσις. So we have what is asserted and the act of asserting as “predicating,” e.g., “being-black.” The statement as determination is a bit restricted with respect to statement in the first sense.
In the third place, a “statement” can mean the same as a “communication,” i.e., the expression of something. This is connected with the first meaning and consequently with the second. But unlike the first, this one means not so much indicating something as, showing it
7.[Here (Moser, p. 274) Heidegger ends his lecture of Thursday, 3 December 1925, to be followed by that of Friday, 4 December, which opened with a 680word summary that is omitted in GA 21.]
8. [A declarative sentence (λόγος) never simply “shows something,” but always “shows something as something.” I occasionally indicate this by putting “as” in brackets after “shows.”]