Every affirmative statement is never simply synthetic. (2) When it comes to true and false, it is not a matter of either/or (i.e., either synthesizing or separating). Rather, every affirmative statement both synthesizes and separates, and every negative statement both synthesizes and separates. And there is a further consequence: (3) Since every affirmative statement can be either true or false, it is not the case that uncovering = synthesizing and covering-over = separating. Rather, every uncovering statement and every covering-over statement bothsynthesize and separate. In other words, a structure of every statement qua statement is that it synthetic-and-separating. Therefore, this structure obtains in every statement, and it obtains prior to affirmation and negation, attribution and denial—and it does so absolutely. This is the case [140] not, as one might allege, because attributing-to is primarily synthesis and only secondarily separation, or that denying-of is primarily separation and only secondarily synthesis. No—attribution is no more a matter of synthesis than it is of separation, and denial is no more a matter of separation than it is of synthesis. What all of this means is that synthesis and separation are found at a level that is prior to attribution and denial, and are the condition of the possibility of attributing-to and denying-of, just as they are the condition of the possibility of covering-over and uncovering.

What have we gained by this discussion of the various forms of simple statements with regard to σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις? As concerns an insight into their very structure, it has achieved nothing. On the contrary, that structure has gotten even more obscure and puzzling. The reason, as we have seen, is that synthesizing and separating are not two possible forms of statement, so that statements would be divided into one or the other. Rather, they belong to every statement as such and therefore go together essentially and therefore are a matter of a unified phenomenon that originally constitutes the unity of a statement as such. So even though the structure itself is not yet entirely clear, nonetheless the result is not merely negative. It is also positive insofar as we have gained a reference point and a direction for understanding this linking-together that is a separation and this separation that is a linking-together as a unified phenomenon. The phenomenon is not something cobbled together from these two forms, something that leads, at best, to a merely extrinsic understanding of the unity.

But there was a further result: What really led us in the first place to that simple chart that ordered σύνθεσις, ἀληθές, κατάφασις, and their opposites? We said that synthesis is already manifest in the linguistic form of the sentence qua unified sequence of words and in its true enactment. Words are not just strung along, but are also synthesized into the whole of a verbal manifold. We focused on the expressed sentence, (although here, too, in a less than precise way). But on a