[167] have different ones from the Greeks}, so too the sounds {the forms of the utterances} are not the same.However, the things of which these uttered words are first {and properly} signs {i.e., what the words give utterance to, what they are words for}—these {the things intended, the apprehended as such} are identically the same for everyone.And the things {the πράγματα that we deal with} of which they {the in-tended and perceived, the meanings} are similitudes, they too are the same, already {from the outset} and of themselves.23
* * *
From that last sentence people derive the “copy-theory.” Yes, ὁμοίωμα can in fact mean an image or a copy. But on an equally original footing it means “that which has been assimilated to, become similar to,” that which is “just the same as.”24 If we translate παθήματα as “representations” and understand that as “mental states,” then it is easy to come up with a copy-theory interpretation. That is: In the mind there are “states of mind,” mental states as images of things that are not in the mind itself.
But the word in the text is not πάθη (which can indeed mean such states) but παθήματα—something that we meet, something that, when met, is taken up—an affectio in the broadest sense. And ὁμοιώματα means the assimilated, that which ὁμοίως ἔχει, that which, as encountering, is just the same as the thing itself. Our apprehending comports itself in the same way as what is to be apprehended. The παθήματα is the apprehended of an apprehending. The apprehending gives the thing itself, lets us meet the thing just the way it is.
What is at stake here is not just any kind of assimilation. It is not, for example, the assimilation of a mental state to a physical thing (which is nonsensical). The assimilation we are taking about here concurs very easily with the determination of truth in the text from Metaphysics IX 10 that we cited earlier.25 [168]
The text from Metaphysics VI 4 is particularly clear about the meaning that σύνθεσις has when it comes to clarifying not only the true and the false of λόγoς but also truth as the uncovering of things, i.e., as the
23. [Here (Moser, p. 351) Heidegger ends his lecture of Friday, 11 December 1925, to be followed by that of Monday, 14 December , which opened with a 430word summary that is omitted in GA 21.]
24. Therefore Aristotle can also say in De interpretatione 9, 19a33: ὁμοίως ὁι λόγοι ἀληθεῖς ὥσπερ τὰ πράγματα. “Λόγοι {i.e., the indicative showing of beings} uncover just as much as the being itself does {insofar as it is uncovered}.”
25. We are talking about ὁμοίωσις in terms of ἀποφαίνεσθαι. The act of showing something assimilates itself to that thing in the only way that makes any sense in such a comportment, viz., in the νόημα.