of thinking as λόγος. To be sure, in the course of the history of Occidental-European thought it was noted that this thinking, born of the λόγος and shaped by logic, does not cover everything and does not suffice in every respect. e did come upon subjects and whole areas of subject matter that demand a different thinking process in order to become accessible to mental perception. But insofar as thinking is originally performed as λόγος, a change of the thinking process can consist only in a transformation of the λόγος. Accordingly, the λέγειν of the λόγος develops in to a διαλέγεσθαι.

Logic becomes dialectic. For dialectic, a λόγος in the customary form of a proposition is never unequivocal. The statement "God is the Absolute" may serve as an example. The ambiguity that is here possible is foreshadowed by the difference in stress with which a statement of this kind can be pronounced: God is the Absolute—or, God is the Absolute. The first sentence means: God alone can claim the distinction of being the Absolute. The second sentence means : only by virtue of the absoluteness of the Absolute is God essentially God. The statement "God is the Absolute" is shown to have several meanings. In appearance, the sentence is a simple proposition, a λόγος in the sense defined.

This is not yet the place to discuss whether the ambiguity of this λόγος is inherent in logic, or whether the logicality of the λόγος, and thus the λόγος itself, has its grounds elsewhere. In any event, propositions such as our "God is the Absolute" do not stay fixed when we say them thoughtfully, that is, when we inquire into what they assert. Their λόγος says only what it is meant to say when it goes through its own λέγειν within and for itself; through is διά; the "for itself" is expressed in λέγεσθαι, the "middle voice" of λέγειν. As διαλέγεσθαι, the λέγειν or proposition proceeds back and forth for itself within its own domain, goes