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Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics [417-18]

Yet we immediately recognize that the 'as' signifies a 'relation' and that the 'as' is never given independently on its own. It points to something which stands in the 'as', and equally it points to some other thing, as which it is. Involved in the 'as' there is a relation, and thus two relational terms, and these not just as any two, since the first is one term and the second is the other. But this structural linking [Gefüge] pertaining to the relation and to the relational terms is not something free-floating on its own account. Where then does it belong? We begin to approach the matter more closely when we unpack the expression 'a as b' and say 'a, insofar as it is b'. Thus the 'as' can only begin to function if beings are already given, so that the 'as' then serves to render these beings explicit as constituted in such and such a way. An 'a' that is 'b' is already given and the 'a' being 'b' is explicitly brought out in the 'as'. We already fundamentally know what we mean by this 'as' even before we articulate it clearly in language. We know this, for example, in the simple statement that 'a is b'. In understanding this assertion we understand 'a as b'. According to its structure, the 'as' therefore belongs to the simple propositional statement. The 'as' is a structural moment of the propositional structure in the sense of a simple propositional statement.

The simple propositional statement, however, is a construction which we say is true or false as the case may be. A statement is true when it agrees with that about which it asserts something; that is, if through the asserted agreement it informs us about what a matter is and how it is. But informing us about something means making something open or manifest. The statement is true because it contains a manifestness of the matter itself The structure of the statement that makes manifest bears this 'as' within itself.

Yet we saw that the manifestness of beings is always the manifestness of beings as such. The 'as' belongs to this manifestness and together with the latter finds its common home in that construction which we have called the simple statement—'a is b'. Thus if we now pursue the structure of this construction called the 'statement', we shall obtain at a single stroke a proper clarification concerning the 'as' and its connection with manifestness, and thus also concerning this manifestness and thereby the essence of world as well.


b) The orientation of metaphysics toward the λόγος and toward
logic as the fundamental reason why the problem of
world has not been unfolded in an originary manner.


In ancient philosophy the assertion, the judgment, is called the λόγος. But the λόγος is surely the principal theme of logic. And thus it is that our problem of world, where world initially signifies the manifestness of beings as such as a whole, finds itself led back through the intrinsic clarification


Martin Heidegger (GA 29/30) The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics

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