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Part I

§12. The basic structure of λόγος and the phenomenon of making sense


The question we have just formulated could also be put this way: What makes λόγος able to be false, i.e., able to cover-over at all? The indirect outcome of our explanation thus far is that λόγος is not through-and-through true, i.e., uncovering. Rather, it uncovers only insofar as it can also cover-over. In a somewhat exaggerated formulation: The statement can be true (can uncover) at all, only because it can also cover-over—only because, as a statement, it operates a priori in the “as.” The statement’s uncovering is an uncovering that does not cover-over. That is, what structures the truth of statements is in principle the same as what structures falsehood. To state the matter as a whole: The possibility of being true orfalse—which is the essential feature of any statement—is as such necessarily grounded in one and the same structure of λόγος. [136]

Let us now pose the question in an extreme form: What is the structural condition in λόγος that accounts for the fact that it can be false? The answer will shed light as well on the condition of the possibility of the truth of statements, i.e., on the kind of uncovering that goes with λόγος. Aristotle says:


τὸ γὰρ ψευδος ἐν συνθέσει ἀεί. (De Anima III, 6, 430b1)


Covering-over is {as such} always a “synthesis.”

He likewise says:


ὁ δὲ ψευδὴς λόγος οὐθενός ἐστιν ἁπλῶς λόγος. (Metaphysics V, 29, 1024b31)


Whenever speech covers-over, it is never non-synthesizing speech about something.


Or,


Wherever there is covering-over, there is necessarily a “synthesizing” within the structure of the statement.


What that means only seems to be clear. But what we said earlier immediately allows us say further that where there is uncovering—“truth”—there is also necessarily a “synthesizing,” because the statement’s uncovering is an uncovering that does not cover-over. But that does not mean it is a non-synthetic statement, supposedly because synthesizing is found, necessarily and structurally, in covering-over. It only says: Every covering-


Martin Heidegger (GA 21) Logic : the question of truth

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