A Passage from Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics
"The opening up of beings happens in logos as gathering. Gathering is originally accomplished in language. Thus logos becomes the definitive and essential determination of discourse. Language, as what is spoken out and said, and as what can be said again, preserves in each case the being that has been opened up. What has been said can be said and passed on. The truth that is preserved in this saying spreads in such a way that the being that was originally opened up in gathering is not itself properly experienced in each particular case. In what is passed on, truth loosens itself, as it were, from beings. This can go so far that saying-again becomes mere hearsay, glossa. Everything that is asserted stands constantly in this danger.
"This implies that the decision about what is true now takes place as a confrontation between correct saying and mere hearsay. Logos, in the sense of saying and asserting, now becomes the domain and place where decisions are made about truth - that is, originally, about the unconcealment of beings and thus about the Being of beings. In the inception, logos as gathering is the happening of unconcealment; logos is grounded in unconcealment and is in service to it. But now, logos as assertion becomes the focus of truth in the sense of correctness. We arrive at Aristotle's proposition according to which logos as assertion is what can be true or false. Truth, which was originally, as unconcealment, a happening of beings themselves that held sway, and was governed by means of gathering, now becomes a property of logos. In becoming a property of assertion, truth does not just shift its place; it changes its essence. From the point of view of the assertion, the true is attained when saying holds on to that about which it is making an assertion, when the assertion directs itself according to beings. Truth becomes the correctness of logos...Logos is now...saying something about something...
"Because, as ways of Being-said, they [truths as correctnesses] have been created out of logos - and because to assert is kategorein - the determinations of Being of beings are called kategoriai, categories. On this basis, the theory of Being and of the determinations fo beings as such becomes a theory that investigates the categories and their order. The goal of all ontology is the theory of categories. Today it is taken to be self-evident, as it has been for a long time, that the essential characteristics of Being are categories...
"In the form of the assertion, logos itself has become just another thing that one comes across. This present-at-hand thing is something handy, something that is handled in order to attain truth as correctness and establish it securely. So this handle for attaining truth can easily be grasped as a tool, organon, and the tool can easily be made handy in the proper way...The true as the correct is now merely spread about and spread afar by way of discussion, instruction, and prescriptions, thereby becoming ever more leveled out. Logos must be made ready as a tool for this. The hour of birth of logic has arrived."
"This implies that the decision about what is true now takes place as a confrontation between correct saying and mere hearsay. Logos, in the sense of saying and asserting, now becomes the domain and place where decisions are made about truth - that is, originally, about the unconcealment of beings and thus about the Being of beings. In the inception, logos as gathering is the happening of unconcealment; logos is grounded in unconcealment and is in service to it. But now, logos as assertion becomes the focus of truth in the sense of correctness. We arrive at Aristotle's proposition according to which logos as assertion is what can be true or false. Truth, which was originally, as unconcealment, a happening of beings themselves that held sway, and was governed by means of gathering, now becomes a property of logos. In becoming a property of assertion, truth does not just shift its place; it changes its essence. From the point of view of the assertion, the true is attained when saying holds on to that about which it is making an assertion, when the assertion directs itself according to beings. Truth becomes the correctness of logos...Logos is now...saying something about something...
"Because, as ways of Being-said, they [truths as correctnesses] have been created out of logos - and because to assert is kategorein - the determinations of Being of beings are called kategoriai, categories. On this basis, the theory of Being and of the determinations fo beings as such becomes a theory that investigates the categories and their order. The goal of all ontology is the theory of categories. Today it is taken to be self-evident, as it has been for a long time, that the essential characteristics of Being are categories...
"In the form of the assertion, logos itself has become just another thing that one comes across. This present-at-hand thing is something handy, something that is handled in order to attain truth as correctness and establish it securely. So this handle for attaining truth can easily be grasped as a tool, organon, and the tool can easily be made handy in the proper way...The true as the correct is now merely spread about and spread afar by way of discussion, instruction, and prescriptions, thereby becoming ever more leveled out. Logos must be made ready as a tool for this. The hour of birth of logic has arrived."
posted by Tristan at 12:09 p.m.
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