for something like qualities. That as which the statement determines what is objectively present is drawn from what is objectively present as such. The as-structure of interpretation has undergone a modification. The "as" no longer reaches out into a totality of relevance in its function of approaching what is understood. It is cut off with regard to its possibilities of the articulation of referential relations of significance which constitute the character of the surrounding world. The "as" gets pushed back to the uniform level of what is merely objectively present. It dwindles to the determination that belongs to the structure of just letting what is objectively present be seen. This leveling down of the primordial "as" of circumspect interpretation to the as of the determination of objective presence is the specialty of the statement. Only in this way does it gain the possibility of a pointing something out in a way that we merely look at it.
Thus the statement cannot deny its ontological provenance from an interpretation that understands. We call primordial the "as" of circumspect interpretation that understands (ἑρμηνεία) the existential-hermeneutical "as" in distinction from the apophantical "as" of the statement.
There are many interim stages between an interpretation which is completely wrapped up in heedful understanding and the extreme opposite case of a theoretical statement about objectively present things: statements about events in the surrounding world, descriptions of what is at hand, "reports on situations," noting and ascertaining a "factual situation," describing a state of affairs, telling about what has happened. These "sentences" cannot be reduced to theoretical propositional statements without essentially distorting their meaning. Like the latter, they have their "origin" in circumspect interpretation.
With the progress of knowledge about the structure of the λόγος, it was inevitable that this phenomenon of the apophantical "as" came to view in some form. The way in which it was initially seen is not a matter of chance, nor did it fail to have its influence on the history of logic to come.
When considered philosophically, the λόγος is itself a being [159] [Seiendes] and, in accordance with the orientation of ancient ontology, something present. What is initially present, that is, what can be found like things, are words and the succession of words in which the λόγος is spoken. When we first look for the structure of the logos thus present, we find a being present together [Zusammenvorhandensein] of several words. What constitutes the unity of this together? As Plato knew, it consists in the fact that the λόγος is always λόγος τινός. With regard to the beings manifest in the λόγος, the words are combined to form one totality of words. Aristotle had a more radical view: every λόγος is σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις at the same time, neither the one—say, as a