‘The Inner Truth …’

The issues that arise from the reading of Aristotle outlined in the previous chapter play out in a number of ways. On the one hand there is a continuity, where Heidegger stresses the idea of the human as the being with the logos, with language (for example, GA29/30, 442–3; GA31, 54; GA32, 91; GA33, 125/106; GA34, 198), and discusses the fallen sense of modern logic (such as GA32, 109, 149–50; GA36/37, 69–77, 103; GA40, 142). On the other, we find a continual effort to rethink and problematise earlier discussions, such as the argument that because legein means lesen, to glean, ‘to harvest or gather [zusammenlesen, sammeln], to add one to the other, to include and connect [mitrechnen] one with the other’, the primary meaning of logos is ‘relation [Beziehung]’ or ‘relationship [Verhältnis]’ rather than discourse (GA33, 5/2–3, 121/103; see GA34, 198; GA40, 95). This is both a partial rejection of the claim in Being and Time that Verhältnis is a misleading translation of logos (GA2, 32), but also builds into the claim that logos is rule or law, ‘the ruling structure, the gathering of those beings related among themselves’ (GA33, 121/103).

This is an important hint of the link between the mode of connection of humans in community, through language, and the calculative politics – through the notion of mitrechnen – to be discussed in Chapter Three.