Heidegger - Early Greek Thinking (HarperCollins)

Martin Heidegger
EARLY
GREEK
THINKING
T h e Dawn of Western
Philosophy
PHILOSOPHY
EARLY
GREEK
THINKING
Martin Heidegger's key essays on the pre-Socratic philosophers not only penetrate to
the dawn of the Western philosophy of Being, but also establish a crucial link to
central aspects of Heidegger's own thought.
Heidegger has done more than any other philosopher to bring alive the unique,
creative insights of Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and others. Early Grkek
Thinking displays this effort and examines the key words—aietheia. logos, moira I he
early Greeks used to name the enigma of a fundamentally premetaphysicalI experience
of Being.
The essays in Early Greek Thinking connect and clarify the subtle references I he
thematic threads, and the Greek undercurrents that run through Heidegger's o vn
philosophical project, from Being and Time (1927) to On Time and Being (1196P).
The translators, to further our understanding of these influences, include a help ul
introduction and glossary.
With the penetrating, poetic insight characteristic of Heidegger. Early Grêk
Thinking is pivotal to an understanding of his later philosophy and indispensable or
a fresh perspective on the thought of the pre-Socratics.
Martin Heidegger (1889 1976) remains one of the most influential and important
philosophers of the 20th century.
David Farteli Krell, Ph.D., has translated and edited other works of Heidegger,
including Basic Writings and the multi-volume Nietzsche ; he is Senior Lecturer in
Philosophy at the University of Essex, England.
Frank A. Capuzzi, Ph.D., who also translated works of Heidegger included in
Basic Writings and Nietzsche, is Director of Creative Services for the Rutledjge
Center Inc., a multimedia production agency.
l
ISBN D-Dti-Db3fl 45-7
90000
HarperSanFrancisco
Cover design by Charles Furman
• 3Ô5
Harper & Row Editions o f
MARTIN HEIDEGGER
Basic Writings
Being and Time
Discourse on Thinking
Early Greek Thinking
The End of Philosophy
Hegel's Concept of Experience
Identity and Difference
Nietzsche: Volume I, The Will to Power as Art
Nietzsche: Volume II, The Eternal Recurrence of the Same
Nietzsche: Volume TV, Nihilism
On the Way to Language
On Time and Being
Poetry, Language, Thought
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays
What Is Called Thinking?
Martin Heidegger
Translated by
David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi
HarperSanFrancisco
A Division oj HarpcrCollinsPi<W/5^crs
"DerSpruckdes Anaximander" ("The Anaximardcr Fragment") is from Holzwege,copyright
1950 by Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Mam^tlh edition, 1972). "Logos," "Moira,"
and "Alelheia," are from Vorträge und Amfsälze, copyright 1954 by Verlag Günther Neske,
Pfullingen (3rd edition, 1967).
EARLY GREEK THINKING. Copyright © 1975, 1984 in the English translation by Harper &
Row, Publishers. Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part
of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without wrilten permission
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For informa
tion address HarperCollins Publishers. 10 East 53rd Street. New York. NY 10022.
FIRST HARPER & ROW PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED IN 1984
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976.

Early Greek thinking.
English translations of 4 essays. The Anaximander fragment is the final essay of Holzwege;
Logos, Moira, and Aletheia make up the third part of his Vorträge und Aufsätze.
Includes bibliographical references.
Contents: The Anaximander fragment—Logos (Heraclitus, fragment B 50) — Moira
(Parmenides VIII, 34-41)—Aletheia (Heraclitus, fragment B 16)
2. Philosophy, Ancient—Addresses, essays, lectures.
I. Title.
BI88.H44 1984 182 84-48220
ISBN 0-06-063842-7
93 94 95 CWI 12 II 10 9
CONTENTS
Translators' Preface
Introduction by David Farrell Krett
1. The Anaximander Fragment
2. Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)
3. Moira (Pannenides VIII, 34-41)
4. Aletheia (Heraclitus, Fragment B 16)
Glossary
t. V
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE
This book contains English translations of four essays written by

Martin Heidegger between 1943 and 1954 on the matter of early Creek
thinking. "The Anaximander Fragment" is the final essay of Holzwege,
fourth edition (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1963), pp.
296-343. "Logos," "Moira," and "Aletheia" make up the third part of
Vorträge und Aufsätze, third edition (Pfullingen: Günther Neske,
1967), pp. 3-78. The German editions offer the following information:
Der Spruch des Anaximander. This piece is taken from a treatise composed in
1946. For criticism of Anaximander's text see also Friedrich Dirlmeier, "Der
Satz des Anaximander v. Milet," Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Vol. 87
(1938), 376-82.1 agree with the delimitation of the text, if not the reasons given
for it.
Logos. A contribution to the Festschrift für Hans Jantzen, edited by Kurt
Bauch (Berlin, 1951), pp. 7ff.;presented as a lecture to the Bremen Club on
May 4, 1951; fully discussed in an unpublished lecture course in the summer
semester of 1944 entitled "Logic."
Moira. An undelivered portion of the lecture course published as Was heisst
Denken? (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1954), with reference to pp. 146 ff.
[Cf. What Is Called Thinking?, translated by Fred D. Wieck and J . Glenn
Cray (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), pp. 240-44.]
Aletheia. A contribution to the Festschrift in honor of the 350th anniversary
celebration of the Humanistic Gymnasium in Constance; first delivered in an
unpublished lecture course on Heraclitus in the summer semester of 1943.
A glossary at the end of the book lists our attempts to translate the
most difficult (usually the most important) terms. While we have
checked one another's work, David Krell is responsible for the transla
tions of the first two articles, Frank Capuzzi for the last two. Dr. Krell
is responsible for the footnotes.
We would like to thank John Salus and Reiner Schürmann of
1
EARLY GREEK THINKING
Duquesne University, Bruce Foltz, Annabel Learned, Sherry Gray,

D.S. Carne-Ross, and the series editors, Joan Stambaugh and J . Glenn
Gray, whose efforts have resulted in innumerable substantial im
provements in the translations. Thanks also to M. Salome and Eunice
Farrell Krell for help in preparing the volume. We hope readers will
trouble themselves to forward any corrections, suggestions, and com
ments to us, in care of the publisher.
D. F . K
F C.
NOTE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

I have taken the opportunity afforded by this new edition to correct
the typographical errors that have come to my attention during the
intervening years—thanks to communications from careful readers. In
addition, a number of phrases have been altered in order to bring the
translation closer to the German.
Frank Capuzzi and I are grateful for the kind reception this book
has enjoyed over the past ten years. We hope that the book will continue
to be of use to the second group of people Nietzsche mentions in a note
from the years 1868-69: "A small community yet survives of persons
who, with an artist's contentment, take delight in the world of Greek
forms; and an even smaller community persists of persons who have not
finished thinking about the thinkers of antiquity—thinkers who them
selves have not yet finished thinking."
D. F . K.
2
INTRODUCTION
by David Farrell Krell
In "The Anaximander Fragment" Heidegger remains preoccupied

with the problem of translation. Before we do any actual translating, he
says, we must translate ourselves to what a fragment says, what it is
thinking; we must first arrive on its foreign shores and, like Hermes on
Ogygia, stop to contemplate before we can return with some fitting
memento of it to the land of our own language.
Without philological aids of all lands Dr. Capuzzi and I could
never have ventured our own translation. Even with those aids and
with the unstinting help of learned friends there can be no guarantee
that we have made the trip as it ought to be made. Whether our
translation thoughtfully brings to the English language what Heidegger
contemplates on archaic Creek shores, whether it is hermeneuticaUy
circumspect, whether it remains receptive of the matter for thinking:
these questions give us pause at the end o f our labors which only
critical and generous readers can answer. We have tried to be literal,
tried harder to be faithful. We can only gesture toward the glossary at
the end of the book, as though that were apologia enough.
"The Anaximander Fragment" is the last essay of the book

Heidegger calls Woodpaths (Holzwege: the French edition translates
Chemins qui mènent nulle part). At the beginning of the book the
following lines appear:
"Wood" is an old name for forest. In the wood are paths which mostly wind
along until they end quite suddenly in an impenetrable thicket.
They are called "woodpaths.
Each goes its peculiar way, but in the same forest. Often it seems as though
one were like another. Yet it only seems so.
3
Woodcutters and forest-dwellers are familiar with these paths. They know
what it means to be on a woodpath.
By the time the reader has arrived at "The Anaximander Frag
ment" he will have gone the way of a reflection on art, "The Origin o f
the Art Work"; on modern science and the Cartesian philosophy, "The
Age of the World View"; on Hegel's Introduction to The Phenomenol
ogy of Spirit, "Hegel's Concept of Experience"; on the essence of
nihilism, "The Word of Nietzsche: Cod is Dead"; and on the role of
1
poets in the epoch of nihilism, "Wozu Dichter?" Only after a series of
reflections on art, poetry, and modern and contemporary philosophy
does Heidegger broach the subject of this early fragment of thinking
ascribed to Anaximander of Miletus. Only after these turns in the path
does he attempt a translation to early Creek thinking.
"Logos," "Moira," and "Aletheia" constitute the third and final
part of Heidegger's Lectures and Essays (Vorträge und Aufsätze: the
French edition translates Essais et Conferences). The Foreword to all
three parts reads:
So long as it lies before us unread, this book is a collection of lectures and
essays. For the reader It might lead to a gathering which would no longer need
to bother about the individual aspects of each piece. The reader might see
himself conducted along a path, preceded by an author who, since he is an
auctor, will if all goes well dispense an augere, an enrichment, and bring
matters to a fruitful outcome.
In the present case we would do better to toil as much as we ever have, so
that unrelenting efforts may prepare a region for what since ancient times is
to-be-thought but is still unthought. From the open space of such a region a
thinking might try to address what is unthought
If he were such a toiler an author would have nothing to express and
nothing to communicate. He wouldn't wish to stimulate anyone, because those
who have been stimulated are already sure of what they know.
If everything turns out for the best, an author on paths of thinking can only
point the way [weisen] without being himself a wise man [ein Weiser] in the
sense of ooipöq.
1. The first and last appear in M. Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans.
Albert Hofctadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971). See also his HegeTt Concept of
Experience (New York: Harper 6: Row, 1970).
4
Introduction
T h o u g h t p a t h s , which a r e indeed past when one has passed by t h e m —

a l t h o u g h for o n e w h o has been going on them they persist in coming—wait.
T h e y wait upon the times thinkers go along t h e m . While usual technical-
r e p r e s e n t a t i o n a l thinking, technical in the broadest sense, forever wills to go
forward and tears a h e a d of everything, paths which point out a way occasionally
o p e n upon a view of a solitary mountain shelter [ein einziges Ge-birg].
Without listing the titles of all the lectures and essays which lead
to those on early Creek thinking, we might glance over our shoulders
along the path already indicated. Heidegger speaks of technology and
science, about will to power and the overcoming of metaphysics; he
reflects on Nietzsche's Zarathustra; he asks "What is called thinking?"
and ponders the meaning of building and cultivating, dwelling and
thinking, of "things," and o f Holderlin's line ". poetically man
dwells. . ." Only then do we hear of "Logos," "Moira," "Aletheia." A
proper introduction to these three lectures and to the Anaximander
essay would be a reflection which had traveled all the earlier stretches
of the path and still could see the forest as well as the trees. It could do
this only by catching a glimpse of the clearing Heidegger calls das
Selbe, id aifrd, the Same.
Four fragments of early Greek thinking dominate Heidegger's

thoughts in the present collection. Each is a truncated monument of
thinking. Like the torso of a river god or the temple of Poseidon at
Sounion, each fragment conveys a sense of loss, of tragic withdrawal
and absence; yet each is a remnant of an exhilarating presence. These
four fragments are ascribed respectively to Anaximander (B 1), Hera-
clitus (B 50), Parmenides (B VIII, 34-41), and again Heraclitus (B 16).
We can read English versions of the standard German translations by
Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz in a minute's time.
1. But where beings have their origin there also their passing away occurs,
according to necessity; for they pay recompense and penalty to each other
for their injustice, according to the assessment of time.
2. Listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to say, in accordance with
the Logos: all is one.
3. Thinking and the thought "it is" are the same. For without the being in
5
relation to which it is u t t e r e d you c a n n o t find thinking. F o r t h e r e neither is

nor shall be anything outside o f being, since Moira bound it to b e whole and
immovable. F o r that reason all these will be m e r e n a m e s which mortals laid
down, convinced that they w e r e true: coming-to-be as well as passing away.
B e i n g as well as non-being, and also c h a n g e o f place and variation o f shining
colors.
1
4. H o w can one hide himself before that which n e v e r s e t s ?
Origin and decay, time and necessity, the word and the One,
Being and thinking, a sun that never sets: it will take us more than a
minute to consider what these fragments say or even what they are
talking about, and whether they have anything in common with one
mother and with us. I f we find these matters puzzling and impenetra
ble we are certainly not the first.
The men who raised these monuments were already "renowned
and venerable" by Plato's time. When in Plato's Sophist (241d 3,5) the
Eleatic Stranger questions the views of "father Parmenides" he takes
care lest his probing transform him into a sort o f parricide. I f the
eccentric Heraclitus receives a more polemical treatment in Plato's
hands it is perhaps because the Ephesian's thought is as provocative as
it is elusive. Whatever reservations Plato may have made with respect
to his predecessors' views he is always ready to concede that the matter
jf their thinking is difficult (cf. Soph., 243a-b). But what is difficult for
the master can hardly be easy for the pupil.
After surveying the opinions of early thinkers from the point of
view of his theory of causes, Aristotle (Met. H-a) suggests that
investigation of the truth is both easy and difficult. Every investigator
manages to reveal a part of it, while none can grasp the whole. In the
same place Aristotle mentions a second and more serious difficulty,
'the cause of which is not in the matter (npayuaoiv) but in us; for as
2. See Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin: Weid-
mannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1951). I, 89, 161. 238, and 155. Cf. the translations by
G. S. Kirk and J . E . Raven, The Presocrattc Phibsophers: A Critical History with a
Selection of Texts (Cambridge, Eng.: The University Press, 1966), pp. 117, 188, and 277.
(Kirk and Raven do not print Heraclitus B 16.) Cf. also the translation of Diels-Kranz by
Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1966), pp. 19, 28, 44. and 16. We have offered our own translations of
the Creek texts, based on those of Diels-Kranz, throughout this volume.
6
Introduction
the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the mind of our soul to
things which are by nature most manifest of all" (Met., 993b 9-11).
But who ridicules the bat for his blindness? To whom are the
npdYpara most manifest? Genesis and collapse, necessity and time,
one and many, being and thinking: if these shine like a sun that never
relents, whose brilliance blinds, what are we to see in them?
What do the fragments say? Of what do they speak? We have no
trouble with the first question until we take the second seriously. Only
indirectly do the fragments indicate their subject matter, in the words
TOIQ 0J01, id ndvici, c'uevo.i, id e"dv: things or beings, everything, to
be, Being. These merest fragments of thought seem to talk about
everything, all being, whatever is. We moderns are convinced that this
is nonsense: one cannot talk about everything in general without utter
ing generalities or even "overgeneralizations." We are astounded by
the Greeks' presumption. We refuse to talk that way. Being—ecrasez
Hnfamel The history of philosophy becomes a nightmare from which
we, Dedalus-like, are trying to awake. But indignant refusal and con
signment to oblivion are hardly signs of wakefulness. Besides, we can
not entirely shake off the suspicion that this question of Being involves
us rather intimately: we who raise the question are among the beings
which—for a time—are.
Two forms of the word Being are especially widespread in Greek
philosophical literature, id <5v and id <5VTCL Both are substantive-
participial forms whose articles suggest respectively the singular and
plural neuter nominatives. Because of the nominative plural ending
-TO., the second, which has been farther declined than the first, seems
more "substantial." However, both devolve from efuf, elvai (I am, to
3
be). In the Ionian and Aeolian dialects, and therefore in epic usage, id
dv and id 6"via appear as id rJrfv and I'ddvia Homer, Alcaeus, Sap
pho, Heraclitus, and Parmenides are among the many poets and think
ers of the eastern Hellenic territories where this form—which retains
the verbal root epsilon—is employed. The Liddell and Scott Greek-
English lexicon translates Plato's usage of id <5v and id rJvTO.
3. See M. Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim
(Carden City. N. Y.: Doubleday & Co., Anchor Books, 1961). chap. 2, "On the Cram mar
and Etymology of the Word 'Being." "
7
respectively as "Being" and "the world of things," the German lexicons

as Sein (Being) and das Seiende (beings). O f course, Plato's "world of
things" is neither a world (KOOUOC.) nor is it of "things" (nodyuaTa,
xprjuaia); rather, it is a domain of beings called ef6r). These are op-
posed to non-being or that which is not, pn. <5v, and are taken to be that
which truly is. Td dvra comes to mean "truth" and "reality."
Herodotus already uses the word (in its Ionian form) in this way: he
says Kard T6 ¿dv, ndv t d i6v, and xd £dvra Xdyov \6\EIV, meaning
"to tell the whole story in accordance with the way things truly are."
But the very first meaning for t d dvra listed by the lexicon is: "the
things which actually [in the sense of the French actuellement] exist,
the present, as opposed to the past and the future." Being is what is (at)
present. In English, "present" can mean what now is, as opposed to
what was before or later will be; or it can mean what is here, as opposed
to what is somewhere else, hence absent. German says die Gegenwart
for the first, die Anwesenheit for the second. The Greek words for
Being suggest at once presence in time and place. What is most
thought-provoking for Heidegger is the coming to presence of whatever
presents itself, the Being of beings, the i6\ of ddvta
"The Anaximander Fragment" designates Being as presencing and
introduces the themes which dominate Heidegger's study of the
Greeks: Adyoc,, the unique gathering of beings which language is;
Moipa, the fateful apportionment of Being in which the ontological
difference—the difference between present beings and their
presencing—is obliterated for Western thinking; AXriSeia, the uncon-
cealment of beings and concealment of Being. The temporary abate-
ment of the waters of Lethe, the history of Being's fate or destiny (das
Geschick des Seins), and the decisive role language plays in both,
indicate what is singular about early Greek thinking, that is, the way in
which beings manifest themselves as being present. The Being of be-
ings is therefore taken for granted as the presencing of what presents
itself. It is also decisive that the Greeks never did or could think
through the meaning of presencing and establish it in and for the
history of thought. By the time a philosophical literature develops, the
meaning of e*dv has receded to the threshold of oblivion. Soon it crosses
that threshold: Being is reduced to one being among others, becomes
8
Introduction
itself a present entity which is variously named ibéa, èvépyc\a, actus

purus, reason, will, and will to power. Usually this figure is called the
supreme being, as if by way of consolation; often it is simply called
"God." But not in the last case.
From Being and Time (1927) to Time and Being (1962) Heidegger
has sought to retrieve the meaning of TO <5V and to think the Same as
the nexus of temporality and Dasein, as the luminous clearing and
concealing of Being, and as the event which engages man to the pres-
encing of whatever is present. From first to last the nexus has been a
tragic one. In "The Anaximander Fragment" Heidegger says that the
essence of tragedy can be thought only in relation to the coming-to-
presence of beings, since presencing implies approach and withdrawal,
emergence and evanescence, rise and fall. Mortals share in the tragic
essence in a peculiar way. At the end of "Moira," death is called thé
uttermost possibility o f mortal Dasein and the innermost possibility
which gathers and secures all disclosure of Being. One of the central
issues of "Logos" becomes the need for mortals to become fit for their
allotment (Moipa) and not to mistake their participation in the Adyoç
as some sort of conquest of mortality. For that would be hubris—more
destructive than a holocaust, and sooner to be extinguished.
To recapture the tragic essence of early Greek thinking is an un-
dertaking in which Heidegger joins Nietzsche. Nietzsche's description
of the "philosopher of tragic insight," the thinker he locates before
Plato, perhaps near the figure o f Heraclitus, might suit Heidegger
himself. I
The philosopher of tragic insight [Erkenntnis]: He restrains the uncontrolled
drive toward knowledge, but not through a new metaphysics. He does not set
up a new faith. He feels the vanishing of the metaphysical ground as a tragic
event and cannot find a satisfying compensation for it in the motley spiralling of
the sciences. .*
Nietzsche calls the disappearance of ontological ground "the death oi

Cod" and calls for the liberation of id dvxa from the burden imposed
on them by the shade of the dead God—the traditional Xdyoç of West-
4. Cited from Nietzsche's Nachlast by Marianne Cowan In her Introduction to F .
Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. Marianne Cowan (Chicago:
Henry Regnery, 1962), p. 16.
9
ern metaphysics and morals. "The world of things" must once again be
thought in terms of Aion, the child at play. But the experience of Aion,
"this transformation of the Dionysian into a philosophical pathos," is an
exercise in "tragic wisdom": Nietzsche utters his truth and goes down
with it, since the death of God means the failure of dogmatic Xdyoq and
the death o f man.*
Nietzsche closes the ring of metaphysical enquiry into TO dv and
brings metaphysics to its end, the exhaustion of its final possibility, by
turning back to the beginnings of Greek philosophy. Whether or not
Nietzsche's turning remains determined by Plato—or by one interpre-
tation of Plato, namely Platonism—it is in Heidegger's view historic
6
and fateful, for it marks the end of an epoch of Being. In his
Introduction to Metaphysics (p. 30), focusing on the question of the
meaning of TO dv, Heidegger describes his own task as one of "bringing
Nietzsche's accomplishment to a full unfolding." That means following
Nietzsche's turn toward early Creek thinking in such a way as to bring
the possibilities concealed in e*dv to a radical questioning.
Thus the turning of Heidegger's own thought must be seen, not as
some sort of development or shift in point of view, but as that moment
in the eschatology o f Being when the metaphysical sense of Being
reaches its consummation and goes under. In the turning of its outer-
most gyre, thinking catches sight of remnants of thought which he
concealed in the beginning of the history of Being's destiny. Today
these possibilities appear as fragments of early Greek thinking. They
7
have not yet gone down; nor have they yet been heard. We cannot
hide ourselves from the matter contained in these fragments, since
what they say or do not say to Plato and Aristotle, and through them to
the Schoolmen and to all modern science and philosophy, shapes our
thoughts about Being and man. These in turn determine the character
of our world. Heidegger suggests that the achèvement of Occidental
5. F . Nietzsche, Werke, 3 vols., ed. Karl Schlechta (Munich: C. Hanser Verlag,
1854), III. 1.111; III, 376. Cf. his Philosophy in the Tragic Age. pp. 61-63. See also M.
Heidegger. Nietzsche, 2 vols. (Pfullingen: G. Neske Verlag, 1961). I, 314. 333-34; Eugen
Fink, Spiel als Weltsymbol (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960); and David Krell, Towards
an Ontology of Play," Research in Phenomenology, II, 63-93, esp. 67 ff.
6. Heidegger, Nietzsche, I, 464 ff.
7. See M. Heidegger, "Hegel und die Griechen," Wegmarken (Frankfurt/Main: V.
Klostermann Verlag, 1967) p. 272.
10
Introduction
philosophy is the expanding planetary dominion of technology. Given

such a rum of affairs—and who could have predicted the way the
history of metaphysics has turned out?—we come to face the matters
raised in the fragments: rise and fall, time and its uses, language and
the One, thinking and Being, illumination and concealment.
At the end to arrive at early Greek thinking: there is something

distressing—even violent—in such a turnabout. Certainly it would be
naïve to regard the present book as an introductory volume on early
Greek philosophy. Although Heidegger takes each word of the frag-
ments seriously—rather because he does so—his thinking plies a
dangerous, uncharted course which we are at pains to follow. The
violence of interpretation is unavoidable; no footnote can ameliorate it.
But it is the violence inherent in any attempt to cross over to that
foreign shore, the violence by which we overcome inertia and translate
ourselves to the matter of early Greek thinking. I f it is violent to insist
that this matter casts significant light on contemporary problems, from
the history of metaphysics and nihilism to the essence of technology,
then Heidegger is surely violent. He demands that the fragments be
rescued from the Museum for Historic Oddities and restored to their
proper milieu: thinking. He insists that the fragments occupy contem-
porary man's contemporary reflection. Early Greek Thinking is not an
idyll for weary men who would, like Hamlet's crab, go backward.
The path which leads us forward to the realm of early Greek
thinking is celebrated in a fragment of a hymn by Friedrich Hölderlin
called "Greece." By way of introduction we offer several lines, some
from its beginning, some from its never-completed end.
Griechenland
(Dritte Fassung)
O ihr Stimmen des Geschicks, ihr Wege des Wanderers!

Viel sind Erinnerungen
Süss ists . . . unter hohen Schatten von Bäumen
11
Und Hügeln zu wohnen, sonnig, wo der Weg ist

Gepflastert zur Kirche. Reisenden aber, wem.
Aus Lebensliebe, messend immerhin,
Die Füsse gehorchen, blühn
a
Schöner die Wege, wo das Land
8. Holderlin Werke und Btiefe (Frankfurt/Main: Insel Verlag. 1969) I. 239-40. Lines
1, 9, and 46-51 are cited here.
Greece
(third draft)
O voices of destiny sent, you wanderer's ways!
. . . Many are the memories . . .
It is s w e e t . . . to dwell under high shadows
Of trees and hills, sunny, where the path is
Paved to church. But to travelers,
To him whose feet, from love of life.
Measuring always ahead, obey him.
More beautifully bloom those paths where the land
12
ONE
The Anaximander Fragment
It is considered the oldest fragment of Western thinking. Anaxi-

mander reportedly lived on the island of Samos from the end of the
seventh century to the middle of the sixth.
According to the generally accepted text the fragment reads:
^ t l v 5 i i | ydveoiq ¿0x1 roic. 0J01 KO.1 iri> cpOopdv cfq raura yiveodai Kard id
xpeuiv 6i6ovai ydp aurd 6ixn.v Kai xfoiv dAAifXoic. xrjc, d6iKfac. xard xr)v xou*
xpdvou xd£iv.
Whence things have their origin, there they must also pass away according to
necessity; for they must pay penalty and be judged for their injustice, accord-
ing to the ordinance of time.
Thus translates the young Nietzsche in a treatise completed in

1873 entitled Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. The treatise
was published posthumously in 1903, thirty years after its composition.
It is based on a lecture course Nietzsche offered several times in the
early 1870's at Basel under the title, "The Preplatonic Philosophers,
with Interpretation of Selected Fragments."
In the same year, 1903, that Nietzsche's essay on the Preplatonic
philosophers first became known, Hermann Diels' Fragments of the
Presocratics appeared. It contained texts critically selected according
to the methods of modern classical philology, along with a translation.
The work is dedicated to Wilhelm Dilthey. Diels translates the Anaxi-
mander fragment in the following words:
But where things have their origin, there too their passing away occurs accord-
ing to necessity; for they pay recompense and penalty to one another for their
recklessness, according to firmly established time.
13
The translations by Nietzsche and Diels arise from different inten

tions and procedures. Nevertheless they are scarcely distinguishable.
In many ways Diels' translation is more literal. But when a translation
is only literal it is not necessarily faithful. It is faithful only when its
terms are words which speak from the language of the matter itself.
More important than the general agreement of the two transla
tions is the conception of Anaximander which underlies both.
Nietzsche locates him among the Preplatonic philosophers, Diels
among the Presocratics. The two designations are alike. The unex
pressed standard for considering and judging the early thinkers is the
philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. These are taken as the Creek
philosophers who set the standard both before and after themselves.
Traversing Christian theology, this view becomes firmly entrenched as
a universal conviction, one which to this day has not been shaken. In
the meantime, even when philological and historical research treat
philosophers before Plato and Aristotle in greater detail, Platonic and
Aristotelian representations and concepts, in modern transformations,
still guide the interpretation. That is also the case when attempts are
made to locate what is archaic in early thinking by finding parallels in
classical archaeology and literature. Classic and classicist representa
tions prevail. We expatiate on archaic logic, not realizing that logic
occurs for the first time in the curriculum of the Platonic and Aris
totelian schools.
Simply ignoring these later notions will not help in the course of
translating from one language to another, if we do not first of all see
how it stands with the matter to be translated. But the matter here is a
matter for thinking. Granted our concern for philologically enlightened
language, we must in translating first of all think about the matter
involved. Therefore only thinkers can help us in our attempt to trans
late the fragment of this early thinker. When we cast about for such
help we surely seek in vain.
In his own way the young Nietzsche does establish a vibrant rap
port with the personalities of the Preplatonic philosophers; but his
interpretations of the texts are commonplace, if not entirely superficial,
throughout. Hegel is the only Western thinker who has thoughtfully
experienced the history of thought; yet he says nothing about the
14
Anaximander fragment. Furthermore, Hegel too shares the predomin

ant conviction concerning the classic character of Platonic and Aris
totelian philosophy. He provides the basis for the classification of the
early thinkers as Preplatonic and Presocratic precisely by grasping
them as Pre-Aristotelians.
In his lectures on the history of Creek philosophy, at the point
where he indicates the sources for our knowledge of this primeval
epoch of philosophy, Hegel says the following:
Aristotle is the richest source. He studied the older philosophers expressly and
with attention to fundamentals. Especially at the beginning of the Metaphysics
(though in many other places besides) he spoke as a historian about the entire
group of them. He is as philosophical as he is learned; we can depend on him.
For Creek philosophy we can do nothing better than take up the first book of
his Metaphysics. (Works, XIII, 189)
What Hegel recommends here to his listeners in the first decades of
the nineteenth century had already been followed by Theophrastus,
Aristotle's contemporary, his student, and the first successor to the
leadership of the Peripatetics. Theophrastus died about 286 B.C. He
composed a text with the title 4UOIKUJV 5dF,ai, "the opinions of those
who speak of cpuoci dvra." Aristotle also calls them the <puoioXdvoi,
meaning the early thinkers who ponder the things of nature. «ti/oic.
means sky and earth, plants and animals, and also in a certain way men.
The word designates a special region of beings which, in both Aristotle
and the Platonic school, are separated from rjBoq and Xdyoq. For them
cpuoiq no longer has the broad sense of the totality of being. At the
outset of Aristotle's thematic observations on Physics, that is, on the
ontology of the <pdoei d v i a , the land of being called opiioei dvta is
contrasted with that of Ttfxvn dvra. 4>üoei dvra is that which produces
itself by arising out of itself; Ttfxvn dvra is produced by human plan
ning and production.
When Hegel says of Aristotle that he is "as philosophical as he is
learned," this actually means that Aristotle regards the early thinkers
in the historical perspective, and according to the standard, of his own
Physics. For us that means: Hegel understands the Preplatonic and
Presocratic philosophers as Pre-Aristotelians. After Hegel a twofold
opinion concerning philosophy before Plato and Aristotle ensconces
15
itself as the general view: (1) the early thinkers, in search of the first
beginnings of being, for the most part took nature as the object of their
representations; (2) their utterances on nature are inadequate approx
imations compared to the knowledge of nature which in the meantime
had blossomed in the Platonic and Aristotelian schools, the Stoa, and
the schools of medicine.
The <fruoiKu5v 6d£ai of Theophrastus became the chief source for
manuals of the history of philosophy in Hellenistic times. These manu
als prescribed the interpretation of the original writings of the early
thinkers which may have survived to that time, and founded the sub
sequent doxographical tradition in philosophy. Not only the content
but also the style of this tradition made its mark on the relation of later
thinkers—even beyond Hegel—to the history of thought.
About 530 A.D. the Neoplatonist Simplicius wrote an extensive
commentary on Aristotle's Physics. In it he reproduced the Anaximan-
der fragment, thus preserving it for the Western world. He copied the
fragment from Theophrastus' <I>UOIKU]V 6dcjai. From the time Anaxi-
mander pronounced his saying—we do not know where or when or to
whom—to the moment Simplicius jotted it down in his commentary
more than a millennium elapsed. Between the time of Simplicius'
jotting and the present moment lies another millennium-and-a-half.
Can the Anaximander fragment, from a historical and chronologi
cal distance of two thousand five hundred years, still say something to
us? By what authority should it speak? Only because it is the oldest? In
themselves the ancient and antiquarian have no weight. Besides, al
though the fragment is the oldest vouchsafed to us by our tradition we
do not know whether it is the earliest fragment of its kind in Western
thinking. We may presume so, provided we first of all think the es
sence of the West in terms of what the early saying says.
But what entitles antiquity to address us, presumably the latest
latecomers with respect to philosophy? Are we latecomers in a history
now racing towards its end, an end which in its increasingly sterile
order of uniformity brings everything to an end? Or does there lie
concealed in the historical and chronological remoteness of the frag
ment the historic proximity o f something unsaid, something that will
speak out in times to come?
16
Do we stand in the very twilight of the most monstrous transfor

mation our planet has ever undergone, the twilight of that epoch in
which earth itself hangs suspended? Do we confront the evening of a
night which heralds another dawn? Are we to strike off on a journey to
this historic region of earth's evening? Is the land of evening* only now
emerging? Will this land of evening overwhelm Occident and Orient
alike, transcending whatever is merely European to become the loca
tion of a new, more primordially fated history? Are we men of today
already "Western" in a sense that first crystallizes in the course of our
passage into the world's night? What can all merely historiological
philosophies of history tell us about our history if they only dazzle us
with surveys of its sedimented stuff; if they explain history without ever
thinking out, from the essence of history, the fundamentals of their way
of explaining events, and the essence of history, in turn, from Being
itself? Are we the latecomers we are? But are we also at the same time
precursors of the dawn of an altogether different age, which has already
left our contemporary historiological representations of history behind?
Nietzsche, from whose philosophy (all too coarsely understood)
Spengler predicted the decline of theWest—in the sense of the West
ern historical world—writes in "The Wanderer and His Shadow"
(1880), "A higher situation for mankind is possible, in which the
Europe of nations will be obscured and forgotten, but in which Europe
will live on in thirty very ancient but never antiquated books"
(Aphorism no. 125).
All historiography predicts what is to come from images of the past
determined by the present. It systematically destroys the future and
our historic relation to the advent of destiny. Historicism has today not
only not been overcome, but is only now entering the stage of its
expansion and entrenchment. The technical organization of communi
cations throughout the world by radio and by a press already limping
after it is the genuine form of historicism's dominion.
Can we nevertheless portray and represent the dawn of an age in
ways different from those of historiography? Perhaps the discipline of
•Land dei Abends, Abend-land. In German Abendhnd means Occident, or "the

West," literally "the evening-land."—TR.
17
history is still for us an indispensable tool for making the historical

contemporary. That does not in any way mean however that historiog
raphy, taken by itself, enables us to form within our history a truly
adequate, far-reaching relation to history.
The antiquity pervading the Anaximander fragment belongs to the
dawn of early times in the land of evening. But what if that which is
early outdistanced everything late; if the very earliest far surpassed the
very latest? What once occurred in the dawn of our destiny would then
o n c e
come, as what occurred, at the last (loxarov), that is, at the
departure of the long-hidden destiny of Being. The Being of beings is
gathered (\i\eofki\, Xdyoq) in the ultimacy of its destiny. The essence
of Being hitherto disappears, its truth still veiled. The history of Being
is gathered in this departure. The gathering in this departure, as the
gathering (Xdyoq) at the outermost point (loxarov) of its essence
hitherto, is the eschatology of Being. As something fateful, Being itself
is inherently eschatological.
However, in the phrase "eschatology of Being" we do not under
stand the term "eschatology" as the name of a theological or
philosophical discipline. W e think of the eschatology of Being in a way
corresponding to the way the phenomenology of spirit is to be thought,
i.e. from within the history of Being. The phenomenology of spirit
itself constitutes a phase in the eschatology of Being, when Being
gathers itself in the ultimacy of its essence, hitherto determined
through metaphysics, as the absolute subjecticity [Subjektitat] of the
unconditioned will to will.
If we think within the eschatology of Being, then we must some
day anticipate the former dawn in the dawn to come; today we must
learn to ponder this former dawn through what is imminent.
If only once we could hear the fragment it would no longer sound
like an assertion historically long past. Nor would we be seduced by
vain hopes of calculating historically, i.e. philologically and psychologi
cally, what was at one time really present to that man called Anaximan
der of Miletus which may have served as the condition for his way of
representing the world. But presuming we do hear what his saying
says, what binds us in our attempt to translate it? How do we get to
18
what is said in the saying, so that it might rescue the translation from
arbitrariness?
We are bound to the language of the saying. We are bound to our
mother tongue. In both cases we are essentially bound to language and
to the experience of its essence. This bond is broader and stronger, but
far less apparent, than the standards of all philological and historical
facts—which can only borrow their factuality from it. So long as we do
not experience this binding, every translation of the fragment must
seem wholly arbitrary. Yet even when we are bound to what is said in
the saying, not only the translation but also the binding retain the
appearance of violence, as though what is to be heard and said here
necessarily suffers violence.
Only in thoughtful dialogue with what it says can this fragment of
thinking be translated. However, thinking is poetizing, and indeed
more than one kind of poetizing, more than poetry and song. Thinking
of Being is the original way of poetizing. Language first comes to
language, i.e. into its essence, in thinking. Thinking says what the
truth of Being dictates; it is the original diet are. Thinking is primordial
poetry, prior to all poesy, but also prior to the poetics of art, since art
shapes its work within the realm of language. All poetizing, in this
broader sense, and also in the narrower sense of the poetic, is in its
ground a thinking. The poetizing essence of thinking preserves the
sway of the truth of Being. Because it poetizes as it thinks, the transla
tion which wishes to let the oldest fragment of thinking itself speak
necessarily appears violent.
We shall try to translate the Anaximander fragment. This requires
that we translate what is said in Creek into our German tongue. To that
end our thinking must first, before translating, be translated to what is
said in Greek. Thoughtful translation to what comes to speech in this
fragment is a leap over an abyss [Graben]. The abyss does not consist
merely of the chronological or historical distance of two-and-a-half mil
lennia. It is wider and deeper. It is hard to leap, mainly because we
stand right on its edge. We are so near the abyss that we do not have an
adequate runway for such a broad jump; we easily fall short—if indeed
the lack of a sufficiently solid base allows any leap at all.
19
What comes to language in the fragment? The question is ambigu-

ous and therefore imprecise. It might mean to inquire into the matter
the fragment says something about; it might also mean what the frag-
ment says in itself. More literally translated the fragment says:
But that from which things arise also gives rise to their passing away, according
to what is necessary; for things render justice and pay penalty to one another
for their injustice, according to the ordinance of time.
According to the usual view the statement speaks of the origin and
decay of things. It specifies the nature of this process. Originating and
decaying refer back to the place whence they come. Things flower,
things fall. Thus they exhibit a kind of barter system in Nature's im-
mutable economy. The exchange of constructive and destructive mo-
ments is, of course, only roughly grasped as a general characteristic of
natural occurrences. The mutability of all things is therefore not yet
represented with precision in terms of motions defined by exact rela-
tions of mass. At this point an appropriate formula of the laws of motion
is still lacking. The judgment of later, more progressive times is in-
dulgent enough not to ridicule this primitive natural science. Indeed it
Is found altogether fitting that incipient observation of nature should
describe the processes of things in terms of common occurrences in the
human sphere. This is why Anaximander's statement mentions justice
and injustice, recompense and penalty, sin and retribution, with re-
spect to things. Moral and juridical notions get mixed in with his view
of nature. In this regard Theophrastus already criticizes Anaximander
for noiqiiKurtcfpoic. OJXUJC, dvduaoiv adxd Xtfytuv, that is, for employing
rather poetic words for what he wants to say. Theophrastus means the
words 6IKT|, tfoiq, d6iicfa, 6i6dvai 6fKn,v.
Before all else we should try to make out what the fragment speaks
of. Only then can we judge what it says concerning its subject matter.
Considered grammatically, the fragment consists of two clauses.
The first begins: ¿1; ulv 5£ rj y^veofq ¿0x1 xolq OJOL The matter
under discussion is dvxa; translated literally, xd dvxa means "beings."
The neuter plural appears as xd noXXd, "the many," in the sense of the
manifold of being. But xd dvxa does not mean an arbitrary or boundless
multiplicity; rather, it means xdndvxa, the totality of being. Thus xd
20
dvra means manifold being in totality. The second clause begins:

6i6dvai ydp aifrd. The aifrd refers to the TOIC, duoi of the first
clause.
The fragment speaks of manifold being in totality. But not only
things belong among beings. In the fullest sense, "things" are not only
things of nature. Man, things produced by man, and the situation or
environment effected and realized by the deeds and omissions of men,
also belong among beings, and so do daimonic and divine things. All
these are not merely "also" in being; they are even more in being than
mere things. The Aristotelian-Theophrastian presupposition that id
dvia must be cpuoei dvra, natural things in the narrower sense, is
altogether groundless. It is superfluous for our translation. But even
the translation of td dvra as "the things" does not suit the matter which
comes to language in the saying.
If the presupposition that the fragment makes statements about
things of nature fails, however, then so does all foundation for the
assertion that what ought to be represented strictly in terms of the
natural sciences is interpreted morally and juridically. With the col
lapse of the presupposition that the fragment strives after scientific
knowledge concerning the demarcated realm of nature, another as
sumption becomes superfluous, namely, that at this time ethical or
juridical matters were interpreted in terms of the disciplines we call
"ethics" and "jurisprudence." Denial of such boundaries between dis
ciplines does not mean to imply that in early times law and ethicality
were unknown. But if the way we normally think within a range of
disciplines (such as physics, ethics, philosophy of law, biology,
psychology) has no place here—if boundaries between these subjects
are lacking—then there is no possibility of trespass or of the unjustified
transfer of notions from one area to another. Yet where boundaries
between disciplines do not appear, boundless indeterminacy and flux
do not necessarily prevail: on the contrary, an appropriate articulation
of a matter purely thought may well come to language when it has been
freed from every oversimplification.
The words 6IKT|, dSiicfd, and xioiq have a broad significance which
cannot be enclosed within the boundaries of particular disciplines.
Broad" does not mean here extensive, in the sense of something
21
flattened or thinned out, but rather far-reaching, rich, containing much

thought. For precisely that reason these words are employed: to bring
to language the manifold totality in its essential unity. For that to
happen, of course, thinking must apprehend the unified totality of the
manifold, with its peculiar characteristics, purely in its own terms.
This way of letting manifold being in its unity come into essential
view is anything but a kind of primitive and anthropomorphic rep
resentation.
In order to translate at all what comes to language in the fragment,
we must, before we do any actual translating, consciously cast aside all
inadequate presuppositions. For example, that tne fragment pertains
to the philosophy of nature—in such a way that inappropriate
moralisms and legalisms are enmeshed in it; or that highly specialized
ideas relevant to particular regions of nature, ethics, or law play a role
in it; or finally, that a primitive outlook still prevails which examines
the world uncritically, interprets it anthropomorphically, and therefore
resorts to poetic expressions.
However, even to cast aside all presuppositions whenever we find
them inadequate is insufficient so long as we fail to gain access to what
comes to language in the fragment. Dialogue with early Greek thinking
will be fruitful only when such listening occurs. It is proper to dialogue
that its conversation speak of the same thing; indeed, that it speak out
of participation in the Same. According to its wording, the fragment
speaks of dvia, expressing what they involve and how it is with them.
Beings are spoken of in such a way that their Being is expressed. Being
comes to language as the Being of beings.
At the summit of the completion of Western philosophy these
words are pronounced: "To stamp Becoming with the character of
Being—that is the highest will to power." Thus writes Nietzsche in a
note entitled, "Recapitulation." According to the character of the
manuscript's handwriting we must locate it in the year 1885, about the
time when Nietzsche, having completed Zarathustra, was planning his
systematic metaphysical magnum opus. The "Being" Nietzsche thinks
here is "the eternal recurrence of the same." It is the way of con
tinuance through which will to power wills itself and guarantees its own
presencing as the Being of Becoming. At the outermost point of the
22
completion of metaphysics the Being of beings is addressed in these

words.
The ancient fragment of early Western thinking and the late frag
ment of recent Western thinking bring the Same to language, but what
they say is not identical. However, where we can speak of the Same in
terms of things which are not identical, the fundamental condition of a
thoughtful dialogue between recent and early times is automatically
fulfilled.
Or does it only seem so? Does there lie behind this "seeming" a
gap between the language of our thinking and the language of Creek
philosophy? Whatever the case, if we take i d dvra to mean "beings"
and elvai as nothing else than "to be," we cross every gap; granting the
differences between these epochs, we are together with the early
thinkers in the realm of the Same. This Same secures our translation of
i d dvra and efvai by "beings" and "to be." Must we place in evidence
extensive texts of Creek philosophy in order to demonstrate the unim
peachable correctness of this translation? All interpretations of Creek
philosophy themselves already rest on this translation. Every lexicon
provides the most copious information concerning these words, elvai
meaning "to be," e"oriv "is," dv "being," and i d dvra "beings."
So it is in fact. We do not mean to express doubts about it. We do
not ask whether dv is correctly translated as "being" and elvai as "to
be"; we ask only whether in this correct translation we also think
correctly. We ask only whether in this most common of all translations
anything at all is thought.
Let us see. Let us examine ourselves and others. It becomes
manifest that in this correct translation everything is embroiled in
equivocal and imprecise significations. It becomes clear that the always
hasty approximations of usual translations are never seen as insuffi
cient; nor are scholarly research and writing ever disturbed by them.
Perhaps great effort is expended in order to bring out what the Creeks
truly represented to themselves in words like 8edc, q/uxrf, ^ { TJxn,
U ) R >
xdpiq, Xdyoc., (pi/oiq, or words like idea, Ttfxvr), and e've'pYeia. But we
do not realize that these and similar labors get nowhere and come to
nothing so long as they do not satisfactorily clarify that realm of all
realms—so long as they do not cast sufficient light on dv and elvai in
23
their Creek essence. But scarcely have we named elvai as a realm than
"realm" is represented by the logical apparatus of ycfvoc, and xoivdv, and
understood in the sense of the universal and all-encompassing. This
grasping together (concipere) in the manner of representational con-
cepts is immediately taken to be the only possible way to understand
Being. It is still taken to be applicable when one hastens into the
dialectic of concepts or flees to a nonconceptual realm of mystic signs. It
is wholly forgotten that the potency of the concept and the interpretation
of thinking as conceiving rest solely on the unthought, because unex-
perienced, essence of dv and elvai.
Most often we thoughtlessly catalogue the words dv and elvai
under what we mean by the corresponding (but unthought) words of
our own mother tongue, "being" and "to be." More precisely, we
never ascribe a significance to the Greek words at all: we immediately
adopt them from our stock of common knowledge, which has already
endowed them with the common intelligibility of its own language. We
support the Greek words with nothing except the complacent negli-
gence of hasty opinion. This may do in a pinch, when for example we
are reading eivai and ioiiv in Thucydides' historical works, or rjv and
¿0x01 in Sophocles.
But what if id dvra, dv, and efvai come to speak in language as
the fundamental words of thinking, and not simply a particular land of
thinking but rather as the key words for all Western thinking? Then an
examination of the language employed in the translation would reveal
the following state of affairs:
Neither is it clear and firmly established what we ourselves are

thinking in the words "being" and "to be" in our own language;
nor is it clear and firmly established whether anything we are
liable to come up with suits what the Greeks were addressing in the
words dv and eivai.
Neither is it at all clear and firmly established what dv and elvai,
thought in Greek, say;
nor can we, granted this state of affairs, administer an examination
which might determine whether and how far our thinking corresponds
to that of the Greeks.
These simple relations remain thoroughly confused and un-
24
thought. But within them, hovering over them, Being-talk has drifted
far and wide, all at sea. Buoyed by the formal correctness of the transla
tion of dv and elvai by "being" and "to be," drifting right on by the
confused state of affairs, Being-talk deceives. But not only do we con
temporary men err in this confusion; all the notions and representa
tions we have inherited from Greek philosophy remain in the same
confusion, exiled for millennia. Neither pure neglect on the part of
philology nor inadequate historical research has occasioned this confu
sion. It arises from the abyss [Abgrund] of that relation by which Being
has appropriated the essence of Western man. We cannot therefore
dissolve the confusion by elaborating through some definition a more
precise meaning for the words dv and elvai, "being" and "to be." On
the contrary, the attempt to heed this confusion steadfastly, using its
tenacious power to effect some resolution, may well bring about a
situation which releases a different destiny of Being. The preparation of
such an occasion is already sufficient reason to set in motion, within the
abiding confusion, a conversation with early thinking.
If we so stubbornly insist on thinking Greek thought in Greek
fashion it is by no means because we intend to sketch a historical
portrait of Greek antiquity, as one of the past great ages of man, which
would be in many respeciJmore accurate. We search for what is Greek
neither for the sake of the Greeks themselves nor tor the advancement
of scholarship. Nor do we desire a more meaningful conversation sim
ply for its own sake. Rather, our sole aim is to reach what wants to
come to language in such a conversation, provided it come of its own
accord. And this is that Same which fatefully concerns the Greeks and
ourselves, albeit in different ways. It is that which brings the dawn of
thinking into the fate of things Western, into the land of evening. Only
as a result of this^tefuInessJGesc/j»dt] do the Greeks become Greeks
in the historic [geschichtlich] sense.
In our manner of speaking, "Greek" does not designate a particu
lar people or nation, nor a cultural or anthropological group. What is
Greek is the dawn of that destiny in which Being illuminates itself in
beings and so propounds a certain essence of man; that essence unfolds
historically as something fateful, preserved in Being and dispensed by
Being, without ever being separated from Being.
Greek antiquity, Christendom, modern times, global affairs, and
25
the West interpreted as the land of evening—we are thinking all these
on the basis of a fundamental characteristic of Being which is more
concealed in ArfGn. than it is revealed in 'AXifBeia Yet this concealing
of its essence and of its essential origin is characteristic of Being's
primordial self-illumination, so much so that thinking simply does not
pursue it. The being itself does not step into this light of Being. The
unconcealment of beings, the brightness granted them, obscures the
light of Being.
As it reveals itself in beings, Being withdraws.
In this way, by illuminating them, Being sets beings adrift in
errancy. Beings come to pass in that errancy by which they circumvent
Being and establish the realm of error (in the sense of a prince's realm
or the realm of poetry). Error is the space in which history unfolds. In
error what happens in history bypasses what is like Being. Therefore,
whatever unfolds historically is necessarily misinterpreted. During the
course of this misinterpretation destiny awaits what will become of its
seed. It brings those whom it concerns to the possibilities of the fateful
and fatal [Geschlcktichen and Ungeschicklichen]. Man's destiny gropes
toward its fate [Geschick versucht sich an Geschick]. Man's inability to
see himself corresponds to the self-concealing of the lighting of Being.
P" Without errancy there would be no connection from destiny to
destiny: there would be no history. Chronological distance and causal
sequence do indeed belong to the discipline of historiography, but are
not themselves history. When we are historical we are neither a great
nor a small distance from what is Greek. Rather, we are in errancy
toward it.
As it reveals itself in beings. Being withdraws.
Being thereby holds to its truth and keeps to itself. This keeping to
itself is the way it reveals itself early on. Its early sign is 'A-ArfGeia As
it provides the unconcealment of beings it founds the concealment of
Being. Concealment remains characteristic of that denial by which it
keeps to itself.
We may call this luminous keeping to itself in the truth of its
essence the e*noxrf of Being. However, this word, borrowed from the
Stoic philosophers, does not here have the Husserlian sense of object-
ifican'on or methodical exclusion by an act of thetic consciousness. The
26
The Anaxlmander Fragment
epoche of Being belongs to Being itself; we are thinking it in terms of

the experience of the oblivion of Being.
From the epoche of Being comes the epochal essence of its destin
ing, in which world history properly consists. When Being keeps to
itself in its destining, world suddenly and unexpectedly comes to pass.
Every epoch of world history is an epoch of errancy. The epochal
nature of Being belongs to the concealed temporal character of Being
and designates the essence of time as thought in Being. What is rep
resented in this word "time" is only the vacuity of an illusory time
derived from beings conceived as objects.
For us, however, the most readily experienced correspondence to
the epochal character of Being is the ecstatic character of Da-sein. The
epochal essence of Being lays claim to the ecstatic nature of Da-sein.
The ek-sistence of man sustains what is ecstatic and so preserves what is
epochal in Being, to whose essence the Da, and thereby Da-sein,
belongs.
The beginning of the epoch of Being lies in that which we call
"Greek," thought epochally. This beginning, also to be thought epoch-
ally, is the dawn of the destiny in Being from Being.
Little depends on what we represent and portray of the past; but
much depends on the way we are mindful of what is destined. Can we
ever be mindful without thinking? But if thinking does occur we aban
don all claims of shortsighted opinion and open ourselves to the claim
of destiny. Does this claim speak in the early saying of Anaximander?
^We are not sure whether its claim speaks to our very essence. It
remains to ask whether in our relation to the truth of Being the glance
of Being, and this means lightning (Heraclitus, fir. 64), strikes; or
whether in our knowledge of the past only the faintest glimmers of a
storm long flown cast a pale semblance of light.
Does the fragment speak to us of dvra in their Being? Do we
apprehend what it says, the elvai of beings? Does a streak of light still
pierce the misty confusion of errancy and tell us what dvra and elvai
say in Greek? Only in the brilliance of this lightning streak can we
translate ourselves to what is said in the fragment, so as to translate it in
thoughtful conversation. Perhaps the confusion surrounding the use of
the words dvra and elvai, "being" and "to be," comes less from the
27
EARLY CREEK THINKING
fact that language cannot say everything adequately than because we

cannot think through the matter involved clearly enough. Lessing once
said, "Language can express everything we can clearly think." So it
rests with us to be ready for the right opportunity, which will permit us
to think clearly the matter the fragment brings to language.
We are inclined to see the opportunity we are looking for in the
Anaximander fragment itself. In that case we still are not paying suffi
cient heed to what the way of translating requires.
For before interpreting the fragment—and not with its help to
begin with—it is essential that we translate ourselves to the source of
what comes to language in it, which is to say, to id dvra. This word
indicates the source from which the fragment speaks, not merely that
which it expresses. That from which it speaks is already, before any
expression, what is spoken by the Greek language in common everyday
parlance as well as in its learned employ. We must therefore seek the
opportunity which will let us cross over to that source first of all outside
the fragment itself; it must be an opportunity which will let us experi
ence what id dvra, thought in Greek, says. Furthermore, we must at
first remain outside the fragment because we have not yet delineated
each of its terms; this delineation is ultimately (or, in terms of the
matter itself, in the first place) governed by the knowledge of what in
early times was thought or thinkable in such a choice of words, as
distinct from what the prevailing notions of recent times find in it.
The text cited and translated above from Simplicius' commentary
on the Physics is traditionally accepted as the Anaximander fragment.
However, the commentary does not cite the fragment so clearly that
we can ascertain with certainty where Anaximander's saying begins and
where it ends. Still, our contemporaries who are exceptionally knowl
edgeable in the Greek language accept the text of the fragment in the
form introduced at the outset of our inquiry.
But even John Burnet, the distinguished scholar of Greek
philosophy to whom we owe the Oxford edition of Plato, in his book
Early Greek Philosophy expressed doubts as to whether Simplidus'
citation begins where it is usually said to begin. In opposition to Diels,
Burnet writes: "Diels (Vors. 2, 9) begins the actual quotation with the
words it, ulv Se rj y^veoic.. . The Greek practice of blending quota-
28
tions with the text tells against this. [Only seldom does a Creek author
immediately begin with a literal quotation.] Further it is safer not to
ascribe the terms y^veoic. and <p8opd in their technical Platonic sense
to Anaximander [and it is not likely that Anaximander said anything
about rd dvta]."*
On this basis Burnet argues that Anaximander's saying begins only
with the words icard id xpeufv. What Burnet says in general about
Greek citations speaks for the exclusion of the words preceding these.
On the other hand his remarks, which rest on the terminological em
ployment of the words ye'veoic, and <p6opd, cannot be accepted as they
stand. It is correct to say that y^veoiq and <p6opd become conceptual
terms with Plato and Aristode and their schools. But yivcaic. and
<p6opd are old words which even Homer knows. Anaximander need not
have employed them as conceptual terms. He cannot have applied
them in this fashion, because conceptual language necessarily remains
foreign to him. For conceptual language is first possible on the basis of
the interpretation of Being as i6ea, and indeed from then on it is
unavoidable.
Nevertheless, the entire sentence preceding the xard TO xpeufv is
much more Aristotelian in structure and tone than archaic. The xard
trjv TOU xpdvou xcfîv at the end of the normally accepted text also
betrays the same characteristic lateness. Whoever takes it upon himself
to strike out the part of the text which is dubious to Burnet cannot
maintain the usually accepted closing of the fragment either. Of
Anaximander's original words, only these would remain:
Kard rd xpeuJv Sioovai ydp aifrd 6fxr|v xal ribiv dXArfXoic. Tr]q dSiKfaq.
according to necessity; for they pay one another recompense and penalty
for their injustice.
•Heidegger cites the German translation of Burnet's third edition by Else Schenkl, Die
Anfange der griechischen Philosophie (Berlin: Teubner, 1913), p. 43, n. 4. I have cited the
fourth English edition (London: Black, 1930), p. 52. n. 6, said to be "a reprint of the third
edition" with "additional references and one correction." The first bracketed phrase does not
occur in the English but appears in SchenkTs translation; the second does occur in the
English but not in the German. Nevertheless, the first is a natural expansion of Burnet's
view; asforthe second, one might expect that Heidegger's response to Burnet regarding id
ovra would duplicate that respecting Ye'veoic. and <p6opd: although not yet a technical term,
id dvta is an old word, known already by Homer in the form f ddvra, as the Iliad passage
below (p. 33) attests.—TR.
29
Now these are precisely the words in reference to which Theo-

phrastus complains that Anaximander speaks in a rather poetic man
ner. Since thinking through this entire question, which came up often
in my lecture courses a few years ago, I am inclined to accept only
these as the immediate, genuine words of Anaximander, with the pro
viso however that the preceding parts of the text are not simply set
aside, but rather are positively retained, on the basis of the strength
and eloquence of their thought, as secondary testimony concerning
Anaximander's thinking. This demands that we understand precisely
these words yeveoiq and q>6opd as they are thought in Creek, whether
they be preconceptual words or Platonic-Aristotelian conceptual
terms.
Accordingly, ye'veoic. does not at all mean the genetic in the sense
of the "developmental" as conceived in modem times; nor does (pOopd
mean the counterphenomenon to development—some sort of regres
sion, shrinkage, or wasting away. Rather, yiveoiq and <p6opd are to be
thought from <puoiq, and within it, as ways of luminous rising and
decline. Certainly we can translate ye'veoiq as origination; but we must
think this originating as a movement which lets every emerging being
abandon concealment and go forward into unconcealment. Certainly
we can translate q>6opd as passing away; but we must think this passing
away as a going which in its turn abandons unconcealment, departing
and withdrawing into concealment.
Presumably, Anaximander spoke of yc'veaiq and <p9opd It re
mains questionable whether this occurred in the form of the traditional
statement, although such paradoxical turns of speech as ye'veoiq t"oriv
(which is the way I should like to read it) and <p8opd VI'VCTOI,
"coming-to-be is," and "passing-away comes to be" still may speak in
favor of an ancient language, rrfveoiq is coming forward and arriving in
unconcealment. 4>6cpd means the departure and descent into con
cealment of what has arrived there out of unconcealment. The coming
forward into . and the departure to become present within un
concealment between what is concealed and what is unconcealed.
They initiate the arrival and departure of whatever has arrived.
Anaximander must have spoken of what is designated in yc'veoic,
and (pOopd: whether he actually mentioned id dvio. remains an open
30
question, although nothing speaks against it. The a i h d in the second

clause, because of the scope of what it says and also because of the
reference of this second clause back to the Kara id xpeuiv, can desig-
nate nothing less than being-in-totality experienced in a preconceptual
way, i d noXXd, i d n d v i a , "beings." We are still calling t d dvia
"beings" without ever having clarified what dv and elvai indicate when
thought in Creek. Yet we have in the meantime won a more open field
in which to pursue such clarification.
We began with the usually accepted text of the fragment. In a
preliminary review of it we excluded the common presuppositions
which determine its interpretation. In so doing we discovered a clue in
what comes to language in ye'veoiq and q>6opd The fragment speaks of
that which, as it approaches, arrives in unconcealmept, and which,
having arrived here, departs by withdrawing into the distance.
However, whatever has its essence in such arrival and departure
we would like to call becoming and perishing, which is to say, tran-
siency rather than being; because we have for a long time been accus-
tomed to set Being opposite Becoming, as if Becoming were a kind of
nothingness and did not even belong to Being; and this because Being
has for a long time been understood to be nothing else than sheer
perdurance. Nevertheless, if Becoming is, then we must think Being
so essentially that it does not simply include Becoming in some vacu-
ous conceptual manner, but rather in such a way that Being sustains
and characterizes Becoming (yEfveoiq-mBopd) in an essential, appro-
priate manner.
In this regard we are not to discuss whether and with what right
we should represent Becoming as transiency. Rather, we must discuss
what sort of essence the Greeks think for Being when in the realm of
the dvra they experience approach and withdrawal as the basic trait of
advent.
When the Greeks say id d v r a , what comes to the fore in their
language? Where is there, aside from the Anaximander fragment, a
guideline which would translate us there? Because the word in ques-
tion, with all its modifications, e"oriv, rjv, ¿010.1, efvai, speaks every-
where throughout the language—and even before thinking actually
chooses this as its fundamental word—it is necessary that we avail
31
ourselves of an opportunity which in terms of its subject matter, its

time, and the realm to which it belongs, lies outside philosophy, and
which from every point of view precedes the pronouncements of think-
ing.
In Homer we perceive such an opportunity. Thanks to him we
possess a reference in which the word appears as something more than
a term in the lexicon. Rather, it is a reference which poetically brings
to language what dvra names. Because all Xcîs of the lexicographic
sort presupposes the thought of the Xeyduevov, we will refrain from
the futile practice of heaping up references to serve as evidence; this
kind of annotation usually proves only that none of the references has
been thought through. With the aid of this commonly adopted method
one usually expects that by shoving together one unclarified reference
with another every bit as unclear clarity will suddenly result.
The passage upon which we wish to comment is found at the
beginning of the first book of the Iliad, lines 68-72. It gives us the
chance to cross over to what the Creeks designate with the word dvra,
provided we let ourselves be transported by the poet to the distant
shore of the matter spoken there.
For the following reference a preliminary observation concerning
the history of the language is needed. Our observations cannot claim to
present this philological problem adequately, much less to solve it. In
Plato and Aristotle we encounter the words dv and dvra as conceptual
terms. The later terms "ontic" and "ontological" are formed from them.
However, dv and dvra, considered linguistically, are presumably
somewhat truncated forms of the original words e*dv and rWvTa. Only
in the latter words is the sound preserved which relates them to eouv
and elvai. The epsilon in ddv and e'dvra is the epsilon in the root ¿0 of
£onv, est, esse, and "is." In contrast dv and dvra appear as rootless
participial endings, as though by themselves they expressly designated
what we must think in those word-forms called by later grammarians
ueToxrf, participlum, i.e. those word-forms which participate in the
verbal and nominal senses of a word.
Thus dv says "being" in the sense of to be a being; at the same
time it names a being which is. In the duality of the participial signifi-
cance of dv the distinction between "to be" and "a being" lies con-
32
cealed. What is here set forth, which at first may be taken for grammat
ical hair-splitting, is in truth the riddle of Being. The participle dv is
the word for what comes to appear in metaphysics as transcendental
and transcendent Transcendence.
Archaic language, and thus Parmenides and Heraclitus as well,
always employ e*dv and ddvia.
But e*dv, "being," is not only the singular form of the participle
ddvra, "beings"; rather, it indicates what is singular as such, what is
singular in its numerical unity and what is singularly and unifyingly one
before all number.
We might assert in an exaggerated way, which nevertheless bears
on the truth, that the fate of the West hangs on the translation of the
word e*dv, assuming that the translation consists in crossing over to the
truth of what comes to language in e*dv.
What does Homer tell us about this word? We are familiar with
the situation of the Achaeans before Troy at the outset of the Iliad. For
nine days the plague sent by Apollo has raged in the Creek camp. At an
assembly of the warriors Achilles commands Kalchas the seer to inter
pret the wrath of the god.
toloi 6' dveoTn.
KdXxaq 0eoTopi6nc oliovono'Xiov dx* dpioToc.
6c,rf6r|id i eovra id V eoodpeva npd t ' ecivTa
Kal vrfeoo' RLYRFOAT' 'AxaiuJvlAiov efoui
i?v 6id uavToodvriv, xifv oi ndpe 4>oif3oc 'AndAAwv
and among them stood up

Kalchas, Thestor's son, far the best of the bird interpreters,
who knew all that is, is to b e , or once was,
who guided into the land of Ilion the ships of the Achaeans
through that seercraft of his own that Phoibos Apollo gave him.*
Before he lets Kalchas speak. Homer designates him as the seer.

Whoever belongs in the realm of seers is such a one 6q ffir] . "who
knew "; rJ6r| is the pluperfect of the perfect oI6ev, "he has seen."
•Homer, The Iliad, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1961), p. 61, with minor changes. Heidegger uses the German translation by
Voss.—TH.
33
Only when a man has seen does he truly see. To see is to have seen.
What is seen has arrived and remains for him in sight. A seer has always
already seen. Having seen in advance he sees into the future. He sees
the future tense out of the perfect. When the poet speaks of the seer's
seeing as a having-seen, he must say what the seer has seen in the
pluperfect tense, ifor), he had seen. What is it that the seer has seen in
advance? Obviously, only what becomes present in the lighting that
penetrates his sight. What is seen in such a seeing can only be what
comes to presence in unconcealment. But what becomes present? The
poet names something threefold; rd I'ddvia, that which is in being, t d
i doodueva, also that which will be, npd i eovra, and also the being that
once was.
The first point we gather from this poetic phrase is that i d eo'vra
is distinguished from i d doodueva and npd eo'vta. Thus xd ddvia
designates being in the sense of the present [Gegenwärtigen]. When
we moderns speak of "the present," we either mean what is
"now"—which we represent as something within time, the "now" serv
ing as a phase in the stream of time—or we bring the "present" into
relation with the "objective" [Gegenständigen]. As something objec
tive, an object is related to a representing subject. However, if we
employ "present" for the sake of a closer determination of e"dvTa, then
we must understand "the present" from the essence of ddvra.and not
vice versa. Yet e"dvTa is also what is past and what is to come. Each o f
these is a kind o f present being, i.e. o n e not presently present. The
Greeks also named more precisely what is presently present
Td nupedvTd, napd meaning "alongside," in the sense of coming along
side in unconcealment. The gegen in gegenwärtig [presently] does not
mean something over against a subject, but rather an open expanse
[Gegend] of unconcealment, into which and within which whatever
comes along lingers. Accordingly, as a characteristic of fidvia,
"presently" means as much as "having arrived to linger awhile in the
expanse of unconcealment." Spoken first, and thus emphasized, e'dvia,
which is expressly distinguished from npoedvia and doodueva, names
for the Creeks what is present insofar as it has arrived in the designated
sense, t o linger within t h e expanse of unconcealment. Such a coming is
proper arrival, the presencing of what is properly present. What is past
34
The Anoximander Fragment
and what is to come also become present, namely as outside the ex
panse of unconcealment. What presents itself as non-present is what is
absent. As such it remains essentially related to what is presendy
present, inasmuch as it either comes forward into the expanse of un
concealment or withdraws from it. Even what is absent is something
present, for as absent from the expanse, it presents itself in uncon
cealment. What is past and what is to come are also ddvra
Consequently e"dv means becoming present in unconcealment.
The conclusion of this commentary on e"dvra is that also in Creek
experience what comes to presence remains ambiguous, and indeed
necessarily so. On the one hand, id e"dvra means what is presendy
present; on the other, it also means all that becomes present, whether
at the present time or not. However, we must never represent what is
present in the broader sense as the "universal concept" of presence as
opposed to a particular case—the presendy present—though this is
what the usual conceptual mode of thought suggests. For in fact it is
precisely the presendy present and the unconcealment that rules in it
that pervade the essence of what is absent, as that which is not pres
endy present.
The seer stands in sight of what is present, in its unconcealment,
which has at the same time cast light on the concealment of what is
absent as being absent. The seer sees inasmuch as he has seen every
thing as present; xai, and only on that account, vrjeoo' rJYrjoar', was he
able to lead the Achaeans' ships to Troy. He was able to do this through
God-given uavToodvr|. The seer, d udvnq, is the uaivduevoq, the
madman. But in what does the essence of madness consist? A madman
is beside himself, outside himself: he is away. We ask: away? Where to
and where from? Away from the sheer oppression of what lies before
us, which is only presently present, away to what is absent; and at the
same time away to what is presendy present insofar as this is always
only something that arrives in the course of its coming and going. The
seer is outside himself in the solitary region of the presencing of every
thing that in some way becomes present. Therefore he can find his way
back from the "away" of this region, and arrive at what has just pre
sented itself, namely, the raging epidemic. The madness of the seer's
being away does not require that he rave, roll his eyes, and toss his
35
limbs; the simple tranquility of bodily composure may accompany the

madness of vision.
All things present and absent are gathered and preserved in one
presencing for the seer. The old German word war [was] means protec
tion. We still recognize this in wahrnehmen [to perceive], i.e. to take
into preservation; in gewahren and verwahren [to be aware of, to keep
or preserve]. We must think of wahren as a securing which clears and
gathers. Presencing preserves [wahrt] in unconcealment what is pres
ent both at the present time and not at the present time. The seer
speaks from the preserve [Wahr] of what is present. He is the sooth
sayer \Wahr-Sager].
Here we think of the preserve in the sense of that gathering which
clears and shelters; it suggests itself as a long-hidden fundamental trait of
presencing, i.e. of Being. One day we shall learn to think our exhausted
word for truth {Wahrhelt] in terms of the preserve; to experience truth
as the preservation \Wahrnis] of Being; and to understand that, as
presencing, Being belongs to this preservation. As protection of Being,
preservation belongs to the herdsman, who has so little to do with
bucolic idylls and Nature mysticism that he can be the herdsman of
Being only if he continues to hold the place of nothingness. Both are the
Same. Man can do both only within the openedness of Da-sein.
The seer is the one who has already seen the totality of what is
present in its presencing. Said in Latin, vidit; in German, er steht im
Wissen [he stands in knowledge]. To have seen is the essence of know
ing. In "to have seen" there is always something more at play than the
completion of an optical process. In it the connection with what is
present subsists behind every kind of sensuous or nonsensuous grasp
ing. On that account, "to have seen" is related to self-illuminating
presencing. Seeing is determined, not by the eye, but by the lighting
of Being. Presence within the lighting articulates all the human senses.
The essence o f seeing, as "to have seen," is to know. Knowledge em
braces vision and remains indebted to presencing. Knowledge is re
membrance of Being. That is why Mvr|Uoo\Jvn. is mother of the muses.
Knowledge is not science in the modern sense. Knowledge is thought
ful maintenance of Being's preserve.
Whither have Homer's words translated us? To ddvra The
36
Creeks experience beings as being present, whether at the present

time or not, presencing in unconcealment. The word by which we
translate dv, "being," is now no longer obtuse; no longer are "to be," as
the translation of elvai, and the Greek word itself hastily employed
ciphers for arbitrary and vague notions about some indeterminate uni
versal.
At the same time it becomes manifest that Being, as the presenc
ing of what is present, is already in itself truth, provided we think the
essence of truth as the gathering that clears and shelters; provided we
dissociate ourselves from the modern prejudice of metaphysics—today
accepted as something obvious—that truth is a property of beings or of
Being. Being, saying the word thoughtfully now, is elvai as presenc
ing. In a hidden way it is a property of truth, but clearly not of truth
considered as a characteristic of human or divine cognition, and not as a
property in the sense of a quality. Furthermore, it has become clear
that id e"dvra ambiguously names what is presendy present and also
what is not presently present; the latter, understood with regard to the
former, means what is absent. But what is at the present time present
is not a slice of something sandwiched between two absences. If what is
present stands in the forefront of vision, everything presences to
gether: one brings the other with it, one lets the other go. What is
presendy present in unconcealment lingers in unconcealment as in an
open expanse. Whatever lingers (or whiles) in the expanse proceeds to
it from concealment and arrives in unconcealment. But what is present
is arriving or lingering insofar as it is also already departing from un
concealment toward concealment. What is presendy present lingers
awhile. It endures in approach and withdrawal. Lingering is the transi
tion from coming to going: what is present is what in each case lingers.
Lingering in transition, it lingers still in approach and lingers already in
departure. What is for the time being present, what presendy is,
comes to presence out of absence. This must be said precisely of what
ever is truly present, although our usual way of representing things
would like to exclude from what is present all absence.
Td idvra names the uniform manifold o f whatever lingers awhile.
Everything present in unconcealment in this way presents itself to all
others, each after its own fashion.
Finally, we gather something else from the passage in Homer: i d
37
e*dvTa, so-called beings, does not mean exclusively the things of na
ture. In the present instance the poet applies e'dvia to the Achaeans'
encampment before Troy, the god's wrath, the plague's fury, funeral
pyres, the perplexity of the leaders, and so on. In Homer's language i d
e*dvTa is not a conceptual philosophical term but a thoughtful and
thoughtfully uttered word. It does not specify natural things, nor does
it at all indicate objects which stand over against human representa
tion. Man too belongs to ddvra; he is that present being which, il
luminating, apprehending, and thus gathering, lets what is present as
such become present in unconcealment. If in the poetic designation of
Kalchas what is present is thought in relation to the seer's seeing, this
means for Creek thinking that the seer, as the one who has seen, is
himself one who makes-present and belongs in an exceptional sense to
the totality of what is present. On the other hand, it does not mean that
what is present is nothing but an object wholly dependent upon the
seer's subjectivity.
Td rid v i a , what is present, whether or not at the present time, is
the unobtrusive name of what expressly comes to language in the
Anaximander fragment. This word names that which, while not yet
spoken, is the unspoken in thinking which addresses all thinking. This
word names that which from now on, whether or not it is uttered, lays a
claim on all Western thinking.
Bui only several decades later, not with Anaximander but with
Parmenides, e"dv (presencing) and eivai (to presence) are expressed as
the fundamental words of Western thinking. This does not happen, as
the normal misconception still insists, because Parmenides interprets
being "logically" in terms of a proposition's structure and its copula. In
the history of Greek thinking even Aristotle did not go so far when he
thought the Being of beings in terms of KatriYopfa. Aristotle perceived
beings as what already lies before any proposition, which is to say, as
what is present and lingers awhile in unconcealment. Aristotle did not
have to interpret substance, OnoKefuevov, on the basis of the subject
of a predicate phrase, because the essence of substance, ouoia, in the
sense of napo-joia, was already granted. Nor did Aristotle think the
presence of what is present in terms of the objectivity of an object in a
proposition, but rather as e've'pYeio., which however is far removed!—as
38
The Anazimander Fragment
by an abyss—from the actualitas of actus purus in medieval scholasti

cism.
In any case, Parmenides' eouv does not mean the "is" which is the
copula of a proposition. It names e'dv, the presencing of what is
present. The eouv corresponds to the pure claim of Being, before the
division into a first and second odofa, into existentia and essentia. BuJ
in this way, e'dv is thought from the concealed and undisclosed richness
of unconcealment in e*dvra known to the early Creeks, without it ever
becoming possible or necessary for them to experience in all its per
spectives this essential richness itself.
From a thoughtful experience of the e'dv of ddvia, spoken in a
preconceptual way, the fundamental words for early thinking are ut
tered: <I>uoiq and Adyoq, Moipa and "Epis, 'AXifGeia and "Ev. By
means of the'Ev, which is to be thought back into the realm of funda
mental words, e'dv and elvai become the words which expressly indi
cate what is present. Only as a result of the destiny of Being, as the
destiny oPEv, does the modern age after essential upheavals enter the
epoch of the monadology of substance, which completes itself in the
phenomenology of spirit.
It is not that Parmenides interpreted Being logically. On the con
trary, having sprung from metaphysics, which at the same time it
wholly dominated, logic led to a state of affairs where the essential
richness of Being hidden in these early fundamental words remained
buried. Thus Being could be driven to the fatal extreme of serving as
the emptiest, most universal concept.
Bui since the dawn of thinking "Being" names the presencing o f
what is present, in the sense of the gathering which clears and shelters,
which in turn is thought and designated as the Adyoq. The Adyoq
(Xeyeiv, to gather or assemble) is experienced through 'AXrjOeia, the
sheltering which reveals things. In the bifurcated essense of 'AXijBeia,
what is essentially thought as'Epiq and Moipa, which at the same time
mean $doiq, lies concealed.
In the language of these fundamental words, thought from the
experience of presencing, these words from the Anaximander fragment
resound: 61 up, ifoiq, d5i>cux
The claim of Being which speaks in these words determines
39
philosophy in its essence. Philosophy did not spring from myth. It

arises solely from thinking and in thinking. But thinking is the thinking
of Being. Thinking does not originate: it is, when Being presences. But
the collapse of thinking into the sciences and into faith is the baneful
destiny of Being.
In the dawn of Being's destiny, beings, id ddvta, come to lan
guage. From the restrained abundance of what in this way comes, what
does the Anaximander fragment bring to utterance? According to the
presumably genuine text, the fragment reads:
KOTO id xpeuiv Siodvai vdp adrd SfKnv xal rfoiv dXAifXoiq ujc. d6iidac.
In the standard translation:

. according to necessity; for they pay one another recompense and penalty
for their injustice.
The fragment still consists of two clauses; of the first one only the
closing words are retained. We will begin by commenting on the sec
ond clause.
The adrd refers to what is named in the previous clause. The
antecedent can only be id dvta, the totality of what is present, what
ever is present in unconcealment, whether or not at the present time.
Whether or not this is expressly designated by the word e*dvxa may
remain an open question since the text is uncertain. The adrd refers to
everything present, everything that presences by lingering awhile:
gods and men, temples and cities, sea and land, eagle and snake, tree
and shrub, wind and light, stope and sand, day and night. What is
present coheres in unifying presencing, as everything becomes present
to everything else within its duration; it becomes present and lingers
with the others. This multiplicity (noXAd) is not a muster of separate
objects behind which something stands, embracing them as a whole.
Rather, presencing as such is ruled by the lingering-with-one-another
of a concealed gathering. Thus Heraclitus, catching sight of this essen
tial gathering, unifying, and revealing in presencing, named the*Ev
(the Being of beings) the Adyoc
But before this, how does Anaximander experience the totality of
things present; how does he experience their having arrived to linger
40
awhile among one another in unconcealment? What at bottom runs

through whatever is present? The fragment's last word gives the an
swer. We must begin the translation with it. This word designates the
basic trait of what is present: rj dSixfa. The literal translation is "injus
tice." But is this literal translation faithful? That is to say: does the word
which translates d6ixfa heed what comes to language in the saying?
Does the adrd, the totality of what is present, lingering awhile in
unconcealment, stand before our eyes?
How is what lingers awhile in presence unjust? What is unjust
about it? Is it not the right of whatever is present that in each case it
linger awhile, endure, and so fulfill its presencing?
The word d-6iicia immediately suggests that 6ixr| is absent. W e
are accustomed to translate 64x1) as "right." The translations even use
"penalties" to translate "right." I f we resist our own juridical-moral
notions, if we restrict ourselves to what comes to language, then we
hear that wherever d6ixfa rules all is not right with things. That
means, something is out of joint. But of what are we speaking? Of what
is present, lingering awhile. But where are there jointures in what is
present? Or where is there even one jointure? How can what is present
without jointure be d6ixov, out of joint?
The fragment clearly says that what is present is in d6ixia, i.e. is
out of joint. However, that cannot mean that things no longer come to
presence. But neither does it say that what is present is only occasion
ally, or perhaps only with respect to some one of its properties, out of
joint. The fragment says: what is present as such, being what it is, is out
of joint. To presencing as such jointure must belong, thus creating the
possibility of its being out of joint. What is present is that which lingers
awhile. The while occurs essentially as the transitional arrival in depar
ture: the while comes to presence between approach and withdrawal.
Between this twofold absence the presencing of all that lingers occurs.
In this "between" whatever lingers awhile is joined. This "between" is
the jointure in accordance with which whatever lingers is joined, from
its emergence here to its departure away from here. The presencing of
whatever lingers obtrudes into the "here" of its coming, as into the
"away" of its going. In both directions presencing is conjointly disposed
toward absence. Presencing comes about in such a jointure. What is
41
present emerges by approaching and passes away by departing; it does

both at the same time, indeed because it lingers. The "while" occurs
essentially in the jointure.
But then what lingers awhile is precisely in the jointure of its
presencing, and not at all, as we might put it, in disjunction, d6iicfa.
But the fragment says it is. The fragment speaks from the essential
experience that d6iKla is the fundamental trait of e*dvTa
Whatever lingers awhile becomes present as it lingers in the join
ture which arranges presencing joindy between a twofold absence.
Still, as what is present, whatever lingers awhile—and only it—can
stay the length of its while. What has arrived may even insist upon its
while solely to remain more present, in the sense of perduring. That
which lingers perseveres in its presencing. In this way it extricates
itself from its transitory while. It strikes the willful pose of persistence,
no longer concerning itself with whatever else is present. It stiffens—as
if this were the way to linger—and aims solely for continuance and
subsistence.
Coming to presence in the jointure of the while, what is present
abandons that jointure and is, in terms of whatever lingers awhile, in
disjunction. Everything that lingers awhile stands in disjunction. To
the presencing of what is present, to the e*dv of £*dvTa, dSmia belongs.
Thus, standing in disjunction would be the essence of all that is pres
ent. And so in this early fragment of thinking the pessimism—not to
say the nihilism—of the Creek experience of Being would come to the
fore.
However, does the fragment say that the essence of what is pres
ent consists in disjunction? It does and it doesn't. Certainly, the frag
ment designates disjunction as the fundamental trait of what is present,
but only to say:
6i5dvai yap aiitd 6fiu)v trie dfinuaq.
"They must pay penalty," Nietzsche translates; "They pay recom

pense," Diels translates, "for their injustice." But the fragment says
nothing about payment, recompense, and penalty; nor does it say that
something is punishable, or even must be avenged, according to the
opinion of those who equate justice with vengeance.
42
Meanwhile, the thoughtlessly uttered "injustice of things" has

been clarified by thinking the essence of what lingers awhile in pres
ence as the disjunction in lingering. The disjunction consists in the fact
that whatever lingers awhile seeks to win for itself a while based solely
on the model of continuance. Lingering as persisting, considered with
respect to the jointure of the while, is an insurrection on behalf of sheer
endurance. Continuance asserts itself in presencing as such, which lets
each present being linger awhile in the expanse of unconcealment. In
this rebellious whiling whatever lingers awhile insists upon sheer con
tinuance. What is present then comes to presence without, and in
opposition to, the jointure of the while. The fragment does not say that
whatever is present for the time being loses itself in disjunction; it says
that whatever lingers awhile with a view to disjunction 6iSdvai SIKTTV,
gives jointure.
What does "give" mean here? How should whatever lingers
awhile, whatever comes to presence in disjunction, be able to give
jointure? Can it give what it doesn't have? If it gives anything at all,
doesn't it give jointure away? Where and how does that which is pres
ent for the time being give jointure? We must ask our question more
clearly, by questioning from within the matter.
How should what is present as such give the jointure of its pres
encing? The giving designated here can only consist in its manner of
presencing. Giving is not only giving-away; originally, giving has the
sense of acceding or giving-to. Such giving lets something belong to
another which properly belongs to him. What belongs to that which is
present is the jointure of its while, which it articulates in its approach
and withdrawal. In the jointure whatever lingers awhile keeps to its
while. It does not incline toward the disjunction of sheer persistence.
The jointure belongs to whatever lingers awhile, which in turn belongs
in the jointure. The jointure is order.
Alien, thought on the basis of Being as presencing, is the ordering
and enjoining Order. 'A5ixfa, disjunction, is Disorder. Now it is only
necessary that we think this capitalized word capitally—in its full lin
guistic power.
Whatever lingers awhile in presence comes to presence insofar as
it lingers; all the while, emerging and passing away, and the jointure of
43
the transition from approach to withdrawal, continue. This lingering

endurance of the transition is the enjoined continuance of what is
present. The enjoined continuance does not at all insist upon sheer
persistence. It does not fall into disjunction; it surmounts disorder.
Lingering the length of its while, whatever lingers awhile lets its es
sence as presencing belong to order. The 5i6dvai designates this "let
ting belong to."
The presencing of whatever is present for the time being does not
consist in d6iicfa by itself, i.e. not in disorder alone; rather, it consists
in 6i5dvai 6fKr)v TT)C. dSiicfac., since whatever is present lets order
belong in each case. Whatever is presendy present is not a slice of
something shoved in between what is not presendy present; it is pres
ent insofar as it lets itself belong to the non-present:
6i6dvai. ailtd 6fKny . trjq d&iKfac.,
—they, these same beings, let order belong (by the surmounting) of
disorder.
The experience of beings in their Being which here comes to
language is neither pessimistic nor nihilistic; nor is it optimistic. It is
tragic. That is a presumptuous thing to say. However, we discover a
trace of the essence of tragedy, not when we explain it psychologically
or aesthetically, but rather only when we consider its essential form,
the Being of beings, by thinking the 6i5dvai 6iKr)v . xrjc a'6iKfac,
Whatever lingers awhile in presence, rd e"dvxa, becomes present
when it lets enjoining order belong. To what does the order of jointure
belong, and where does it belong? When and in what way does that
which lingers awhile in presence give order? The fragment does not
directly say anything about this, at least to the extent we have so far
considered it. If we turn our attention to the still untranslated portion,
however, it seems to say clearly to whom or what the 6i6dvai is di
rected
6i6dvai ydp aikd 6fKn.v nal tfoiv dXXrjXoiq
—present beings which linger awhile let order belong dAXrfAoiq, to one
44
another. Thus we are generally accustomed to read the text; we relate

the dXXrfXoiq to 6IKT|V and T/OIV, if we represent it clearly and ex
pressly name it, as does Diels—though Nietzsche passes over it en
tirely in his translation. However, it seems to me that the immediate
relation of dXXifXoiq to öiodvai 6fKn.v is neither linguistically neces
sary nor, more important, justified by the matter itself. Therefore it
remains for us to ask, from within the matter itself, whether dXXrfXoiq
should be directly related also to öfiuiv, or whether it should not
indeed rather be related only to the rfoiv which immediately precedes
it. The decision in this case depends in part on how we translate the
xai that stands between 6ficr|v and Tioiv. But this is determined by
what Tioiq here says.
We usually translate rfoiq by "penalty." This leads us to translate
öiödvai as "to pay." Whatever lingers awhile in presence pays penalty;
it expends this as its punishment (6iicrj). The court of justice is com
plete. It lacks nothing, not even injustice—though of course no one
rightly knows what might constitute injustice.
Surely, tfoiq can mean penalty, but it must not, because the
original and essential significance of the word is not thereby named.
For TIOIC, is "esteem" [Schätzen]. To esteem something means to heed
it, and so to take satisfactory care of what is estimable in it. The essen
tial process of esteem, which is to satisfy, can, in what is good, be a
magnamimous action; but with respect to wickedness giving satisfac
tion may mean paying a penalty. Yet a mere commentary on the word
does not bring us to the matter in the fragment's use of the word if we
have not already, as with döiicfa and öficr), thought from within the
matter which comes to language in the fragment.
According to the fragment the aihd (id iövxa), those beings that
linger awhile in presence, stand in disorder. As they linger awhile,
they tarry. They hang on. For they advance hesitantly through their
while, in transition from arrival to departure. They hang on; they cling
to themselves. When what lingers awhile delays, it stubbornly follows
the inclination to persist in hanging on, and indeed to insist on persist
ing; it aims at everlasting continuance and no longer bothers about
öiKri, the order o f the while.
But in this way everything that lingers awhile strikes a haughty
45
pose toward every other of its kind. None heeds the lingering presence
of the others. Whatever lingers awhile is inconsiderate toward others,
each dominated by what is implied in its lingering presence, namely,
the craving to persist. Beings which linger awhile do not in this respect
simply drift into inconsiderateness. Inconsiderateness impels them to
ward persistence, so that they may still present themselves as what is
present. Nevertheless, what is present in totality does not simply disin
tegrate into inconsiderate individualities; it does not dissipate itself in
discontinuity. Rather, the saying now says:
6i5dvai. t i o i v dXXrjXoiq
—beings which linger awhile let belong, one to the other: considera
tion with regard to one another. The translation of tfoiq as considera
tion coincides better with the essential meaning of "heeding" and "es
teeming." It is thought from within the matter, on the basis of the
presencing of what lingers awhile. But the word "consideration" means
for us too directly that human trait, while rioiq is applied neutrally,
because more essentially, to everything present, auid (id ddvra). Our
word "consideration" lacks not only the necessary breadth, but above
all the gravity to speak as the translating word for xioiq in the fragment,
and as the word corresponding to 6IKT|, order.
Now our language possesses an old word which, interestingly
enough, we moderns know only in its negative form, indeed only as a
form of disparagement, as with the word Unfug [disorder]. This usually
suggests to us something like an improper or vulgar sort of behavior,
something perpetrated in a crude manner. In the same fashion, we still
use the word ruchlos [reckless] to mean something pejorative and
shameful: something without Ruch [reck]. We no longer really know
what RucA means. The Middle High German word ruoche means solic
itude or care. Care tends to something so that it may remain in its
essence. This tuming-itself-toward, when thought of what lingers
awhile in relation to presencing, is rioiq, reck. Our word geruhen [to
deign or respect] is related to reck and has nothing to do with Ruhe
[rest]: to deign means to esteem something, to let or allow something
to be itself. What we observed concerning the word "consideration,"
46
that it has to do with human relations, is also true ofruoche. But we

shall take advantage of the obsolescence of the word by adopting it
anew in its essential breadth; we will speak of xfoiq as the reck corres
ponding to Sinn, order.
Insofar as beings which linger awhile do not entirely dissipate
themselves in the boundless conceit of aiming for a baldly insistent
subsistence, insofar as they no longer share the compulsion to expel
one another from what is presently present, they let order belong,
6i6dvai 6fxr|v. Insofar as beings which linger awhile give order, each
being thereby lets reck belong to the other, lets reck pervade its rela
tions with the others, 6i6dvai. xal xfoiv dXXrfXoiq. Only when we
have already thought Td e'dvia as what is present, and this as the
totality of what lingers awhile, does dXXrfXoiq receive the significance
thought for it in the fragment: within the open expanse of unconceal-
ment each lingering being becomes present to every other being. So
long as we do not think of the i d e'dvia, the dXAifXoiq remains a name
for an indeterminate reciprocity in a chaotic manifold. The more
strictly we think in dXXrfXoiq the manifold of beings lingering awhile,
the clearer becomes the necessary relation of dXXrfXoiq to xfbiq. The
more unequivocally this relation emerges, the more clearly we recog
nize that the 6i5dvai. xfoiv dXXifXoiq, each one giving reck to the
other, is the sole manner in which what lingers awhile in presence
lingers at all, i.e. 6i6dvai 6ficn.v, granting order. The nai between
6iKr|v and xfoiv is not simply the vacuous conjunction "and." It sig
nifies the essential process. I f what is present grants order, it happens
n this manner: as beings linger awhile, they give reck to one another.
The surmounting of disorder properly occurs through the letting-
belong of reck. This means that the essential process of the disorder of
non-reck, of the reckless, occurs in dSiKia:
oiodvai aiixd 6iKnv KO.1 xioiv dXXrfXoiq irjq d&iKfaq
—they let order belong, and thereby also reck, to one another (in the
surmounting) of disorder.
To let belong is, as the Kaf suggests, something twofold, since the
essence of e*dvxa is dually determined. Whatever lingers awhile comes
47
to presence from the jointure between approach and withdrawal. It

comes to presence in the "between" of a twofold absence. Whatever
lingers awhile comes to presence in each case in accordance with its
while. It comes to presence as what is present at the present time.
With a view to its while it gives reck, and even a while, to the others.
But to whom does whatever is present let the order of jointure belong?
The second clause of the fragment, which we have been interpret
ing, does not answer this question. But it provides a clue. For we have
passed over a word: 6i6dvai ydp a d r d . they (namely) let
belong. The ydp, "for" or "namely," introduces a grounding. In
any case, the second clause delineates the extent to which the matter of
the previous clause behaves in the prescribed manner.
What does the translation of the fragment's second clause say? It
says that the e*dvTa, whatever is present, as that which lingers awhile,
is released into reckless disorder; and it tells how present beings sur
mount disorder by letting order and reck belong to one another. This
letting-belong is the manner in which what lingers awhile lingers and
so comes to presence as what is present. The fragment's second clause
designates what is present in the manner of its presencing. The saying
speaks of what is present and tells about its presencing. This it places in
the brilliance of what is thought. The second clause offers a commen
tary on the presencing of what is present.
For this reason the first clause must designate presencing itself,
and even the extent to which presencing determines what is present as
such; only so can the second clause in turn, referring back to the first
by means of the ydp, comment on the presencing of what is present.
Presencing, in relation to what is present, is always that in accordance
with which what is present comes to presence. The first clause names
that presencing "in accordance with which . " Only the. last three
words of the first clause are preserved:
xard id xpeuiv
This is translated: according to necessity;" We will leave id

xpeuiv untranslated at first. But we can still reflect on two matters
48
concerning xd xpeuiv which arose in our commentary on the second

clause and its reference back to the first clause. First, that it designates
the presencing of what is present; second, that if xpeuiv thinks the
presencing of what is present, then presencing may be thought some
how in terms of what is present; or it may prove to be otherwise, that
the relation of Being to beings can only come from Being, can only rest
in the essence of Being.
The word Kara precedes xd xpeuiv. It means "from up there,
or "from over there." The Hard refers back to something from which
something lower comes to presence, as from something higher and as
its consequent. That in reference to which the xard is pronounced
has in itself an incline along which other things have fallen out in this
or that way.
But in consequence of what, or by what inclination, can what is
present become present as such, if not in consequence of, or by the
befalling of, presencing? That which lingers awhile in presence lingers
xard xd xpeuiv. No matter how we are to think xd xpeuiv, the word is
the earliest name for what we have thought as the ddv of ddvid; xd
xpeuiv is the oldest name in which thinking brings the Being of beings
to language.
That which lingers awhile in presence becomes present as it sur
mounts reckless disorder, d&iicfa, which haunts lingering itself as an
essential possibility. The presencing of what is present is such a sur
mounting. It is accomplished when beings which linger awhile let
order belong, and thereby reck, among one another. The answer to the
question to whom order belongs is now provided: order belongs to that
which comes to presence by way of presencing—and that means by
way of a surmounting. Order is xard rd xpeuiv. At this point something
of the essence of xpeuiv begins to glimmer, though at first from a great
distance. If, as the essence of presencing, xpeuiv is related essentially
to what is present, then xd xpeuiv must enjoin order and thereby also
reck in that relation. The xpeuiv enjoins matters in such a way that
whatever is present lets order and reck belong. The xpeuiv lets such
enjoining prevail among present beings and so grants them the manner
of their arrival—as the while of whatever lingers awhile.
What is present comes to presence when it surmounts the dis- of

disorder, the d- of dSixfa. This and in d6ixfa corresponds to the xard
of xpeufv. The transitional ydp in the second clause strings the bow,
connecting one end to the other.
So far we have tried to think what id xpeufv means only in terms of
the reference of the fragment's second clause back to it, without asking
about the word itself. What does id xpeuiv mean? This first word in the
fragment's text we are interpreting last because it is first with respect to
the matter. What matter? The matter of the presencing of what is
present. But to be the Being of beings is the matter of Being.
The grammatical form of this enigmatic, ambiguous genitive indi
cates a genesis, the emergence of what is present from presencing. Yet
the essence of this emergence remains concealed along with the es
sence of these two words. Not only that, but even the very relation
between presencing and what is present remains unthought. From
early on it seems as though presencing and what is present were each
something for itself. Presencing itself unnoticeably becomes something
present. Represented in the manner of something present, it is ele
vated above whatever else is present and so becomes the highest being
present. As soon as presencing is named it is represented as some
present being. Ultimately, presencing as such is not distinguished from
what is present: it is taken merely as the most universal or the highest
of present beings, thereby becoming one among such beings. The
essence of presencing, and with it the distinction between presencing
and what is present, remains forgotten. The oblivion of Being is obliv
ion of the distinction between Being and beings.
However, oblivion of the distinction is by no means the conse
quence of a forgetfulness of thinking. Oblivion of Being belongs to the
self-veiling essence of Being. It belongs so essentially to the destiny of
Being that the dawn of this destiny rises as the unveiling of what is
present in its presencing. This means that the history of Being begins
with the oblivion of Being, since Being—together with its essence, its
distinction from beings—keeps to itself. The distinction collapses. It
remains forgotten. Although the two parties to the distinction, what is
present and presencing, reveal themselves, they do not do so as
50
distinguished. Rather, even the early trace of the distinction is obliter

ated when presencing appears as something present and finds itself in
the position of being the highest being present.
The oblivion of the distinction, with which the destiny of Being
begins and which it will carry through to completion, is all the same not
a lack, but rather the richest and most prodigious event: in it the
history of the Western world comes to be borne out. It is the event of
metaphysics. What now is stands in the shadow of the already foregone
destiny of Being's oblivion.
However, the distinction between Being and beings, as something
forgotten, can invade our experience only if it has already unveiled
itself with the presencing of what is present; only if it has left a trace
which remains preserved in the language to which Being comes.
Thinking along those lines, we may surmise that the distinction has
been illuminated more in that early word about Being than in recent
ones; yet at no time has the distinction been designated as such. Il
lumination of the distinction therefore cannot mean that the distinction
appears as a distinction. On the contrary, the relation to what is pres
ent in presencing as such may announce itself in sufch a way that
presencing comes to speak as this relation.
The early word concerning Being, id xpeufv, designates such a
relation. However, we would be deceiving ourselves if we thought we
could locate the distinction and get behind its essence merely by
etymologicaljy dissecting the meaning of the word xpeuiv with enough
1
persistence. Perhaps only when we experience historically what has
not been thought—the oblivion of Being—as what is to be thought, and
only when we have for the longest time pondered what we have long
experienced in terms of the destiny of Being, may the early word speak
in our contemporary recollection.
We are accustomed to translate the word xpeuiv by "necessity."
By that we mean what is compelling—that which inescapably must be.
Yet we err if we adhere to this derived meaning exclusively. Xpeuiv is
derived from xpdui, xpdouai. It suggests ij xeip, the hand; xpdui
means: I get involved with something, I reach for it, extend my hand to
it. At the same time xpdui means to place in someone's hands or hand
51
over, thus to deliver, to let something belong to someone. But such

delivery is of a kind which keeps this transfer in hand, and with it what
is transferred.
Therefore the participial xpeuiv originally signifies nothing of con
straint and of what "must be." Just as little does the word initially or
ever mean to ratify and ordain.
If we firmly keep in mind that we must think the word within the
Anaximander fragment, then it can only mean what is essential in the
presencing of what is present, and hence that relation to which the
genitive so mysteriously alludes. T ó xpeuiv is thus the handing over of
presence which presencing delivers to what is present, and which thus
keeps in hand, i.e. preserves in presencing, what is present as such.
The relation to what is present that rules in the essence of presenc
ing itself is a unique one, altogether incomparable to any other rela
tion. It belongs to the uniqueness of Being itself. Therefore, in order to
name the essential nature of Being, language would have to find a
single word, the unique word. From this we can gather how daring
every thoughtful word addressed to Being is. Nevertheless such daring
is not impossible, since Being speaks always and everywhere through
out language. The difficulty lies not so much in finding in thought the
word for Being as in retaining purely in genuine thinking the word
found.
Anaximander says, TÓ xpeuiv. We will dare a translation which
sounds strange and which can be easily misinterpreted: TÓ xpeuiv,
usage [der Brauch].
With this translation we ascribe to the Creek word a sense that is
foreign neither to the word itself nor to the matter designated by the
word in the saying. Nonetheless the translation makes excessive de
mands. It loses none of this character even when we consider that all
translation in the field of thinking inevitably makes such demands.
To what extent is TO xpeuiv "usage"? The strangeness of the trans
lation is reduced when we think more clearly'about the word in our
language. Usually we understand "to use" to mean utilizing and ben
efiting from what we have a right to use. What our utilizing benefits
from becomes the usual. Whatever is used is in usage. "Usage," as the
word that translates TO xpeuiv, should not be understood in these
52
current, derived senses. We should rather keep to the root-meaning:

to use is to brook [bruchen], in Latin Jrui, in German fruchten,
Frucht.* We translate this freely as "to enjoy," which originally means
to be pleased with something and so to have it in use. Only in its
derived senses does "enjoy" mean simply to consume or gobble up.
We encounter what we have called the basic meaning of "use," in the
sense of Jrui, in Augustine's words, Quid enim est aliud quod dicimus
firui, nisi praesto habere, quod diligis?** Frui involves praesto habere.
Praesto, praesitum is in Creek dnoicefuevov, that which already lies
before us in unconcealment, odofa, that which lingers awhile in pres
ence. "To use" accordingly suggests: to let something present come to
presence as such; Jrui, to brook, to use, usage, means: to hand some
thing over to its own essence and to keep it in hand, preserving it as
something present.
In the translation of TO xpeuiv usage is thought as essential pres-
encing in Being itself. "To brook," jrui, is no longer merely predicated
of enjoyment as a form of human behavior; nor is it said in relation to
any being whatsoever, even the highest (fruitio Dei as the beatitudo
hominis); rather, usage now designates the manner in which Being
itself presences as the relation to what is present, approaching and
becoming involved with what is present as present: T6 xpeufv.
Usage delivers what is present to its presencing, i.e. to its linger
ing. Usage dispenses to what is present the portion of its while. The
while apportioned in each case to what lingers rests in the jointure
which joins what is present in the transition between twofold absence
(arrival and departure). The jointure of the while bounds and confines
what is present as such. That which lingers awhile in presence, i d
(!dvTa, comes to presence within bounds (nepacj
•"To brook" is today used only in negative constructions—"III brook no
rivall"—which suggest unwillingness to put up with a state of aflairs. It shares its original
Teutonic stem with the modem German brauchen and the Middle High German
bruchen: bruk-, from the Indo-European bhrug-. Its archaic senses include: to make use
of, to have the enjoyment of, to bear or hold, to possess the right of usufruct—i.e. the
right to cultivate and use land one does not own, and to enjoy its fruits.—TR.
• • " F o r what else do we mean when we say Jrui if not to have at hand something that
is especially prized?" De moribus ecclesiae, lib. I, c. 3; cf. De doctrina Christiana, lib. I,
c. 2-4. For the first see Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, 2 vols., ed. Whitney J. Oates
(New York: Random House, 1048) I, 321: for the second see On Christian Doctrine,
trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr. (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958), pp. 9-10.—TR.
S3
As dispenser of portions of the jointure, usage is the fateful join

ing: the enjoining of order and thereby of reck. Usage distributes order
and reck in such manner that it reserves for itself what is meted out,
gathers it to itself, and secures it as what is present in presencing.
But usage, enjoining order and so limiting what is present,
distributes boundaries. As xd xpeuiv it is therefore at the same time
dneipov, that which is without boundary, since its essence consists in
sending boundaries of the while to whatever lingers awhile in pres
ence.
According to the tradition recounted in Simplicius' commentary
on Aristotle's Physics, Anaximander is supposed to have said that what
ever is present has its essential origin in what presences without
bounds: dpxr) ruiv dviuiv TO dneipov. What presences without bounds,
not joined by order and reck, is not some present being but rather xd
xpeuiv.
Enjoining order and reck, usage delivers to each present being the
while into which it is released. But accompanying this process is the
constant danger that lingering will petrify into mere persistence. Thus
usage essentially remains at the same time the distribution of presenc
ing into disorder. Usage conjoins the dis-.
Therefore, whatever lingers awhile in presence can only come to
presence when it lets order and thereby also reck belong: with respect
to usage. What is present comes to presence icard xd xpeuiv, along the
lines of usage. Usage is the enjoining and preserving gathering of what
is present in its presencing, a presencing which lingers awhile accord
ing to each particular case.
The translation of xd xpeuiv as "usage" has not resulted from a
preoccupation with etymologies and dictionary meanings. The choice
of the word stems from a prior crossing over of a thinking which tries to
think the distinction in the essence of Being in the fateful beginning of
Being's oblivion. The word "usage" is dictated to thinking in the ex
perience of Being's oblivion. What properly remains to be thought in
the word "usage" has presumably left a trace in xd xpeuiv. This trace
quickly vanishes in the destiny of Being which unfolds in world history
as Western metaphysics.
The Anaximander fragment, thinking of what is present in its
54
presencing, elucidates what id xpeuiv means. What is thought as

xpeuiv in the fragment is the first and most thoughtful interpretation of
what the Creeks experienced in the name Moipa as the dispensing of
portions. Cods and men are subordinated to Moipa. Td Xpeuiv, usage,
is the handing over of what is in each case present into its while in
unconcealment.
Td Xpeuiv harbors the still hidden essence of the gathering which
clears and shelters. Usage is the gathering: d Adyoc,. From the essence
of Adyoc,, thought in this way, the essence of Being is determined as
the unifying One.'Ev. Parmenides thinks this same'Ev. He thinks the
unity of this unifying One expressly as the Moipa (fir. VIII, 37).
Thought from within the essentia] experience of Being, Moipa
corresponds to the Adyoc, of Heraclitus. The essence of Moipa and
Adyoc, is thoughtfully intimated in the Xpeuiv of Anaximander.
To search for influences and dependencies among thinkers is to
misunderstand thinking. Every thinker is dependent—upon the ad
dress of Being. The extent of this dependence determines the freedom
from irrelevant influences. The broader the dependence the more
puissant the freedom of thought, and therefore the more foreboding
the danger that it may wander past what was once thought, and yet
—perhaps only thus—think the Same.
Of course, in our recollecting we latecomers must first have
thought about the Anaximander fragment in order to proceed to the
thought of Parmenides and Heraclitus. I f we have done so, then the
misinterpretation that the philosophy of the former must have been a
doctrine of Being while that of the latter was a doctrine of Becoming is
exposed as superficial.
However, in order to think the Anaximander fragment we must
first of all, but then continually, take a simple step: we must cross over
to what that always unspoken word, e"dv, e"dvTa, elvai says. It says:
presencing into unconcealment. Concealed in that word is this:
presencing brings unconcealment along with itself. Unconcealment it
self is presencing. Both are the Same, though they are not identical.
What is present is that which, whether presently or not, presences
in unconcealment. Along with the 'AArfOeia which belongs to the es
sence of Being, the ArjOn, remains entirely unthought, as in conse-
55
quence do "presently" and "non-presently," i.e. the region of the open

expanse in which everything present arrives and in which the presenc-
ing to one another of beings which linger awhile is unfolded and de-
limited.
Because beings are what is present in the manner of that which
lingers awhile, once they have arrived in unconcealment they can
linger there, they can appear. Appearance is an essential consequence
of presencing and of the kind of presencing involved. Only what ap-
pears can in the first place show an aspect and form, thinking these
matters always from within presencing. Only a thinking which has
beforehand thought Being in the sense of presencing into unconceal-
ment can think the presencing of what is present as iöea But whatever
lingers awhile in presence at the same time lingers as something
brought forward into unconcealment. It is so brought when, arising by
itself, it produces itself; or it is so brought when it is produced by man.
In both cases what has arrived in the foreground of unconcealment is in
a certain sense an £pyov, which in Greek is thought as something
brought forward. The presencing of what is present, with respect to its
dpyov character, thought in the light of presence, can be experienced
as that which occurs essentially in production. This is the presencing of
what is present: the Being of beings is eWpyeia.
The eWpyeia which Aristotle thinks as the fundamental character
of presencing, of e*dv, the iöe*a which Plato thinks as the fundamental
character of presencing, the Adyoc. which Heraclitus thinks as the
fundamental character of presencing, the Moipa which Parmenides
thinks as the fundamental character of presencing, the XpeuJv which
Anaximander thinks is essential in presencing—all these name the
Same. In the concealed richness of the Same the unity of the unifying
One, the'Ev, is thought by each thinker in his own way.
Meanwhile an epoch of Being soon comes in which eWpyeia is
translated as actualitas. The Greek is shut away, and to the present day
the word appears only in Roman type. Actualitas becomes Wirklichkeit
[reality]. Reality becomes objectivity [Objektivität]. But objectivity
must still preserve the character of presencing if it is to remain in its
essence, its objectiveness [Gegenständlichkeit]. It is the "presence"
56
The Anaxlmander Fragment
[Präsenz] of representational thinking. The decisive turn in the destiny

of Being as eWpyeia lies in the transition to actualitas.
Could a mere translation have precipitated all this? We may yet
learn what can come to pass in translation. The truly fateful encounter
with historic language is a silent event. But in it the destiny of Being
speaks. Into what language is the land of evening translated?
We shall now try to translate the Anaximander fragment:
KQTÖ. id xpeuiv Siodvai vdp aihd öfunv Kai rfoiv dXXifXoic. rrjq döiKfaq.
along the lines of usage; for they let order and thereby also reck belong to
one another (in the surmounting) of disorder.
We cannot demonstrate the adequacy of the translation by schol

arly means; nor should we simply accept it through faith in some
authority or other. Scholarly proof will not carry us far enough, and
faith has no place in thinking. We can only reflect on the translation by
thinking through the saying. But thinking is the poetizing of the truth
of Being in the historic dialogue between thinkers.
For this reason the fragment will never engage us so long as we
only explain it historiologically and philologically. Curiously enough,
the saying first resonates when we set aside the claims of our own
familiar ways of representing things, as we ask ourselves in what the
confusion of the contemporary world's fate consists.
Man has already begun to overwhelm the entire earth and its
atmosphere, to arrogate to himself in forms of energy the concealed
powers of nature, and to submit future history to the planning and
ordering of a world government. This same defiant man is utterly at a
loss simply to say what is; to say what this is—that a thing is.
The totality of beings is the single object of a singular will to
conquer. The simplicity of Being is confounded in a singular oblivion.
What mortal can fathom the abyss of this confusion? He may try to
shut his eyes before this abyss. He may entertain one delusion after
another. The abyss does not vanish.
Theories of nature and doctrines of history do not dissolve the
confusion. They further confuse everything until it is unrecognizable,
57
since they themselves feed on the confusion prevailing over the dis
tinction between beings and Being.
Is there any rescue? Rescue comes when and only when danger is.
Danger is when Being itself advances to its farthest extreme, and when
the oblivion that issues from Being itself undergoes reversal.
But what if Being in its essence needs to use [braucht] the essence
of man? I f the essence of man consists in thinking the truth of Being?
Then thinking must poetize on the riddle of Being. It brings the
dawn of thought into the neighborhood of what is for thinking.
58
TWO
Logos
(Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)
= ^
The path most needed for our thinking stretches far ahead. It leads
to that simple matter which, under the name Adyoq, remains for think-
ing. Yet there are only a few signs to point out the way.
By means of free reflection along the guidelines of a saying of
Heraclitus (B 50), the following essay attempts to take a few steps along
that path. Perhaps they can carry us to the point where at least this one
saying will speak to us in a more question-worthy way:
OUK e*uou dXXd TOU Adyou dKouoavraq

dpoAoyelv oocpdv d o T i v ' E v ndvTa.
One among the virtually identical translations reads:
When you have listened not to me but to the Meaning,

it is wise within the same Meaning to say: One is All.
(Snell)
The saying speaks of dKOiJeiv, hearing and having heard, of

duoAoyeiv, to say the same, of Adyoq, what is said and the saying, of
¿YuJ, the thinker himself as Atfyiuv, the one who is talking. Heraclitus
here considers a hearing and a saying. He expresses what the Adyoc.
says: "Ev fldvia, all is One. The saying of Heraclitus seems com-
prehensible in every respect. Nevertheless, everything about it is
worthy of question. Most question-worthy is what is most self-evident,
namely, our presupposition that whatever Heraclitus says ought to
59
become immediately obvious to our contemporary everyday under

standing. This demand was probably never met even for Heraclitus'
contemporaries.
In the meantime, we would correspond sooner to his thinking if
we conceded that several riddles remain, neither for the first time with
us, nor only for the ancients, but rather in the very matter thought. We
will get closer to these riddles if we step back before them. That done,
it becomes clear that in order to observe the riddle as a riddle we must
clarify before all else what Xdyoc. and Ae'veiv mean.
Since antiquity the Adyoq of Heraclitus has been interpreted in
various ways: as Ratio, as Verbum, as cosmic law, as the logical, as
necessity in thought, as meaning and as reason. Again and again a call
rings out for reason to be the standard for deeds and omissions. Yet
what can reason do when, along with the irrational and the antirational
all on the same level, it perseveres in the same neglect, forgetting to
meditate on the essential origin of reason and to let itself into its
advent? What can logic, XoyiKif (dmorrfuri) of any sort, do if we never
begin to pay heed to the Adyoc. and follow its initial unfolding?
What Xdyoc. is we gather from XeVeiv. What does Xe\eiv mean?
Everyone familiar with the language knows that Ae'veiv means talking
and saying; Xdyoc. means X^yeiv as a saying aloud, and Xeyduevov as
that which is said.
Who would want to deny that in the language of the Creeks from
early on Xtfyeiv means to talk, say, or tell? However, just as early and
even more originally—and therefore already in the previously cited
meaning—it means what our similarly sounding legen means: to lay
down and lay before. In legen a "bringing together" prevails, the Latin
legere understood as lesen, in the sense of collecting and bringing
together. Aiyeiv properly means the laying-down and laying-before
which gathers itself and others. The middle voice, XdYeoOai, means to
lay oneself down in the gathering of rest; Xtfxoc. is the resting place;
Xdxoq is a place of ambush [or a place for lying in wait] where some
thing is laid away and deposited. (The old word dXcfyu) (d
copulativum), archaic after Aeschylus and Pindar, should be recalled
here: something "lies upon me," it oppresses and troubles me.)
All the same it remains incontestable that Xdyeiv means, predom-
60
Logos (Heraclitua, Fragment B 50)
inately if not exclusively, saying and talking. Must we therefore, in

deference to this preponderant and customary meaning of Xeyeiv,
which assumes multiple forms, simply toss the genuine meaning of the
word, Xriyeiv as laying, to the winds? Dare we ever do such a thing?
Or is it not finally time to engage ourselves with a question which
probably decides many things? The question asks: (low does the
t iv
p r n p p r spn<;p of X f y r *n lay, mmft tn mean saying and talking?
In order to find the foothold for an answer, we need to reflect on
what actually lies in Xe'yeiv as laying. To lay means to bring to lie.
Thus, to lay is at the same time to place one thing beside another, to lay
them together. To lay is to gather [lesen]. The lesen better known to us,
namely, the reading of something written, remains but one sort oi
gathering, in the sense of bringing-together-into-lying-before, al
though it is indeed the predominant sort. The gleaning at harvest time
gathers fruit from the soil. The gathering of the vintage involves pick
ing grapes from the vine. Picking and gleaning are followed by the
bringing together of the fruit. So long as we persist in the usual appear
ances we are inclined to take this bringing together as the gathering
itself or even its termination. BuLgatheringjs more than mere amassing.
, K 1 c 1 r f n n
T T satf»' ''"fl " " " n r ? f " ' R ^hf h brings, jijider shejter.
Accommodation governs ihe_sheltering; accommodation is in turn gov''
erned by safekeeping. That "something extra" which makes gathering
more than a jumbling together that snatches things up is not something
only added afterward. Even less is it the conclusion of the gathering,
coming last The safekeeping that brings something in has already
determined the first steps of the gathering and arranged everything
that follows. If we are blind to everything but the sequence of steps,
then the collecting follows the picking and gleaning, the bringing
under shelter follows the collecting, until finally everything is accom
modated in bins and storage rooms. This gives rise to the illusion that
preservation and safekeeping have nothing to do with gathering. Yet
what would become of a vintage [eine Lese] which has not been
gathered with an eye to the fundamental matter of its being sheltered?
The sheltering [Bergen] comes first in the essential formation o f the
vintage.
However, the sheltering does not secure just any thing that hap-
61
pens along: the gathering which properly begins with the sheltering,
i.e. the vintage, is itself from the start a selection [Auslese] which
requires sheltering. For its part, the selection is determined by what
ever within the crop to be sorted shows itself as to-be-selected
[Erlesene]. The most important aspect of the sheltering in the essential
formation of the vintage is the sorting (in Alemanic [the southwestern
German dialect]: the fore-gathering [Vor-lese]) which determines the
selection, arranging everything involved in the bringing together, the
bringing under shelter, and the accommodation of the vintage.
The sequence of steps in the gathering act does not coincide with
the order of those far-reaching, fundamental traits in which the essence
of the vintage [die Lese] consists.
It is proper to every gathering that the gatherers assemble to
coordinate their work to the sheltering, and—gathered together with
that end in view—first begin to gather. The gathering [die Lese]
requires and demands this assembly. This original coordination gov
erns their collective gathering.
However, lesen [to gather] thought in this way does not simply
stand near legen [to lay]. Nor does the former simply accompany the
latter. Rather, ffltherjng is a l r e a d y included in laying. Every gathering
is already a laying. Every laying is of itself gathering. Then what does
"to lay" mean? Laying brings to lie, in that it lets things lie together
before us. All too readily we take this "letting" in the sense of omitting
or letting go. To lay, to bring to lie, to let lie, would then mean to
concern ourselves no longer with what is laid down and lies before
us—to ignore it. However, ^tfyeiv, to lay, by its letting-lie-together-
before means just this, that jvhatever lies before us involves us and
therefore concerns us. Laying as letting-lie-together-before [bei-
sammen-vorliegen-Lassen] is concerned with retaining whatever is laid
down as lying before us. (In the Alemanic dialect legi means a weir or
dam which lies ahead in the river, against the water's current.)
The Ae\eiv or laying now to be thought has in advance relin
quished all claims—claims never even known to it—to be that which
for the first time brings whatever lies before us into its position [Lage].
Laying, as Xtfyeiv, simply tries to let what of itself lies together here
before us, as what lies before, into its protection, a protection in which
62
Logos (Heraclltus, Fragment B 50)
it remains laid down. What sort of protection is this? What lies together
before us is stored, laid away, secured and deposited in unconceal-
ment, and that means sheltered in uncorjcealment. By letting things lie
together before us, Affyeiv undertakes to secure what lies before us in
unconcealment. The_it£io8ai, the lying before for-itself of what is in
this fashion deposited, i.e. the KeiofJai o f unoKefuevov, is nothing
more and nothing less than _the presenting of that which lies before us
into unconcealment. In this Xtfyeiv of urtOKei'uevov, Xeyeiv as gather
ing and assembling remains implied. Because Xtfyeiv, which lets
things lie together before us, concerns itself solely with the safety of
that which lies before us in unconcealment, the gathering appropriate
to such a laying is determined in advance by safekeeping.
Aiyeiv is to lay. Laying is the letting-lie-before—which is
gathered into itself—of that which comes together into presence.
The question arises: How does the proper meaning of Xe'yeiv, to
lay, attain the signification of saying and talking? The foregoing reflec
tion already contains the answer, for it makes us realize that we can no
longer raise the question in such a manner. Why not? Because what we
have been thinking about in no way tells us that this word Xe'yeiv
advanced from the one meaning, "to lay," to the other, "to say."
w
» hftw ^ m > ^ 4 ^ ^ j fhp f"rp£"'ig with the transfor
n
mation of word meanings. Bather, we have stumbled upon an event

whose immensity still lies concealed in its long unnoticed simplicity.
The saying and talking of mortals comes to pass from early on as
Ae\eiv, laying. Saying and talking occur essentially as the letting-lie-
together-before of everything which, laid in unconcealment, comes to
presence. The original Xe'yeiv, laying, unfolds itself early and in a
manner ruling everything unconcealed as saying and talking. Atfyeiv as
laying lets itself be overpowered by the predominant sense, but only in
order to deposit the essence of saying and talking at the outset under the
governance of laying proper.
That Xe'YCiv is a laying wherein saying and talking articulate their
essence, refers to the earliest and most consequential decision concern
ing the essence of language. Where did it come from? This question is
as weighty, and supposedly the same, as the other question: How far
does this characterization of the essence of language from laying ex-
63
tend? The question reaches into the uttermost of the possible essential
origins of language. For, like the letting-lie-before that gathers, saying
receives its essential form from the unconcealment of that which lies
together before us. But the unconcealing of the concealed into uncon
cealment is the very presencing of what is present. We call this the
Being of beings. Thus, the essential speaking of language, Xe'yeiv as
laying, is determined neither by vocalization (qxuvrf) nor by signifying
(onpafveiv). Expression and signification have long been accepted as
manifestations which indubitably betray some characteristics of lan
guage. But they do not genuinely reach into the realm of the primor
dial, essential determination of language, nor are they at all capable of
determining this realm in its primary characteristics. That saying as
laying ruled unnoticed and from early on, and—as if nothing at all had
occurred there—that speaking accordingly appeared as Xtfyeiv,
produced a curious state of affairs. Human thought was never as
tonished by this event, nor did it discern in it a mystery which con
cealed an essential dispensation o f Being to men, a dispensation
perhaps reserved for that historical moment which would not only
devastate man from top to bottom but send his very essence reeling.
To say is Xe'yeiv. This sentence, if well thought, now sloughs off
everything facile, trite, and vacuous. It names the inexhaustible mys
tery that the speaking of language comes to pass from the unconceal
ment of what is present, and is determined according to the lying-
before of what is present as the letting-Iie-together-before. Will think
ing finally learn to catch a glimpse of what it means that Aristotle
could characterize Xe'yeiv as dno<pafveo6ai? The Xdyoc. by itself bring*
that which appears and comes forward in its lying before us to
appearance—to its luminous self-showing (cf. Being and Time, § 7b).
Saying is a letting-Iie-together-before which gathers and is
gathered. I f such is the essence of speaking, then what is hearing? As
Xe'yeiv, speaking is not characterized as a reverberation which expres
ses meaning. If saying is not characterized by vocalization, then neither
can the hearing which corresponds to it occur as a reverberation meet
ing the ear and getting picked up, as sounds troubling the auditory
sense and being transmitted. Were our hearing primarily and always
only this picking up and transmitting o f sounds, conjoined by several
64
Logos (Heraclittis, Fragment B 50)
other processes, the result would be that the reverberation would go in

one ear and out the other. That happens in fact when we are not
gathered to what is addressed. But the addressed is itself that which
lies before us, as gathered and laid before us. Hearing is actually this
gathering of oneself which composes itself on hearing the pronounce
ment and its claim. Hearing is primarily gathered hearkening. What is
heard comes to presence in hearkening. We hear when we are "all
ears." But "ear" does not here mean the acoustical sense apparatus.
The anatomically and physiologically identifiable ears, as the tools of
sensation, never bring about a hearing, not even if we take this solely
as an apprehending of noises, sounds, and tones. Such apprehending
can neither be anatomically established nor physiologically demon
strated, nor in any way grasped as a biological process at work within
the organism—although apprehension lives only so long as it is em
bodied. So long as we think of hearing along the lines of acoustical
science, everything is made to stand on its head. W e wrongly think
that the activation of the body's audio equipment is hearing proper.
But then hearing in the sense of hearkening and heeding is supposed to
be a transposition of hearing proper into the realm of the spiritual [das
Geistige]. In the domain of scientific research one can establish many
useful findings. One can demonstrate that periodic oscillations in air
pressure of a certain frequency are experienced as tones. From such
kinds of determinations concerning what is heard, an investigation can
be launched which eventually only specialists in the physiology of the
senses can conduct.
In contrast to this, perhaps only a little can be said concerning
proper hearing, which nevertheless concerns everyone directly. Here
it is not so much a matter for research, but rather of paying thoughtful
attention to simple things. Thus, precisely this belongs to proper hear
ing: that man can hear wrongly insofar as he does not catch what is
essential. I f the ears do not belong directly to proper hearing, in the
sense of hearkening, then hearing and the ears are in a special situa
tion. We do not hear because we have ears. We have ears, i.e. our
bodies are equipped with ears, because we hear. Mortals hear the
thunder of the heavens, the rustling of woods, the gurgling of foun
tains, the ringing of plucked strings, the rumbling of motors, the noises
65
of the city—only and only so far as they always already in some way
belong to them and yet do not belong to them.
We are all ears when our gathering devotes itself entirely to
hearkening, the ears and the mere invasion of sounds being completely
forgotten. So long as we only listen to the sound of a word, as the
expression of a speaker, we are not yet even listening at all. Thus, in
this way we never succeed in having genuinely heard anything at all.
But when does hearing succeed? We have heard [gehört] when we
belong to [gehören] the matter addressed. The speaking of the mat
ter addressed is Xeêiv, letting-Ue-together-before. To belong to
speech—this is nothing else than in each case letting whatever a
letting-lie-before lays down before us lie gathered in its entirety. Such
a letting-lie establishes whatever lies before us as lying-before. It estab
lishes this as itself. It lays one and the Same in one. It lays one as the
Same. Such Xtfyeiv lays one and the same, the dudv. Such Xe'yeiv is
duoXoyeiv: One as the Same, i.e. a letting-lie-before of what does lie
before us, gathered in the selfsameness of its lying-before.
Proper hearing occurs essentially in Xe'yeiv as duoXoyeiv. This is
consequendy a Xe'yeiv which lets lie before us whatever already lies
together before us; which indeed lies there by virtue of a laying which
concerns everything that lies together before us of itself. This excep
tional laying is the Xe'yeiv which comes to pass as the Adyoc,.
Thus is Adyoc. named without qualification: d Adyoc., the Laying:
the pure letting-Iie-together-before of that which of itself comes to lie
before us, in its lying there. In this fashion Adyoc. occurs essentially as
the pure laying which gathers and assembles. Adyoc, is the original
assemblage of the primordial gathering from the primordial Laying.'O
Adyoc. is the Laying that gathers [die lesende Lege], and only this.
However, is all this no more than an arbitrary interpretation and
an all-too-alien translation with respect to the usual understanding
which takes Adyoc. as meaning and reason? At first it does sound
strange, and it may remain so for a long time—calling Adyoc. "the
Laying that gathers." But how can anyone decide whether what this
translation implies concerning the essence of Adyoc. remains appro
priate, if only in the most remote way, to what Heraclitus named and
thought in the name d Adyoc.?
66
Logos (HeracHtus. Fragment B 50)
The only way to decide is to consider what Heraclitus himself says

in the fragment cited. The saying begins: OUK £*uoü" It begins with
a strict, prohibiting "Not . " It refers to the saying and talking of
Heraclitus himself. It concerns the hearing of mortals. "Not to me,"
i.e. not to this one who is talking; you are not to heed the vocalization
of his talk. You never hear properly so long as your ears hang upon the
sound and flow of a human voice in order to snatch up for yourselves a
manner of speaking. Heraclitus begins the saying with a rejection of
hearing as nothing but the passion of the ears. But this rejection is
founded on a reference to proper hearing.
OÜK tfpou dXXd . Not to me should you listen (as though gap-
ing), but rather "mortal hearing must attend to something else. To
what? 'AXXd TOÜ" Adyou. The way of proper hearing is determined by
the Adyoq. But inasmuch as the Adyoq is named without qualification
it cannot be just any customary thing. Therefore, the hearing appro-
priate to it cannot proceed casually toward it, only to pass it by once
again. If there is to be proper hearing, mortals must have already heard
the Adyoq with an attention [Gehör] which implies nothing less than
their belonging to the Adyoq.
OÜK fjpoü dXAd TOU Adyou dKodoavxaq. "When you have lis-
tened, not merely to me (the speaker), but rather when you maintain
yourselves in hearkening attunement [Gehören], then there is proper
hearing."
What happens, then, when such hearing occurs? When there is
such proper hearing there is duoXoyeiv, which can only be what it is as
a Xe\eiv. Proper hearing belongs to the Adyoq. Therefore this hearing
is itself a Xfiyeiv. As such, the proper hearing of mortals is in a certain
way the Same as the Adyoq. At the same time, however, precisely as
duoXoyeiv, it is not the Same at all. It is not the same as the Adyoq
itself. Rather, duoXoyeiv remains a Xcfyeiv which always and only lays
or lets lie whatever is already, as dudv, gathered together and lying before
us; this lying never springs from the duoXoyeiv but rather rests in the
Laying that gathers, i.e. in the Adyoq.
But what occurs when there is proper hearing, as duoXoyeiv? Hera-
clitus says: rxxpdv e"ouv. When duoXoyeiv occurs, then oocpdv comes to
pass. We read: orxpdv e o n v . One translates oocpov correctly as
67
"wise." But what does "wise" mean? Does it mean simply to know in the
way old "wise men" know things? What do we know of such knowing? If
it remains a having-seen whose seeing is not of the eyes of the senses,
just as the having-heard is not hearing with the auditory equipment,
then having-seen and having-heard presumably coincide. They do not
refer to a mere grasping, but to a certain land of behavior. Of what sort?
Of the sort that maintains itself in the abode of mortals. This abiding
holds to what the Laying that gathers lets lie before us, which in each
case already lies before us. Thus ooqtdy signifies that which can adhere to
whatever has been indicated, can devote itself to it, and can dispatch
itself toward it (get under way toward it). Because it is appropriate
[schickliches] such behavior becomes skillful [geschickt]. When we want
to say that someone is particularly skilled at something we still employ
such turns of speech as "he has a gift for that and is destined for it." In
this fashion we hit upon the genuine meaning of oxxpdv, which we
translate as "fateful" Cgeschicklich"]. But "fateful" from the start says
something more than "skillful." When proper hearing, as duoXoyefv, is,
then the fateful comes to pass, and mortal Xeyeiv is dispatched to the
Adyoc,. It becomes concerned with the Laying that gathers. Atfyeiv is
dispatched to what is appropriate, to whatever rests in the assemblage of
the primordiaDy gathering laying-before, i.e. in that which the Laying
that gathers has sent. Thus it is indeed fateful when mortals accomplish
proper hearing. But oo<pdv is not id Lcxpdv, the "fateful" is not "Fate,"
so called because it gathers to itself all dispensation, and precisely that
which is appropriate to the behavior of mortals. We have not yet made
out what, according to the thinking of Heraclitus, d Adyoc. is; it remains
still undecided whether the translation of d Adyoc. as "the Laying that
gathers" captures even a small part of what the Adyoc, is.
And already we face a new riddle: the word T6 Eocpdv. If we are to
think it in Heraclitus' way, we toil in vain so long as we do not pursue it
in the saying in which it speaks, up to the very words that conclude it.
ÔuoAoyeiv occurs when the hearing of mortals has become
proper hearing. When such a thing happens something fateful comes
to pass. Where, and as what, does the fateful presence? Heraclitus
says: dpoXoyeiv ocxpdv doriv'Ev ndvxa, "the fateful comes to pass
insofar as One All."
68
Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)
The text which is now current runs: £v ndvxa elvai. * The elvai is
an alteration of the sole traditional reading: év ndvxa elbevai,
understood to mean, "It is wise to know that everything is one." The
conjectural elvai is more appropriate. Still, we set aside the verb. By
what right? Because the'Ev ndvxa suffices. But it not only suffices: it
remains far more proper for the matter thought here, and likewise for
the style of Heraclitean speech. "Ev ndvxa, One: All, All: One.
How easily one speaks these words. How readily they transform
themselves into a stolid maxim. A swarming multiplicity of meanings
nestles in both these dangerously harmless words, ¿V and ndvxa Their
indeterminate juxtaposition permits various assertions. In the words Sv
ndvxa the hasty superficiality of usual representations collides with the
hesitant caution of the thinking that questions. The statement "One is
all" can lend itself to an overhasty account of the world which hopes to
buttress itself with a formula that is in some way correct everywhere,
for all times. But the'Ev Ildvxa can also conceal a thinker's first steps
which initiate all the following steps in the fateful course of thinking.
The second case applies with Heraclitus' words. We do not know their
content, in the sense of being able to revive Heraclitus' own way of
representing things. We are also far removed from a thoughtful com-
prehension of these words. But from this "far remove" we may still
succeed in delineating more meaningfully a few characteristics o f the
scope of the words ¿v and ndvxa, and of the phrase'Ev ndvxa. This
delineation should remain a free-flowing preliminary sketch rather
than a more self-assured portrayal. O f course, we should attempt such
a sketch only in reflecting upon what Heraclitus said from within the
unity of his saying. As it tells us what and how the fateful is, the saying
names the Adyoq. The saying closes with'Ev n d v x a Is this conclusion
only a termination, or does it first unlock what is to be said, by way of
response?
The usual interpretation understands Heraclitus' fragment thus: it
*See Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin: Weid-
mannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1851), I, 161, line 17. Kranz rejects the Miller-
Comperz paraphrase el6¿vai and prints elvai. Heidegger's citation of B 50 capital-
izes *Ev n d v r a and drops elvai.—TR.
69
is wise to listen to the pronouncement of the Adyoq and to heed the

meaning of what is pronounced, while repeating what one has heard in
the statement: One is All. There is the Adyoq. It has something to
relate. Then there is also that which it relates, to wit, that everything is
one.
However, the'Ev Ildvia is not what the Adyoq relates as a maxim
or gives as a meaning to be understood. *Ev Ildvia is not what the
Adyoq pronounces; rather,"Ev fldvia suggests the way in which Adyoc;
essentially occurs.
" E v is the unique One, as unifying. It unifies by assembling. It
assembles in that, in gathering, it lets lie before us what lies before us
as such and as a whole. The unique One unifies as the Laying that
gathers. This gathering and laying unifying assembles all uniting in
itself, so that it is this One, and as this One, is what is unique. What
ever is named*Ev Ildvia in Heraclitus' fragment gives us a simple clue
concerning what the Adyoq is.
Do we wander off the path if we think Adyoq as Ae'yeiv prior to all
profound metaphysical interpretations, thereby thinking to establish
seriously that Ae'yeiv, as gathering letting-lie-together-before, can be
nothing other than the essence of unification, which assembles every
thing in the totality of simple presencing? There is only one
appropriate answer to the question of what Adyoq is. In our formula
tion it reads: d Adyoq Xe'yei. Adyoq lets-lie-together-before. What?
r i d v i a What this word means Heraclitus tells us immediately and
unequivocally in the beginning of fragment B 7: Ei ndvra id
dvTa . " I f everything (namely) which is present . " The Laying
that gathers has, as Adyoq, laid down everything present in uncon-
cealment. To lay is to shelter. Laying shelters everything present in its
presencing, from which whatever lingers awhile in presence can be
appropriately collected and brought forward by mortal Xtfyeiv. Adyoq
lays that which is present before and down into presencing, that is, it
puts those things back. Presencing nevertheless suggests: having come
forward to endure in unconcealment. Because the Adyoq lets lie before
us what lies before us as such, it discloses what is present in its presenc
ing. But disclosure is 'AXrjGeia. This and Adyoq are the Same. Ae'yeiv
70
Logos (HeraclUua, Fragment B 50)
lets dXnOeo. , unconcealed as such, lie before us (cf. B 112*). All

disclosure releases what is present from concealment. Disclosure
needs concealment. The 'A-ArfSeia rests in Arf6n, drawing from it and
laying before us whatever remains deposited in AifGq. Adyoq is in itself
and at the same time a revealing and a concealing. It is 'AXrfGeia.
Unconcealment needs concealment, ArjOr), as a reservoir upon which
disclosure can, as it were, draw. Adyoq, the Laying that gathers, has in
itself this revealing-concealing character. When we can see in Adyoc,
how the'Ev essentially occurs as unifying, it becomes equally clear that
this unifying which occurs in the Adyoc. remains infinitely different
from what we tend to represent as a connecting or binding together.
The unifying that rests in Xe'yeiv is neither a mere comprehensive
collecting nor a mere coupling of opposites which equalizes all con
traries. T h e ' E v Ildvia lets he together before us in one presencing
things which are usually separated from, and opposed to, one another,
such as day and night, winter and summer, peace and war, waking and
sleeping, Dionysos and Hades. Such opposites, borne along the far
thest distance between presence and absence, 6iaq>epduevov, let the
Laying that gathers lie before us in its full bearing. Its laying is itself
that which carries things along by bearing them out. The'Ev is itself a
carrying out.
*Ev n d v r a says what the Adyoc. is. Adyoc. says how'Ev ndvxa
essentially occurs. Both are the Same.
When mortal Xe'yeiv is dispatched to the Adyoc., duoXoyeiv
occurs. This is assembled in the "Ev, with its unifying domi
nance. When duoXoyeiv occurs, the fateful comes to pass. However,
duoXoyeiv is never properly Fate itself. Where do we ever find, not
merely things that are fated, but the fateful itself? What is the fateful
•Fragment B 112, Dlels-Kranz I, 176 reads:
ouxppovciv dpetr) \ieyiou\, nal ocxpfn dXnOe'a Ae'veiv Kal noielv xaxd qnfoiv
e'nafoviaq.
Healthful thinking is the greatest perfection: and wisdom consists in saying the truth
and acting in accordance with nature, listening to it.
If we may venture another translation: "Thinking is the greatest arete, for what is
fateful comes to pass when, in dedicated hearkening, we let unconcealment lie before us
and bring forth [what is present] along the lines of self-disclosure."—TR.
71
itself? Heraclitus says what it is unequivocally at the beginning of

fragment B 32:*Ev id oo<pov uoûvov, "the unique One unifying all is
alone the fateful." But if the'Ev is the same as the Adyoc, the result is:
d Adyoc id «wpdv-uoûvov- The only properly fateful matter is the
Adyoc. When mortal Xtfyeiv, as duoXoyeîv, is dispatched toward what
is fateful, it is sent on its fated way.
But how is Adyoc. the fateful, how is it destiny proper, that is, thé
assembly of that which sends everything into its own? The Laying that
gathers assembles in itself all destiny by bringing things and letting
them lie before us, keeping each absent and present being in its place
and on its way; and by its assembling it secures everything in the
totality. Thus each being can be joined and sent into its own. Heracli-
tus says (B 64): xd 6è ndvxa ofaxIÇei Kepauvdq. "But lightning steers
(in presencing) the totality (of what is present)."
Lightning abrupdy lays before us in an instant everything present
in the light of its presencing. The lightning named here steers. It
brings all things forward to their designated, essential place. Such
instantaneous bringing is the Laying that gathers, the Adyoc.
"Lightning" appears here as an epithet of Zeus. As the highest of gods,
Zeus is cosmic destiny. The Adyoc., the'Ev ndvxa, would accordingly
be nothing other than the highest god. The essence of Adyoc thus
would offer a clue concerning the divinity of the god.
Ought we now to place Adyoç.'Ev ndvxa, and Zeûç all together,
and even assert that Heraclitus teaches pantheism? Heraclitus does not
teach this or any doctrine. As a thinker, he only gives us to think. With
regard to our question whether Adyoc, f Ev ndvxa) and Zeûç are the
Same, he certainly gives us difficult matters to think about. The rep-
resentational thought of subsequent centuries and millennia has car-
ried this question along without thinking it, ultimately to relieve itself
of this unfamiliar burden with the aid of a ready forgetfulness. Hera-
clitus says (B 32):
"Ev TO Xo<pov uoûvov Xeyeoôai oik eWAei

Kai èQéXci Znvoç dvoua-
The One, which alone is wise, does not want
and yet does want to be called by the name Zeus.
(Diels-Kranz)
72
Logos (Herachtus, Fragment B 50)
The word that carries the saying, ¿66X11}, does not mean "to want,"
but rather "to be ready of itself for "; e'Be'Xuj does not mean merely
to demand something, but rather to allow something a reference back
to itself. However, if we are to consider carefully the import of what is
said in the saying, we must weigh what it says in the first line: *Ev
XtfyeoOai odic eWXei. "The unique-unifying-One, the Lay-
ing that gathers, is not ready ." Ready for what? For Xeyeodai, to be
assembled under the name "Zeus." For if in such assemblage t h e ' E v
should be brought to light as Zeus, then perhaps it would always have
to remain an apparition. That the saying under consideration concerns
Xcfyeodai in immediate relation to dvoua (the naming word), indisput-
ably points to the meaning of Xe'yeiv as saying, talking, naming. So
precisely this saying of Herachtus, which seems to contradict directly
everything said above concerning Xe'yeiv and Xdyoq, is designed to
allow us renewed thinking on whether and how far Xe'yeiv in the sense
of "saying" and "talking" is intelligible only if it is thought in its most
proper sense—as "laying" and "gathering." To name means to call
forward. That which is gathered and laid down in the name, by means
of such a laying, comes to light and comes to he before us. The naming
(dvoua), thought in terms of Xe'yeiv, is not the expressing of a word-
meaning but rather a letting-lie-before in the light wherein something
stands in such a way that it has a name.
In the first place the'Ev, the Adyoc,, the destining of everything
fateful, is not in its innermost essence ready to appear under the name
"Zeus," i.e. to appear as Zeus: odx e"8efXei. Only after that does xal
iQiXei follow: the'Ev is "yet also ready."
Is it only a manner of speaking when Heraclitus says first that
the'Ev does not admit the naming in question, or does the priority
of denial have its ground in the matter itself? For"Ev ndvra, as Adyoc.,
lets everything present come to presence. T h e ' E v , however, is not
itself one present being among others. It is in its way unique. Zeus, for
his part, is not simply someone present among others. He is the high-
est of present beings. Thus Zeus is designated in an exceptional way in
presencing; he is alloted this special designation, and appropriately
called to such an apportionment (Moipa) in the all-assembling'Ev, i.e.
Fate. Zeus is not himself the "Ev, although as the one who aims
lightning-bolts he executes Fate's dispensations.
73
That with respect to the e'Oe'Xei the oihc is designated first suggests
that the"Ev does not properly admit of being named Zeus, and of being
thereby degraded to the level of existing as one being present among
others—even if the "among" has the character of "above all other
present beings."
On the other hand, according to the saying, the"Ev does admit of
being named Zeus. How? The answer is already contained in what has
just been said. I f the "Ev is not apprehended as being by itself the
Adyoq, if it appears rather as the ITdvTa, then and only then does the
totality of present beings show itself under the direction of the highest
present being as one totality under this [unifying] One. The totality of
present beings is under its highest aspect the°Ev as Zeus. The*Ev
itself, however, as'Ev ndvra, is the Adyoq, the Laying that gathers. As
Adyoq, the"Ev alone is td Ecxpdv, the fateful as Fate itself: the gather
ing of destiny into presence.
If the dxodeiv of mortals is directed to Adyoq alone, to the Laying
that gathers, then mortal Acfyeiv is skillfully brought to the gathering of
the Adyoq. Mortal Xe\eiv lies secured in the Advoc It is destined to
be appropriated in dpoXoyeiv. Thus it remains appropriated to the
Adyoc,. In this way mortal Xtfyeiv is fateful. But it is never Fate itself,
i.e.*Ev n d v r a as d Adyoq.
Now that the saying of Heraclitus speaks more clearly, what it says
again threatens to fade into obscurity.
T h e ' E v n d v r a indeed contains the clue to the way in which
Adyoq in its Xdyeiv essentially occurs. Yet whether it is thought as
"laying" or as "saying," does XtJyeiv forever remain merely a type of
mortal behavior? If "Ev ndvra were the Adyoq, then would not a
particular aspect of mortal being be elevated to become the fundamen
tal trait of that which, as the destiny of presencing itself, stands above
all mortal and immortal being? Does the Adyoq imply the elevation
and transfer of the mortal's way-to-be to that of the unique One? Does
mortal Xifyeiv remain only an image corresponding to the Adyoq,
which is itself the Fate in which presencing as such and for all present
beings rests?
Or does such questioning, which attaches itself to the guidelines of
an Either-Or, not at all apply, because its approach is from the start
74
Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)
inadequate to the inquiry here undertaken? If this is so, then neither

can Adyoc, be the overcoming of mortal Affyeiv, nor can Aeyeiv be
simply a copying of the definitive Adyoc;. Then whatever essentially
occurs in the Atfyeiv of duoAoyef v and in the Atfyeiv of the Adyoq has a
more primordial origin—and this in the simple middle region between
both. Is there a path for mortal thinking to that place?
In any case, the path remains at first confused and confounded by
the very ways which early Creek thinking opened for those who were
to follow. We shall limit ourselves to stepping back before the riddle,
in order to get a first glimpse of several of its puzzling aspects.
The saying of Heraclitus under discussion (B 50) states, according
to our translation and commentary:
Do not listen to me, the mortal speaker, but be in hearkening to the Laying
that gathers; first belong to this and then you hear properly; such hearing is
when a letting-lie-together-before occurs by which the gathering letting-lie,
the Laying that gathers, lies before us as gathered; when a letting-lie of the
letting-lie-before occurs, the fateful comes to pass; then the truly fateful, i.e.
destiny alone, is: the unique One unifying All.
If we set aside the commentary, though not forgetting it, and try to
translate into our language what Heraclitus said, his saying reads:
Attuned not to me but to the Laying that gathers: letting the Same lie: the/
fateful occurs (the Laying that gathers): One unifying All. —'
Mortals, whose essence remains appropriated in duoAoyeiv are

fateful when they measure the Adyoc, as the"Ev n d v i a and submit
themselves to its measurement. Therefore Heraclitus says (B 43):
"VPpiv xpr) opevvu'vai uaAXov it nupKairfv.
Measureless pride needs to be extinguished sooner than a raging fire.
This is needed because Adyoc, needs duoAoyeiv if present beings are to

appear and shine in presencing. 'OuoAoyeiv dispatches itself without
presumption into the measuring of the AO'YOC..
From the saying first considered (B 50) we receive a distant coun
sel, which the last-named saying (B 43) indicates to be the most neces
sary of all:
75
Before you play with fire, whether it be to kindle or extinguish it,

put out first the flames of presumption, which overestimates itself and
takes poor measure because it forgets the essence o f Aeyeiv.
The translation of Xtfyeiv as gathered-letting-lie-before, and of

Adyoc, as the Laying that gathers, may seem strange. Yet it is more
salutary for thinking to wander into the strange than to establish itself
in the obvious. Presumably Heraclitus alienated his contemporaries at
least as much, although in an entirely different way, by weaving the
words Xefyeiv and Xdyoc, so familiar to them, into such a saying, and
by making d Adyoc. the guiding word of his thinking. Where does this
word d Xdyoc—which we are now attempting to think as the Laying
that gathers—lead Heraclitus' thought? The word d Adyoc. names that
which gathers all present beings into presencing and lets them lie
before us in it.'O Adyoc. names that in which the presencing of what is
present comesjQ_pass. The presencing of present beings the Greeks
call xd ddv, that is, td elvai tulv dviuiv, in Latin, esse entium. We say
the Being of beings. Since the beginning of Western thought the Being
of beings emerges as what is alone worthy of thought. If we think this
historic development in a truly historical way, then that in which the
beginning of Western thought rests first becomes manifest: that in
Creek antiquity the Being of beings becomes worthy of thought is the
beginning of the West and is the hidden source of its destiny. Had this
beginning not safeguarded what has been, i.e. the gathering of what
still endures, the Being of beings would not now govern from the
essence of modern technology. Through technology the entire globe is
today embraced and held fast in a kind of Being experienced in West-
ern fashion and represented on the epistemological models of Euro
pean metaphysics and science.
In the thinking of Heraclitus the Being (presencing) of beings
appears as d Adyoc, as the Laying that gathers. But this lightning-flash
of Being remains forgotten. And this oblivion remains hidden, in its
turn, because the conception of Adyoc is forthwith transformed. Thus,
early on and for a long time it was inconceivable that the Being of
beings could have brought itself to language in the word d Adyoq.
What happens when the Being of beings, the being in its Being,
76
Logos (HeracUtus, Fragment B 50)
the distinction between the two as a distinction, is brought to lan

guage? "To bring to language" usually means to express something
orally or in writing. But the phrase now wishes to think something else:
"to bring to language" means to secure Being in the essence of lan
guage. May we suggest that such an event prepared itself when d
Adyoq became the guiding word of Heraclitus' thinking, because it
became the name for the Being of beings?
' O Adyoq, id Atfyeiv, is the Laying that gathers. But at the same
time Xefyeiv always means for the Creeks to lay before, to exhibit, to
tell, to say. ' O Adyoq then would be the Creek name for speaking,
saying, and language. Not only this.'O Adyoq, thought as the Laying
that gathers, would be the essence of saying [die Sage] as thought by
the Greeks. Language would be saying. Language would be the gather
ing letting-Iie-before of what is present in its presencing. In fact, the
Greeks dwelt in this essential determination of language. But they
never thought it—Heraclitus included.
The Creeks do experience saying in this way. But, Heraclitus
included, they never think the essence of language expressly as the
Adyoq, as the Laying that gathers.
What would have come to pass had HeracUtus—and all the Creeks
after him—thought the essence of language expressly as Adyoq, as the
Laying that gathers! Nothing less than this: the Greeks would have
thought the essence of language from the essence of Being—indeed, as
this itself. For d Adyoq is the name for the Being of beings. Yet none of
this came to pass. Nowhere do we find a trace of the Greeks' having
thought the essence of language directly from the essence of Being.
Instead, language came to be represented—indeed first of all with the
Greeks—as vocalization, cpuivrf, as sound and voice, hence phonetic
ally. The Creek word that corresponds to our word "language" is
yXcuooa, "tongue." Language is cpuivri, cmuavTiicrf, a vocalization which
signifies something. This suggests that language attains at the outset
that preponderant character which we designate with the name "ex
pression." This correct but externally contrived representation of lan
guage, language as "expression," remains definitive from now on. It is
still so today. Language is taken to be expression, and vice versa.
Every kind of expression is represented as a kind of language. Art
77
historians speak of the "language of forms." Once, however, in the

beginning of Western thinking, the essence of language flashed in the
light of Being—once, when Heraclitus thought the Adyoq as his guid
ing word, so as to think in this word the Being of beings. But the
lightning abruptly vanished. No one held onto its streak of light and the
nearness of what it illuminated.
We see this lightning only when we station ourselves in the storm
of Being. Yet everything today betrays the fact that we bestir ourselves
only to driveJtarmsjiway. We organize all available means for cloud-
seeding and storm dispersal in order to have calm in the face of the
storm. But this calm is no tranquility. It is only anesthesia; more pre
cisely, the narcotization o f anxiety in^the^face of thinking.
To think is surely a peculiar affair. The word of thinkers has no
authority. The word of thinkers knows no authors, in the sense of
writers. The word of thinking is not picturesque; it is without charm.
The word of thinking rests in the sobering quality of what it says. Just
the same, thinking changes the world. It changes it in the ever darker
depths of a riddle, depths which as they grow darker offer promise of a
greater brightness.
The riddle has long been propounded to us in the word "Being."
In this matter "Being" remains only the provisional word. Let us see to
it that our thinking does not merely run after it blindly. Let us first
thoughtfully consider that "Being" was originally called "presenc-
ing"—and "presencing": enduring-here-before in unconcealment.
78
THREE
Moira
(Parmenides Vili, 34-41 )
The relation between thinking and Being animates all Western

reflection. It remains the durable touchstone for determining to what
extent and in what way we have been granted both the privilege and
the capacity to approach that which addresses itself to historical man as
to-be-thought. Parmenides names this relation in his saying (Frag. I l l ) :
td ydp aikd voeiv dariv re xal elvaL
For thinking and Being are the same.
In another verse, Fragment VIII, (34—41) he elaborates this saying. The

lines read:
Taifrdv 6'eorl voeiv re xal oJvexev eon vdn.ua
od ydp dveu TOU EOVTOC,, e*v uJ netpanope'vov dariv,
edprfoeiq xd voeiv: oi!6ev ydp if eoriv if £aia\
dXXo ndpe£ TOU COVTOC, encl id ye Moip' dncf6npev
odXov dxivr|Tdv T' e'uuevai: TO} ndvt' dvop' corai,
oooa 6OOTO1 KattfOevTO nenoiGdieq elvai dXr|9rj,"
yfyveoGaf TE KO! dAAuoGai, elvai re teal odxf,
KQ! rdnov dXXdooeiv 6id re xpoa cpavdv dpeffierv.
Thinking and the thought "it is" are the same. For without the being in relation
to which it is uttered you cannot find thinking. For there neither is nor shall be
anything outside of being, since Moira bound it to be whole and immovable.
Foxjhat reason, all these wilLhe mere names which mortals have laid down.
79
convinced that they were true: coming-to-be as well as passing away. Being as
well as nonbeing, and also change of place and variation of shining colors.*
How do these eight verses more clearly bring to light the relation
between thinking and Being? They seem rather to obscure it, since
they themselves lead us into darkness and leave us without counsel.
Let us therefore seek some sort of preliminary instruction concerning
the relation between thinking and Being by pursuing the main features
of previous interpretations. It has traditionally been explained in three
ways, each of which we may mention briefly without showing in detail
to what extent it is evidenced in the Parmenidean text. In the first,
thinking is taken as something at hand, appearing alongside many
other such things, and which "is" in that sense. Its being must be
gauged by the standard applied to every other being of its kind, and
together with those beings be aggregated into a sort of comprehensive
whole. This unity of beings is called Being. Since thinking, considered
as a being, is just like every other kind of being, thinking proves to be
identical with Being.
One hardly needs to have recourse to philosophy in order to draw
such a conclusion. The mustering of what is at hand into the totality of
being seems quite natural. It involves more than thinking. Seafaring,
temple building, conversation at social gatherings, every kind of
human activity belongs among beings and is therefore identical with
Being. One wonders why Parmenides, precisely with respect to that
human activity called thinking should have insisted on expressly estab-
lishing that it is included in the realm of beings. One would certainly
be justified in wondering further why Parmenides proceeds to give a
special proof for this inclusion, particularly through the commonplace
notion that aside from beings, and being in totality, there can be no
other beings.
Rightly viewed, however, where Parmenides' doctrine is rep-
resented in such fashion one has long ceased to wonder. For by consid-
ering Parmenides' thought in this way we abandon it; it thereupon
*Cf. Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vortokratiker. I, 238. Heidegger's citation of

Fragment VIII differs from that of Diels-Kranz in two respects: he replaces the Creek
semicolon (•) in lines 36 and 38 with a colon(:), and employs a variant spelling for ¿ucvaí
( 1 . 38). On the latter see below, p. 9 1 — T R .
60
Moira (Parmenides Vili. 34-41)
succumbs to these crude and clumsy attempts—for which it was an

effort, to be sure—to assign every being that comes to the fore, among
others also thinking, a place in the totality of being.
Consequently our reflection will gain nothing by paying attention
to this inept interpretation of the relationship between thinking and
Being, which represents everything solely by reference to the mass of
beings at hand. Still, this interpretation does give us the priceless
opportunity to make the point once and for all that Parmenides no
where explicitly says that thinking too is one of the many e"dvTa, one of
the manifold beings, each of which at one time is and at another time is
not, and therefore always brings to appearance both at once: being and
nonbeing, what comes-to-be and what passes away.
In contrast to this first interpretation of Parmenides' saying—an
interpretation equally accessible to everyone—another more thought
ful treatment of the text (in verses VIII, 34 ff.) at least finds "utter
ances difficult to understand." To assist in illuminating what is intelli
gible in them one has to search about for a proper guide. Where does
one find it? Obviously it will be found in an understanding which has
more incisively penetrated into that relation between thinking and
Being which Parmenides was trying to think. Such penetration pro-^
claims itself in a question concerning thinking or knowledge with re-^
spect to its connection with Being, i.e. with reality. The analysis of the
relationship between thinking and Being, understood in this fashion, is
one of the chief aims of modem philosophy. With this aim in view,
philosophy has even produced a special discipline, theory of knowl
edge, which today in many respects serves as the chief business of
philosophy. It has changed only its name, and is now called
"Metaphysics" or "The Ontology of Knowledge." At present its defini
tive and most widespread form is being developed under the rubric of
"Symbolic Logic" [Logistik]. Here the saying of Parmenides, by a
strange and unforeseen transformation, has reached a decisive position
of dominance. Thus philosophy in the modem age everywhere deems
itself so situated that from its seemingly superior standpoint it can
extract the true meaning from Parmenides' saying concerning the rela
tion between thinking and Being. Considering the unchecked power of
modern thinking (philosophy of existence and existentialism, along
81
with symbolic logic, are its most effective exponents), it is necessary to

emphasize more distinctly that definitive outlook within which the
modern interpretation of Parmenides' fragment operates.
Modern philosophy experiences beings as objects [Gegenstand],
It is through and for perception that the object comes to be a "standing
against." As Leibniz clearly saw, percipere is like an appetite which
seeks out the particular being and attacks it, in order to grasp it and
wholly subsume it under a concept, relating this being's presence
[Präsenz] back to the percipere (repraesentare). Repraesentatio,
representation [Vorstellung], is defined as the perceptive self-
arrogation (to the self as ego) of what appears.
Among the doctrines of modern philosophy there is one outstand
ing formulation which is unfailingly regarded as the final solution by all
those who with the help of modern philosophy undertake to clarify
Parmenides' saying. We mean Berkeley's proposition, which is based
on the fundamental position of Descartes' metaphysics and says: esse =
percipi, Being equals being represented. Being falls under the sway of
representation, understood in the sense of perception. This proposi
tion fashions the context in which the saying of Parmenides first be
comes accessible to a scientific-philosophical explanation which re
moves it from that aura of half-poetical "presentiment" to which Pre-
socratic thinking is usually consigned. Esse = percipi. Being is being
represented. It is by virtue of representing that Being is. Being is
identical with thinking insofar as the objectivity of objects is composed
and constituted in the representing consciousness, in the "I think
something." In light of this assertion regarding the relation between
Being and thinking, the saying of Parmenides comes to be viewed as a
crude prefiguring of contemporary doctrines of reality and the knowl
edge of reality.
It is no accident that Hegel, in his Lectures on the History of
Philosophy (Works, 2d ed., XIII, 274), translates and discusses this
saying of Parmenides concerning the relation o f Being and thinking:
"Thinking, and that for the sake o f which t h e r e is thought, a r e the s a m e . F o r
without the beings in which it is e x p r e s s e d (ev tJnecpcmopevov doriv) you will
not find thinking; for thinking, without beings, is and shall b e nothing." This is
the main thought. Thinking produces itself, and what is p r o d u c e d is a thought.
82
Moira (Parmenide* Vili, 34-41)
Thinking is thus identical with its Being; for t h e r e is nothing outside o f Being,
this great affirmation.
For Hegel Being is the affirmation of self-productive thought. Being is

the product of thinking, of perception, in the sense in which Descartes
had already interpreted idea. Through thinking, Being as
affirmation and as the positing of representation is transposed into the
realm of the "ideal." For Hegel also—though in an incomparably more
thoughtful way, a way mediated by Kant—Being is the same as think
ing. It is the same as thinking in that Being is what is expressed and
affirmed by thinking. Thus, from the standpoint of modern philosophy,
Hegel can pass the following judgment upon the saying of Parmenides:
In that this saying gives e v i d e n c e o f ascending into t h e realm o f t h e ideal,
genuine philosophizing began with Parmenides; this beginning is o f
course still dark and indefinite and does not further explain what is contained
in it; but just this explanation constitutes t h e d e v e l o p m e n t of philosophy
itself—which is not yet p r e s e n t h e r e . (pp. 2 7 4 ff.)
For Hegel philosophy is at hand only when the self-thinking of
absolute knowledge is reality itself, and simply is. The self-perfecting
elevation of Being into the thinking of Spirit as absolute reality takes
place in and as speculative logic.
On the horizon of this consummation of modern philosophy Par
menides' saying appears as the very beginning of genuine philosophiz
ing, i.e. as the beginning of logic in Hegel's sense—but only as a
beginning. Parmenides' thought lacks the speculative, dialectical form
which Hegel does however find in Heraclitus. Referring to Heraclitus
Hegel says, "Here we see land; there is no sentence in Heraclitus
which I have not taken up into my Logic." Hegel's Logic is not only the
one and only suitable interpretation of Berkeley's proposition in mod
ern times; it is its unconditioned realization. That Berkeley's assertion
esse = percipi concerns precisely what Parmenides' saying first put into
words has never been doubted. But this historical kinship of the mod
ern proposition and the ancient saying at the same time has its proper
foundation in a difference between what is said and thought in our
times and what was said and thought at that time—a difference which
could hardly be more decisive.
The dissimilarity between the two is so far-reaching that through it
83
the very possibility o f comprehending the difference is shattered. By

indicating this difference we are at the same time giving an indication
of the degree to which our own interpretation of Parmenides' saying
arises from a way of thinking utterly foreign to the Hegelian approach.
Does the statement esse = percipi contain the proper interpretation of
the saying TÓ ydp adró voeîv ¿orív re KO.1 eivai? Do both
propositions—provided we may call them propositions—say that think-
ing and Being are the same? And even if they do say so, do they say so
in the same sense? To the attentive eye a distinction at once makes
itself clear which might easily be dismissed as apparently external. In
both places (Frags. I l l and VIII, 34-41) Parmenides words his saying so
that voeiv (thinking) each time precedes eivai (Being). Berkeley, on
the other hand, puts esse (Being) before percipi (thinking). This would
seem to signify that Parmenides grants priority to thinking, while
Berkeley grants priority to Being. Actually the situation is just the
reverse: Parmenides consigns thinking to Being, while Berkeley refers
Being to thinking. To correspond more adequately to the Creek say-
ing, the modern proposition would have to run: percipi = esse.
The modern statement asserts something about Being, under-
stood as objectivity for a thoroughgoing representation. The Creek
saying assigns thinking, as an apprehending which gathers, to Being,
understood as presencing. Thus every interpretation of the Creek say-
ing that moves within the context of modern thinking goes awry from
the start. Nonetheless, these multiform interpretations fulfill their in-
exorable function: they render Creek thinking accessible to modem
representation and bolster the latter in its self-willed progression to a
"higher" level of philosophy.
The first of the three viewpoints that determine all interpretations
of Parmenides' saying represents thinking as something at hand and
inserts it among the remaining beings. The second viewpoint, in the
modern fashion, grasps Being, in the sense of the representedness of
objects, as objectivity for the ego of subjectivity.
The third point of view follows one of the guidelines of ancient
philosophy as determined by Plato. According to the Socratic-Platonic
teaching, the Ideas endow every entity with "being," but they do not
belong in the realm of aiodnrd, the sense-perceptible. The Ideas can
84
Moira (Parmenide» Vili, 34-41)
be purely seen only in voeiv, nonsensible perception. Being belongs in

the realm of the vonid, the non- and supersensible. Plotinus interprets
Parmenides' saying in the Platonic sense, according to which Par-
menides wants to say: Being is something nonsensible. Here the em
phasis of the saying falls on thinking, although not in the way this is
understood in modern philosophy. Being is identified in terms o f
thinking's nonsensible nature. Interpreted from the Neoplatonic per
spective, Parmenides' saying is an assertion neither about thinking nor
about Being, nor even about the essential belonging-together of both in
their difference. The saying is rather an assertion about the equal par
ticipation of both in the realm of the nonsensible.
Each of these three viewpoints draws the early thinking of the
Creeks into a region dominated by the spheres of questioning of sub
sequent metaphysics. Presumably, however, all later thinking which
seeks dialogue with ancient thinking should listen continually from
within its own standpoint, and should thereby bring the silence o f
ancient thinking to expression. In this process, of course, the earlier
thinking is inevitably accommodated to the later dialogue, into whose
frame of reference and ways of hearing it is transposed. The earlier
thinking is thus, as it were, deprived of its own freedom of speech. But
this accommodation in no way restricts one to an interpretation com
pletely dedicated to reinterpreting the to-be-thought at the beginning
of Western thinking exclusively in terms of subsequent modes of rep
resentation. All depends on whether the dialogue we have undertaken
first of all and continually allows itself to respond to the questioning
address of early thinking, or whether it simply closes itself off to such
an address and cloaks early thought with the mantle of more recent
doctrines. This happens as soon as subsequent thinking neglects to
inquire properly into the ways of hearing and frames of reference of
early thinking.
An effort at proper inquiry should not end in a historical investiga
tion which merely establishes the unexpressed presuppositions under
lying early thought; that is, proper inquiry is not an investigation in
which these presuppositions are taken into account solely with respect
to whatever subsequent interpretation either validates as already pos
ited truth or invalidates as having been superseded by further de-
85
velopments. Unlike this type of investigation, proper inquiry must be a

dialogue in which the ways of hearing and points of view of ancient
thinking are contemplated according to their essential origin, so that
the call [Geheiss] under which past, present, and future thinking
—each in its own way—all stand, might begin to announce itself. An
attempt at such inquiry should first direct its attention to the obscure
passages of the ancient text, and should not settle upon those which
give the appearance of easy intelligibility. To focus on the latter would
end the dialogue before it has begun.
The following discussion limits itself to working through the cited
text by a series of individual commentaries. These may help to prepare
a thoughtful translation of early Creek speech by advancing a thinking
which is awake to beginnings.
The topic under discussion is the relation between thinking and

Being. In the first place we ought to observe that the text (VIII, 34-41)
which ponders this relation more thoroughly speaks of e*dv and not—as
in Fragment III—about elvai. Immediately, and with some justifica
tion, one concludes from this that Fragment VIII concerns beings
rather than Being. But in saying e"dv Parmenides is in no way thinking
"beings in themselves," understood as the whole to which thinking,
insofar as it is some kind of entity, also belongs. Just as little does £dv
mean elvai in the sense of "Being for itself," as though it were incum
bent upon the thinker to set the nonsensible essential nature of Being
apart from, and in opposition to, beings which are sensible. Rather
e*dv, being, is thought here in its duality as Being and beings, and is
participially expressed—although the grammatical concept has not yet
come explicidy into the grasp of linguistic science. This duality is at
least intimated by such nuances of phrasing as "the Being of beings"
and "beings in Being." In its essence, however, what unfolds is ob
scured more than clarified through the "in" and the "of." These expres
sions are far from thinking the duality as such, or from seriously ques
tioning its unfolding.
"Being itself," so frequendy invoked, is held to be true so long as
86
Moira (Parmenides Vili, 34-41)
it is experienced as Being, consistently understood as the Being o f

beings. Meanwhile the beginning of Western thinking was fated to
catch an appropriate glimpse of what the word elvai, to be, says—in
4>doiq, Adyoc.,"Ev. Since the gathering that reigns within Being unites
all beings, an inevitable and continually more stubborn semblance
arises from the contemplation of this gathering, namely, the illusion
that Being (of beings) is not only identical with the totality of beings,
but that, as identical, it is at the same time that which unifies and is
even most in being [das Seiendste]. For representational thinking ev
erything comes to be a being.
The duality of Being and beings, as something twofold, seems to
melt away into nonexistence, although thinking, from its Greek begin
nings onward, has moved within the unfolding of this duality, though
without considering its situation or at all taking note of the unfolding of
the twofold. What takes place at the beginning of Western thought is
the unobserved decline of the duality. But this decline is not nothing.
Indeed it imparts to Greek thinking the character of a beginning, in
that the lighting of the Being of beings, as a lighting, is concealed. The
hiddenness of this decline of the duality reigns in essentially the same
way as that into which the duality itself falls. Into what does it fall? Into
oblivion, whose lasting dominance conceals itself as Ar(6r|, to which
'AArfGeia belongs so immediately that the former can withdraw in its
favor and can relinquish to it pure disclosure in the modes of 4doi(;,
Adyoq, and "Ev, as though this had no need of concealment.
But the apparently futile lighting is riddled with darkness. In it
the unfolding of the twofold remains as concealed as its decline for
beginning thought. However, we must be alert to the duality of Being
and beings in the e*dv in order to follow the discussion Parmenides
devotes to the relation between thinking and Being.
II
Fragment III states very concisely that thinking belongs to Being.

How shall we characterize this belongingness? Our question comes too
late, since the laconic saying has already given the answer with its first
words: td ydp adtd, "For, the Same. . . " T h e construction of the
87
saying in Fragment VIII, 34 begins with the very same word: tadrdv.
Does this word give us an answer to the question of how thinking
belongs to Being, in that it says both are "the Same"? The word gives
no answer. In the first place, because the determination "the Same"
precludes any question about "belonging together," which can only
exist between things that are different. In the second place, because
the word "the Same" says nothing at all about the point of view from
which, and for what reason, difference passes over into sameness. Thus
td adrd, the Same, remains the enigmatic key word for both
fragments—if not for the whole of Parmenides' thought.
O f course if we are of the opinion that the word id adrd, the Same,
means "identical," and if we accept "identity" completely as the most
transparent presupposition for the thinkability o f whatever is think
able, then by this opinion we become progressively more deaf to the
key word, assuming that we have ever heard its call. It is sufficient,
however, to keep the word in our hearing in its thought-provoking
character. In doing so we remain listeners, prepared to let this enigma
tic key word alone for a while in order to listen for a saying which could
help us to contemplate the enigma in all its fullness.
Parmenides offers some help. In Fragment VIII he gives a clearer
statement as to how we should think the "Being" to which voeiv
belongs. Instead of efvai, Parmenides now says e*dv, "being" [das
Seiend], which enunciates the ambiguity of the duality of Being and
beings. But voeiv calls to mind vdrjpa: what has been taken heed of by
an attentive apprehending.
'Edv is explicitly identified as that odvexev fori vdn.ua for the
sake of which thankful thought comes to presence. (Concerning think
ing and thanking see What Is Called Thinking?* Part 2, Lecture 3, pp.
138 ff.)
Thinking comes to presence because of the still unspoken duality.
The presencing of thinking is on the way to the duality of Being and
beings. The duality presences in taking-heed-of. According to Frag
ment VI, taking-heed-of is already gathered to the duality by virtue of a
prior Xeyeiv, a prior lerting-lie-before. How does this come about?
'What It Called Thinking? New York. Harper tt Row, 1 9 6 8 . — T R
88
Simply through the fact that the duality on account of which mortals
find themselves thinking, demands such thinking for itself.
We are still far from experiencing the duality itself—that is, at the
same time, so far as it demands thinking—far from experiencing it in an
essential way. Only one thing is clear from the saying of Parmenides:
neither on account of e'dvxa, "beings in themselves," nor for the sake of
efvai, "Being for itself," does thinking come to presence. That is to say:
a "being in itself," does not make thinking mandatory, nor does "Being
for itself' necessitate thought. Neither, taken separately, will ever let it
be known to what extent "Being" calls for thinking. But because of
their duality, because of the e*dv, thinking comes to presence. The
taking-heed of Being comes to presence on the way to the duality. In
such a presencing thinking belongs to Being. What does Parmenides
say about this belonging?
Ill
Parmenides says that voeiv neaxuiouevov e*v xu} e*dvxi. This is

translated: "thinking, which as something uttered js in being." But how
can we ever hope to experience and understand this being-uttered so
long as we do not take the trouble to question what "utterance," "to
speak," and "language" mean here, or so long as we hastily accept c*dv
as a being and let the meaning of Being remain undetermined? How
can we ever come to recognize the connection of voeiv to
nemaxiouevov so long as we do not adequately determine the voeiv by
referring back to Fragment VI? (Cf. What h Called Thinking? pp. 203
ff.) Noeiv, whose belonging-together with e*dv we should like to con
template, is grounded in and comes to presence from Xeyeiv. In
Xeyeiv the Ietting-lie-before of what is present in its presencing oc
curs. Only as thus lying-before can what is present as such admit the
voeiv, the taking-heed-of. Accordingly, the vdn.ua as vooduevov of the
voeiv is already a Xeyduevov of the Xeyeiv. In the Greek experience,
the essence o f saying rests in Xeyeiv. On that account voeiv is
essentially—not peripherally or accidentally—something said. Cer
tainly not everything said need be an utterance. It can also, and some-
59
times must, be a silence. Every utterance and every silence is already

something said, though the reverse does not always hold.
In what does the difference between something said and some
thing uttered consist? For what reason does Parmenides characterize
the vooduevov and voeiv (VIII, 34 ff.) asnecparioue'vov? This word is
correctly translated in dictionaries as "utterance." But how are we to
experience an uttering which gets its name from cpdoxeiv and cpdvai?
Does "utterance" here merely stand for the vocalization (cpuivrf) of what
a word or sentence signifies (on.uafveiv)? Is speaking out, uttering, to
be grasped here as the expression of something interior (something
psychical), and so divided into two component parts—the phonetic and
the semantic? There is no trace of this to be found in the experience of
speaking as cpdvai, the experience of speech as cpdoiq. <Pdoiceiv implies
"to invoke," "to name with praise," "to call upon," all of which depend
upon the fact that the verb has its essence in letting something appear.
4>doua is the shining of the stars and of the moon, it is their way of
coming forward into view and of self-concealing. 4>doeiq means "pha
ses." The changing forms of the moon's shining are its phases. <Pdoiq is
the saying; to say means to bring forward into view. 4>nuf, "I say," has
the same (though not identical) essence as Xeyio: to bring what is
present in its presencing forward into shining appearance, into lying-
before.
Parmenides thus wishes to discuss where voeiv belongs. For only
where it belongs and is at home can we find it; only there can we
experience through our findings how far thinking belongs with Being.
If Parmenides experiences voeiv as necpanoue'vov, this does not mean
that he experiences it as an "utterance" which is to be discovered in
spoken conversation or in written characters, i.e. in some sort of sensi
bly perceptible entities. We would miss the mark entirely, putting the
greatest possible distance between ourselves and Creek thinking, if we
accepted this notion, and if we further desired to represent both speak
ing and what is spoken as "conscious experiences," and to establish
thinking within the confines of these experiences as an act of con
sciousness. Noeiv, taking-heed-of, and what it takes up, are something
said, something brought forward into view. But where? Parmenides
says: e*v TU| e*dvTi, in e"dv, in the duality of presencing and what is
90
present. This gives us food for thought and thoroughly frees us from
the hasty presupposition that thinking is something expressed in an
utterance: there is nowhere any suggestion of that.
To what extent can and must voeiv, thinking, come to light in the
duality? To the extent that the unfolding in the duality of presencing
and present beings invokes Xeyeiv, letting-lie-before, and with the
released letting-lie of what lies before us, grants voeiv something it can
take heed of and thus preserve. But Parmenides does not yet think the
duality as such; he does not at all think through the unfolding of the
twofold. He does, however, say (Frag. VIII, 35 ff.): ov ydp dveu TOU
e'dvToc,. eUprjoeic. i d voeiv. "For you cannot find thinking apart
from the duality." Why not? Because thinking belongs with e*dv in the
gathering that e"dv calls for; and because thinking itself, resting in the
Xeyeiv, completes the gathering called for, thus responding to its be
longing to e*dv as a belonging which e"dv uses. For voeiv takes up, not
just anything at random, but only that One designated in Fragment VI:
e*dv c'uuevai,* whatever is present in its presencing.
Insofar as what is thought-provoking, though not yet thought, is
announced in Parmenides' exposition, so far does the fundamental
requirement clearly come to light for proper reflection upon Par
menides' statement that thinking belongs to Being. We have to learn to
think the essence of language from the saying, and to think saying as
letting-lie-before (Xdyoq) and as bringing-forward-into-view (cpdoiq).
To satisfy this demand remains a difficult task because that first illumi
nation of the essence of language as saying disappears immediately into
a veiling darkness and yields ascendancy to a characterization of lan
guage which relentlessly represents it in terms o f tpuivrj,
vocalization—a system of signs and significations, and ultimately of
data and information.
•In the Ionian dialect and in epic usage the verb eivai (to be) may appear either as
luevai or c'uuevai. In his commentary on Aristotle's Physics Simplicius, for no apparent
reason, ascribes both forms to Parmenides. The first variant appears at 144, 29 (Diels-
Kranz VIII, 38), the second at 117, 2 (Diels-Kranz VI, 1). Heidegger reproduces the
second variant (c'uuevai, DK VI, 1) throughout. With a shift of accent to the penult this
second form becomes c'uuc'vai, an Attic isomorph—used also by Herodotus,
however—which means to dwell in or abide by; or of things, to remain fixed, stand
fast.—TR
91
TV
Even now, when the way in which thinking belongs to Being has
been brought somewhat more clearly to light, we are scarcely able to
hear the enigmatic key word of the saying—xd adrd, the Same—in its
enigmatic fullness. But when we see that the duality of the e'dv, the
presencing of what is present, gathers thinking to itself, then the gov
erning duality gives us a clue to the profound riddle of what is hidden
by the ordinarily empty and insignificant word "the Same."
Is it from the unfolding of the twofold that the duality in turn calls
thinking onto the path of "for its own sake," thereby requiring also the
belonging-together of the presencing (of what is present) and thinking?
But what is the unfolding of the twofold? How does it happen? Do we
find any basis in Parmenides' saying for a proper inquiry into the
unfolding of the duality, or for hearing what is essential to the unfold
ing in what the enigmatic key word of the saying silendy conceals? We
find nothing immediate.
Still, it should occur to us that in both forms of the saying concern
ing the relation of thinking and Being the enigmatic key word stands at
the beginning. Fragment III says, "For the Same is taking-heed-of and
so too presencing (of what is present)." Fragment VIII, 34, says, "The
Same is taking-heed-of and (that) toward which heedful perception is
on the way." What does situating the word at the beginning signify in
what this passage says? What tone is Parmenides trying to set in letting
us hear this resounding emphasis? Ostensibly the dominant tone. In it
resounds the anticipation of what the saying really has to say. Gram
matically, what it says is called the predicate of the sentence. Thus the
subject here would be voelv (thinking) in its connection with elvai
(Being). In accordance with the Greek text this is the sense in which
one must interpret the grammatical structure of the saying. By placing
its enigmatic key word at the beginning as predicate, the saying calls on
us to dwell on the word attentively, returning to it again and again. But
even so, the word says nothing about what we would like to learn.
Therefore we are compelled to focus our gaze relendessly upon
the preferred position of TO aurd, the Same, and to make a daring
attempt to think from the duality of e"dv (the presencing of what is
92
Moka (Parmenides Vili, 34-41)
present) to its unfolding. We are aided in our purpose by the insight

that thinking, when brought forward into view within the duality of the
e"dv, is something said therein, neqxmauf:vov.
As a result, what reigns in the duality is qxfoiq, saying as the
invocative and insistent bringing-forward-into-view. What does the
saying bring to appear? The presencing of what is present. The saying
that comes to pass and governs in the duality is the gathering of pre
sencing, in whose shining what is present can appear. What Par
menides thinks as 4>doiq Heraclitus calls the Adyoq, the letting-lie-
before that gathers.
What happens in <Pdoiq and in Adyoq? Could the gathering-calling
saying which reigns in them be that bringing which brings forth a
shining? Which gives the lighting in whose endurance presencing is
first illuminated, so that in its light what is present appears, thus
governing the duality of both? Could the unfolding of the twofold
consist in this, that a shining which illuminates itself comes to pass?
The Creeks experience its basic character as disclosure [Entbergen].
Correspondingly, disclosure reigns in the unfolding of the twofold. The
Creeks call it 'AAifGeia.
If indeed Parmenides was saying something about 'AArfGeia, he
must have been thinking within the unfolding of the twofold. Does he
mention 'AArfGeia? Of course he does, right at the beginning of his
"Didactic Poem." Even more: 'AArfGeia is the goddess. Listening to
what she says, Parmenides speaks his own thought—although he
leaves unsaid what the essence of'AArfGeia might be rooted in. He also
leaves unthought in what sense of divinity 'AArfGeia is a goddess. All
this remains for the early thinking of the Creeks as obviously outside
the realm of the thought-provoking as any explanation of the enigmatic
key word, id aihd, the Same.
Presumably, however, there is some hidden link connecting all
these unthought elements. The introductory lines of the poem (I, 22
ff.) are not poetical finery masking an abstract conceptual work. We
make the dialogue with Parmenides' way of thinking too easy if we
ignore the mythic experience in the philosopher's words, and then
object that the goddess 'AArfGeia is an extremely vague and empty
mental construct in comparison with the sharply delineated "divine
93
persons," Hera, Athene, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Artemis. Such ob

jections are advanced as if we already possessed old and reliable
knowledge about the divinity of the Creek gods—as if we were certain
that it makes sense here to talk about "persons," and as if it had long
been determined that if the essence of truth should appear as a goddess
it could do so only as the abstract personification of a concept. Thought
has scarcely touched upon the essence of the mythical, especially with
regard to the fact that the uuQoq is the saying, while saying is the
calling bringing-into-appearance. Consequently we would be better
advised to continue questioning with caution, while listening to what is
said (Frag. I, 22-23):
KQ( ue 0ed npd<ppu>v ilneficfâTo, xeipa 6c xeipf

6eE,iiepr)v fXcv, aJ6e 6' ertoq <pdio Kai pc npoonuoa:
And the goddess received me with thoughtful

affection, as hand with hand
she took my right and so gave voice and sang
to me:
What is herewith given the thinker to think remains at the same

time veiled with respect to its essential origins. This affirms rather than
denies that disclosure rules in what the thinker says, and rules as what
the thinker heeds, since this points the way into what is to-be-thought.
But what is to-be-thought is named in the enigmatic key word rd aurd,
the Same. What is so named expresses the relation of thinking to
Being.
For that reason we must at least ask whether or not the unfolding
of the twofold, taken specifically as the disclosure of the presencing of
what is present, is tacitly contained in the aurd, the Same. When we
presume that such is the case we do not advance beyond the thought of
Parmenides; rather, we only reach back into what must be thought
even more primordially.
A discussion of the saying that bears on the relation of thinking and
Being inevitably succumbs to the appearance of being arbitrary and
forced.
94
The construction of the passage id ydp durd voeiv doxiv re xal

efvai, grammatically represented, now shows itself in a different light.
The enigmatic key word, id aifrd, the Same, with which the saying
begins, is no longer a predicate repositioned to stand first, but rather
the subject—what lies at the core, what supports and maintains. The
inconspicuous dorfv, "is," now means "comes to presence," "endures,"
and further, the bestowal of what endures. As such, id adrd, the Same
reigns. Specifically, it reigns as the unfolding of the twofold—an un
folding in the sense of disclosure. That which unfolds, and in unfolding
reveals the twofold, allows taking-heed-of to get under way toward the
gathering perception o f the presencing of what is present. Truth,
characterized as the disclosure of the duality, lets thinking, from out of
this duality, belong to Being. What is silendy concealed in the enigma
tic key word id adrd is the revealing bestowal of the belonging-
together of the duality and the thinking that comes forward into view
within it.
Thus thinking does not belong together with Being because it is

also something present and therefore to be counted in the totality of
presencing—which means here the whole of what is present. Admit
tedly, it seems as though Parmenides represents the connection be
tween thinking and Being in just this fashion. But he offers some
justification, tacking it on by means of a ydp (for). His explanation
states (VIII, 36 ff.), ndpef; TOU e'dvioq: outside of beings there was, is,
and will be nothing else in being (following Bergk's conjecture, od6'
r|v). However, rd ddv does not say "beings," but rather names the
duality. Naturally there is never a presencing of what is present outside
it, since presencing as such is grounded in, appears in, and shines out
of the unfolded light of the twofold.
But why does Parmenides expressly append this explanation with
regard to the relation of thinking to Being? Because the name voeiv,
"thinking," in not sounding the same as efvai, gives the appearance of
actually being an dXXo, something different, something set opposite
Being and therefore apart from it. But not only does the pronunciation
95
of the name appear to maintain itself "alongside" and "apart from" e*dv,
but also what the name names. This appearance is no mere illusion.
For Aeyeiv and voeiv let what is present he before us in the light of
presencing. Accordingly, they themselves lie opposite presencing,
though certainly not as two independently existing objects. The con
junction of Aeyeiv and voeiv (according to Fragment VI) liberates the
e*dv e*puevai, presencing in its appearance, for perception, and there
fore does in a certain sense hold itself apart from e*dv. In one respect
thinking is outside the duality toward which it makes its way, required
by and responding to it. In another respect, this very "making its way
toward . ." remains within the duality, which is never simply an in
differently represented distinction between Being and beings, but
rather comes to presence from the revealing unfolding. It is this unfold
ing that, as 'AArfOeia, bestows on every presencing the light in which
something present can appear.
But disclosure, while it bestows the lighting of presencing, at the
same time needs a letting-lie-before and a taking-up-into-perception if
what is present is to appear, and by this need binds thinking to its
belonging-together with the duality. Therefore by no means is there
somewhere and somehow something present outside the duality.
This entire discussion would be something arbitrarily spun out in
thought and insinuated by hindsight had not Parmenides himself ex
plained why anything outside of presencing, anything besides the e*dv,
is impossible.
VI
Considered grammatically, what the thinker says here about the

e*dv stands in a subordinate clause. Anyone who has only minimal
experience in hearing what great thinkers say will probably pause to
ponder the strange fact that they say what is to be thought in a casually
attached dependent clause and let it go at that. The play of the calling,
brightening, expanding light is not actually visible. It shines impercep
tibly, like morning light upon the quiet splendor of lilies in a field or
roses in a garden.
96
Parmenides' subordinate clause—in reality his "sentence of

sentences"—runs (VIII, 37 ff.):
e"nel id ye Moip" e'nc'&noev o J X o v didvnTdv T' e p u e v a i :
since Moira bound it (being) to b e a whole and immovable.

(W. Kranz)
Parmenides speaks of ridv, of the presencing (of what is present), and of

duality, and in no sense of "beings." He names the Moipa, the appor
tionment, which allots byJiestowing and so unfolds the twofbld- T h e
apportionment dispenses [beschickt], (provides and presents) through
the duality. Apportionment is the dispensation of presenting, as the
presencing of what is present, which is gathered in itself and therefore
unfolds of itself. Moipa isi Ae_desJtinjngj)£"Being^" i n .the sense of cldy.,
Moipa has dispensed_the._destiny of Being, id ye, iniaihe_duality, and
thus has bound it to totality and immobility, from which and in which
the presenting of what 4s-present comes to pass.
In the destining of duality, however, only presencing attains a
shining, and oaly_whaL i s . present attains appearance. Destiny al
together conceals both the duality as such and its unfolding. The es
sence of 'AArfOeia remains veiled. The visibility it bestows allows the
presencing of what is present to arise as outer appearance [Aussehen],
(elooc.) and aspect [Gesicht], (i6ea). Consequently the perceptual rela
tion to the presencing of what is present is defined as "seeing"
(eideVai). Stamped with this character of visio, knowledge and the
evidence of knowledge cannot renounce their essential derivation from
luminous disclosure, even where truth has been transformed into the
certainty of self-consciousness. Lumen naturale, natural light, i.e. the
illumination of reason, already presupposes the disclosure of the dual
ity. The same holds true of the Augustinian and medieval views of
light—not to mention their Platonic origins—which could only develop
under the tutelage of an 'AAifOeia already reigning in the destiny of the
duality.
If we wish to speak of the history of Being, we must first have
97
considered that Being says: presencing_of what is present: duality.

Only on the basis of Being, so considered, can we first ask with ade
quate thoughtfulness what "history" might mean here. History is the
destining of the duality. It is the revealing, unfolding bestowal of
luminous presencing in which what is present appears. The history of
Being is never a sequence of events which Being traverses for itself. It
is certainly not an "object" which might offer new possibilities of histor
ical representation, willing to put itself in the place of prior observa
tions of the history of metaphysics with the presumption of knowing
better than they.
What Pannenides in his inconspicuous subordinate clause says
about Moipa, into whose grasp £dv has been released as the duality,
reveals to the thinker the breadth of vision fatefully reserved for the
path he treads. For in this expanse appears that in which the presenc
ing (of what is present) manifests itself: id orfpara TOU £OVTO<;. There
are many (noXXd) of these OTfuata. They are not signposts for some
thing else. They are the manifold shining of presencing itself, out of the
unfolded duality.
VII
But we have not yet exhaustively recounted what it is that Moipa

in its dispensing metes out. Therefore an essential feature of the nature
of its governance still remains unthought. What is the significance of
the fact that destiny releases the presencing of what is present into the
duality, and so binds it to wholeness and rest?
To take proper measure of what Parmenides says about this prob
lem in the lines that follow his subordinate clause (VIII, 39 ff.), it is
necessary to recollect something previously mentioned (III). The un
folding of the twofold reigns as tpdoiq, saying as bringing-forward-
into-view. The duality conceals within itself both voeiv and its thought
(vdnua) as something said. What is taken up in thinking, however, is
the presencing of what is present. The thoughtful saying that corres
ponds to the duality is the Xeyeiv, the letting-lie-before of presencing.
It occurs, and occurs only, on the thought-path of the thinker who has
been called by 'AXrfGeia.
98
But what b e c o m e s o f the jpaoiq (saying) reigning in revealing des

tiny if this destiny should abandon what is unfolded in the twofold to
the everyday perception of mortals? Mortals accept (6tfxEo6ai, 6d£a)
whatever is immediately, abruptly, and first of all offered to them.
They never concern themselves about preparing a path of thought.
They never really hear the call of the disclosure of the duality. They
keep to what is unfolded in the twofold, and only to that aspect which
immediately makes a claim upon mortals; that is, they keep to what is
present without considering presenting. They relinquish all their af
fairs to what is commonly assumed, id SOKOUVTO (Frag. I, 3 1 ) . They
take this to be what is unconcealed, dXn.9r] (VIII, 3 9 ) , for it really does
appear to them and is thus something revealed. But what becomes of
their speech if it is not capable of being a Xeyeiv, a letting-lie-before?
The ordinary speech of mortals, insofar as they do not consider pres
encing, that is, insofar as they do not think, ends up as a speaking oi
names in which vocalization and the immediately perceptible form oi
the word, as spoken or written, are stressed.
The unequivocal restriction of speech (of letting-lie-before) to
word-signs shatters the gathering taking-heed-of. The latter now be
comes KoroTiBeoOai (VIII, 3 9 ) , establishing, which simply secures this
or that as a hasty opinion. Everything, so secured remains dvoua
Parmenides is in no way saying that what is ordinarily assumed be
comes a "mere" name. But what is thus assumed is given over to a
speaking entirely guided by current terms which, rashly spoken, say
everything about everything and wander aimlessly in the " as well
as.
Perception of what is present (of e'dvia) also names elvai and
knows presencing, although it knows nonpresencing just as fleetingly;
of course, it does not know this in the same way as does thinking, which
for its part is concerned with what is withheld from the duality (the uri,
edv). Ordinary opinion knowS only elvaf re KO.1 odxf (VIII, 40), pres
encing as well as nonpresencing. The stress in this knowing falls on the
te-xaf, the "as well as." And where ordinary perception, speaking in
words, encounters rise and fall, it is satisfied with the "as well as" of
coming-to-be, yfyveoGai [Entstehen], and passing away, dXXuoGai
Wergehen]. It never perceives place, rdnos, as an abode, as what the
99
twofold offers as a home to the presenting of what is present. In the "as

well as," the ordinary opinion of mortals merely follows the "here and
there" (dXXdooeiv, VIII, 41) of particular "places." Ordinary percep
tion certainly moves within the lightedness of what is present and sees
what is shining out, cpavdv (VIII, 41), in color; but it is dazzled by
changes of color, duefPeiv, and pays no attention to the still light of the
lighting that emanates from duality and is <Woiq: the bringing-
fbrward-into-view—the way the word speaks, not the way in which
terms as mere names speak.
TtiJ ndvr' dvou' eorai (VIII, 38): thereby will everything (that is
present) become present in a merely presumed disclosure which per
mits the predominance of terms. How does this happen? Through
Moipa, through the destining of the disclosure of the duality. How are
we to understand this? In the unfolding of the twofold what is present
comes to appear with the shining of presencing. What is present is
itself also something said, but said in name-words, in whose speaking
the ordinary speech of mortals moves. The destining of the disclosure
of the duality (of £dv) yields what is present (id e*dvTa) to the everyday
perception oLmoxtals.
How does this fateful yielding occur? Already only insofar as the
twofold as such, and therefore its unfolding, remain hidden. But then
does self-concealment reign at the heart of disclosure? A bold thought.
Heraclitus thought it. Parmenides unwittingly experienced this
thought insofar as he heard the call of *AXrf8eia and contemplated the
Moipa of e*dv, the destining of the duality, with a view to what is
present and also to presencing.
Parmenides would not have been a thinker at the earliest dawn of
that thinking which is sent into the destiny of the duality if he had not
thought within the area of the riddle which is silently contained in the
enigmatic key word i d adrd, the Same. Herein is concealed what is
thought-worthy, what in the very predominance of what is present (id
e*dvTa, i d ooxouvta) gives us food for thought: as the relation of think
ing to Being, as the truth of Being in the sense of the disclosure of the
'duality, and as withholding from the twofold (urj e*dv).
The dialogue with Parmenides never comes to an end, not only
100
because so much in the preserved fragments of his "Didactic Poem"

still remains obscure, but also because what is said there continually
deserves more thought. This unending dialogue is no failing. It is a sign
of the boundlessness which, in and for remembrance, nourishes the
possibility o f a transformation of destiny.
But anyone who only expects thinking to give assurances, and
awaits the day when we can go beyond it as unnecessary, is demanding
that thought annihilate itself. That demand appears in a strange light if
we consider that the essence of mortals calls upon them to heed a call
which beckons them toward death. As the outermost possibility of
mortal Dasein, death is not the end of the possible but the highest
keeping (the gathering sheltering) of the mystery of calling disclosure.
101
FOUR
Aletheia
(Heraclitus, Fragment B 16)
He is called "the Obscure," d EKOxeivdq. Heraclitus had this

reputation even when his writings were preserved intact. Today we
know only fragments of his work. Later thinkers—Plato and Aristode;
subsequent authors and philosophical scholars—Theophrastus, Sextus
Empiricus, Diogenes Laertius, and Plutarch; even Church
Fathers—Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen—all cite
passages from Heraclitus here and there in their own works. Thanks to
research in philology and history of philosophy, these quotations have
been collected as fragments. Sometimes the fragments comprise sev
eral sentences, sometimes only one sentence, and occasionally they
consist of mere phrases or isolated words.
The train of thought of these later thinkers and writers determines
their selection and arrangement of Heraclitus' words. This in turn
delimits the space available for any interpretation of them. Thus a
closer examination of their place of origin in the writings of subsequent
authors yields only the context into which the quotation has been
placed, not the Heraclitean context from which it was taken. The quo
tations and the sources, taken together, sail do not yield what is essen
tial: the definitive, all-articulating unity of the inner structure of Hera
clitus' writing. Only a constandy advancing insight into this structure
will reveal the point from which the individual fragments are speaking,
and in what sense each of them, as a saying, must be heard. Because
we can scarcely surmise what the well-spring is that gives the writing of
Heraclitus its unity, and because we find this source so difficult to
102
Aletheia (Heraclitus, Fragment B 16)
think, we are justified in calling this thinker "the Obscure." Even the
inherent meaning of what this epithet says to us remains obscure.
Heraclitus is called "the Obscure." But he is the Lucid. For he
tells of the lighting whose shining he attempts to call forth into the
language of thinking. Insofar as it illuminates, the lighting endures. We
call its illumination the lighting [die Lichtung]. What belongs to it, and
how and where it takes place, still remain to be considered. The word
"light" means lustrous, beaming, brightening. Lighting bestows the
shining, opens what shines to an appearance. The open is the realm of
unconcealment and is governed by disclosure. What belongs to the
latter, and whether and to what extent disclosing and lighting are the
Same, remain to be asked.
An appeal to the meaning of dXnOeofa accomplishes nothing, and
will never produce anything useful.* Further, we must ask whether
what is entertained under the rubrics "truth," "certainty," "objectiv
ity," and "reality" has the slightest bearing upon the direction in which
revealing and lighting point thought. Presumably, the thinking that
goes in such a direction has more at stake than a securing of objective
truth—in the sense of valid propositions. Why is it that we are ever and
again so quick to forget the subjectivity that belongs to every objectiv
ity? How does it happen that even when we do note that they belong
together, we still try to explain each from the standpoint of the other,
or introduce some third element which is supposed to embrace both
subject and object? Why is it that we stubbornly resist considering
even once whether the belonging-together of subject and object does
not arise from something that first imparts their nature to both the
object and its objectivity, and the subject and its subjectivity, and
hence is prior to the realm of their reciprocity? That our thinking finds
it so toilsome to be in this bestowal, or even on the lookout for it,
cannot be blamed on a narrowness of contemporary intellect or resis-
*Although Heidegger positively discourages us from doing so, we offer the follow
i n g philological information: riAr)8eofa is a substantive form constructed from dXpGrfc,
( - t q ) , an adjectival form of dXrjOeia T. Gaisford's Etymologicum Magnum (Oxford,
1S48), pp. 62, 5 1 , discusses it as follows: XIJ6UJ = XavBdvu): dXnGec td \xr\ ArfGn,
ononimov. Aijduils a collateral form of XavGdviD.I escape notice, am hidden, unseen or
forgotten by others. Gaisford describes dAn.de'Q as that which does not sink into XifOr), the
source of oblivion. Liddell-Scott translate dXnOe'c. as "unconcealed." Hence dXn8eofa
might be* rendered as "unconcealment."—TR.
103
tance to unsettling or disruptive views. Rather we may surmise some

thing else: that w e know too much and believe too readily ever to feel
at home in a questioning which is powerfully experienced. For that we
need the ability to wonder at what is simple, and to take up that
wonder as our abode.
Of course, "simple" assertion and repetition that the literal mean
ing of dXnOeofo. is "unconcealment" will not give us what is simple.
Unconcealment is the chief characteristic of that which has already
come forward into appearance and has left concealment behind. That is
the significance here of the a - , which only came to b e classified as the
alpha-privative b y a grammar based upon later Greek thought. The
connection with XijSri, concealment, and concealment itself do not
diminish in importance for our thinking simply because the uncon
cealed is immediately experienced only as what has come forward in
appearance, or what is present.
Wonder first begins with the question, "What does all this mean
and how could it happen?" How can w e arrive at such a beginning?
Perhaps by abandoning ourselves to a wonder which is on the lookout
for what we call lighting and unconcealing?
Thoughtful wonder speaks in questioning. Heraclitus says:
TO ur) SuvdvnoTcnuk; dv TIC; XdBoi;
H o w can o n e hide himself before that which n e v e r sets?

(Diels-Kranz)
The saying is numbered as Fragment 16. But because of its inner

significance and ultimate implications, perhaps we ought to consider it
the first. Heraclitus' saying is quoted by Clement of Alexandria in his
Paidagogos (Bk. I l l , chap. 10) to support a theological-educational pos
ition. H e writes:
XrfoeTai [!] uev ydp ICXDC; TO alo6r|Tdvcpux; Tiq.rd 6e vonrdv dSu'vardv
doTiv, rj oJq cprioiv 'HpaKXeiToq.
"Perhaps one can hide from the light perceived by the senses, but
it is impossible to do so before spiritual light, as Heraclitus
says. . . . " Clement is thinking about the ever-present God who sees
104
everything, even the sin committed in darkness. Thus his work The
Teacher says in another place (Bk. I l l , chap. 5): odruic. ydp udvux;
dntufc; nq 6iauevei, el ndviore oupnapeivai voufCoi TOV 0edv. "In this
way alone will a man never fall, if he hold to the belief that God is
everywhere present with him." Who would gainsay the fact that Clem
ent, pursuing his theologico-pedagogic intentions, put the words of
Heraclitus—seven centuries later—into a Christian frame of reference,
thereby imposing his own interpretation on them? The Church Father
was thinking about sinners hiding themselves from the light. Hera
clitus, on the other hand, speaks only about "remaining concealed."
Clement means the supersensible Light, rdv 8edv, Cod, the God of
Christian faith. Heraclitus, however, mentions only the never-setting.
Whether or not this "only"—emphasized by us—signifies a limitation
or something else is now, and will in what follows remain, an open
question.
What advantage would there be in arguing that this theological
interpretation of the fragment is simply incorrect? At best, such an
argument could leave the impression that the following remarks
cherish the notion that they engage Heraclitus in the one absolutely
correct way. Our task limits itself to getting closer to the words of the
Heraclitean saying. This could help to bring some future thinking
within range of still unheard intimations.
Since these proceed from the call under which thinking stands,
there is little to be gained from comparing thinkers and calculating
their proximity to these intimations. Rather, all our efforts should be
directed toward bringing ourselves closer to the realm of what is to be
thought by means of a dialogue with an early thinker.
Discerning minds understand that Heraclitus speaks in one way to
Plato, in another to Aristotle, in another to a Church Father, and in
others to Hegel and to Nietzsche. If one remains embroiled in a histor
ical grasp of these various interpretations, then one has to view each of
them as only relatively correct. Such a multiplicity necessarily
threatens us with the specter of relativism. Why? Because the histori
cal ledger of interpretations has already expunged any questioning
dialogue with the thinker—it probably never entered such dialogue in
the first place.
105
The respective difference of each dialogical interpretation of

thought is a sign of an unspoken fullness to which even Heraclitus
himself could only speak by following the path of the insights afforded
him. Wishing to pursue the "objectively correct" teaching of Heraclitus
means refusing to run the salutary risk of being confounded by the
truth of a thinking.
The following remarks lead to no conclusions. They point toward
the event [das Ereignis].
Heraclitus' saying is a question. The word with which the frag
ment ends—"end" understood as TC'AOC,—names that from which the
questioning begins. It is the domain in which thinking moves. The
word into which the question ascends is AdGoi. What could be easier to
establish than this: that XavGdvui, aorist e"Ao.6ov, means "I am hid
den"? Nonetheless, we are scarcely capable of immediately rediscover
ing just how this word speaks in Creek.
Homer (Odyssey, VIII, 83 ff.) tells how Odysseus, in the Phaea-
cian king's palace, covered his head each time at the minstrel Demo-
docus' song, whether happy or sad, and thus hidden from those pres
ent, wept. Verse 93 runs: e*v0' dAAouq uevndvtaq e"Aa'v8ave 6dxpua
Aeffkuv. Consistent with the spirit of our own language, we translate:
"Then he shed tears, without all the others noticing it." The Cerman
translation by Voss comes closer to what the Greek says, since it carries
the important verb £*Adv6ave over into the German formulation: "He
concealed his flowing tears from all the other guests." 'EAdvGave,
however, does not mean the transitive "he concealed," but "he re
mained concealed"—as the one who was shedding tears. "Remaining
concealed" is the key word in the Greek. German, on the other hand,
says: he wept, without the others noticing it. Correspondingly, we
translate the well-known Epicurean admonition AdGe (3iuioaq as "Live
in hiding." Thought from a Creek perspective, this saying means: "As
the one who leads his life, remain concealed (therein)." Concealment
here defines the way in which a man should be present among others.
By the manner of its saying, the Greek announces that concealing—
and therefore at the same time remaining unconcealed—exercises a
commanding preeminence over every other way in which what is pres
ent comes to presence. The fundamental trait of presencing itself is
106
determined by remaining concealed and unconcealed. One need not

begin with a seemingly capricious etymology of dAn.9eofa in order to
experience how universally the presencing of what is present comes to
language only in shining, self-manifesting, lying-before, arising, bring-
ing-itself-before, and in assuming an outward appearance.
All this, in its undisturbed harmony, would be unthinkable within
Greek existence and language if remaining-concealed/remaining-
unconcealed did not hold sway as that which really has no need to bring
itself expressly to language, since this language itself arises from it.
Accordingly, the Greek experience in the case of Odysseus does
not proceed from the premise that the guests present are represented
as subjects who in their subjective behavior fail to grasp weeping Odys
seus as an object of their perception. On the contrary, what governs
the Greek experience is a concealment surrounding the one in tears, a
concealment which isolates him from the others. Homer does not say:
Odysseus concealed his tears. Nor does the poet say: Odysseus con
cealed himself as one weeping. Rather, he says: Odysseus remained
concealed. We must ponder this matter ever more strenuously, even at
the risk of becoming diffuse and fastidious. A lack of sufficient insight
into this problem will mean, for us, that Plato's interpretation of pres
encing as 16ea remains either arbitrary or accidental.
A few verses before the one we have cited. Homer says (1. 86):
af6eTO ydp 4Pafn.Kaq ih' dcppdoi odxpua AefPurv. In keeping with
idiomatic German Voss translates: (Odysseus covered his head) "so that
the Phaeacians could not see his wet lashes." Voss in fact leaves the key
word untranslated: afoero. Odysseus shied away—as one shedding
tears before the Phaeacians. But doesn't this quite clearly mean the
same as: he hid himself before the Phaeacians out of a sense of shame?
Or must we also think shying away, ai6o3q, from remaining-concealed,
granted that we are striving to get closer to its essence as the Greeks
experienced it? Then "to shy away," would mean to withdraw and
remain concealed in reluctance or restraint [Verhoffen], keeping to
oneself.
Typically Greek, this poetic vision of Odysseus weeping beneath
his cloak makes clear how the poet feels the governance of
presencing—a meaning of Being which, though still unthought, has
107
already become destiny. Presenting is luminous self-concealing. Shy

ing away corresponds to it. It is a reserved remaining-concealed before
the closeness of what is present. It is the sheltering of what is present
within the intangible nearness of what remains in coming—that coming
which is an increasing self-veiling. Thus shying-away, and everything
related to it, must be thought in the brilliant light of remaining-
concealed.
Consequendy, we must also be prepared to consider more
thoughtfully another Greek word, whose stem is X0.8-. This is
dniXav6dveo6aL The correct translation is "to forget." On the basis of
this lexical correctness everything seems perfectly clear. We act as if
forgetting were the most transparent thing in the world. Only fleet-
ingly does anyone notice that there is a reference to "remaining con
cealed" in the corresponding Greek word.
But what does "forgetting" mean? Modern man, who puts all his
stock into forgetting as quickly as possible, certainly ought to know
what it is. But he does not. He has forgotten the essence of forgetting,
assuming he ever thought about it fully, i.e. thought it out within the
essential sphere of oblivion. The continuing indifference toward the
essence of forgetting does not result simply from the superficiality of
our contemporary way of life. What takes place in such indifference
comes from the essence of oblivion itself. It is inherent in it to with
draw itself and to founder in the wake of its own concealment. The
Greeks experienced oblivion, XrfOn., as a destining of concealment.
AavGdvouai says: I am—with respect to my relation to something
usually unconcealed—concealed from myself. The unconcealed, for its
own part, is thereby concealed—even as I am concealed from myself in
relation to it. What is present subsides into concealment in such a way
that I, because of this concealing, remain concealed from myself as the
one from whom what is present withdraws. At the same time, this very
concealing is itself thereby concealed. That is what takes place in the
occurrence to which we refer when we say: I have forgotten (some
thing). When we forget, something doesn't just slip away from us.
Forgetting itself slips into a concealing, and indeed in such a way that
we ourselves, along with our relation to what is forgotten, fall into
concealment. The Greeks, therefore, speaking in the middle voice,
108
intensify it: oriXavOdvouai. Thus they also identify the concealment

into which man falls by reference to its relation to what is withdrawn
from him by concealment.
Both in the way the Greek employs XavGdveiv, to remain con
cealed, as a basic and predominant verb, as well as in the experience of
the forgetting of remaining-concealed, this much is made sufficiently
clear: XavOdvui, I remain concealed, does not signify just a form of
human behavior among many others, but identifies the basic trait of
every response to what is present or absent—if not, indeed, the basic
trait of presence and absence themselves.
Now, if this word XrfGu), I remain concealed, speaks to us in the
saying of a thinker, and if perhaps it concludes a thoughtful question,
then we are bound to ponder the word and what it says as comprehen
sively and as persistendy as we can today.
Every remaining-concealed includes a relation to the sort of thing
from which the concealed has withdrawn, but toward which in many
cases it remains directly inclined. The Greek names in the accusative
that to which what has withdrawn into concealment remains related:
d\Q' dXXouc, uevndvTaq e*Xdv0ave.
Heraclitus asks:raoc.dv TIC. XdOoi "how could anyone remain
concealed?" Relative to what? To what is named in the preceding
words, with which the fragment begins: rd ur] 6uvdvnoTC, that which
never sets. The "anyone" mentioned here is consequendy not the
subject in relation to which something else remains concealed, but the
"anyone" who comes into question with respect to the possibility of his
own remaining-concealed. Heraclitus' question is not first and
foremost a consideration of concealment and unconcealment with re
gard to the sort of men whom we, with our modern habits of represen
tation, like to interpret as carriers—or even creators—of unconceal
ment. Heraclitus' question, expressed in modern terms, thinks the
reverse. It ponders the relation of man to "the never-setting" and
thinks human being from this relation.
With the words "the never-setting" we are translating—as though
it were self-evident—the Greek phrase TO pr] 6uvdv nore. What do
these words signify? Where do we get our information about them?
This seems the obvious question to explore, even if the pursuit should
109
lead us far from the saying of Heraclitus. Here, however, and in similar
instances, we easily run the risk of searching too far afield. For we
presume the phrase is clear enough to warrant an immediate and ex
clusive search for the sort of thing to which "the never-setting" must,
according to Heraclitus' thinking, be attributed. But our inquiry will
not take us so far. Nor shall we decide whether the question can be
asked in that way. The attempt to render such a decision would fall
away once it became clear that the question (to what does Heraclitus
ascribe the never-setting?) is superfluous. But how can this be made
clear? How can we avoid the danger of inquiring too far afield?
Only if we realize to what degree the phrase id ur) 6tivdv noxe
gives us quite enough to think about, once we clarify what it says.
The key is id 5uvov. It is related to 6dui, which means to envelop,
to submerge. Aueiv says: to go into something—the sun goes into the
sea, is lost in it. Ilpdq Sdvovroq rjXiou means toward the setting sun,
toward evening; ve"<pea 6uvai means to sink into the clouds, to disap
pear behind clouds. Setting, as the Creeks thought of it, takes place as
a going into concealment.
We can easily see, if at first only tentatively, that the two main-
—because substantial—words with which the fragment begins and
ends, id 6uvov and XdOoi, say the Same. But in what sense this is true
still remains in question. Meanwhile, we have already gained some
thing when we perceive that the fragment, in its questioning, moves
within the realm of concealing. Or do we, as soon as we pursue this line
of thinking, lapse into gross error? It seems so, for the fragment names
id \xi\ 6uvdvnoTe, that which never does set. This is obviously some
thing that never goes into concealment. Concealment is excluded. O f
course the fragment would still ask about remaining-concealed. But it
questions the possibility of concealment so emphatically that the ques
tion amounts to an answer—which rejects the possibility of
remaining-concealed. In the form of a simply rhetorical question, the
affirmative proposition says: no one can remain concealed before the
never-setting. This sounds almost like a maxim.
As soon as we hear the key words id 6uvov and XdGoi in the
unbroken unity of the fragment, and no longer extract them as indi
vidual terms, it becomes evident that the fragment does not operate in
110
Aktheia (Heraclitus, Fragment B 16)
the realm of concealment, but in the utterly opposite sphere. A slight

transposition of the construction into the form id urfnoxe öüvov clarifies
at once what the fragment is talking about: the never-setting. I f we
change the negative expression into a completely affirmative one, we
then hear for the first time what the fragment means by the
"never-setting"—i.e. the ever-rising. In Greek phraseology, this
would have to be TO del cpdov. This turn of speech is not found in
Heraclitus. The thinker speaks only of tpiJoic.. In this we hear a primal
word of Greek thought. Unexpectedly, then, we get an answer to our
question as to what it is whose setting Heraclitus denies.
But can this indication of cpdoiq as an answer satisfy us, so long as it
remains obscure how we are to understand cpdoic.? And what help are
impressive-sounding epithets like "primal word," if the grounds and
the abysses [Gründe und Abgründe] of Greek thinking so little concern
us that we can cloak them in arbitrarily chosen terms borrowed in an
utterly thoughtless fashion from our current stock of ideas? If indeed rd
uiftOTe öüvov is to signify cpuoic., then the reference to cpdoic, will not
tell us what TÖ un. 6üvdv nore is, but the other way around—"the
never-setting" urges us to consider how cpdoic. is experienced as the
ever-rising. And what is this latter but what is always-enduring and
self-revealing? The saying of the fragment accordingly takes place in
the realm of disclosure, not that of concealment.
How, and with respect to what content, must we think the realm
of disclosure and disclosing itself, so as not to run the risk of chasing
mere terms? The more determined we are to keep from intuitively
representing the ever-rising, the never-setting, as some present thing,
the more urgent will be the discovery of what it is to which "never-
setting" has been given as an attribute.
The desire to know is offen praiseworthy; only not when it is rash.
But we could scarcely be proceeding more deliberately, not to say
fastidiously, when we remain at all times close to the words of the
fragment. Have we in fact stayed with them? Or has a barely noticeable
transposition of words seduced us to haste, and thus to waste an oppor
tunity for observing something crucial? ApparenÜy so. We transposed
Td \ir) 6uvdv nore into the form TÖ urfnore ötfvov, and correcdy trans
lated urfnore as "never" and TO 6Jvov as "that which sets." We consid-
111
ered neither urf, which is stated independently before 6uvov, nor noTtf,
the word that follows 6uvov. We therefore failed to pay attention to a
hint proffered us by the negation urf and the adverb note* for a more
considered interpretation of Suvov. Mif is a word of negation. Like
OUK, it signifies a "not," but in a difierense sense. OUK denies something
to whatever is being affected by the negation. Mrf, on the other hand,
attributes something to whatever comes within its sphere of negation, a
refusal, a distancing, a preventing. Mr) nore' says: Not. ever
(Well, what then?). does something essentially unfold otherwise
than the way it does.
In Heraclitus' fragment urf and nore* bracket 6uvov. Viewed
grammatically, the word is a participle. Up until now we have trans
lated it in the apparently more natural nominative meaning. This has
served to emphasize the equally natural view that Heraclitus is speak
ing about the sort of thing that never falls prey to setting. But the
negating pi). . nore touches on a certain land of enduring and essen
tial occurring \Wesen], The negation therefore refers to the verbal
sense of the participle Suvov. The same is true of the urf in the e*dv of
Parmenides. The phrase id pi) 6uvdv note says: the not setting ever.
If we dare for a moment to change the negative phrase back to an
affirmative one again, then it becomes clear that Heraclitus thinks the
ever-rising; not something to which rising is qualitatively attributed,
nor the totality affected by the rising. Rather, he thinks the rising, and
only this. The ever and always-enduring rising is named in the thought
fully spoken word cpuoic.. We must translate it with the unfamiliar but
fitting term "upsurgence," corresponding to the more common
"emergence."
Heraclitus thinks the never-setting. In Greek thinking, this is the
never-going-into-concealment. In what domain, therefore, does the
saying of the fragment take place? According to its sense, it speaks of
concealment—i.e. it speaks of never going into concealment. At the
same time, the saying directly signifies the always-enduring rising, the
ever and always-enduring disclosure. The phrase id pi) 6uvdv nore, the
not setting ever, means both revealing and concealing—not as two
different occurrences merely jammed together, but as one and the
112
Same. If we pay strict attention to this fact, then we are prevented from
carelessly putting iriv cpuoiv in place of TO ur) 6uvdv noxe. Or is that
still possible, perhaps even inevitable? In the latter case, however, we
must no longer think of <puoiq simply as rising. At bottom, it never
means that anyhow. No less a figure than Heraclitus says so, clearly
and enigmatically at once. Fragment 123 reads:
•tiioiq KpJnrco6ai<piAei.
Whether the translation "the essence of things likes to hide" even

remotely points toward the realm of Heraclitean thinking will not be
further discussed here. Perhaps we should not attribute such a com
monplace to Heraclitus, even apart from the fact that an "essence of
things" first became a matter for thought after Plato. We must heed
something else: cpifcnq and KpunreoOai, rising (self-revealing) and con
cealing, are named in their closest proximity. This might seem strange
at first glance. For if cpdoiq as rising turns away from, or indeed against,
something, then it is Kpdnreo6ai, self-concealing. But Heraclitus is
thinking both in closest proximity. Indeed their nearness is explicitly
mentioned. Nearness is defined by cpiAel. Self-revealing loves self-
concealing. What is this supposed to mean? Does rising seek out con
cealment? Where then must concealment be—and in what sense of
"be?" Or does cpdcnq merely have some kind of sporadically appearing
predilection for being a self-concealing, just for a change, rather than a
rising? Does the fragment say that rising willingly changes into self-
concealing, so that now the one, now the other holds sway? By no
means. This interpretation misses the meaning of cpiAei, wherein the
relation between cpdoiq and KpdnreoOaiis named. The interpretation
forgets, above all, that decisive matter which the fragment gives us as
food for thought: the way in which rising occurs essentially as self-
revealing. If, in discussing cpdoiq, we dare use the expression "occur
essentially" [wesen], cpdoiq does not mean "essence" [das Wesen], the
d TI, the "what" of things. Neither here nor in Fragments 1 and 112,
where he uses the form xard cpdoiv, does Heraclitus speak of it. The
fragment does not think cpdoiq as the essence of things, but rather
thinks the essential unfolding (Wesen as a verb), of cpdoiq.
113
Rising as such is already inclined toward self-closing. The former

is concealed in the latter. KpdrrreoOai is, as self-concealing, not a mere
self-closing but a sheltering in which the essential possibility of rising is
preserved—to which rising as such belongs. Self-concealing guarantees
self-revealing its essential^ unfolding. In self-concealing, inversely,
what reigns is the restraint of the inclination to self-revealing. What
would a self-concealing be if it did not restrain itself in its tendency
toward rising?
And so q>doic. and KpdrrreoOai are not separated from each other,
but mutually inclined toward each other. They are the Same. In such
an inclination each first bestows upon the other its proper nature. This
inherently reciprocal favoring is the essence of <piXeiv and of cpiAia In
this inclination by which rising and self-concealing lean toward each
other the full essence of (pdoiq consists.
Therefore the translation of Fragment 123, tpuoiq icpdrrreoOai
(piAei, could run: "Rising (out of self-concealing) bestows favor upon
self-concealing."
Still, we are thinking <puoiq superficially if we think it as merely
rising and letting rise, and if we continue to attribute qualities of any
land to it. By doing that we overlook what is decisive: the fact that
self-revealing not only never dispenses with concealing, but actually
needs it, in order to occur essentially in the way it occurs \Wesen, west]
as dis-closing. Only when we think <puoiq in this sense may we say TI)V
qtdoiv instead of rd pi) Suvdvnore.
Both names designate the realm which the reciprocal intimacy of
revealing and concealing founds and governs. Within this intimacy is
hidden the uniqueness and oneness of "Ev the One—which early
thinkers presumably beheld in the wealth of its simplicity, which has
remained closed to posterity. Td \a\ 6uvdvnore, "the never going into
concealment," never falls prey to concealment only to be dissolved in
it, but remains committed to self-concealing, because as the
never-going-info it is always a rising-out-o/ concealment. For
Creek thinking,KpdnTeo9ai,though unuttered, is said in Td pr] 6uvdv
loie, and qjiioiq is thereby named in its full character, which is gov
erned by the cpiAia between revealing and self-concealing.
114
Perhaps the cpiXia of cpiXeiv in Fragment 123 and the dpuovin,

dcpavrfc, in Fragment 54 are the Same—granted that the jointure
thanks to which revealing and concealing are mutually joined must
remain the invisible of all invisibles, since it bestows shining on what
ever appears.
The reference to cpuoiq, cpiXia, dpuovin, has diminished the
vagueness in which TO \IT) 6ú"vdv nore, "the never in any case setting,"
was first heard. But it is difficult to suppress any longer the wish that
instead of this explanation of unconcealing and concealing which has no
images and no fixed place, some clear information might surface, indi
cating just where the phrase we have identified properly belongs. We
arrive too late with this question, of course. Why? Because TÓ urj
óüvdvnoTC names the realm of all realms for early thinking. It is not,
however, the highest genus which subordinates different species of
realms to it. It is the abode wherein every possible "whither" of a
belonging-to rests. Thus the realm, in the sense of \ir) 6úvdv nore is
unique by virtue of the extent of its gathering reach. Everything that
belongs in the event of a rightly experienced revealing grows upward
and together (concrescit) in this realm. It is the absolutely concrete.
But how can this realm be represented as concrete on the basis of the
foregoing abstract expositions? This question appears justified only as
long as we fail to see that we must not precipitously assault Heraclitus'
thought with distinctions like "concrete" and "abstract," "sensuous"
and "nonsensuous," "perceptible" and "imperceptible." That they are
and have long been current among us does not guarantee their sup
posedly unlimited importance. It could very well happen that Hera
clitus, precisely when he utters a word which names something per
ceptible is just then thinking what is absolutely imperceptible. Thus it
becomes obvious how little we profit from such distinctions.
According to our interpretation, we can replace xd ur] 6uvdv nore
with TÓ del cpuov on two conditions. We must think cpdoic. from self-
concealing, and we must think cpuov as a verb. A search for the word
deicpuov in Heraclitus proves fruitless. We find instead the word
dei'Cwov, ever-living, in Fragment 30. The verb "to live" speaks in the
largest, uttermost, and inmost significance, which Nietzsche too, in his
IJ5
note from 1885/86, was thinking when he said: " 'Being'—we have no
conception of it other than as 'life.'—How can something dead 'be'? "
(Wt/Z to Power, no. 582).
How must we understand our word "life," if we accept it as a
faithful translation for the Creek word fryv? In £rjv, £du> the root (,a-
speaks. It is, of course, impossible to conjure up the Creek meaning of
"life" from this sound. But we do notice that the Creek language,
above all in the speech of Homer and Pindar, uses words like (tiOeoq,
Capevijq, Cdnupoq. Linguistics explains that Co.- signifies an intensifica
tion. ZdOeoq accordingly means "most divine," "very holy"; fauevrfq,
"very forceful"; fc'nupoq, "most fiery." But this "intensification" means
neither a mechanical nor a dynamic increase. Pindar calls various
locales, mountains, meadows, the banks of a river, CdGeoq, especially
when he wants to say that the gods, the shining ones who cast their
gaze about, often permitted themselves actually to be seen here. They
came to presence by appearing here. These locales are especially holy
because they arise purely to allow the appearing of the shining one. So
too does âpevrfq mean that which allows the imminent advance of the
storm to billow up in its full presencing.
Za- signifies the pure letting-rise within appearing, gazing upon,
breaking in upon, and advancing, and all their ways. The verb £r]v
means rising into the light. Homers says, Cflv xal dpdv <pdoq rjeXfoio,
"to live, and this means to see the light o f the sun." The Creek £rjv,
£u>rf, q*ujov must not be interpreted in either a zoological or a broader
biological sense. What is named in the Creek qujov lies so far from any
biologically conceived animality that the Greeks could even call their
gods qoja How so? Those who cast their gaze about are those who rise
into view. The gods do not experience as animals are. But animality
n
does belong to Cr]v ' a special sense. The rising of animals into the
open remains closed and sealed in itself in a strangely captivating way.
Self-revealing and self-concealing in the animal are one in such a way
that human speculation practically runs out of alternatives when it
rejects mechanistic views of animality—which are always feasible—as
firmly as it avoids anthropomorphic interpretations. Because the ani
mal does not speak, self-revealing and self-concealing, together with
116
their unity, possess a wholly different life-essence [Lebe-Wesen] with

animals.
But Ourf and cpuoiq say the same: deffruov means defcpuov, which
means id ur] 6uvdv note.
In Fragment 30, the word defOuov follows nup, fire, less as a
qualifier than as a separate name which begins the saying anew and
which says how the fire is to be thought—as ever-enduring rising. With
the word "fire" Heraclitus names that which otfre nq Geoiv o J t e dvGpuf-
raov e"nofr|oev, "that which neither any of the gods nor any mortal
brought forth," what on the contrary always already rests in itself be
fore gods and men as cpdoiq, what abides in itself and thus preserves all
coming. But this is the xdcnioq. We say "world," and think it improp
erly so long as we represent it exclusively, or even primarily, after the
fashion of cosmology or philosophy of nature.
World is enduring fire, enduring rising in the full sense of cpdoiq.
Though we are speaking of an eternal world-conflagration here, we
must not first imagine a world which is independent and is then set
ablaze and consumed by some ever-burning torch. Rather, the world-
ing of world, xdnup, xd defûiov, TO uri. Suvdvnore, are all the Same.
Therefore, the essence of the fire which Heraclitus thinks is not as
transparendy obvious as the image of a glowing flame might suggest.
We need only heed ordinary usage, which speaks the word mJp from
diverse perspectives and thereby points toward the essential fullness of
what is intimated in the thoughtful saying of the word.
FIup names the sacrificial fire, the oven's fire, the campfire, but
also the glow of a torch, the scintillation of the stars. In "fire," lighting,
glowing, blazing, soft shining hold sway, and that which opens an ex
panse in brightness. In "fire," however, consuming, welding, cauteriz
ing, extinguishing also reign. When Heraclitus speaks of fire, he is
primarily thinking of the lighting governance, the direction [das
Weisen] which gives measure and takes it away. According to a frag
ment in Hippolytus, discovered and convincingly authenticated by
Karl Reinhardt (Hermes 77 [1942], 1 ff.) TO nup is for Heraclitus also xd
cppdviuov, the meditative [das Sinnende]. It indicates the direction of
everything, laying before it that to which it belongs. T h e medita-
117
tive fire which lays before gathers all together and secures it in its
essence. The meditative fire is the gathering which lays everything
there before us (into presenting). Td IIup is d Adyoq. Its meditating is
the heart, i.e. the lighting-sheltering expanse, of the world. In a multi-
plicity of different names—q>doiq,mJp, Adyoq, dppoviri.ndAeuoq, e"piq,
(<piAfa), e*v Heraclitus thinks the essential fullness of the Same.
From beginning to end and back again this list refers to the phrase
that begins Fragment 16: id pi) 6uvdvnore, the not setting ever. What
is named in it must be heard in consonance with all those fundamental
words of Heraclitean thinking to which we have referred.
In the meantime, we have seen that never entering into conceal
ment is the enduring rising out of self-concealing. In this way does the
world fire glow and shine and meditate. If we think it as lighting, this
includes not only the brilliance, but also the openness wherein every
thing, especially the reciprocally related, comes into shining. Lighting
is therefore more than illuminating, and also more than laying bare.
Lighting is the meditatively gathering bringing-before into the open. It
is the bestowal of presenting.
The event of lighting is the world. The meditatively gathering
lighting which brings into the open is revealing; it abides in self-
concealing. Self-concealing belongs to it as that which finds its essence
in revealing, and which therefore cannot ever be a mere going into
concealment, never a setting.
Iluiq dv Tiq AdOoi; "How then could anyone remain concealed?"
the fragment asks, with reference to the forementioned TO 6uvdv
note, which stands in the accusative. In translating, we make it the
object of a preposition in the dative case—"How could anyone remain
hidden before it, that is, before the lighting?" Without giving a reason,
the form of the question rejects such a possibility. The reason must
already lie in what is questioned itself. All too quickly we are prepared
to bring it forward: since the never-setting, the lighting, sees and
notices everything, nothing can hide before it. But there is no mention
of seeing and noticing in the fragment. Above all, however, the frag
ment does not say nuiqdv TI, "how could something .?"but nojqdv
riq, "how could someone ?" According to the fragment, the light
ing is in no way related to whatever just happens to be present. Who is
118
Aletheia (HeraclUus, Fragment B 16)
meant by the tie,? Our first impulse is to think of a human person,

especially since the question is posed by a mortal and addressed to
human beings. But because a thinker is speaking here, particularly that
thinker who abides near Apollo and Artemis, his speaking could be a
dialogue with those who cast their gaze on things, and could co-signify
in rfq/'anyone," the gods. We are strengthened in this surmise by
Fragment 30, which says, oJre TIC, Oeoiv oJre dvOpuincuv. Similarly,
Fragment 53, often cited, but incompletely for the most part, mentions
mortals and immortals together when it says ndXeuoq, the setting-
apart-from-each-other (the lighting), manifests some of those present as
gods, others as men, and brings some forward into appearance as slaves
and others as free. This says: the enduring lighting lets gods and men
come to presence in unconcealment in such a way that none of them
could remain concealed; not because he is observed by someone, but
because—and only because—each comes to presence. The presenting
of gods, however, is other than that of men. As oafuoveq, Oedovxeq,
the gods are those who look into the lighting of what is present, which
concerns mortals after their own fashion, as they let what is present he
before them in its presence and as they continue to take heed of it.
The lighting, therefore, is no mere brightening and lightening.
Because presenting means to come enduringly forward from conceal
ment to unconcealment, the revealing-concealing lighting is concerned
with the presenting of what is present. Fragment 16, however, does
not speak of just any and every something, rf, which could come to
presence, but unequivocally and only of rfq, someone among gods and
men. Thus the fragment seems to name only a limited range of what is
present. Or, rather than limit us to a particular realm of what is pres
ent, does the fragment perhaps contain something exceptional which
shatters limits and concerns the realm of all realms? Is its exceptional
character such that the fragment seeks to know what tacitly collects and
embraces also those present beings which are not to be counted as
among the regions of gods and men, but which are nevertheless human
and divine in another sense—present beings such as plants and ani
mals, mountains, seas, and stars?
But in what else could the exceptional character of gods and men
consist, if not in the fact that precisely they in their relation to the
119
lighting can never remain concealed? Why is it that they cannot? B e

cause their relation to the lighting is nothing other than the lighting
itself, in that this relation gathers men and gods into the lighting and
keeps them there.
The lighting not only illuminates what is present, but gathers it
together and secures it in advance in presencing. But of what sort is the
presenting of gods and men? They are not only illuminated in the
lighting, but are also enlightened from it and toward it. Thus they can,
in their way, accomplish the lighting (bring it to the fullness of its
essence) and thereby protect it. Gods and men are not only lighted by a
light—even if a supersensible one—so that they can never hide them
selves from it in darkness; they are luminous in their essence. They are
alight [er-lichtet]; they are appropriated into the event of lighting, and
therefore never concealed. On the contrary, they are re-vealed,
thought in still another sense. Just as those who are far distant belong
to the distance, so are the revealed—in the sense now to be thought
—entrusted to the lighting that keeps and shelters them. According to
their essence, they are trans-posed [ver-legt] to the concealing of the
mystery, gathered together, belonging to the Adyoq in dpoXoyeiv
(Fragment 50).
Did Heraclitus intend his question as we have just been discussing
it? Was what this discussion has said within the range of his notions?
Who knows? Who can say? But perhaps the fragment, independendy
of Heraclitus' own representational range, says the sort of thing our
tentative discussion has put forward. The fragment does say it—
provided a thoughtful dialogue may bring it to speak. The fragment
says it, and leaves it unuttered. The paths that lead through the region
of the unuttered remain questions, questions which always evoke only
such things as were manifested long ago on those paths under diverse
disguises.
The fundamentally interrogative character of the fragment indi
cates that Heraclitus is contemplating the revealing-concealing light
ing, the world fire, in its scarcely perceptible relation to those who are
en-lightened in accord with their essence, and who therefore hearken
to and belong to the lighting in an exceptional way.
Or does the fragment speak out of an experience of thinking which
has already weighed every step? Might Heraclitus' question only be
120
saying that evidently there is no way possible for the relation of the
world fire to gods and men to be other than this: gods and men belong
in the lighting not only as lighted and viewed, but also as invisible,
bringing the lighting with them in their own way, preserving it and
handing it down in its endurance?
In this case the fragment, with its questioning, could give voice to
a thoughtful wonder, which stands expectantly [verhofft] before that
relation wherein the lighting takes the essence of gods and men unto
itself. The questioning saying would then correspond to what is ever
and again worthy of wonder and is preserved in its worth by wonder.
It is impossible to estimate how much and how clearly Heraclitus'
thinking presaged the realm of all realms. That the fragment moves
within the realm of the lighting cannot be doubted as soon as we
consider ever more clearly this one matter: the beginning and the end
of the fragment name revealing and concealing—particularly with re
spect to their interconnection. We do not even require a separate refer
ence to Fragment 50, in which the revealing-concealing gathering is
identified as being entrusted to mortals in such a way that their essence
unfolds in this: their correspondence or noncorrespondence to the
Adyoc,.
We are too quick to believe that the mystery of what is to be
thought always lies distant and deeply hidden under a hardly penetra
ble layer of strangeness. On the contrary, it has its essential abode in
what is near by, which approaches what is coming into presence and
preserves what has drawn near. The presenting of the near is too close
for our customary mode of representational thought—which exhausts
itself in securing what is present—to experience the governance of the
near, and without preparation to think it adequately. Presumably, the
mystery that beckons in what is to be thought is nothing other than
essentially what we have attempted to suggest in the name the "light
ing." Everyday opinion, therefore, self-assuredly and stubbornly
bypasses the mystery. Heraclitus knew this. Fragment 72 runs:
nil u d X i o r a 6in.v£Ku5c dpiXouoi Advu>i, TOUTOJI 6iacpe'povTai, KO! olq Ka6'

r|pe'pav e y x u p o u o i , TOUTO a d r o i q c ^ v a (paivcioL
F r o m that to which for t h e most part they a r e bound and by which t h e y a r e

thoroughly sustained, t h e Adyoc;. from that they separate themselves; and it
121
b e c o m e s manifest: w h a t e v e r they daily e n c o u n t e r remains foreign (in its p r e

senting) to t h e m . *
Mortals are irrevocably bound to the revealing-concealing gather

ing which lights everything present in its presencing. But they turn
from the lighting, and turn only toward what is present, which is what
immediately concerns them in their everyday commerce with each
other. They believe that this trafficking in what is present by itself
creates for them a sufficient familiarity with it. But it nonetheless
remains foreign to them. For they have no inkling of what they have
been entrusted with: presencing, which in its lighting first allows what
is present to come to appearance. Adyoq, in whose lighting they come
and go, remains concealed from them, and forgotten.
The more familiar to them everything knowable becomes, the
more foreign it is to them—without their being able to know this. They
would become aware of all this if only they would ask: how could
anyone whose essence belongs to the lighting ever withdraw from
receiving and protecting the lighting? How could he, without im
mediately discovering that the everyday can seem quite ordinary to
him only because this ordinariness is guilty of forgetting what initially
brings even the apparently self-evident into the light of what is pres
ent?
Everyday opinion seeks truth in variety, the endless variety of
novelties which are displayed before it. It does not see the quiet gleam
(the gold) of the mystery that everlastingly shines in the simplicity of
the lighting. Heraclitus says (Fragment 9):
dvouq o o p p a r ' dv dXcfoGai pdXAov if xpuodv.
"Asses choose hay rather than gold."
•Diels-Kranz (I, 167) translate, . from the Meaning with which for the most
part they go about (from that which governs the totality), from that they separate them
selves, and the things they encounter every day seem strange to them." A more fluent
translation appears in the excellent French collection by Jean Brun, Heraclite. ou le
philosophe de Teternel retour (Paris: Seghers, 1965), p. 188: "However closely united
they are to the Logos which governs the world, they separate themselves from it,
etc."—TH.
122
But the golden gleam of the lighting's invisible shining cannot be

grasped, because it is not itself something grasping. Rather, it is the
purely appropriating event [das reine Ereignen]. The invisible shining
of the lighting streams from wholesome self-keeping in the self-
restraining preservation of destiny. Therefore the shining of the light
ing is in itself at the same time a self-veiling—and is in that sense what
is most obscure.
Heraclitus is called d SKoxeivdc.. He will also retain this name in
the future. He is the Obscure, because he thinks questioning^ into the
lighting.
123
Glossary
das Abendland the West

das A b e n d - L a n d the land o f evening
abgehen to decline, depart
d e r Abgrund abyss
die Abwesenheit absence
achten to heed, pay attention to
in-die-Acht-nehmen ( v o e i v ) to take h e e d o f
die Ankunft advent, arrival
d e r Anspruch claim
anwesen t o c o m e to p r e s e n c e
das Anwesen (ddv) presencing
das Anwesende ( e o v r a ) what is p r e s e n t
die Anwesenheit presence
das Aufgehen rising
das Aussehen (elooç, Ibéa) form, o u t e r
appearance
das B e h a r r e n persistence
b e h a r r e n auf t o insist on, persist in
beisammen-vor-liegen-Lassen (Xtfyeiv) to let-lie-together-
before
der Bereich realm, domain
bergen to shelter, s e c u r e , conceal
entbergen to disclose, reveal
das Sichentbergen ((puoiq) self-revealing
verbergen to conceal, hide
das Sichverbergen (KpunieoGai) self-concealing
die Beständigung continuance
d e r Brauch (xpeuiv) usage, use, need, c u s t o m
brauchen to need, use, n e e d to use
125
GLOSSARY
brachen (frui) to brook, enjoy, have

usufruct
aas Denken ( v o c l v ) thinking

andenken r e m e m b e r , recall, recollect
bedenken think of, consider
das Denkwürdige what is worthy of thought, t h e
thought-provoking
das z u - D e n k e n d e what is to b e thought, what is for
thinking
dichten poetize
dunkel (oKOTeivdq) o b s c u r e , dark
eigentlich proper, genuine

eigens expressly, explicitly
einholen to collect
das E i n z i g - E i n e f E v ) the unique o n e
einen to unify, unite
das E n t b e r g e n disclosure
entlang (Karri) along the lines o f
ereignen to appropriate
sich e r e i g n e n to c o m e to pass
das E r e i g n i s the e v e n t
die F r ü h e dawn, early times

der Fug (6fKn) o r d e r
der Un-Fug (ooncfa) disorder
die F u g e jointure
die U n - F u g e disjunction
fugen to join
verfugen to conjoin, enjoin
die G e g e n d expanse, region, province

das Geheiss call, g e s t u r e
gehören belong
hören hear
horchen hearken
das G e h ö r attunement
ein Gesagtes something said
126
Glossary
ein Gespräch conversation

ein Gesprochenes something spoken, utterance
die Geschichte history
die Historie historiography
das Geschick destiny, destining. Fate
das Geschick des Seins the destiny(-ing) of Being
das Gesicht (i6ea) aspect
das Gleiche what is identical or alike
der Graben gap, gully
der Grund ground, reason (for)
die Helle brightness, brilliance
die Herkunft arrival emergence, origin
die Hut protection
Je-weilen to linger awhile

das je-weilige Anwesende what lingers awhile in presence;
that which for the time being is
das je und je Wedige what in each case lingers
lassen to let
bei-sammen-vor-liegen-Lassen to let-lie-together-before
loslassen to release
legen (Ae'yeiv) to lay
die lesende Lege the Laying that gathers
lesen to gather, read
die Lese the vintage, gathering
die Auslese the selection
das Erlesene the to-be-selected
lichten to clear, lighten, illuminate
die Lichtung the clearing, lighting
die lichtende-bergende- the gathering that clears and
Versammlung shelters
liegen to lie
massgebend definitive, standard
die Nähe nearness, proximity
der Ort (idnoc.) place
127
GLOSSARY
die Ortschaft abode
das Rätsel riddle, enigma

das Rätselwort enigmatic key word
das Recht (6<Kn) right, justice
das Unrecht (d6ucfa) wrong, injustice
der Ruch reck
ruchlos reckless
die Rücksicht consideration
rücksichtlos inconsiderate
die Sage the saying (verbal)

sammeln to gather
sich sammeln to assemble
die Sammlung the gathering, coordination
die Versammlung the assembly(-ing)
der Satz sentence, proposition
schätzen to esteem
scheinen to shine, appear
der Schein shining, appearance
das Erscheinen appearance (verbal)
der Anschein semblance, apparition
der Vorschein prominence, appearance
schicken to send
sich schicken to devote oneself to, dispatch
self toward
schickliches appropriate, fitting
geschickt werden to become skillful
der Schick calling, vocational skill
das Geschickliche Fate, the fateful itself
geschicklich fateful
das Geschick destiny, destining. Fate
die Schickung dispensation
sein (elvat) to be
das Sein (éov) Being
das Seiende (e'dvTa) being(s)
das Seiende-im-Ganzen being-in-totality
das Selbe (TO auid) the Same
die Sprache language, speech
128
Glossary
der Spruch fragment, saying

Strafe und Busse r e c o m p e n s e and penalty
übersetzen translate, cross o v e r

untergehen (6uvov) t o go down, set
das niemals U n t e r g e h e n d e t h e never-setting
die U n v e r b o r g e n h e i t unconcealment
die V e r b o r g e n h e i t concealment
verborgenbleiben to remain c o n c e a l e d
vergessen (eniAavOdveodai) to forget
die Vergessenheit des Seins t h e oblivion of Being
das V e r n e h m e n apprehension, perception
die V e r s a m m l u n g assembly, gathering
die Verwindung t h e surmounting (of)
das Vorhandene something a t hand
d e r Vorschein prominence, appearance
in-den-Vorschein-bringen t o bring forward into view
z u m Vorschein k o m m e n to c o m e forward into a p p e a r a n c e ,
to c o m e to t h e fore
das Vorstellen representational thought
wahren (die Wahrheit) to p r e s e r v e

die W a h m i s preservation
walten to hold sway, reign, rule, d o m i n a t e
die W e i l e the while
weilen t o linger
wesen to o c c u r essentially, p r e s e n c e
das W e s e n e s s e n c e , essential being
die Zusammengehörigkeit belonging-together

die Zuteilung ( M o i p a ) a p p o r t i o n m e n t , allotment
die Zwiefalt the duality, twofold (of Being and
beings)
die Entfaltung d e r Zwiefalt the unfolding o f the twofold
129

Heidegger - Early Greek Thinking (HarperCollins)

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Martin Heidegger

Cover design by Charles Furman

FIRST HARPER & ROW PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED IN 1984

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976.

Introduction by David Farrell Krett

1. The Anaximander Fragment

2. Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)

3. Moira (Pannenides VIII, 34-41)

4. Aletheia (Heraclitus, Fragment B 16)

This book contains English translations of four essays written by

Duquesne University, Bruce Foltz, Annabel Learned, Sherry Gray,

NOTE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

by David Farrell Krell

In "The Anaximander Fragment" Heidegger remains preoccupied

"The Anaximander Fragment" is the last essay of the book

T h o u g h t p a t h s , which a r e indeed past when one has passed by t h e m —

Four fragments of early Greek thinking dominate Heidegger's

relation to which it is u t t e r e d you c a n n o t find thinking. F o r t h e r e neither is

respectively as "Being" and "the world of things," the German lexicons

itself a present entity which is variously named ibéa, èvépyc\a, actus

Nietzsche calls the disappearance of ontological ground "the death oi

philosophy is the expanding planetary dominion of technology. Given

At the end to arrive at early Greek thinking: there is something

O ihr Stimmen des Geschicks, ihr Wege des Wanderers!

Und Hügeln zu wohnen, sonnig, wo der Weg ist

The Anaximander Fragment

It is considered the oldest fragment of Western thinking. Anaxi-

Thus translates the young Nietzsche in a treatise completed in

The translations by Nietzsche and Diels arise from different inten­

Anaximander fragment. Furthermore, Hegel too shares the predomin­

Do we stand in the very twilight of the most monstrous transfor­

•Land dei Abends, Abend-land. In German Abendhnd means Occident, or "the

history is still for us an indispensable tool for making the historical

What comes to language in the fragment? The question is ambigu-

dvra means manifold being in totality. The second clause begins:

flattened or thinned out, but rather far-reaching, rich, containing much

completion of metaphysics the Being of beings is addressed in these

Neither is it clear and firmly established what we ourselves are

epoche of Being belongs to Being itself; we are thinking it in terms of

fact that language cannot say everything adequately than because we

Now these are precisely the words in reference to which Theo-

question, although nothing speaks against it. The a i h d in the second

ourselves of an opportunity which in terms of its subject matter, its

and among them stood up

Before he lets Kalchas speak. Homer designates him as the seer.

•Homer, The Iliad, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago

limbs; the simple tranquility of bodily composure may accompany the

Creeks experience beings as being present, whether at the present

by an abyss—from the actualitas of actus purus in medieval scholasti­

philosophy in its essence. Philosophy did not spring from myth. It

In the standard translation:

awhile among one another in unconcealment? What at bottom runs

present emerges by approaching and passes away by departing; it does

6i5dvai yap aiitd 6fiu)v trie dfinuaq.

"They must pay penalty," Nietzsche translates; "They pay recom­

Meanwhile, the thoughtlessly uttered "injustice of things" has

the transition from approach to withdrawal, continue. This lingering

6i6dvai. ailtd 6fKny . trjq d&iKfac.,

6i6dvai ydp aikd 6fKn.v nal tfoiv dXXrjXoiq

The translations by Nietzsche and Diels arise from different inten

Anaximander fragment. Furthermore, Hegel too shares the predomin

Do we stand in the very twilight of the most monstrous transfor

by an abyss—from the actualitas of actus purus in medieval scholasti

"They must pay penalty," Nietzsche translates; "They pay recom

distinguished. Rather, even the early trace of the distinction is obliter

As dispenser of portions of the jointure, usage is the fateful join

We cannot demonstrate the adequacy of the translation by schol

become immediately obvious to our contemporary everyday under

the distinction between the two as a distinction, is brought to lan

Parmenides says that voeiv neaxuiouevov ev xu} edvxi. This is

persons," Hera, Athene, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Artemis. Such ob

But what b e c o m e s o f the jpaoiq (saying) reigning in revealing des