heidegger on heraclitus_logos

5/11/2018 Heidegger on Heraclitus_logos

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EARLY GREEK THINKINGsince 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 iswhen Being itself advances to its farthest extreme, and whenthe oblivion that issues from Being itself undergoes reversal.

But what ifBeing in its essence needs to use [braucht] the essenceof man? Ifthe essence ofman consists in thinking the truth ofBeing?

Then thinking must poetize on the riddle of Being. Itbrings thedawn of thought into the neighborhood ofwhat is for thinking.

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TWOLogos

(Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)

The path most needed for our thinking stretches far ahead. Itleadsto that simple matter which, under the name A O Y 0 C ; , 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 ofHeraclitus (B50), the following essay attempts to take a few steps alongthat path. Perhaps they can carry usto the point where at least this onesaying will speak to us in a more question-worthy way:

OUK 8 JIO U Q A AQ L O U Aovou dKOUOaVTG< ;o JIo Ao yd v O O< jlO Veonv"Ev I I dVTG.

One among the virtually identical translations reads:When you have list ened not to me but to the Mean ing,i t iswise within the same Meaning to say:One is AlL

(Snell)The saying speaks of QKOUelV , hearing and having heard, of

0lloAoyeiv, to saythe same, ofAcvoc, what is said and the saying, ofeyw, the thinker himself as Aeywv, the one who is talking. Heraclitushere considers a hearing and a saying. He expresses what the AoyoC;says: "Ev IIdvTO, all is One. The saying of Heraclitus seems com-prehensible in every respect. Nevertheless; everything about it isworthy ofquestion. Most question-worthy is what is most self-evident,namely, our presupposit ion that whatever Heracli tus says ought to

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EARLY GREEK THINKING

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 ifwe conceded that several riddles remain, neither forthe first time withus, nor onlyforthe ancients, but rather in the verymatter thought. Wewillget closer to these riddles ifwe step backbefore them. That done,it becomes clear that in order to observe the riddle asa riddle wemustclarify before all else what AOyO


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pens along: the gathering which properly begins with the sheltering,i.e. the vintage, is itself from the start a selection [Auslese] whichrequires 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 ofthe sheltering in the essentialformation of the vintage is the sorting (in Alemanic [the southwesternGerman dialect]: the fore-gathering [Var-lese]) which determines theselection, 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 ofthose far-reaching, fundamental traits inwhich the essenceof the vintage [ d ie L e se ] consists.

It is proper to every gathering that the gatherers assemble tocoordinate their work to the sheltering, and-gathered together withthat end in view-first begin to gather. The gathering [ di e L es e]requires and demands this assembly. This original coordination gov-ems their collective gathering.However, lesen [ to gather] thought in this way does not simplystand near legen [ to lay]. Nor does the former simply accompany thelatter. Rather, gathering is already included in laying. Every gatheringis already a laying. Every laying is ofitself gathering. Then what does"to lay" mean? Laying brings to lie , in that i t lets things lie togetherbefore us. All too readily we take this "letting" in the sense ofomittingor letting go. To lay, to bring to lie, to let lie, would then mean toconcern ourselves no longer with what is laid down and lies beforeus-to ignore it. However, Aeyelv, to lay, by its letting-lie-together-before means just this, that whatever lies before us involves us andtherefore concerns us. Laying as letting-lie-together-before ,[bei-sammen-varliegen-Lassen] is concerned with retaining whatever is laiddown aslying before us. (In the Alemanic dialect legi means a weir ordam which lies ahead in the river , against the water 's current .)

The Aeyelv or laying now to be thought has in advance relin-quished all claims-claims never even known to it-to be that whichfor the first time brings whatever lies before us into its position [Lage].Laying, as Aeyelv, simply tries to let what ofi tself l ies together herebefore us, as what lies before, into its protection, a protection in which

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Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)it remains laid down. What sort ofprotection isthis? What lies togetherbefore us is stored, laid away, secured and deposited in unconceal-ment, and that means sheltered in unconcealment. Byletting things lietogether before us, Aeyelv undertakes to secure what lies before us inunconcealment. The Kelo8m, the lying before for-itself of what is inthis fashion deposited, i .e. the Kelo8m of ilnoxefuevov, is nothingmore and nothing less than the presencing ofthat which lies before usinto unconcealment. In this Aeyelv of UnOKelpeVOV,Aeyeni as gather-ing and assembling remains implied. Because AeyelV, which letsthings lie together before us, concerns itself solely with the safety ofthat which lies before us in unconcealment, the gathering appropriateto such a laying is determined in advance by safekeeping.

Aeverv is to lay. Laying is the letting-lie-before-which isgathered into itself-of that which comes together into presence.

The question arises: How does the proper meaning ofAeyelv, tolay, attain the signification of saying and talking? The foregoing reflec-tion already contains the answer, for it makes us realize that we can nolonger raise the question in such a manner. Why not? Because what wehave been thinking about in no way tells us that this word Aeyelvadvanced from the one meaning, "to lay," to the other, "to say."

We have not busied ourselves in the foregoing with the transfor-mation ofword meanings. Rather, we have stumbled upon an eventwhose immensity still lies concealed in its long unnoticed simplicity.

The saying and talking of mortals comes to pass from early on asAeyelv, laying. Saying and talking occur essentially as the letting-lie-together-before ofeverything which, laid in unconcealment, comes topresence. The original Myelv, laying, unfolds itself early and in amanner ruling everything unconcealed as saying and talking. Aeyelv aslaying lets itself be overpowered by the predominant sense, but only inorder to deposit the essence ofsaying and talking at the outset under the!governance of laying proper.

That Aeyelv is a laying wherein saying and talking articulate theiressence, refers to the earliest and most consequential decision concern-ing the essence oflanguage. Where did it come from? This question isas weighty, and supposedly the same, as the other question: How furdoes this characterization of the essence of language from laying ex-

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EARLY GREEK THINKING Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)

j

tend? The question reaches into the uttermost ofthe possible essentialorigins oflanguage. For, like the letting-He-beforethat gathers, sayingreceives its essential form from the unconcealment of that which liestogether before us. But the unconcealingof the concealed into uncon-cealment is the very presencing ofwhat is present. We call this theBeing of beings. Thus, the essential speaking of language, AeyelV aslaying, is determined neither by vocalization (qxovri)nor by signifying(onpcfveiv), Expression and significationhave long been accepted asmanifestations which indubitably betray some characteristics of lan-guage. But they do not genuinely reach into the realm ofthe primor-dial, essential determination oflanguage, nor are they at allcapable ofdetermining this realm in its primary characteristics. That saying aslayingruled unnoticed and fromearly on, and-as ifnothing at all hadoccurred there-that speaking accordingly appeared as Aeyelv,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 of Being to men, a dispensationperhaps reserved for that historical moment which would not onlydevastate man from top to bottom but send his very essence reeling.

To say is Aeyelv. This sentence, ifwell thought, now sloughs offeverything facile, trite, and vacuous. Itnames the inexhaustible mys-tery that the speaking oflanguage comes to pass from the unconceal-ment of what is present, and is determined according to the lying-before ofwhat is present as the letting-lie-together-before. Will think-ing finally learn to catch a glimpse of what it means that Aristotlecould characterize Aeyelv as drtorpufveodrn?The AOYOC ;y itselfbringsthat which appears and comes forward in its lying before us toappearance-to its luminous self-showing(cf.Being and Time, 7b).

Saying is a letting-lie-together-before which gathers and isgathered. If such is the essence of speaking, then what is hearing? AsAeyelv, speakingis not characterized as a reverberation which expres-sesmeaning. If sayingis not characterized by vocalization,then neithercan the hearing whichcorresponds to it occur asa reverberation meet-ing the ear and getting picked up, as sounds troubling the auditorysense and being transmitted. Were our hearing primarily and alwaysonly this picking up and transmitting of sounds, conjoined by several

other processes, the result wouldbe that the reverberation would goinone ear and out the other. That happens in fact when we are notgathered to what is addressed. But the addressed is itself that whichlies before us, as gathered and laid before us. Hearing is actually thisgathering of oneself which composes itself on hearing the pronounce-ment and itsclaim. Hearing isprimarily gathered hearkening. What isheard comes to presence in hearkening. We hear when we are "allears." But "ear" does not here mean the acoustical sense apparatus.The anatomicallyand physiologicallyidentifiable ears, as the tools ofsensation, never bring about a hearing, not even ifwe take this solelyas an apprehending of noises, sounds, and tones. Such apprehendingcan neither be anatomically established nor physiologically demon-strated, nor in any way grasped as a biologicalprocess at work withinthe organism-although apprehension lives only so long as it is em-bodied. So long as we think of hearing along the lines of acousticalscience, everything is made to stand on its head. We wrongly thinkthat the activation of the body's audio equipment is hearing proper.Butthen hearing in the senseof hearkening andheeding issupposed tobe a transposition ofhearing proper into the realm ofthe spiritual [dasGeistige]. In the domain ofscientific research one can establish manyuseful findings. One can demonstrate that periodic oscillationsin airpressure of a certain frequency are experienced as tones. From suchkinds ofdeterminations concerning what is heard, an investigation canbe launched which eventually only specialists in the physiologyof thesenses can conduct.

In contrast to this, perhaps only a little can be said concerningproper hearing, whichnevertheless concerns everyone directly. Hereit isnot somuch a matter for research, but rather ofpayingthoughtfulattention to simple things. Thus, precisely this belongs to proper hear-ing: that man can hear wrongly insofar as he does not catch what isessential. If the ears do not belong directly to proper hearing, in thesense ofhearkening, 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 thethunder of the heavens, the rustling ofwoods, the gurgling of foun-tains, the ringing ofplucked strings, the rumbling ofmotors, the noises

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of the city-only and only so far as they always already in some waybelong to them and yet do not belong to them.

We are all ears when our gathering devotes itself entirely tohearkening, the ears and the mere invasion ofsounds being completelyforgotten. So long as we only listen to the sound of a word, as theexpression ofa speaker, we are not yet even listening at al l. Thus, inthis way we never succeed in having genuinely heard anything at al l.But when does hearing succeed? We have heard [gehort] when we

1 belong to [gehoren] the matter addressed. The speaking ofthat which isspoken to is Aeye~v, letting-lie-together-before. To belong tospeech-this is nothing else than in each case letting whatever aletting-lie-before lays down before us lie gathered in its entirety. Sucha letting-lie establishes whatever lies before us as lying-before. Itestab-lishes this as itself. Itlaysone and the Same in one. Itlays one astheSame. Such Aeyelv lays one and the same, the opov. Such AeyelVisopOAOyeiV:One as the Same, i.e. a letting-lie-before of what does liebefore us, gathered in the selfsameness of its lying-before.

Proper hearing occurs essentially in Aeyelv as opoAoydv. This isconsequently a Aeyelv which lets lie before us whatever already liestogether before us; which indeed lies there by virtue ofa laying whichconcerns everything that lies together before us of itself. This excep-tional laying is the Aeyelv which comes to pass as the Aoyoe;.

Thus is Aoyoe;named without qualification: < > Aoyoe;, the Laying:the pure letting-lie-together-before of that which of itself comes to liebefore us, in its lying there. In this fashion Aoyoe;occurs essentially asthe pure laying which gathers and assembles. AoyoC;is the originalassemblage ofthe primordial gathering from the primordial Laying. '0AoyoC;is the Laying that gathers [ di e l es en de L eg e], and only this.

However, is all this no more than an arbitrary interpretation andan all-too-alien translation with respect to the usual understandingwhich takes Aoyoe; as meaning and reason? At first it does soundstrange, and it may remain so for a long time-calling Aoym; "theLaying that gathers." But how can anyone decide whether what thistranslation implies concerning the essence of Advoq remains appro-priate, ifonly in the most remote way, to what Heraclitus named andthought in the name 0 Adyoe;?

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Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)The only way to decide is to consider what Heraclitus himself says

in the fragment cited. The saying begins: OUKEPOU... Itbegins witha strict, prohibiting "Not ... " It refers to the saying and talking ofHeraclitus 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 vocalizationofhis talk. You never hear properly solong asyour ears hang upon thesound and flowofa human voice in order to snatch up foryourselves amanner of speaking. Heracli tus begins the saying with a rejection of >-hearing as nothing but the passion of the ears. But this rejection isfounded on a reference to proper hearing.

OUKEPOUdAAa... Not to me should you listen (as though gap-ing), but rather ... mortal hearing must attend to something else. Towhat? 'AAAaTOUAdyou. The way ofproper hearing is determined by vthe Advoc, But inasmuch as the AdyoC;is named without qualificationit cannot be just any customary thing. Therefore, the hearing appro-priate to it cannot proceed casually toward it, only to pass i t by onceagain. Ifthere isto be proper hearing, mortals must have already heardthe Aoyoe;with an attention [GehOr] which implies nothing less thantheir belonging to the Aoyoc;.OUKEJ.lOUAAa TOUAovou dKOUaaVTaC;.When you have lis-tened, not merely to me (the speaker), but rather when you maintainyourselves in hearkening attunement [Gehoren], then there is proper'//hearing."

What happens, then, when such hearing occurs? When there issuch proper hearing there is opOAOyeiV,which can only be what it isasa AeyelV. Proper hearing belongs to the Adyoe;.Therefore this hearing

v isi tself a AeyelV. Assuch, the proper hearing ofmortals isin a certainway the Same as the Advoc, At the same time, however, precisely asOJ.lOAOyeiV,t is not the Same at all. Itis not the same as the AdyoC;itself. Rather, opOAoyeiv remains a AeyelVwhich always and only lays\ orlets liewhatever isalready, asOJ.lOV,athered together and lyingbeforeus; this lying never springs from the opoAoyeiv but rather rests in theLaying that gathers, i.e. in the Aovoc.

But what occurs when there isproper hearing, aso)loAoyeiv? Hera-clitus says:oorpov{anv. When OJ.lOAoyeivccurs, then ooqxfvcomes topass. We read: ooqxiv {onv. One translates ooqxiv correctly as

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wise." But what does "wise" mean? Does it mean simply to know in theway old "wise men" know things? What do we know ofsuch knowing? Ifit 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 notrefer to a mere grasping, but toa certain kind ofbehavior. Of what sort?Of the sort that maintains itself in the abode of mortals. This abidingholds to what the Laying that gathers lets lie before us, which in eachcase already lies before us. Thus oooov Signifies that which can adhere towhatever has been indicated, can devote itself to it, and can dispatchitself toward it (get under way toward it). Because it is appropriate[schickliches] such behavior becomes skillful [geschickt]. When we wantto say that someone is particularly skilled at something we still employsuch turns of speech as "he has a gift for that and is destined for it." Inthis fashion we hit upon the genuine meaning of ooqxiv, which wetranslate as ":mteful" ['geschicklich"]. But "fateful" from the start sayssomething more than "skillful." When proper hearing, as opoAoyeiv, is,then the fateful comes to pass, and mortal AEyelv is dispatched to theAovoc. Itbecomes concerned with the Laying that gathers. Aeyelv isdispatched to what isappropriate, to whatever rests in the assemblage ofthe primordially gathering laying-before, i.e. in that which the Layingthat gathers has sent. Thus it is indeed fateful when mortals accomplishproper hearing. But oooov is not ro ~ocpov, the "fateful" is not "Fate,"so called because it gathers to itself all dispensation, and precisely thatwhich is appropriate to the behavior of mortals. We have not yet madeout what, according to the thinking ofHeraclitus, d Aovoc;is; itremainsstill undecided whether the translation of 0 Advos as" the Laying thatgathers" captures even a small part of what the Aovoc is.

And already we face a new riddle: the word Tel~ocpov. If we are tothink it in Heraclitus' way, we toil in vain so long as we do not pursue itin the saying in which it speaks, up to the very words that conclude it.

'OpOAOyeiV occurs when the hearing of mortals has becomeproper hearing. When such a thing happens something fateful comesto pass. Where, and as what, does the fateful presence? Heraclitussays: OpOAOyeivoorpov oTlv"Ev IIuVTa, "the fateful comes to passinsofar as One All."

*See Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Yorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin: Weid-mannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1951), I, 161, l ine 17. Kranz rejects the Miller-Gomperz paraphrase dOt5vUIand prints elver, Heidegger's citation of B 50 capital-izes'Ev IIdvTQand drops dvm.-TR.

The text which is now current runs: ev ndvru eivcn. * The eivci isan alteration of the sole traditional reading: ev ndvtn eioeVOl,understood to mean, "It is wise to know that everything is one." Theconjectural elver is more appropriate. Still, we set aside the verb. Bywhat right? Because the'Ev IIuVTa suffices. But it not only suffices: itremains far more proper for the matter thought here, and likewise forthe style of Heraclitean speech. "Ev IIuVTa, One: All, All: One.How easily one speaks these words. How readily they transformthemselves into a stolid maxim. A swarming multiplicity of meaningsnestles in both these dangerously harmless words, ev and ndvru, Theirindeterminate juxtaposition permits various assertions. In the words EVndvro the hasty superficiality ofusual representations collides with thehesitant caution of the thinking that questions. The statement "One isall" can lend itself to an overhasty account of the world which hopes tobuttress itself with a formula that is in some way correct everywhere,for all times. But the"E~ IIuVTa can also conceal a thinker's first stepswhich initiate all the following steps in the fateful course ofthinking.The second case applies with Heraclitus' words. We do not know theircontent, in the sense of being able to revive Heraclitus' own way ofrepresenting things. We are also far removed from a thoughtful com-prehension of these words. But from this "far remove" we may stillsucceed in delineating more meaningfully a few characteristics of thescope of the words ev and ndvrc, and of the phrase''Ev IIuVTa. Thisdelineation should remain a free-flowing preliminary sketch ratherthan a more self-assured portrayal. Of course, we should attempt sucha sketch only in reflecting upon what Heraclitus said from within theunity of his saying. As it tells us what and how the fateful is, the sayingnames the Aoyoc;. The saying closes with'Ev IIuVTa. Is this conclusiononly a termination, or does it first unlock what is to be said, by way ofresponse?The usual interpretation understands Heraclitus' fragment thus: it

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EARLY GREEK THINKING Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)is wise to listen to the pronouncement of the Aoyo~ and to heed themeaning of what is pronounced, while repeating what one has heard inthe statement: One is All. There is the Aoyo~. It has something torelate. Then there is also that which it relates, to wit, that everything isone.

However, the''Ev Fldvtu is not what the Advoc rela tes as a maximor gives as a meaning to be understood. "Ev Ildvrn is not what theAoyo~ pronounces; rather:Ev Ildvro suggests the way in which Aoyo~essentially occurs.

"Ev is the unique One, as unifying. It unifies by assembling. Itassembles in that, in gathering, it lets lie before us what lies before usas such and as a whole. The unique One unifies as the Laying thatgathers. This gathering and laying unifying assembles all uniting initsel f, so tha t it is this One, and as this One, is what is unique. What-ever is named'Ev Ildvro in Heracl itus' fragment gives us a simple clueconcerning what the Adyo Adyo~ Aeyel. Adyo~ lets- lie- together-before. What?Ildvro, What this word means Heraclitus tells us immediately andunequivocally in the beginning of fragment B 7: Ei n:dVTO rd


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EARLY GREEK THINKlNG Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)

itself? Heraclitus says what it is unequivocally at the beginning offragment B 32:"Ev T(loooov poirvov, "the unique One unifying al l isalone the fateful." But if the'Ev is the same as the Advoc, the result is:Aovoc T O ooqiov uouvov. The o nl y p ro pe rl y fateful matter is theAoyoc;. When mortal AeYelV,as POAOyeiV,s dispatched toward whatis fateful, it is sent on its fated way.

But how is Aoyoc;the fateful, how r s it destiny proper, that is, theassembly of that which sends everything into its own? The Laying thatgathers assembles in itself all destiny by bringing things and lett ingthem lie before us, keeping each absent and present being in its placeand on its way; and by its assembling it secures everything in thetotality. Thus each being can be joined and sent into its own. Heracli -tus says (B64): rd o e Tldvru oiaKi~el Kepcuvdc, "But lightning steers(in presencing) the totality (of what is present)."

Lightning abruptly lays before us in an instant everything presentin the light of its presencing. The lightning named here steers. Itbrings all things forward to their designated, essential place. Suchinstantaneous bringing is the Laying that gathers, the Aovoc,"Lightning" appears here asan epithet of Zeus. As the highest ofgods,Zeus is cosmic destiny. The Aovoc, the'Ev Ildvru, would accordinglybe nothing other than the highest god. The essence of Aovoc thuswould offer a clue concerning the divinity of the god.

Ought we now to place Aoyoc;:Ev IIdvTO, and Zeuc all together,and even assert that Heraclitus teaches pantheism? Heraclitus does notteach this or any doctrine. As a thinker, he only gives us to think. Withregard to our quest ion whether Aovoc ('Ev IIdvTO) and Zeuc; are theSame, 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 itselfof this unfamiliar burden with the aid of a ready forgetfulness. Hera-clitus says (B 32):

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The word tbat carries the saying, eSeAw, does not mean "to want,"but rather "to be ready of itselffor ... ", eSiAw does not mean merelyto demand something, but rather to al low something a reference backto itself. However, if we are to consider carefully the import ofwhat issaid in the saying, we must weigh what it says in the first line: "Ev. ., AeyeoSm oilx eSeAeI. "The unique-unifying-One, the Lay-ing that gathers, is not ready ... " Ready for what? For Aeyeaem, to beassembled under the name "Zeus." For if in such assemblage the"Evshould be brought to light as Zeus, then perhaps it would always haveto remain an apparition. That the saying under consideration concernsAeyeoSOl in immediate relation to dvouo (the naming word), indisput-ably points to the meaning of Aeynv as saying, talking, naming. Soprecisely this saying of Heraclitus, which seems to contradict directlyeverything said above concerning Aeyelv and AOY0c;,is designed toallow us renewed thinking on whether and how far Aeyelv in the senseof"saying" and "talking" is intel ligible only if i t is thought in its mostproper sense-as "laying" and "gathering." To name means to callforward. That which is gathered and laid down in the name, by meansof such a laying, comes to light and comes to lie before us. The naming(ovouo), thought in terms of Aeyelv, is not the expressing of a word-meaning but rather a letting-lie-before in the light wherein somethingstands in such a way that it has a name.

In the first place the'Ev, the Aoyo


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That with respect to the tgeAel the OUKs designated first suggeststhat the'Ev does not properly admit ofbeing named Zeus, and ofbeingthereby degraded to the level of exist ing asone being present amongothers-even if the "among" has the character of "above all otherpresent beings."On the other hand, according to the saying, the 'Ev does admit ofbeing named Zeus. How? The answer is already contained in what hasjust been said. If the "Ev is not apprehended as being by itself theAoyo


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EARLY GREEK THINKING LiJgos(Heraclitus, Fragment B 50)Before you play with fire, whether it be to kindle or extinguish it,

put out first the flames ofpresumption, which overestimates itself andtakes poor measure because it forgets the essence of AeyelV.

the distinction between the two as a dist inction, is brought to lan-guage? "To bring to language" usually means to express somethingorally 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 dAoyoC;became the guiding word of Heraclitus' thinking, because itbecame the name for the Being ofbeings?

'0 Aoyoc;, TO Aeyelv, is the Laying that gathers. But at the sametime Aeyel" always means for the Greeks to lay before, to exhibit, totell, to say. '0 Aoyoc; then would be the Greek name for speaking,saying, and language. Not only this . '0 Aovoc, thought as the Layingthat gathers, would be the essence ofsaying [die Sage] as thought bythe Greeks. Language would be saying. Language would be the gather-ing letting-lie-before of what is present in its presencing. In fact, theGreeks dwelt in this essential determination of language. But theynever thought it-Heraclitus included.

The Greeks do experience saying in this way. But, Heraclitusincluded, they never think the essence of language expressly as theAovoc, as the Laying that gathers.What would have come topass had Heraclitus-and all the Greeksafter him-thought the essence oflanguage expressly asAoyoC;,as theLaying that gathers! Nothing less than this: the Greeks would havethought the essence oflanguage from the essence of Being-indeed, asthis itself. For d AoyoC;s the name for the Being ofbeings. Yet none ofthis came to pass. Nowhere do we find a trace of the Greeks' havingthought the essence of language directly from the essence of Being.Instead, language came to be represented-indeed first ofall with theGreeks-as vocalization, qxovr], as sound and voice, hence phonetic-ally. The Greek word that corresponds to our word "language" isYAwooa,"tongue." Language is qxovr]onuuvnxri, a vocalization whichsignifies something. This suggests that language attains at the outsetthat 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. Itisstill so today. Language is taken to be expression, and vice versa.Every kind of expression is represented as a kind of language. Art

The translation of Aeyelv as gathered-letting-Iie-before, and ofAoyoC;as the Laying that gathers, may seem strange. Yet i t is more

\ salutary for thinking to wander into the strange than to establish itselfin the obvious. Presumably Heraclitus alienated his contemporaries atleast as much, al though in an entirely different way, by weaving thewords Aeyelv and AOYOC;,o familiar to them, into such a saying, andby making < > Advoc the guiding word ofhis thinking. Where does thisword d AoyoC;-which we are now attempting to think as the Layingthat gathers-lead Heraclitus' thought? The word d A6yoc;names thatwhich gathers all present beings into presencing and lets them liebefore us in it.'0 A6yoC;names that in which the presencing ofwhat ispresent comes to pass. The presencing of present beings the Greekscall TO eov, that is, TO elvcn TWV OVTWV, in Latin, esse entium. We saythe Being ofbeings. Since the beginning ofWestern thought the Beingofbeings emerges as what is alone worthy ofthought. Ifwe think thishistoric development in a truly historical way, then that in which thebeginning of Western thought rests first becomes manifest: that inGreek antiquity the Being ofbeings becomes worthy ofthought is thebeginning ofthe West and is the hidden source ofits destiny. Had thisbeginning not safeguarded what has been, i.e. the gathering of whatstill endures, the Being of beings would not now govern from theessence ofmodern technology. Through technology the entire globe istoday 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 beingsappears as d Aovoc, as the Laying that gathers. But this lightning-flashof Being remains forgotten. And this oblivion remains hidden, in itsturn, because the conception ofA6yoc;is forthwith transformed. Thus,early on and for a long time it was inconceivable that the Being ofbeings could have brought itself to language in the word d Aovoc.

What happens when the Being ofbeings, the being in its Being,76 77


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historians speak of the "language of forms." Once, however, in thebeginning ofWestern thinking, the essence oflanguage flashed in thelight ofBeing-once, when Heraclitus thought the AoyoC;as his guid-ing word, so as to think in this word the Being of beings. But thelightning abruptly vanished. No one held onto its streak oflight and thenearness of what it illuminated.

We see this lightning onlywhen we station ourselves in the stormof Being. Yet everything today betrays the fact that we bestir ourselvesonly to drive storms away. We organize all available means for cloud-seeding and storm dispersal in order to have calm in the face of thestorm. But this calm is no tranquility. Itis only anesthesia; more pre-cisely, the narcotization of anxiety in the face of thinking.

To think is surely a peculiar affair . The word of thinkers has noauthority. The word of thinkers knows no authors, in the sense ofwriters. The word ofthinking is not picturesque; it is without charm.The word of thinking rests in the sobering quality ofwhat it says. Justthe same, thinking changes the world. Itchanges it in the ever darkerdepths ofa riddle, depths which asthey grow darker offer promise ofagreater 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 toit that our thinking does not merely run after it blindly. Let us firstthoughtfully consider that "Being" was originally called "presenc-ing"-and "presencing": enduring-here-before in unconcealment.

In another verse, Fragment VIII, he elaborates this saying. The linesread:

THREE

Moira(Parm enides V III, 34-41)

The relation between thinking and Being animates all Westernreflection. Itremains the durable touchstone for determining to whatextent and in what way we have been granted both the privilege andthe capacity to approach that which addresses itself to historical man asto-be-thought. Parmenides names this relation in his saying (Frag. III):

to yap mho voeiv eOTiv re xni elvci,For thinking and Being are the same.

rrnlrov 0' eOT iv o e i v re KU ! ou ve xe v e O Tl v en ue ,ou yap dveu TOUeovTOC; ,ev q J r te qxm ou ev ov e O Tl v,e up r Jo e lC ; t o voefv: o uo ev y ap I] fOTIV I]eOTmdAAO ndpet ; rou MVTOC ;,e nd t o ye Mo ip ' e ni oI ]o evOUAOVdxfvnrov r ' E lllle vm : tu l rtdvr' dvou' eOtUl ,c oo c 6 POT O i K u te ge vT O rtenorflcrec elver aAI]9Ii,y iy ve 09 ui r e K ui o AA u0 8m , elvcf re KU ! oilxf,K ui ro rto v a AA aO O eI v O ld r e xpoa CPUVQVl le ipe Iv .

Thinking and the thought "it is" are the same. For without the being in relationtowhich it isuttered you cannot find thinking. For there neither isnor shall beanything outside ofbeing, since Moira bound it to be whole and immovable.For that reason, all these will be mere names which mortals have laid down,

78 79

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