What does τέχνη, which we say has the most intimate relation to ἐπιστήμη, mean? τέχνη is related to the root word τέκω/τίκτω, commonly translated as “to create.” What is created is τὸ τέκνον, the child; τίκτω means to create—indeed, it means to beget as well as to bear, but for the most part it means the latter. In our mother tongue, this bearing-creating is expressed by the beautiful and not yet fully comprehended turn of phrase ‘to bring into the world.’ The proper and most concealed Greek meaning of τέκω is not ‘making’ or ‘manufacturing,’ but is rather the bringing-forth of something into the unconcealed by the human so that it may presence there in the unconcealed as something that has been thus brought forth, so that it may shine out of the unconcealed and ‘be’ in the sense that the Greeks understood it. ὁ τέκτων is the one who brings forth, the one who places-forth and sets-forth something in the unconcealed and sets it into the open. This setting-forth in the manner of bringing-forth is carried out by the human—for example, in building, hewing, and molding. ὁ τέκτων lies in the word ‘architect.’ Something issues and projects-forth from the architect, who is the ἀρχή of a τεκεῖν and who guides it—as in, for example, the bringing-forth of a temple.
All bringing-forth in this larger and richer sense of setting-forth into the unconcealed (properly understood) moves and persists in the realm of unconcealment, which is the realm of all possible realms and is that in which the human stands and falls, walks and rests, climbs and plunges, erects and destroys. This bringing-forth is essentially different from ‘what is brought forth’ by ‘nature.’ To be sure, we say that ‘nature’ brings-forth plants and animals. But this ‘bringing-forth’ is not the characteristically human activity of setting-forth and setting into the unconcealed. ‘Nature,’ especially if we think it in the Greek way as φύσις, is the self-emerging and self-occluding. Given that this is so, we can easily see that φύσις [202] as emerging and occluding stands in relation to unconcealment and concealing, and in a certain sense is unconcealment and concealing themselves, so long as by φύσις we think (as is necessary) ‘nature’ in a more originary sense than we are used to (i.e., only as a special realm to be differentiated from history). These connections between φύσις as emerging into the unconcealed, and unconcealment itself, never became clear and grounded in Greek thinking itself. Indeed, they are still not fully thought through today. The relationship between φύσις and τέχνη and the connection of both to unconcealment has yet to be illuminated. But, rooted in this connection is the uncanny enigma that for the modern human there is a fate concealed within modern technology, one to which he will never be able to respond properly through the merely purported mastery of technology. But what, now, is τέχνη in relation to τεκεῖν, to “bringing-forth”?
τέχνη is what pertains intimately to all bringing-forth in the sense of human setting-forth. If bringing-forth (τεκεῖν) is a setting into the unconcealed (i.e., the world), then τέχνη means the knowledge of the unconcealed and the ways of attaining, obtaining, and implementing it. The essential feature of bringing-forth is τέχνη, and the essential feature of τέχνη is to be the relation with unconcealment and to unfold that relatedness. Thus, τέχνη does not mean a type of activity in the sense of an effecting of bringing-forth, but rather a preparing-beforehand and keeping ready of the respective realm of the unconcealed into which something is brought forth and set-forth: namely, what is to be set-forth. This preparing-beforehand and keeping-ready of the unconcealed (ἀληθές)—that is, of the true—is τέχνη. If we call this particular residing within the true by the name ‘knowledge,’ taken here in a far-ranging and rich sense, then τέχνη is a form of knowledge in the broad sense of illuminating, of making ‘light.’ The conventional translation of τέχνη as “art” is wrong and misleading, especially when we understand ‘art’ [203] in the way it is meant in the common pairing and differentiation ‘art and science.’ But even if we take ‘art’ in the broadest sense of ‘skill,’ the essentially knowledge-based (and thus Greek) dimension of τέχνη is thereby still not expressed, and the sense of proficiency and dexterity predominate. How exclusively the Greeks think a dimension of knowledge within the word τέχνη is exhibited by the fact that it often means something like ‘cunning,’ which in our language originally meant something like ‘knowledge’ and ‘wisdom,’ without the additional connotations of the deceitful and the calculating. On the other hand, it would be erroneous if we were to think that ἐπιστήμη–τέχνη, as a type of ‘knowledge,’ were to account for, as is commonly said, the theoretical side of ‘practical’ doing, making, and executing. One may see how crooked and confused the thinking of this view is if one looks to the fact that, for the Greeks, ‘the theoretical’ (i.e., θεωρεῖν) is the highest form of action itself. Of what use, then, is our thoughtless and groundless differentiation between the ‘theoretical’ and the ‘practical’? The still-veiled essential feature of the essence of ἐπιστήμη and τέχνη consists in their relation to the unconcealment of what is and what can be.
ἐπιστήμη, the understanding-of-something, and τέχνη, the knowledge of something, are so near to one another in essence that very often one word stands in for the other. This was already the case in the ancient Greek world: indeed, it is through ancient Greece that an essential connection between all knowledge and τέχνη is founded. The fact that now, at a turning point of Occidental fate—if not the Occidentally determined fate of the earth as a whole—τέχνη in the form of modern mechanized technology is becoming the admitted (or the not yet fully admitted) fundamental form of knowledge as a calculating ordering, is a sign whose immediate interpretation cannot be dared by any mortal. The ‘philosophies of technology’ now running wild are all only the spawn of technological thinking itself or, at best, mere re-actions against it (which amounts to the same). [204] At the moment, we can only make a supposition regarding what surely gives more than enough to think about: namely, that the fate of humanity and of peoples is intimately rooted in the particular relation of the human toward the respective appearing or self-withholding essence of unconcealment—that is, of truth. Whether and how the true is fatefully sent is grounded in whether and how the truth itself shows itself in its essence. If we consider that the essence of truth first opened itself for the Occident in general, and then decisively for the ancient Greek world, we then recognize to what extent the fate that unfolded in the ancient Greek world is nothing bygone or antiquated, and also nothing ‘ancient,’ but is rather something still undecided and still approaching us toward which we the Germans—preeminently and, for a long time also, probably alone—can and must direct our thinking. I say ‘thinking’: this is why it is necessary to learn how to think. Does ‘logic’ help in this regard? Once again we ask: what does ‘logic’ have to do with thinking? Why does thinking find itself subject to the laws of ‘logic’? We are in the process of elucidating this term in its totality.
‘Logic’ is the shortened expression for ἐπιστήμη λογική, and now means: having an understanding of what pertains to λόγος. And what does λόγος now mean? We let the question stand once more and linger first with the historical ‘fact’ that the name and matter of ἐπιστήμη λογική arises in connection with two other names and matters—ἐπιστήμη φυσική and ἐπιστήμη ἠθική—and in a manner that becomes historical.
ἐπιστήμη φυσική is the understanding of what belongs to φύσις or, more precisely, to the φύσει ὄντα. These are those particular beings that, emerging and submerging on their own accord, safeguard arising and vanishing: heaven and earth, the stars, the ocean, the mountains, rocks and waters, plants and animals. [205] If we thus understand the emerging and the emerged as what presences and appears in the broadest sense, then even humans and gods belong to φύσει ὄντα, insofar as they appear and presence, decay and disappear, peer into the unconcealed and withdraw themselves. ἐπιστήμη φυσική—that is, physics thus understood—is the knowledge of beings as a whole, in all of their guises and stages, in terms of their first and simplest connections. This ‘physics’ is not only substantially wider in scope than what we think of as ‘physics’ today (i.e., the mathematical, experimental knowledge pertaining to the laws of motion of material points of mass in space and time). ἐπιστήμη φυσική also thinks in a completely different way than the modern science of physics—indeed, in a completely different way than all science. ἐπιστήμη φυσική thinks beings as a whole, and thereby also beings in general, with an eye toward what is common to every being insofar as it is, can be, must be, or is none of these. What is common, proper, and ownmost to all beings is ‘being.’ ‘Being’—the emptiest word which, it would appear, makes us initially not think much at all. Being—the word from out of which we nevertheless think and experience everything, and the word through which we are. When will we finally have the ‘courage,’ for once, to think genuinely and tenaciously what would come to be if we (i.e., humans) could not think and say ‘being’ and ‘to be’? The ἐπιστήμη φυσική of the ancient Greeks is a way and an attempt to understand beings as a whole with an eye toward being, an attempt to place themselves before beings and stand before them so that these beings may show themselves in their being. The entirety of Occidental thinking has not moved beyond this attempt—at most, perhaps, it has deviated from it.
The third term, ἐπιστήμη ἠθική, designates the understanding of what belongs to the ἦθος. The word ἦθος originally means dwelling, sojourn. Here, in the term ἐπιστήμη ἠθική, τὸ ἦθος is meant in a simple way. So understood, it means [206] the sojourn of the human, the residing, the ‘dwelling’ of the human in the midst of beings as a whole. The essential feature of ἦθος, of this sojourning, is the way in which the human holds fast to beings, and thereby holds himself, keeps himself, and allows himself to be held. The understanding of ἦθος, the knowledge of it, is ‘ethics.’ Here we take this word in a very broad and essential sense. The conventional meaning of ‘ethics’ as a moral doctrine, a theory of virtue, or even a doctrine of values, is only a consequence, mutation, and aberration of the concealed, original meaning. Moreover, whereas ‘physics’ thinks about beings as a whole, ‘ethics’ only regards one being—namely, the human—set apart from the others. However, the human is here not regarded as a separate solitary being, cut off from beings as a whole, but rather precisely in view of the fact that he, and he alone, abides in beings as a whole, relates to them, and thereby consummates and maintains this relation from either a particular grounding or groundlessness. τὸ ἦθος is the comportment of the human’s sojourn in the midst of beings as a whole. In this sense, even the knowledge of ‘ethics,’ although surely in a different way and approach, is oriented toward beings as a whole: in this case, the human is in one respect the center, though in another respect, not. Hidden within these connections is the essence that is both proper to, and characteristic of, the human, an essence which we could call ‘eccentric.’ The human is, dwelling in the midst of beings as a whole, without, however, being its center in the sense of a ground that mediates and upholds it. The human is in the center of beings but is not that center itself. ἐπιστήμη φυσική and ἐπιστήμη ἠθική are an understanding of beings as a whole, a whole which shows itself to the human, and to which the human relates by holding himself to it and sojourning in it.
From these short references to ‘physics’ and ‘ethics’ we may surmise that now the aforementioned [207] ‘logic,’ the ἐπιστήμη λογική, in some sense also connects to beings as a whole. Here, also, the remarked-upon essential feature—i.e., the understanding that it somehow concerns beings as whole—is grounded in that on which ἐπιστήμη λογική draws: namely, λόγος.
In this lecture on logic, we would like to set out to learn how to think. However, so that right at the beginning of our efforts a certain illumination already brightens this path, we must at least have provisional knowledge of what, through its traditional transmission (to which we are all knowingly or unknowingly subject), we understand as ‘logic.’ What is ‘logic’? What is it that is signified by this Greek name? What does it mean for the fate and course of thinking itself that, from long ago (although not from the inception), ‘logic’ appears in Occidental thinking as the doctrine of correct thinking? Early on, ‘logic’ is regarded as the ὄργανον, the tool and the equipment, as it were, with which thinking is handled. Since then, one finds it proper that thinking belongs under the province of ‘logic,’ as though this belonging together of ‘thinking’ and ‘logic’ had been eternally written in the stars.
Nevertheless, one is not entirely certain about the authoritative role accorded to ‘logic.’ Occasionally a suspicion regarding ‘logic’ arises, even if it is only a suspicion regarding its usefulness (which, admittedly, remains only a superficial suspicion): for something can be without usefulness, thus being useless, and can nevertheless [208] still have being—indeed, it can even be the case that the useless has infinitely more being than all that is useful combined. Behind the suspicion that logic is, in a practical sense, useless, owing to the fact that we always only learn correct thinking through contact with things and never through an ‘abstract’ logic—behind this fear of the uselessness of logic there nevertheless remains a more serious concern.
The concern is this: that logic, as the doctrine of proper thinking, is itself a form of thinking. To ‘study logic’ therefore means to think about thinking. Hereby thinking bends back toward itself and becomes reflection. Since logic thinks about thinking and thinks about it in general, and since the thinking which is the object of this thought has no reference to an object determined in terms of its content, and thereby remains a pure thinking that dissolves into itself, logic as the thinking about pure thinking is not only reflection, but is rather the reflection about reflection, a reflection that whirls away into emptiness like a hollow vortex without an object or a connection to things. Logic: a thinking about thinking (i.e., reflection)—a detour into utter entanglement. If already within the context of dealing with things a thinking about them easily hampers action and decisiveness, what then would be the consequences of a thinking about thinking? Reflection, the bending-back toward oneself, is, as one says, ‘egocentric,’ self-centered, self-absorbed, ‘individualistic.’
But is this due to reflection? It is possible for a group of people to be focused upon itself as a group, as an association, as a coalition—i.e., reflection. A people can be focused on itself and only itself—i.e., reflection. Indeed, even all of humanity on earth could be focused back upon itself—i.e., reflection. Does reflection cease to be reflective, reflected, and self-absorbed when many people reflect together instead of a loner only by himself reflecting about himself and his ‘I’? But how could this be, if in fact the totality of humanity on this earth reflecting upon itself constitutes the most monstrous case of reflection, and if, [209] in this reflection, the abstract and abstraction have become the uncanny itself? Has the human already escaped reflection when, for example, as a Christian he thinks of his god? Or is he thereby only concerned with his own salvation? But how could this be, if only with and through this type of self-concern and this form of self-encounter the power of subjectivity’s self-reflection has been released into modern world history and has become hardened in it? Then Christianity, with its belief in, and teaching of, the τέχνη-like notion of Creation (regarded metaphysically), is an essential reason for the rise of modern technology, and also plays an essential role in the formation of the dominance of the self-reflection of subjectivity. As a result, it is precisely Christianity that is unable to overcome this reflection. What else could be the cause of the historical bankruptcy of Christianity and its church in the modern era of world history? Is a third world war needed in order to prove this?
The matter of reflection is a peculiar one, and it is not settled with the simple suspicion that reflection is allegedly only a ‘solipsistic’ circling of the individual around itself. Through such a suspicion, the essence of reflection is not recognized, nor are the distortions of its essence averted. Perhaps reflection belongs to the essence of the human. Perhaps the harm of reflection does not lie in the bending-back as such, but rather in what is being bent-back toward, and in that toward which the essence of the human is inclined. But perhaps it is not only that the essence of the human is essentially turned toward something. Perhaps it is even the case that the essence of the human is in itself re-flection, an originary turning-toward that is a re-turn that also entails within itself that the reversal and the inverted become stronger and gain the upper hand. Then what one would otherwise call and understand as ‘reflection’ would only be a particular variation of reflection: namely, the reflection of subjectivity in which the human conducts [210] himself as the self-regarded subject, accepting all beings only as ‘objects’ and as the merely objective. This kind of reflection, thought as the essence of the modern human (i.e., as the inner structure of the subjectivity of the subject), is consummately articulated poetically, and at the same time experienced in regard to its metaphysical dimension, in Rilke’s eighth Duino Elegy.
From this elegy it becomes clear that Rilke’s poetry, notwithstanding other differences, still belongs in the same realm of the same stage of Occidental metaphysics as what is given voice by Nietzsche’s philosophy. That Rilke was both able and compelled to speak the eighth Duino Elegy also bears witness to the greatness of his inner tact in regard to the boundary set for the poet. That he was able to stay within the limits of this boundary and bear the room to maneuver afforded by his position is more essential than any overly effortful and purely deliberate breaking of these boundaries.
If there is to be at all a kind of ‘overcoming’ of modern forms of reflection (i.e., the reflection of subjectivity), then it is only possible through another type of reflection, even though it may initially appear that this is the very height of madness: namely, to attempt to reflect oneself out of reflection by way of reflection! But if ‘reflection’ is always a manner of thinking, then the proper reflection belonging to the essence of the human could only consist of a corresponding thinking. Then we would have to learn to think, even if we thereby run the risk of creating the impression that when we think-after thinking, this thinking is simply circling around itself with neither goal nor ground.
Mindful of this danger, we nonetheless attempt to learn how to think: every meditation on every sentence is already that attempt at learning, one that does not only begin, for example, once we have moved beyond these apparently only introductory lectures. Learning how to think—only thinking and nothing else besides. What are we thinking when we are ‘only’ thinking? When we are only thinking, we embark down the path toward what, for thinking, is the to-be-thought. [211] This shows itself to us when we are only—and that means, purely—thinking. This means that, as long as we are thinking about particular matters and within the confines of a particular subject matter, we remain on one level (i.e., we remain merely on the surface). In thinking about specific matters, we do not proceed toward what opens itself in and to pure thinking, opening itself to it because it is intended for thinking and only for thinking. For then pure thinking inclines itself toward, and opens itself to, its own depth, and finds within this depth enough of the to-be-thought—and only there finds, inclined toward this depth, what is deepest.
Thinking would thus not at all be an occupation that immanently circles itself, an occupation for the benefit of which a matter must be identified and offered up to it as an object so that thinking may have a hold and a ground. In this case, all of these solid foundations that present the objective to subjects would be merely surface aspects and superficial levels that hide from the human the profound depth into which thinking itself, as thinking, opens itself: for, as the thinking that it is, it is in itself, and not retroactively, oriented toward what is deepest, and is attracted by it and taken up into a relation with it. In one of his short odes that serves as a prelude to his hymnal and elegiac poetry, Hölderlin says the following:
Whosoever has thought what is deepest, loves what is most alive.
(Socrates and Alcibiades)
We are tempted to think that “what is deepest” allows itself to be identified, so that we may then use thinking, among other things, in order to make it an object of understanding. But what is deepest only comes about when we have already thought, and simply only thought. However, he who has already thought has also already ceased to think—how shall the deepest then still open itself? The Greek thinkers already knew all of this, albeit differently and better. Whosoever has thought is not at the end of thinking and finished with it: rather, whosoever has thought is only beginning [212] to think, and only to think. The more purely the human has thought, the more decisively has he arrived on the path of thinking and remains one who thinks, in the very same manner that someone who has seen the right way has only just begun to see. Strange, how here the end is actually only the beginning. Whosoever has thought and thus has only first begun to think, and is thus in thinking and operating from out of it, has in this way, and only in this way, already thought what is deepest, which never exists somewhere apart.
“Whosoever has thought what is deepest, loves what is most alive.” This makes it sound as though the love for what is most alive is a consequence of thinking, as though this love activates itself once thinking has been consummated. Yet, the truth is otherwise: it is rather the case that thinking is itself the love, the love for what is “most alive,” for that in which all that is alive has gathered itself in life. Love—a kind of thinking? Or, indeed, is thinking a kind of love? We are told that love is a ‘feeling’ and that thinking is without feeling. Psychology clearly differentiates between thinking, feeling, desire, and ‘classifies’ these as ‘psychical phenomena.’ One also thinks—and, from a certain perspective, justifiably—that thinking is cleaner and more precise the less it is affected (i.e., polluted) by moods and feelings. If, however, thinking is ever able to lead to love, then it would surely have to be a thinking in the proper mood and therefore an ‘emotive’ thinking, a thinking with ‘emotions,’ i.e., ‘emotional thinking.’ However, how can this be if what is deepest is only reachable in thinking and if it only opens itself to thinking? Does everything not then depend upon only thinking, upon thinking purely, in order to assure that the to-be-thought approaches thinking?
We now say Hölderlin’s saying aloud with the emphasis suggested by the structure and rhythm of the verse itself:
Whosoever has thought what is deepest, loves what is most alive.
However, given the mysterious inexhaustibility of such lines, which always speak above and beyond the poet, it is good if we also occasionally emphasize it thusly:
[213] Whosoever has thought what is deepest, loves what is most alive.
“Thought” and “loves” are in such immediate proximity that they are effectively the same, though not, of course, as an indistinct monotony, but rather as a conjoined simplicity whose unity as thinking and life is named but nevertheless remains unsaid.
The thinking named here, and perhaps only provisionally intuited, is that thinking which we are trying to learn by learning ‘thinking as such.’
Can this be accomplished through ‘logic’? What is ‘logic’? It is the ἐπιστήμη λογική: the science of λόγος and what pertains to λόγος. ἐπιστήμη means: the understanding of something. At the time of the formation and development of ‘logic’ in ancient Greece, the word ἐπιστήμη had the same meaning, or was closely related to, τέχνη. We translate τέχνη as “knowledge of something.”
This mention of the kinship, and perhaps even sameness, of the meaning of the two Greek words ἐπιστήμη and τέχνη does not yet amount to much. But if we consider that ἐπιστήμη is the historical origin of Occidental science and of the Occidental forms of knowledge in general, and that in its modern guise it has become entirely ubiquitous, then the reference to the kinship between ἐπιστήμη and τέχνη gains in importance. Behind this fact, which bears upon the history of a word, there lies hidden the predestination of the technological essence of Occidental knowledge, for whose development the Judeo-Christian understanding of Creation, specifically in the form of late-Greek and Roman terminology, plays a decisive role.
Before we now elucidate the term ἐπιστήμη λογική and the matter it names, we must attend to the fact that this term appears at the same time alongside two others: ἐπιστήμη φύσική and ἐπιστήμη ἠθική. How does this fact bear upon our understanding [214] of what ἐπιστήμη means? The name means an understanding that pertains to beings as a whole. φύσις, understood properly, does not only include that which, in distinction to history, we call ‘nature’: for history also belongs to φύσις, as do the human and the gods. φύσις means beings as a whole. ἐπιστήμη φύσική, certainly in distinction to modern physics, is the knowledge of beings as a whole.
By contrast, ἐπιστήμη ἠθική now does appear to bring forth a separate, or in any case particular, region of beings. The word ἦθος means dwelling, sojourn. We say: the dwelling of the human, his sojourn amidst beings as a whole. ἐπιστήμη ἠθική, ‘ethics,’ thought essentially and expansively, seeks to understand how the human abides in this sojourn amidst beings, thereby upholding himself and abiding. The word ἦθος refers to the bearing of all conduct obtaining to this sojourning amidst beings. ‘Ethics’ does not concern the human as a separate matter among other matters: rather, it regards the human in view of the relation of beings as a whole to the human, and of the human to beings as a whole. The human is thus, in a certain sense, in the middle of beings as a whole, but not, however, in the sense that he is the middle itself of beings such that he would be their sustaining ground. In any case, ethics—even though, like ἐπιστήμη φυσική, it deals with the human, albeit from a different perspective and in a different way—is concerned with beings as a whole.
Now, how do matters stand with regard to the third ἐπιστήμη that is named next to physics and ethics—namely, ἐπιστήμη λογική (i.e., logic)?
In the term ἐπιστήμη λογική, the word λόγος means something akin to “assertion”: λέγειν τι κατά τινος—“to claim something about something,” and at the same time to hold fast to it, thereby establishing it and showing it. The essential feature of λόγος, of making an assertion, lies in saying in the sense of a making apparent of something that each time allows a particular being to be seen and grasped in the manner that it is. Saying brings and places what is said, and what is shown through the saying, before us, presenting and delivering it to us. The essential feature of λόγος, of the assertion, is not, therefore, a saying in the sense of a speaking and of making a verbal statement. This is already implied by the fact that the Greek word λόγος, and what it actually means, does not have anything directly to do with language and discourse. What this means for the essence of λόγος, the insight into its essence, and also for the misapprehension of its essence (and consequently for the origin of ‘logic’ and its role and limitations), will reveal itself to us in what follows. Above all we will have to consider when and how the words λέγειν and λόγος arrived at the undeniable meaning of saying and asserting, even though the original meaning did not include a connection to saying and language.
However, first it is still necessary to bring the designation of logic as ἐπιστήμη λογική—the knowledge pertaining to that which belongs to asserting—into its correct connection with the given designations of ‘physics’ and ‘ethics.’
Physics and ethics both have, albeit in different ways, the fundamental feature of an understanding about beings as a whole. They are oriented toward this one whole, they are versus unum, universal in the simplest sense of the word. Physics and ethics are each an understanding of beings as a whole. Does this also apply to ‘logic’? If so, in what sense? [216] As a human activity, λόγος—assertion, judgment—only appears in one particular region of beings: namely, in the region of the human, but not, for example, in that of plants, stones, or even animals. Assertion is thereby not like what may be encountered everywhere in every being, and thus also continuously and universally in beings. This statement applies also to ἦθος which, as the abiding of the human’s sojourn amidst beings, only pertains to the human. However, ἦθος pertains to the human in just such a way that he, in ἦθος and through it, stands in relation to beings as a whole, and in such a manner that, reciprocally, the whole of beings addresses itself to him alone. Could not something similar apply also to λόγος, since as assertion it is a behavior of the human that can relate itself to all beings and somehow also always beings as a whole, especially and particularly when the assertion hits upon the unsayable? For the unsayable and unutterable is what it is, as the no-longer-sayable and the no-longer-utterable, owing to its relation to asserting. However, λόγος does seem to be constituted differently than ἦθος. Asserting can perhaps relate itself to all beings; but asserting, taken strictly for itself, is only a particular and isolated activity among the totality of activities that comprise the bearing of the human sojourn amidst beings. Seen from this perspective, λόγος is only a special case among the other possible human activities.
λόγος, as the activity of asserting, belongs to ἦθος, which is the bearing that pervades all behavior. Hence ethics, as the knowledge of human behavior in relation to this bearing, is the more expansive knowledge that includes logic within itself. ‘Logic’ is, as it were, a particular kind of ethics, that of assertoric behavior: logic is the ethics of λόγος, the ethics of asserting. If this is the case, then any justification for equating logic with the other forms of knowledge (i.e., physics and ethics), or even placing it above them, falls away. The human, insofar as he is seen and thought with regard to his universal relations and modes of behavior [217] toward beings as a whole, is determined by ἦθος. That is why we would be justified in saying that the human is that particular being amidst beings as a whole whose essence is characterized by ἦθος.
However, in light of the form of the human essence just now delineated, we come upon something strange: namely, that in the Greek world, and throughout the entirety of Occidental history following upon it, the human is defined as τὸ ζῷον λόγον ἔχον, that living being who has as its defining characteristic both saying and asserting. This determination of the human essence with an eye toward λόγος gets its character through the differentiation of the human from the animal, and thereby within the context of the life of living beings in general. The animal is, with respect to λόγος, ζῷον ἄλογον, the living being without λόγος. However, α- (i.e., “without”) does not mean here an absence, a lack, and a going-without. Indeed, going-without is only present where the absent as such has become recognizable through a desire for it. The animal is entirely excluded from λόγος, no matter how ‘intelligent’ animals may be (and no matter how eager modern psychology is, in a strange misapprehension of the simplest connections, to research the ‘intelligence’ of animals). The human is characterized by λόγος: it is the human’s most essential possession.
Following what was elucidated above, one might rather expect a characterization of the human essence that reads thusly: ἄνθρωπος ζῷον ἦθος ἔχον, the human is that living being whose ownmost and most distinguishing characteristic is ἦθος. However, instead of this, λόγος is now seen to have the undeniable primacy over ἦθος. The essence of the Occidental human finds itself being imprinted upon by the character of ζῷον λόγον ἔχον. The Roman re-articulation of this—which is something more than just a translation into Latin—reads: homo est animal rationale, the human is the rational living being. If we pay attention to the relation of ratio and λόγος to thinking, and the equating of both, then we could also say: [218] the human is the thinking animal. If we understand thinking to be the form through which knowledge (i.e., ἐπιστήμη and τέχνη) carries itself out, then the human is the cunning, clever animal. With an eye toward this essence of the human, and from within the perspective of modern metaphysics, the young Nietzsche precociously caught sight of and verbalized an outline of his later metaphysics of the will to power. In the summer of 1873, the twenty-nine-year-old Nietzsche wrote an essay entitled On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense. This essay would be published for the first time only later (in 1903) as a part of his literary estate.1 The essay begins with the following excerpt:
In some remote corner of the universe, poured out into countless flickering solar systems, there was once a star on which some clever animals invented knowledge. It was the most arrogant and dishonest minute of ‘world history’; but, still, it was only a minute. Once nature had drawn in a few breaths, the star solidified, and the clever animals had to die.
To what extent Nietzsche, in his later metaphysics, holds fast to this conception of the human, while at the same time radicalizing his thoughts regarding the over-human, cannot be elucidated presently. It is enough if we can initially and approximately see that, from the beginning of Occidental metaphysics on through its consummation, the essence of the human is understood in relation to λόγος, and λόγος is interpreted as thinking. In what sense this characteristic of λόγος is to be understood; to what extent λόγος thereby remains ambiguous; what all of this means for history and the essence of the Occidental human and for the manner in which he exists historically: all of this can only be alluded to here in an inquiring way. ‘Logic’ forms itself and its history in accordance with the fate from out of which λόγος unfolds (and does not unfold) its essence in the history of the Occident and of the world.
The prior session attempted to discuss three things: two relating to thinking, and the third on the doctrine of thinking (i.e., logic as ἐπιστήμη λογική).
Thinking was characterized, on the one hand, with regard to reflection, and on the other hand in relation to its own depth. We today only know reflection in the form of the reflection belonging to subjectivity. That is why we fear, with the equally common equating of subjectivity with the I-hood of the singular ‘I,’ that reflection is the breeding ground of individualism and egoism. However, an argument against this is the fact that not only individual people may be carried away by, and entangled up in, this essence of reflection as a form of selfish obstinacy, but also entire groups, federations, nations, peoples—indeed, even all of humanity on earth. Reflective self-referentiality need not necessarily hit upon a singular, separate ‘I,’ but it does always hit upon a self. But the ‘I’ and the self are not the same. Not only is there an I-self, but also a you-self [Du-Selbst], as well as a we-self and the you-self [Ihr-Selbst]. For each particular essence of reflection, what is decisive is how the self-hood of the self is determined, and vice versa.
To be sure, every thinking thinks its thoughts in such a way that thinking itself is thereby also thought, and that what is thought about, and thought with, refers back to the one who is thinking. How else could it be that what is thought about is also what is intended for us to be thought about? But the question remains how what is thought about is being thought about—if, for example, only as a thing or an object. The question also remains how the one thinking knows himself in this—as only, for example, an ‘I’ or a subject. If it is only as such, then all reference back to what is representationally set-before [220] ends already with a subject oriented toward itself, and then it is indeed the case that all representation, imagining, and bringing-before-oneself resemble a capturing of objects in snares that have been set out. And then Rilke, in whom the age of consummate subjectivity poetizes its own end, can say the following in these strangely fitting yet nevertheless profoundly errant lines at the beginning of the eighth Duino Elegy:
With full gaze, the animal sees
the open. Only our eyes are,
as if reversed, entirely like snares
set around it, blocking the freedom of its out-going.
What is outside, we know only from the animal’s face.
Let us reflect on what announces itself in these words: “What is outside, we know only from the animal’s face.” ‘The creature’—that is, in this case, the animal, and in no way the creation of God as conceived of by Christianity—alone sees the open. The human, however, gathers knowledge of the open from the animal. This thought is not only mentioned in passing within this elegy. Rather, it everywhere bears Rilke’s true poetry. It contains a decision concerning the thinking of the human as subject, whose essence is now being made true in a world-historical sense. Those of the contemporary era, instead of ceaselessly blathering about this poet, should for once earnestly think-after such a thought as the above, in order to recognize in it a consummation, finally brought to word, of an approaching errancy whose origin lies in a misapprehension of the essence of reflection and, thus, of thinking. When determining the essence of reflection, we must first ask from where and back to where and in what way thinking is bent back into itself, so that it carries within itself the fundamental feature of a re-turn.
So that we may nevertheless find the proper ‘perspective’ regarding all of these questions concerning the character of reflection, it is necessary first to pay some attention to the dimension into which thinking as thinking reaches, and within [221] which, and through which, it wields itself. It is necessary to consider the depth proper to pure thinking, from which thinking itself first receives the seal of its essence. We usually only think ‘depth’ in contrast to height, and therefore in the direction of downward and the below. But the essence of depth is otherwise. For example, we speak of the ‘deep woods.’ Depth is the self-opening concealing expanse that continually points to an ever more lightened concealment and gathers itself therein. The quoted words of Hölderlin should only be a hint, and not the answer, to the question concerning the depth proper to pure thinking.
He who has thought what is deepest, loves what is most alive.
The exegesis of this line can be briefly summarized in the resonant, albeit different, intonation:
He who has thought what is deepest, loves what is most alive.
Whosoever has thought is thinking for the first time, in the very same way that whosoever has seen sees for the first time. The perfect case is the proper present, and the proper present is the future. Authentic thinking is true loving and the coming-to-be at home in the essential ground of all relations: re-turn. Only when thinking has thought what is deepest—that is, only when it has begun to think and continues to think the essential and singular to-be-thought—does the re-turn proper to thinking, i.e., the originary reflection, come to itself and come into play originarily.
Do we now experience something of the depth allotted to thinking and about the reflection originally proper to it, [222] or anything essential about the essence of thinking, through logic, which since antiquity has been known as the ‘doctrine of thinking’? What is logic? We find the doctrine of thinking under the name of ἐπιστήμη λογική: the understanding of λόγος. This name is no mere label, behind which something other than what it says is concealed. Through this name ‘logic,’ it is decided that thinking is thought as λόγος, with λόγος being understood in a very particular way. But this is not at all self-evident. In this equating of thinking and λόγος, the origin of an Occidental fate conceals itself: it conceals itself there inconspicuously, without noise, fanfare or hawkers, so that it appears—and for millennia has appeared—as though there is nothing remarkable there. Moreover, ἐπιστήμη λογική—i.e., logic—is also named in connection with two other manners of ἐπιστήμη: ἐπιστήμη φυσική and ἐπιστήμη ἠθική. Each of these are, albeit in different ways, oriented toward beings as a whole. ‘Physics’ and ‘ethics’ unfold a knowledge directed toward the universal. Does this also apply to that particular understanding that deals with λόγος? λόγος is for ‘logic’ the λέγειν τι κατά τινος—that is, the asserting of something about something. λόγος is understood in Roman and medieval terms as enuntiatio, assertion; at the same time, it is understood as propositio, a placing-before, a statement, i.e., recta determination iustorum, the correct determination of what is right, iudicium, judgment: λόγος is assertion, judgment. The elements of a judgment are concepts. Judgments themselves are related to one another in the form of inferences (‘deductions’). Logic, as the doctrine of the assertion—that is, of judgment—is at the same time the doctrine of the concept and the inference. Judging/asserting is certainly not a special mode of human behavior: it is only one among many possible others. ‘Ethics,’ however, elucidates the modes of human behavior, all of which arise out of the unity of the human abiding in the sense of his sojourning amidst [223] beings—in short, the ἦθος of the human. It is in this way that we can understand ‘logic’ as a branch of ethics. It is the ethics of the behavior of asserting. Thus, in distinction to ethics and physics, ‘logic’ is missing the feature of the universal.
According to the above-mentioned determination of the human essence from out of ἦθος, the definition of the human should be ἄνθρωπος ζῷον ἦθος ἔχον—the human is that living being that has ethics and is distinguished by it. However, the determination of the human essence, according to the Greeks, is otherwise: ἄνθρωπος ζῷον λόγον ἔχον—the human is that living being that has λόγος and is distinguished by it. According to this, should not ‘logic,’ as the science of λόγος, have a distinguished character, one that is equal to that of ethics and perhaps even above it?
The ‘definition’ of the human essence is as follows: the human is that living being that has λόγος, as pronounced by the character of the human whose fate is the Occidental and Occidentally determined world history of humanity. We know the Greek definition in later formulations: homo est animal rationale, the human is the rational living being. λόγος becomes ratio, and ratio becomes reason. The defining characteristic of the ability to reason is thinking. As the animal rationale, the human is the thinking animal. In Rilke’s words: the animal that sets snares for things, lying in wait for them. We could say that the above-named definition is the metaphysical determination of the human essence: in it the human, who is subject to the sway of metaphysics, speaks its essence. In recent times, Nietzsche, the last thinker of metaphysics, has taken up this determination of the human essence: the human is the clever, discerning animal. A treatise by the twenty-nine-year-old Nietzsche, first written in Basel in 1873 but not published until 1903 after his death, begins this way:
[224] In some remote corner of the universe, poured out into countless flickering solar systems, there was once a star on which some clever animals invented knowledge. It was the most arrogant and dishonest minute of ‘world history’; but, still, it was only a minute. Once nature had drawn in a few breaths, the star solidified, and the clever animals had to die.
But this interpretation of the human was, for the later and authentic Nietzsche, only a half-measure. Later he would oppose it with his doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same. Around the time that Nietzsche was writing his Zarathustra and getting closer to his one, unique thought of the will to power (every thinker only thinks one thought); around this time Nietzsche recognized that the human up to this point, the animal rationale, was indeed an animal, but the “animal” whose essence “has not yet been established.” The task is therefore to understand decisively the essence of the ratio that determines the animal human, and according to the direction already set out step-by-step in contemporary thought. The essence of reason—and that means, subjectivity—is not mere thinking and reason, but rather the will: for in the will as self-willing, the positioning of the self toward itself first consummates itself as subjectivity. According to Nietzsche, however, the will is a will to power. The human is that animal who is determined through the thinking will to power, and is only thereby established in its metaphysical essence. This willing animal—the human—is, according to Nietzsche, the “animal of prey.” How close this is to Rilke’s snare-setting, ambushing animal! The human thus conceived, and therefore willed and also self-willing, goes beyond the prior human, the merely clever animal. As he who goes beyond the prior human, the future human of metaphysics is ‘the over-human,’ the human as the human of the will to power.
[225] When λόγος has turned into ratio, and ratio into reason, and reason into a thinking will, and when this will as the will to power determines the essence of the human and even beings as such and as a whole, then ‘logic’ as the doctrine of ‘logos’ has a universal meaning equal to that of physics and ethics.
1 Nietzsche, Werke, X, 189 ff.