While emerging, as emerging, gives favor to self-concealing, self-concealing joins itself to emerging in such a manner that the latter can emerge from the former and, for its part, remain secured in self-concealing (and this means conjoined to it). φύσις itself, seen now in terms of the essence that the saying of fragment 123 names, is ‘the jointure’ in which emerging joins itself to self-concealing, and self-concealing joins itself to emerging. The Greek word for ‘jointure’ is ἁρμονία. When we hear this word, we think immediately of the joining of sounds, and take ‘harmony’ to mean that which is in ‘uni-son.’ However, the substance of ἁρμονία does not lie in the realm of sounds and tones. Rather, it lies in ἁρμός: i.e., in the joint, that whereby one thing fits into another, where both join themselves into the joint in such a way that that the jointure is.
However, because self-concealing is not something that lies outside of, and next to, emerging, and is not what is subsequently added and fitted onto it, and further, because self-concealing is what φύσις bestows from itself as that wherein it itself remains grounded, φύσις prevails here as the jointure (i.e., ἁρμονία), the joint in which emerging and self-concealing hand one another the bestowing of their essences in a reciprocal way. [142]
In fragment 54 (which we treat as the third fragment), Heraclitus says the following about ἁρμονία, which is the φύειν of φύσις itself:
ἁρμονίη ἁφανὴς φανερῆς κρείττων.
Inconspicuous jointure, more precious than the conjoined that insistently pushes toward appearance.
φύσις is the inconspicuous. Emerging, as that which in the first place bestows the cleared open for an appearing, withdraws itself behind all appearing and every appearing thing and is not just one appearing thing among others. Consequently, within the narrower region of the visible, what typically (and often exclusively) attracts our attention is, for example, what stands in the light and remains accessible as illuminated; over against this, the brightness itself is the unimposing and self-evident medium to which we only pay attention (and then only in passing) when the illuminated object becomes inaccessible to us as a result of the onset of darkness. The human being then fashions a light for himself. As a result of such fashioning, the modern metropolis, even before the war, had already turned night into day by means of a technology of illumination, so that neither the sky nor the lights that belong to it can be seen. As a result of this lighting technology, brightness itself has become an object that can be produced. Brightness, in the sense of the inconspicuous in all shining, has lost its essence. However, brightness, in the sense of the pellucidity of the light, is grounded in the fact that, above all else, clearing and emergence (i.e., φύσις) unfold.
(The modern human is fascinated by this technological monstrosity of brightness; when it becomes too much, he uses the mountains or the sea as a palliative; he then ‘experiences’ ‘nature,’ an experience that certainly [143] can become boring already on the first morning of the trip, whereupon he just goes to the movies. Ah, the totality of what is called ‘life’!)
φύσις does not occur within what emerges and what has emerged in the manner of something that appears: rather, it is the inconspicuous in all appearing things. However, it is in no way ‘the invisible,’ as the previously mentioned philological translations erroneously suggest. φύσις is not the invisible—on the contrary, it is what is seen inceptually which, however, is for the most part never properly beheld. In order to represent here the relationship in question, take, for example, a room, which of course contains ‘space.’ However, we do not behold the space as such, but rather only the furnishings and whatnot (i.e., those things that appear as objects within that space). In the same way, we see the ‘time’ on the clock, but we do not truly behold it: rather, we have the digits and the hands in view and glean from them ‘what’ time it is. ‘Space’ and ‘time’ are in each case inconspicuous but also seen, though they are not beheld as concrete objects.
Therefore, it is not the case that the ἁρμονία of φύσις—i.e., the jointure as which φύσις unfolds—is ἀφανής (i.e., is something that ‘does not come into manifest ap-pearance’) because κρύπτεσθαι in the misinterpreted sense of the self-hiding belongs to it, but rather because φύσις, as the pure emerging, is more manifest than every manifest object: therefore, it remains and unfolds as the inconspicuous. As the inconspicuous, the jointure is κρείττων—“worthier,” it is worth “more.”
With this word, which names an intensification, we think immediately of the ζα in the word ζωή. We ask: in what respect is the jointure, as inconspicuous, worth “more”? Surely in respect to its essence, in respect to the emerging opening and harboring. In itself, and not only as some consequence or effect, the emerging as the inconspicuous is more disclosive and more revealing than any conjoined thing pushed forth [144] into appearance. What contains the more originary within itself does not require effects and activities, remains untouched by such ‘doings’ and their ‘putting on appearances,’ and shines from out of itself without contrived embellishments and trimmings and without imposition: this is, in its essence, the ‘precious.’ What is precious is intrinsically worthier than the prepared and arranged. The ἁρμονία ἀφανής is precious. The preciousness of pure emerging consists in its not entering into the appearance of the obviously contrived that pushes itself forward. φύσις is the inconspicuous shining. Within the inconspicuousness of emerging rests the guarantee that it, because it is not dependent on a presentation given to it, continually unfolds from out of itself without interruption into emerging and remains untouched by the vicissitudes of any particular appearing thing, and thus falls victim to a submerging “not ever” (μή). The μή in the naming of φύσις as τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε names the κρείττων: the originary, innate, precious essence of pure emerging. The μή is said from out of an essential glimpse of the preciousness of φύσις, which, as emerging, bestows appearing, but which at the same time is not included with what appears. But the inconspicuousness of emerging rests in itself and does so only because in its very essence it gives favor to self-concealing.
ἁρμονία (i.e., the jointure) is there in the pure shining of its essence and lightens there unblemished: it unfolds there as what is most beautiful and as that wherein the emerging harbors itself, also unblemished, in the self-concealing, while at the same time self-concealing finds in the emerging the pure bestowing of itself. Thus, where emerging [145] gives itself to the essence of self-concealing, and self-concealing gives itself to the essence of emerging, each one goes toward what is contrary to it. Here, the going over-and-against within the favor of essential bestowal is, in Greek, τὸ ἀντίξουν. ξέω means to go back-and-forth over something, for example while in the process of working on something in order to smooth it out and bring out its form (such as in the grinding, abrading, scraping, and shaving of a stone). (ξέω, ξάω, and ‘shave’ are the same word). τὸ ἀντί-ξουν—the participial form of ἀντιξέω, to go toward and back—means: going-toward-and-against, as in the jointure of the essential joining of φύσις itself. Insofar as emerging joins to self-concealing as the bestowal of its essence, it goes toward what is opposed to it (namely, submerging); however, insofar as self-concealing joins to emerging, it too goes against what is against itself. τὸ ἀντίξουν prevails as the bearing that is over against, and yet toward, one another. By prevailing, ‘it brings’ emerging together with self-concealing. The Greeks called the bringing-together and bearing-toward of one to the essence of the other in the manner of a joining into the joint of the unity of essence συμφέρειν; the participle συμφέρον subsequently comes to mean what is ‘beneficial’ and helpful. Bearing-together in the sense of ἀντίξουν holds the self-joining in the unity of its essence.
Heraclitus says this in fragment 8, which we order as the fourth:
τὸ ἀντίξουν συμφέρον καὶ ἐκ τῶν διαφερόντων καλλίστην ἁρμονίαν.
Going-toward-and-against, a bringing-together; and from out of the bringing-apart, the one resplendent jointure.
The bringing-together, which is not a pushing together of things whereby the different is simply pushed toward the different and attached to it, but which on the contrary consists of a going-toward-and-against of what experiences and dispenses itself as essence, [146] brings together by joining into the joint. In fact, this bringing-together first enjoins the joint itself, thereby making its shining possible, and thereby bringing-apart, one from out of another, that which joins together, a bringing apart in the purity of the joint’s self-dispensing opposition. However, where the reciprocal relation of φύσις and κρύπτεσθαι is thought as ἀντίξουν, we must always keep in mind that what is being thought is φύσις, and that emerging and submerging join themselves in a manner that goes both toward and against. Thinking this matter in a more originary way, we would even have to say that the essence of ἀντίξουν, συμφέρειν, and διαφέρειν are determined from out of φύσις, i.e., from out of its emerging, lightening essence. However, because some sensory and observable aspect is not being hastily posited here in place of beings as a whole, and because, to the contrary, thoughtful projection beholds being itself non-pictorially in its inceptually simple essence of jointure, conventional thinking is not able to think here the to-be-thought: for thinking would have to follow the ἀντίξουν/συμφέρον and take the going-toward-and-against as a bringing-together, and in so doing comport itself adequately toward the to-be-thought.1 Emerging (i.e., φύσις) can only be thought as the above-mentioned jointure if thinking itself is compliantly joined to it and thinks the joining in the joint of the jointure, and thereby and exclusively knows already the inceptual disrupting dis-jointure. Conventional thinking, and particularly our modern thinking, is a thinking directed toward objects which seeks the defining characteristic of the truth of what is thought solely in what can be objectified. However, because it is the case that not just recent thinking, but rather all conventional thinking as such, is never able properly to accompany the thinking of φύσις, the difference between both ways of thinking must already have emerged for the inceptual thinkers. That conventional thinking is not able to carry out a thinking of φύσις is something that Heraclitus expresses clearly enough [147] in a saying that at the same time points to something that appears to be quite conventional, and in whose form the pure shining of φύσις most easily becomes delineated and visible. Fragment 51, which we place here as the fifth fragment, says:
οὐ ξυνιᾶσιν ὅκως διαφερόμενον ἑωυτῶι συμφέρεται . παλίντονος ἁρμονίη ὅκωσπερ τόξου καὶ λύρης.2
They do not put together how the self-differentiating should unfold in such a way that it (in the self-differentiating of itself) brings itself together with itself; the jointure (namely, the self-differentiating) unfolds drawing-back (-expanding back), as it (i.e., the unfolding) shows itself in the image of the bow and lyre.
Instead of παλίντονος (which is used above), παλίντροπος is sometimes also used. It should be pointed out that the jointure in itself is at the same time both the turning-away-from-one-another into relaxed un-tensing, and the turning-back-toward in the sense of the tensing of what turns itself toward un-tensing. ἁρμονία thus does not consist merely in yoking together such that the drive to move apart from one another into un-tensing would be distinguished from it and, at most, what is conjoined together remains: rather, letting move apart into un-tensing belongs to ἁρμονία. When, therefore, παλίντονος ἁρμονίη is translated by the philologist Snell as “the joining of opposing tensions” [Wider-Spännstigen Fügung], it does succeed in bringing to mind Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew:3 nevertheless, the translation is both grammatically incorrect and factually inaccurate. παλίντονος, which is a drawing-back, is the predicate of ἁρμονία: however, παλίντονος is not meant or named as what is of opposing tension in the sense of it being the object of a joining. It is not the case that an intractable ‘opposing-tension’ needs to be conjoined and compliantly join itself: rather, it should appear that the tensing-against-and-toward belongs to the essence of the jointure itself. The fact that another philologist finds this translation (which is untenable in every respect) ‘vivid’ casts a strange light on the alleged dependability of the translations of philologists. Equally strange is the fact that all [148] extant translations reproduce ξυνιᾶσιν as ‘understand’ which, although lexically correct, fails to hit upon what is said and thought by the Greeks. However, in order to find what is decisive in the translation, one only needs the literal rendering of the Greek συνίημι: ‘I bring together’; the word means the same as λέγειν: ‘to read,’ ‘to gather.’ However, we all too easily render the phrase συμφέρειν (i.e., ‘to bring together’) as “to gather” in the sense of harvesting together, a bringing together as precisely a driving-together the resulting ‘unity’ of which is the outcome of this ‘gathering.’ In truth, however, the converse is the case: the gathering is determined from out of a previously beheld unity. ‘To gather’ means: to bring to appearance the unity that has already unfolded from out of itself; ‘gathering oneself’ means also to bring oneself together with a determinative unity that is not self-made and that therefore has previously addressed us. We should also not overlook the fact that in the words συνίημι and συμφέρω (‘I bring/bear together’) and λέγω (‘I gather’)—precisely because they are Greek words—there already resonates a reference to φύσις (i.e., the emerging, the beautiful), so that ‘gathering’ and ‘bringing-together’ have thought, in a Greek way, the essential feature that we could call the letting-appear from out of the unity.
(Every etymology becomes a meaningless play with words if the spirit of the language from out of which the language speaks, i.e., the essence of being and of truth, is not experienced. The danger of etymology lies not in etymology itself, but rather in the spiritual poverty of those who practice it—or, what amounts to the same, of those who seek to resist it. Thus, a philologist, with all due industriousness, can occupy himself for his entire life with the Greek language and command it, without ever being touched by the spirit of this language. On the contrary, he dutifully and conventionally allows his everyday world and the common way of thinking—even if modified ‘historiographically’—to preside in place of the spirit of language.)
The saying of fragment 51 clearly indicates what can also be gleaned from [149] other statements of Heraclitus’s: namely, that he knew of the difference between, and the manifest irreconcilability of, conventional thinking and essential thinking. One can see from this that the manifest irreconcilability with conventional thinking belongs to the very essence of essential thinking. The latter is, in its essence, entirely ‘incomprehensible’ to the conventional understanding. However, we would once again draw an all-too-hasty conclusion were we to maintain, as a result of the above, that anyone who states incomprehensible things is already thereby a thinker. Essential thinking is not incomprehensible because it is too complicated, but rather because it is too simple. Essential thinking is alienating not because what is thought by it lies too distant, but rather because it lies too near. The difference between conventional thinking and essential thinking is irresolvable. To know this and to know the reason for such irresolvability, and thereby to know the essence of manifest irreconcilability, are tasks that themselves belong to the knowledge of essential thinking. This difference is therefore expressed in various ways according to the fundamental position of a thinking within its history.
Seen from the perspective of conventional thinking—a perspective that is, for us, always the most familiar—every declaration of a thinker concerning the relation of essential thinking to conventional thinking is either taken as an arrogant dismissal of the ignorance of the masses, or as an irritated and petulant complaint concerning conventional thinking’s ‘deliberate’ misunderstandings regarding the thinker, and by extension the aggression the mob feels toward the thinker.
The vehemence of the thinkers’ comments regarding their relation to conventional thinking does not, in truth, arise from the minor irritation of one who is insulted merely as a result of a common lack of understanding. However, one can (because one can do this anywhere and anytime) very easily explain the defensive words of Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, Descartes, Kant, [150] Hegel, Schelling, and Nietzsche as resulting from anger: for, conventional thinking understands such an explanation most easily, and precisely thereby takes it to be the only true one. In truth, however, behind the thinkers’ defensive words is concealed an entire range of connections whose essence has still not been questioned. What is at stake here is not the ‘psychology’ of the ‘personality’ of the thinkers and their particular way of responding to the public and its lack of understanding: rather, what is being questioned is the essentially manifold relation in which the human essence stands to the truth of beings. Phrased still more essentially: if conventional thinking conceives of beings and only this, and if essential thinking thinks being, and if the difference between being and beings is an essential difference—or, indeed, is the inceptual difference itself—then the rift between conventional thinking and essential thinking has its origin in the difference between being and beings. This means: the relation between common thinking and essential thinking is in no way only a question of the ‘reaction’ of the public to philosophy, nor is it a question of the reaction of philosophy to the public’s reaction. Why do we say all of this during an elucidation of fragment 51? Because in this fragment the relation of essential thinking to common thinking is thought, and because a number of Heraclitus’s fragments that say something about this relation have been handed down to us.4 From the number of sayings alone it is evident that the above-discussed relation between conventional and essential thinking is something that must be thought essentially. What is also shown, through the haphazard scattering of such fragments through their customary sequence and arrangement, is that there is still no knowledge concerning their essential connectedness and the ground upon which such connectedness is based. Fragment 9, which [151] is so-named without regard for its proper content, reads:
ὄνους σύρματ᾽ἂν ἑλέσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ χρυσόν.
Asses may prefer chaff to gold.
The fragments of Heraclitus’s enumerated above require a special elucidation because, up to this point, they have only been misused ‘psychologically’ to ‘illuminate’ the ‘personality’ of Heraclitus, and for characterizing the relation of the philosopher toward the public. In this, one forgets to consider whether perhaps a thinker such as Heraclitus was compelled by other reasons to speak out concerning this relation, just as one forgets to ask what is at stake in the fact that in the inception of Occidental thinking precisely this relation came to the word in unity with the inceptual thought that, in turn, bears all that is to come.
(In modern times one all too eagerly understands the words of Heraclitus’s concerning the understanding of the mob in light of the rantings and ravings that Schopenhauer delivered during the previous century regarding university philosophy and its followers. With Schopenhauer—who was never a thinker, but merely a writer who obtained his thoughts secondhand from Hegel and Schelling and then trivialized them—grumpiness is the principle from which the relation of philosophers to the world is determined.)
Because the disparity between conventional and essential thinking is grounded in what each thinks, and because the disparity between what is thought in each, on the one hand, and the to-be-thought, on the other, traces back to the difference between being and beings; because, moreover, this difference is operative everywhere in Occidental history but is the least questioned and least thought-through, and is never taken as the difference that it is; for all of these reasons, the insertion of numbered fragments into Heraclitus’s thinking—that is, into that which he thinks [152]—must necessarily remain obscure. First we must learn what the to-be-thought is in Heraclitus’s thinking. Therefore, the second part of the saying in that fragment that is numbered 51 is initially taken by us as the most important part. Here something essential is said regarding ἁρμονία, i.e., regarding the essence of φύσις:
παλίντονος ἁρμονίη ὅκωσπερ τόξου καὶ λύρης.
The jointure (namely, the self-differentiating) unfolds drawing-back, as shows itself in the image of the bow and lyre.
We spoke about the ‘bow’ and the ‘lyre’ at the beginning of this lecture course when we made reference to the goddess Artemis, whom we claimed to be the goddess of Heraclitus. Her essence shows itself in the bow and lyre. Now we learn that the essence of the to-be-thought, and thus of what Heraclitus thinks—namely, φύσις as ἁρμονία—reveals itself in the bow and lyre. Can we doubt any longer that Artemis is the goddess of Heraclitus? Will we recognize that Heraclitus, not as an Ephesian but as a thinker—and, indeed, as an inceptual thinker—is beckoned in his thinking by this goddess? The emerging that unfolds (in that it originates from self-concealing) brings itself into separation, in a way, from self-concealing. Emerging thereby appears to move away from submerging, and is thus determined by a closing-together and a self-closing, just as the one end of the relaxed bow springs away from the other so that the curvature of the bow (and thus the bow itself) disappears. Emerging, taken on its own terms, seems like the mere bending away from one another of the ends of a relaxed bow. In truth, however, emerging is what shows itself to us in the image of the tightened (and that means, at the same time, tensible) bow. It belongs to the essence of the bow that while the ends stretch away from one another they, at the same time and within this very stretching away, are stretched back toward one another. Emerging does not abandon submerging and unhitch it: rather, in emerging, emerging itself [153] submerges into self-concealment as the facilitator of its essence and yokes itself to it. φύσις is this moving ‘away’ and moving apart of self-opening and self-closing, as well as the ‘return’ of each into being toward-one-another. φύσις is the to-and-fro, the back-and-forth: ἁρμός/the counter-moving joining/ἁρμονία/‘jointure.’ But inasmuch as λύρα (the lyre) is named, the thinker, by means of a single image in which the bowed-ness and counter-striving are one with the jointure, grasps ἁρμονία, in which the special form of harmony appears. The goddess whose signs are bow and lyre unfolds herself only from out of the essence of φύσις, and compliantly joins herself to this. Therefore, she roams, as the huntress, the entirety of what we call ‘nature.’ We certainly must not think about the essence of ‘tension’ in modern dynamical and quantitative terms, but rather as the lightened apartness of an expanse that is, at the same time, held together. In emerging, emerging receives the self-concealing in itself, because it can emerge as emerging only from out of self-concealing: it draws itself back into this. Because emerging and self-concealing each bestow to each other the favor of essence, the jointure of self-concealing into emerging, which at the same time joins emerging into self-concealing, is. Emerging and self-concealing (i.e., submerging) are the same. However, according to our interpretation of the first saying, φύσις is precisely τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε, the ‘never submerging.’ How can these two things square with one another? We must nevertheless question whether we are here justified in making the claim that they ‘square’ with one another, and thus make sense. φύσις is the never submerging precisely because it compliantly joins constantly to submerging as that from out of which it emerges. Without closure’s bestowal and its continual essence, emerging would cease to be what it is. The ‘never submerging’ in no way means that in φύσις the relation to submerging is obliterated: rather, it means that this relation must constantly and inceptually unfold. The ‘never submerging,’ and precisely and solely it, must grant favor to self-concealing. [154] Were the ‘never submerging’ to deny favor to the self-concealing, it would be without that from out of which it, as emerging, emerges, and that in which it as ‘the never submerging’ can unfold. The ‘never submerging’ does not submerge, and indeed unfolds within self-closure. That self-closure necessarily unfolds within emerging by no means indicates that emerging ‘submerges.’
(Were it to do so, its essence would of necessity decompose into non-essence. Were it the case that it could not bestow essence constantly, the ‘never submerging’ would still not even ‘become’ a mere submerging and revert to this.)
If, however, emerging and submerging are in a certain manner the same, why then does the thinker always say φύσις when he thinks of this sameness? Why does he not say τὸ δῦνον, since within the essence of φύσις self-concealing has the same claim to essence as emerging does? And why, instead of τὸ δῦνον, is the opposite τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε (i.e., emerging) used? In all of this, φύσις seems to have priority. However, this is merely an illusion that persists only so long as we think φύσις in a manner that disregards what comprises its essence (namely, ἁρμονία). Because φύσις is ἁρμονία, self-concealing is named within it as essentially equal. But then we could say τὸ δῦνον instead of φύσις, and thereby make it manifest that this submerging, as a going into concealing, is always already at the same time an emerging. Only the sun that, in emerging, both unfolds into its emergence and abandons that emergence, can submerge. Certainly—the sun involves both emerging as well as submerging, and we mean the latter as well as the former when we refer to the sun. The sun is so-named neither solely in relation to emerging nor solely in relation to submerging. [155] In the name φύσις, on the other hand, emerging has priority; but what this name names is essentially equally a submerging, and could indeed also be named according to it. If we nevertheless find priority given to the word φύσις, there must be a reason for this. Concerning the priority given to φύσις over κρύπτεσθαι, one can offer the following as a ground of explanation: emerging is the ‘positive’ and submerging the ‘negative.’ Everywhere and always the positive precedes the negative, not only, for example, in the ordering of affirming and denying, but rather in all ‘placements’ generally. Indeed, how could there be a de-nial without something first being placed before it, and thus a positum and a positive that the denial then re-places and dis-places? There is no beginning with dis-placement alone. The prefixes dis- and re- betray all too clearly here that the denial is dependent upon something that is already placed before it, and that it relies upon not only in every particular case, but also essentially. Only what has arrived and emerged can also go away and submerge. Because what displaces is in itself reliant upon something prior, placing-forth and placement, the position and the positive, retain an insuperable priority.
This is all clear enough and cleverly calculated. However, has the issue actually been thought? Is what we put forth concerning the relation and the essential consequences of placing-forth and displacement also valid for emerging and submerging? Placing-forth and displacing are, first of all, only ways that we bring beings before us and remove them. This placing-forth and displacing are the modes in which the action of presenting something, whatever it may be, moves. Placing and placing-forth are ‘actions,’ i.e., acts of thinking in the manner that ‘logic’ grasps and interprets ‘thinking.’ Does what applies to the behavior of human beings toward beings also apply to those beings themselves? Presuming it were indeed to apply to beings, would it therefore also apply to being? φύσις/κρύπτεσθαι are names for being. The persuasive argumentation offered with regard to the priority of positing over negating means nothing for the decision concerning the [156] relation of φύσις and κρύπτεσθαι. We speak while under the bewitchment of the blindly accepted omnipotence of ‘logic’ if we demonstrate the reliance of negation upon positing, and therefore unthinkingly assume that what applies to the ranking of formalized actions of thinking must also hold for the arrangement of beings and, further, for the essential arrangement of being (and this latter, indeed, already in advance). The very minimum that must here be required of a mindfully considerate thinking is that it at least ask whether what holds true for actions of thinking also already pertains to being itself, and indeed is even capable of pertaining to it: it must ask whether all thinking can only be thinking if it beforehand, and in the first place, is addressed by being. The competency of ‘logic’ to illuminate being itself is in every respect questionable.
However, one can raise the following obvious counterargument, which says in short: contesting the competency of logic for the illumination of the essence of being, or even calling it into question, is hypocritical—for in truth, any illumination of being that is articulated in propositions must proceed according to the rules ‘of logic,’ and must take place through actions of placement and displacement. One may respond to this objection in the following way: the actions of thinking in the sense of the placement of propositions may be necessary conditions for the execution of essential thinking and its saying: however, they are not thereby shown to be the ‘sufficient’ conditions and the originary bolstering support for this thinking. The claim that ‘logic’ is not competent to illuminate the truth of being says something other than the claim (supposed in the objection above) that the illumination of being can do without ‘logic.’
The dismissal of the competency of ‘logic’ has the following purpose: to make clear that the actions of placing, placing-forth, and displacing, taken on their own as the actions that they are, can neither ground, establish, nor even constitute [157] or ‘replace’ the domain within which ‘being’ itself becomes clear. It is one thing to carry out thinking interpreted in terms of ‘logic’ (in the sense of the placing of the presentation of things) directly and ubiquitously, and another thing entirely to set forth blindly this ‘logical’ thinking as the guideline along which the question of the being of beings is placed and considered decided. The appeal to a ranking of priority between the ‘positive’ and the ‘negative’ is, in a manifold sense, ‘logically’ correct: however, it does not guarantee the relation to being itself, because it (and the mere pointing out of the formal representational placements) not only presup-poses the relation of being to us, but also at the same time obscures and disguises it. The positing proposed by ‘logic’ is able to accomplish much within thinking, but this placing is not able to accomplish precisely that ‘positing’ that already lies in the so-called presup-positions, and it is in truth something other than a positing. Thus, in the very moment we clearly and distinctly interpret what emerges before and comes before as being presup-positions, ‘logic’ has already besieged and battered us with a blindness that can never be remedied by means of that which carried out the blinding itself (i.e., logic). Logic, as an authority over the decision concerning the essence of being, is not only intrinsically questionable and lacking a grounded competence, but this authority, and thus also the relation of the ‘positive’ to the ‘negative,’ is nowhere to be found in inceptual thinking. We force φύσις and κρύπτεσθαι into what is for them a thoroughly foreign relationship when we interpret the jointure, in and as which both are in essence united, as the chain of logical connection between the ‘positive’ and the ‘negative.’
However, within the saying of the inceptual thinker, the name φύσις is obvious. Certainly, we must at the same time also consider and marvel at the fact that in φύσις, in emerging, ἀλήθεια is thought and is near. But through the presence [158] of the alpha-privative, it is shown within ἀλήθεια that in emerging the relation to concealing and concealment originally prevails.
On the way of such considerations we gradually arrive before an enigma that no ‘logic’ and no ‘dialectic’ (the hitherto greatest power of logic) has solved, precisely because they cannot solve it, since they are not able to look the enigma in the eye. The enigma is this: that φύσις names at once emerging in distinction to submerging (i.e., φύσις in its relation to κρύπτεσθαι) and also names the unified essence of the jointure of φύσις and κρύπτεσθαι.
What does this two-fold meaning of φύσις signify? For those of us who have not managed to escape the grasp of metaphysics and therefore of logic, therein lies ready a schema by means of which to grasp the enigma ‘logically’—and through that very grasp to strangle it. Emerging and submerging stand in a relation (namely, a relation of φιλεῖν). They themselves are the links of the relation: the relata. φύσις is now the name for one of the relata and, at the same time, the name for the relation itself. φύσις is the relation itself and one of the relata. We can raise the following question to the enigma: why is it, and how does it come about, that something can and must be, at the very same time, the relation itself and one of the relata within that relation? To this question (which is posed within terms of the schema of logic), dialectic—the highest authority within metaphysical logic—might answer by pointing out that even thinking, precisely as the consummating act of the thinking ‘I’ (that is, the ‘I’ as the ‘I think’) has this essential character: that within the relation of the presentation of the object, it is at one and the same time this relation itself and one of the relata of the relation, specifically the ‘I’ that, in its representing, relates to the object.
However, we leave it entirely open here whether this dialectical-speculative answer born from out of the metaphysics of subjectivity is indeed an answer to the question raised by the above-mentioned enigma. For now, we observe only this: that φύσις [159] is in no way able to be compared with the ‘I’ and the ‘representing I’ (and thereby with subjectivity and consciousness), even though this equating in fact takes place when, for example, the famous saying of Parmenides’s concerning the relationship between νοεῖν and εἶναι is interpreted in terms of the relationship between subject and object, or of consciousness and an object of consciousness.
Were we able to say straightaway what conceals itself behind the enigma of the essential two-foldness of φύσις, then we would already have stated the essence of the inception. But perhaps it already gives us enough to ponder if we can first arrive before this enigma and attempt to look straight at it.
Even if we no longer attend to the attempted equating of the connection between φύσις and κρύπτεσθαι, emerging and submerging, with the formal/thetical/logical relation of positive and negative, then there still remains a priority of emerging. However, it is also illuminating to us if we think emerging (in the sense of the self-opening of the clearing) from out of what is properly determined through this emerging: namely, from out of beings themselves, which appear into emerging. Because it appears—that is, because it attains to presence and is precisely thereby that-which-is—emerging ‘dominates.’ Seen from the perspective of beings, it is of course being in whose emerged light alone beings as such can come to presence. With this perspective, the priority of emerging is grounded upon the priority of beings. However, the question stands before us: why are beings decisive and not rather non-beings and, what amounts to the same, the ‘nothing’? Why beings, and not rather nothing? Furthermore, apart from the question regarding the priority between that-which-is and that-which-is-not, could it not be the case that being itself unfolds as the prerequisite of the possibility of making a decision over whether or not there are beings?
[160] However, even this way of thinking—a way of retreat back to the priority of beings—does not allow us to find the grounding for the priority of being, and thereby the priority of emerging. Given this, we see that this justification on other grounds is not possible, since it already assumes the way of thinking characteristic of metaphysics, which questions being exclusively from the perspective of beings. By means of the metaphysical interpretation just executed above, we have already again taken being/emerging/φύσις for itself and have forgotten that according to the inceptual two-foldness, φύσις names at the same time the relation of φύσις to κρύπτεσθαι, and thus names φιλεῖν, the favor of the bestowal of essence in which the two join themselves together into their essence.
1 Regarding fragment 16, see below.
2 [Diels supplies ὁμολογέει instead of συμφέρεται.—Ed.]
3 Translators’ note. Heidegger does not mention this play by name; rather, he writes “so klingt das zwar gut nach Shakespeare.” We are assuming that it is The Taming of the Shrew, often translated into German as Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung, to which he is referring.
4 Cf. fragments 1, 2, 9, 13, 17, 19, 29, 34, 37, 40, 72, 87, 97, 104, 108.