heidegger anaximander fragment

MARTIN HEIDEGGERTHE ANAXIMANDER FRAGMENT

Translated by David Farrell Krell

IT IS CONSIDERED THE OLDEST

fragment of Western thinking. Anaximander reportedlylived on the island of Samos from the end of the seventhcentury to the middle of the sixth.

According to the generally accepted text the fragmentreads:

f.~ 6>v Of ~ yfVf.ULfi f.UTL TOL~ OVUL KaL T~V ¢Oopav €i~ TaVTa

yLVf.UOaL KaTa TO XP€Wv· OLoovaL yap aVTa OLK'YjV Kat TLULV

aM~J\OIS T~~ aOLK{a() Kara r~v rov Xpovov ra~Lv.

Whence things have their origin, there they mustalso pass away according to necessity; for theymust pay penalty and be judged for their injustice,according to the ordinance of time.

Thus translates the young Nietzsche in a treatise completed in 1873 entitled Philosophy in the Tragic Age ofthe Greeks. The treatise was published posthumously in1903, thirty years after its composition. It is based on alecture course Nietzsche offered several times in the early1870's at Basel under the title, "The Preplatonic Philosophers, with Interpretation of Selected Fragments."

In the same year, 1903, that Nietzsche's essay on thePreplatonic philosophers first became known, HermannDiels' Fragments of the Presocratics appeared. It con-

Copyright@ 1975 in the English translation by Harper & Row,Publishers, Inc.

"The Anaximander Fragment" is a chapter from Martin Heidegger, Early Greek Thinking (translated by David Farrell Krell andFrank A. Capuzzi), to be published in spring, 1975 (New York:Harper & Row).

David FarrellKrell 577

tains texts critically selected according to the methodsof modem classical philology, along with a translation.The work is dedicated to Wilhelm Dilthey. Diels translates the Anaximander fragment in the following words:

But where things have their origin, there too theirpassing away occurs according to necessity; forthey pay recompense and penalty to one anotherfor their recklessness, according to finnly established time.

The translations by Nietzsche and Diels arise from different intentions and procedures. Nevertheless they arescarcely distinguishable. In many ways Diels' translation.is more literal. But when a translation is only literal it isnot necessarily faithful. It is faithful only when its termsare words which speak from the language of the matteritself.

More important than the general agreement of the twotranslations is the conception of Anaximander which underlies both. Nietzsche locates him among the Preplatonicphilosophers, Diels among the Presocratics. The two designations are alike. The unexpressed standard for considering and judging the early thinkers is the philosophy ofPlato and Aristotle. These are taken as the Greek philosophers who set the standard both before and after themselves. Traversing Christian theology, this view becomesfirmly entrenched as a universal conviction, one which tothis day has not been shaken. In the meantime, evenwhen philological and historical research treat philosophers before Plato and Aristotle in greater detail, Platonicand Aristotelian representations and concepts, in moderntransformations, still guide the interpretation. That isalso the case when attempts are made to locate what isarchaic in early thinking by finding parallels in classicalarchaeology and literature. Classic and classicist representations prevail. We expatiate on archaic logic, notrealizing that logic occurs for the first time in the curriculum of the Platonic and Aristotelian schools.

Simply ignoring these later notions will not help in the

578 THE ANAXIMANDER FRAGMENT

course of translating from one language to another if wedo not first of all see how it stands with the matter to betranslated. But the matter here is a matter for thinking.Granted our concern for a philologically enlightenedlanguage, we must in translating first of all think aboutthe matter involved. Therefore only thinkers can help usin our attempt to translate the fragment of this earlythinker. When we cast about for such help we surely seekin vain.

In his own way the young Nietzsche does establish avibrant rapport with the personalities of the Preplatonicphilosophers; but his interpretations of the texts are commonplace, if not entirely superficial, throughout. Hegelis the only Western thinker who has thoughtfully experienced the history of thought; yet he says nothing aboutthe Anaximander fragment. Furthermore, Hegel tooshares the predominant conviction concerning the classiccharacter of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. Heprovides the basis for the classification of the early thinkers as Preplatonic and Presocratic precisely by graspingthem as Pre-Aristotelians.

In his lectures on the history of Greek philosophy, atthe point where he indicates the sources for our knowledge of this primeval epoch of philosophy, Hegel saysthe following:

Aristotle is the richest source. He studied the olderphilosophers expressly and with attention to fundamentals. Especially at the beginning of the Metaphysics (though in nlany other places besides) hespoke as a historian about the entire group ofthem. He is as philosophical as he is learned; wecan depend on him. For Greek philosophy we cando nothing better than take up the first book of hisMetaphysics. (Works, XIII, 189)

What Hegel recommends here to his listeners in the firstdecades of the nineteenth century had already been followed by Theophrastus, Aristotle's contemporary, hisstudent, and the first successor to the leadership of the

David Farrell Krell 579

Peripatetics. Theophrastus died about 286 B.C. He composed a text with the title tPVULKWV 86eaL, "the opinions ofthose who speak of cf>VU£L oVTa." Aristotle also calls themthe cf>vuLoAoyOL, meaning the early thinkers who ponderthe things of nature. tPVULS' means sky and earth, plantsand animals, and also in a certain way men. The worddesignates a special region of beings which, in both Aristotle and the Platonic school, are separated from ~(JoS' andA6yoS'. For them epVULS' no longer has the broad sense of thetotality of being. At the outset of Aristotle's thematic observations on Physics, that is, on the ontology of the cf>VU£L

oVTa, the kind of being called epvun oVTa is contrasted withthat of Tf.XVTJ OVTa. <Pvun OVTa is that which produces itselfby arising out of itself; Tf.XVTJ OVTa is produced by humanplanning and production.

When Hegel says of Aristotle that he is "as philosophical as he is learned," this actually means that Aristotle regards the early thinkers in the historical perspective, andaccording to the standard, of his own Physics. For us thatmeans: Hegel understands the Preplatonic and Presocratic philosophers as Pre-Aristotelians. After Hegel atwofold opinion concerning philosophy before Plato andAristotle ensconced itself as the general view: (1) theearly thinkers, in search of the first beginnings of being,for the most part took nature as the object of their representations; (2) their utterances on nature are inadequateapproximations compared to the knowledge of naturewhich in the meantime had blossomed in the Platonicand Aristotelian schools, the Stoa, and in the schools ofmedicine.

The <PVULKfiw 86~aL of Theophrastus became the chiefsource for manuals of the history of philosophy in Hellenistic times. These manuals prescribed the interpretation of the original writings of the early thinkers whichmay have survived to that time, and founded the subsequent doxographical tradition in philosophy. Not only thecontent but also the style of this tradition made its markon the relation of later thinkers-even beyond Hegel-tothe history of thought.

About 530 A.D. the Neoplatonist Simplicius wrote an


extensive commentary on Aristotle's Physics. In it he reproduced the Anaximander fragment, thus preserving itfor the Western world. He copied the fragment fromTheophrastus' fIlVUI.KWV 8o~al.. From the time Anaximanderpronounced his saying-we do not know where or whenor to whom-to the moment Simplicius jotted it down inhis commentary more than a millennium elapsed. Betweenthe time of Simplicius' jotting and the present momentlies another millennium-and-a-half.

Can the Anaximander fragment, from a historical andchronological distance of two thousand nve hundredyears, still say something to us? By what authority shouldit speak? Only because it is the oldest? In themselves theancient and antiquarian have no weight. Besides, although the fragment is the oldest vouchsafed to us byour tradition we do not know whether it is the earliestfragment of its kind in Western thinking. We may presume so, provided we first of all think the essence of theWest in terms of what the early saying says.

But what entitles antiquity to address us, presumablythe latest latecomers with respect to philosophy? Are welatecomers in a history now racing towards its end, anend which in its increasingly sterile order of uniformitybrings everything to an end? Or does there lie concealedin the historical [historisch] and chronological remoteness of the fragment the historic [geschichtliche] proximity of something unsaid, something that will speak out intimes to come?

Do we stand in the very twilight of the most monstroustransformation our planet has ever undergone, the twilight of that epoch in which earth itself hangs suspended?Do we gaze into the evening of a night which heraldsanother dawn? Are we to strike off on a journey to thishistoric region of earth's evening? Is the land of evening"only now emerging? Will this land of evening overwhelmOccident and Orient alike, transcending whatever ismerely European to become the location of a new but

o Land des Abends, Abend-Land. In German Abendland meansOccident or "the West," literally "the evening-land." - TR.


primordially fated history? Are we men of today already"Western» in a sense that first crystallizes in the course ofour passage into the world's night? What can all merelyhistoriological philosophies of history tell us about ourhistory if they only dazzle us with surveys of its sedimented stuff; if they 'explain history without ever thinking out, from the essence of history, the fundamentals oftheir way of explaining events, and the essence of history,in turn, from Being itself? Are we the latecomers we are?But are we also at the same time precursors of the dawnof an altogether different age, which has already left ourcontemporary historiological representations of historybehind?

Nietzsche, from whose philosophy (all too coarsely understood) Spengler predicted the decline of the Westin the sense of the Western historical world-writes in"The Wanderer and His Shadow" (1880), "A highersituation for mankind is possible, in which the Europe ofnations will be obscured and forgotten, but in whichEurope will live on in thirty very ancient but never antiquated books" (Aphorism no. 125).

All historiography predicts what is to come fromimages of the past determined by the present. It systematically destroys the future and our historic relationto the advent of destiny. Historicism has today not onlynot been overcome, but is only now entering the stage ofits expansion and entrenchment. The technical organization of communications throughout the world by radioand by a press already limping after it is the genuineform of historicism's dominion.

Can we nevertheless portray and represent the dawnof an age in ways different from those of historiography?Perhaps the discipline of history is still for us an indispensable tool for making the historical contemporary.That does not in any ,vay mean however that historiography, taken by itself, enables us to form within our historya truly adequate, far-reaching relation to history.

The antiquity pervading the Anaximander fragmentbelongs to the dawn of early times in the land of evening.But what if that which is early outdistanced everything


late; if the very earliest far surpassed the very latest?What once occurred in the dawn of our destiny wouldthen come, as what once occurred, at the last (foxarov) ,that is, at the departure of the long-hidden destiny ofBeing. The Being of beings is gathered (Ai.yf.u(}aL, AOYO~)

in the ultimacy of its destiny. The essence of Beinghitherto disappears, its truth still veiled. The history ofBeing is gathered in this departure. The gathering in thisdeparture, as the gathering (A6yo~) at the outermost point( foxarov) of its essence hitherto, is the eschatology ofBeing. As something fateful [geschickliches], Being itselfis inherently eschatological.

However, in the phrase "eschatology of Being" we donot understand the term "eschatology" as the name of atheological or philosophical discipline. We think of theeschatology of Being in a \vay corresponding to the waythe phenomenology of spirit is to be thought, i.e. fromwithin the history of Being. The phenomenology of spirititself constitutes a phase in the eschatology of Being,when Being gathers itself in the ultimacy of its essence,hitherto determined through metaphysics, as the absolutesubjectness [Subiektitiit] of the unconditioned will towill.

If we think within the eschatology of Being, then wemust someday anticipate the former dawn in the dawn tocome; today we must learn to ponder this former dawnthrough what is imminent.

If only once we could hear the fragment it would nolonger sound like an assertion historically long past. Norwould we be seduced by vain hopes of calculating historically, i.e, philologically and psychologically, whatwas at one time really present to that man called Anaximander of Miletus which may have served as the condition for his way of representing the world. But presuming we do hear what his saying says, what binds us in ourattempt to translate it? How do we get to what is said inthe saying, so that it might rescue the translation fromarbitrariness?

Weare bound to the language of the saying. We arebound to our mother tongue. In both cases we are essen-

David FarrellKrell 583

tially bound to language and to the experience of itsessence. This bond is broader and stronger, but far lessapparent, than the standards of all philological and historical facts-which can only borrow their factuality fromit. So long as we do not experience this binding, everytranslation of the fragment must seem wholly arbitrary.Yet even when we are bound to what is said in the saying, not only the translation but also the binding retainthe appearance of violence, as though what is to beheard and said here necessarily suffers violence.

Only in thoughtful dialogue with what it says can thisfragment of thinking be translated. However, thinking ispoetizing, and indeed more than one kind of poetizing,more than poetry and song. Thinking of Being is theoriginal way of poetizing. Language first comes to language, i.e, into its essence, in thinking. Thinking sayswhat the truth of Being dictates; it is the original dictare.Thinking is primordial poetry, prior to all poesy, but alsoprior to the poetics of art, since art shapes its work withinthe realm of language. All poetizing, in this broadersense, and also in the narrower sense of the poetic, is inits ground a thinking. The poetizing essence of thinkingpreserves the sway of the truth of Being. Because itpoetizes as it thinks, the translation which wishes to letthe oldest fragment of thinking itself speak necessarilyappears violent.

We shall try to translate the Anaximander fragment.This requires that we translate what is said in Greek intoour Gennan tongue. To that end our thinking must first,before translating, be translated to what is said in Greek.Thoughtful translation to what comes to speech in thisfragment is a leap over an abyss [Graben]. The abyssdoes not consist merely of the chronological or historicaldistance of two-and-a-half millennia. It is wider anddeeper. It is hard to leap, mainly because we stand righton its edge. We are so near the abyss that we do not havean adequate runway for such a broad jump; we easilyfall short-if indeed the lack of a sufficiently solid baseallows any leap at all.

What comes to language in the fragment? The ques-


tion is ambiguous, and therefore imprecise. It mightmean to inquire into the matter the fragment says something about; it might also mean what the fragment saysin itself. More literally translated the fragment says:

But that from which things arise also gives rise totheir passing away, according to what is necessary;for things render justice and pay penalty to oneanother for their injustice, according to the ordinance of time.

According to the usual view the statement speaks ofthe origin and decay of things. It specifies the nature ofthis process. Originating and decaying refer back to theplace whence they come. Things Hower, things fall. Thusthey exhibit a kind of barter system in Nature's immutable economy. The exchange of constructive and destructive moments is, of course, only roughly grasped as ageneral characteristic of natural occurrences, The mutability of all things is therefore not yet represented withprecision in terms of motions defined by exact relationsof mass. At this point an appropriate formula of the lawsof motion is still lacking. The judgment of later, moreprogressive times is indulgent enough not to ridicule thisprimitive natural science. Indeed it is found altogether:fitting that incipient observation of nature should describe the processes of things in terms of common occurrences in the human sphere. This is why Anaximander'sstatement mentions justice and injustice, recompense andpenalty, sin and retribution, with respect to things. Moraland juridical notions get mixed in with his view of nature.In this regard Theophrastus already criticizes Anaximander for 7rOt'r]'TtKfJyr£pOlS OVTW~ ovopautv aVTo' Aiywv, that is,for employing rather poetic words for what he wants tosay. Theophrastus means the words 8{K7J, T{Ut~, &'8uc{a,8t8ovat 8llC7Jv. • • •

Before all else \ve should try to make out what thefragment speaks of. Only then can we judge what it saysconcerning its subject matter.

Considered grammatically, the fragment consists of


two clauses. The first begins: f.~ <Lv Of ~ Y'Vf.ut~ f.UTt TO'i~ O~Ut

. . . The matter under discussion is OVTa; translated literally, To' OVTa means "beings." The neuter plural designatesTo' 7rOAAa, "the many," in the sense of the manifold of being. But To' OVTa does not mean an arbitrary or boundlessmultiplicity; rather, it means To' 7raVTa, the totality of being. Thus To' OJ/Ta means manifold being in totality. Thesecond clause begins: OtOOvat yap aVTa. . • • The aVTarefersto the TO'i~ OVUL of the first clause.

The fragment speaks of manifold being in totality. Butnot only things belong among beings. In the fullest sense,"things" are not only things of nature. Man, things produced by man, and the situation or environment effectedand realized by the deeds and omissions of man, also belong among beings, and so do daimonic and divine things.All these are not merely "also" in being, they are evenmore in being than mere things. The Aristotelian-Theophrastian presupposition that To' OVTa must be epVUH oVTa,

natural things in the narrower sense, is altogether groundless. It is superfluous for our translation. But even thetranslation of TtL OJ/Ta as "the things" does not suit thematter which comes to language in the saying.

If the presupposition that the fragment makes statements about things of nature fails, however, then so doesall foundation for the assertion that what ought to be represented strictly in terms of the natural sciences is interpreted morally and juridically. With the collapse ofthe presupposition that the fragment strives after scientific knowledge concerning the demarcated realm of nature, another assumption becomes superfluous, namely,that at this time ethical or juridical matters were interpreted in tenus of the disciplines we call "ethics" and"[urisprudence." Denial of such boundaries between disciplines does not mean to imply that in early times lawand ethicality were unknown. But if the way we normallythink within a range of disciplines (such as physics,ethics, philosophy of law, biology, psychology) has noplace here-if boundaries between these subjects arelacking-then there is no possibility of trespass or of theunjustified transfer of notions from one area to another.


Yet where boundaries between disciplines do not appear,boundless indeterminacy and flux do not necessarily prevail: on the contrary, an appropriate articulation of amatter purely thought rnay well come to language whenit has been freed from every oversimplification.

The words DLKYJ' &,DI.KLa, and TLUl.fi have a broad significance which cannot be enclosed within the boundariesof particular disciplines. "Broad" does not mean here extensive, in the sense of something flattened or thinnedout, but rather far-reaching, rich, containing muchthought. For precisely that reason these words are employed: to bring to language the manifold totality in itsessential unity. For that to happen, of course, thinkingmust apprehend the unified totality of the manifold, withits peculiar characteristics, purely in its own terms.

This way of letting manifold being in its unity comeinto essential view is anything but a kind of primitiveand anthropomorphic representation.

In order to translate at all what comes to language inthe fragment, before we do any actual translating wemust consciously cast aside all inadequate presuppositions. For example, that the fragment pertains to the philosophy of nature-in such a way that inappropriate moralisms and legalisms are enmeshed in it; or that highlyspecialized ideas relevant to particular regions of nature,ethics, or law playa role in it; or finally, that a primitiveoutlook still prevails which examines the world uncritically, interprets it anthropomorphically, and therefore resorts to poetic expressions.

However, even to cast aside all presuppositions whenever we find them inadequate is insufficient so long as wefail to gain access to what comes to language in the fragment. Dialogue with early Greek thinking will be fruitful only when such listening occurs. It is proper todialogue that its conversation speak of the same thing; indeed, that it speak out of participation in the Same. According to its wording, the fragment speaks of oVTa, expressing what they involve and how it is with them.Beings are spoken of in such a way that their Being is expressed. Being comes to language as the Being of beings.


At the summit of the completion of Western philosophy these words are pronounced: "To stamp Becomingwith the character of Being-that is the highest will topower." Thus Nietzsche in a note entitled, "Recapitulation." According to the character of the manuscript's handwriting we must locate it in the year 1885,about the time when Nietzsche, having completed Zarathustra, was planning his systematic metaphysical magnum opus. The "Being" Nietzsche thinks here is "theeternal recurrence of the same." It is the way of continuance through which will to power wills itself and guarantees its own presencing as the Being of Becoming. At theoutermost point of the completion of metaphysics the Being of beings is addressed in these words.

The ancient fragment of early Western thinking andthe late fragment of recent Western thinking bring theSame to language, but what they say is not identical.However, where we can speak of the Same in terms ofthings which are not identical, the fundamental condition of a thoughtful dialogue between recent and earlytimes is automatically fulfilled.

Or does it only seem so? Does there lie behind this"seeming" a gap between the language of our thinkingand the language of Greek philosophy? Whatever thecase, if we take TO. OVTa to mean "beings" and flvaL asnothing else than "to be," we cross every gap; grantingthe differences between these epochs, we are togetherwith the early thinkers in the realm of the Same. ThisSame secures our translation of TO. oVTa and flvaL by "beings" and "to be." Must we place in evidence extensivetexts of Greek philosophy in order to demonstrate the unimpeachable correctness of this translation? All interpretations of Greek philosophy themselves already rest onthis translation. Every lexicon provides the most copiousinformation concerning these words, flvaL meaning "tobe," fUTLV "is," OV "being," and TO. oVTa "beings."

So it is in fact. We do not mean to express doubtsabout it. We do not ask whether OV is correctly translatedas ''being'' and flvaL as "to be"; we ask only whether inthis correct translation we also think correctly. We ask


only whether in this most common of all translations anything at all is thought.

Let us see. Let us examine ourselves and others. It becomes manifest that in this correct translation everythingis embroiled in equivocal and imprecise significations. Itbecomes clear that the always hasty approximations ofusual translations are never seen as insufficient; nor arescholarly research and writing ever disturbed by them.Perhaps great effort is expended in order to bring outwhat the Greeks truly represented to themselves in wordslike ()€o'), 1f!vx~, 'w~, rUX'YJ, XapL'), Aoyo'), epVUL'), or words likei8la, Tlxv'Y], and f.vlpy€La. But we do not realize that theseand similar labors get nowhere and come to nothing solong as they do not satisfactorily clarify that realm of allrealms-so long as they do not cast sufficient light on OVand €lvaL in their Greek essence. But scarcely have wenamed €lvaL as a realm than "realm" is represented by thelogical apparatus of )'£vo~ and KOl.VOV and understood inthe sense of the universal and all-encompassing. Thisgrasping together (concipere) in the manner of representational concepts is immediately taken to be the only possible way to understand Being. It is still taken to be applicable when one hastens into the dialectic of conceptsor flees to a nonconceptual realm of mystic signs. It iswholly forgotten that the potency of the concept and theinterpretation of thinking as conceiving rest solely on theunthought, because unexperienced, essence of ov and

Most often we thoughtlessly catalogue the words ovand €lvaJ, under what we mean by the corresponding (butunthought) words of our own mother tongue, ''being''and "to be." More precisely, we never ascribe a significance to the Greek words at all: we immediately adoptthem from our stock of common knowledge, which hasalready endowed them with the common intelligibilityof its own language. We support the Greek words withnothing except the complacent negligence of hasty opinion. This may do in a pinch, when for example we arereading €lvaL and fUTLV in Thucydides' historical works, or~v and (UTaL in Sophocles.


But what if TtL OVTa, ov, and elvat come to speak in language as the fundamental words of thinking, and notsimply a particular kind of thinking but rather as the keywords for all Western thinking? Then an examination ofthe language employed in the translation would revealthe following state of affairs:

Neither is it clear and firmly established what we ourselves are thinking in the words "being" and "to be" inour own language;

nor is it clear and firmly established whether anythingwe are liable to come up with suits what the Greeks wereaddressing in the words ov and elvat.

Neither is it at all clear and firmly established what ov

and elvat, thought in Greek, say;nor can we, granted this state of affairs, administer an

examination which might determine whether and how farour thinking corresponds to that of the Greeks.

These simple relations remain thoroughly confusedand unthought. But within them, hovering over them,Being-talk has drifted far and wide, all at sea. Buoyed bythe formal correctness of the translation of OV and elvat by"being" and "to be," drifting right on by the confusedstate of affairs, Being-talk deceives. But not only do wecontemporary men err in this confusion; all the notionsand representations we have inherited from Greek philosophy remain in the same confusion, exiled for millennia.Neither pure neglect on the part of philology nor inadequate historical research has occasioned this confusion.It arises from the abyss [Abgrund] of that relation bywhich Being has appropriated the essence of Westernman. We cannot therefore dissolve the confusion by elaborating through some definition a more precise meaningfor the words DV and elva", "being" and "to be." On thecontrary, the attempt to heed this confusion steadfastly,using its tenacious power to effect some resolution, maywell bring about a situation which releases a differentdestiny of Being. The preparation of such an occasion is


already sufficient reason to set in motion, within the abiding confusion, a conversation with early thinking.

If we so stubbornly insist on thinking Greek thoughtin Greek fashion it is by no means because we intend tosketch a historical portrait of Greek antiquity, as one ofthe past great ages of man, which would be in many respects more accurate. We search for what is Greek neither for the sake of the Greeks themselves nor for theadvancement of scholarship. Nor do we desire a moremeaningful conversation simply for its own sake. Rather,our sole aim is to reach what wants to come to languagein such- a conversation, provided it come of its own accord. And this is that Same which fatefully concerns theGreeks and ourselves, albeit in different ways. It is thatwhich brings the dawn of thinking into the fate of thingsWestern, into the land of evening. Only as a result of thisfatefulness [Geschick] do the Greeks become Greeks inthe historic [geschichtlich] sense. 0

In our manner of speaking, "Creek" does not designatea particular people or nation, nor a cultural or anthropological group. What is Greek is the dawn of that destinyin which Being illuminates itself in beings and so propounds a certain essence of man; that essence unfoldshistorically as something fateful, preserved in Being anddispensed by Being, without ever being separated fromBeing.

Greek antiquity, Christendom, modem times, globalaffairs, and the West interpreted as the land of eveningwe are thinking all these on the basis of a fundamentalcharacteristic of Being which is more concealed in A~()'YJ

than it is revealed in JAA~()f.La. Yet this concealing of its

o The words Geschick and Geschichte stem from the same root,schicken, (ge )schehen, and since the twelfth century share a richhistory and fate. Schicken originally means "to put in order," later"to dispose" or "dispatch," and finally to prepare something sothat it can be sent. "To send" and "to happen" are today thecommon meanings of schicken and geschehen, once closely related. Thus, what is sent our way, what happens, constitutes ourhistory and makes out our fate; because of their peculiar Geschick,the Greeks remain geschichtlich. Heidegger expands the sense andimplications of these words in "Logos (Heraclitus B 50) ," thesecond essay in Early Greek Thinking. - TR.


essence and of its essential origin is characteristic of Being's primordial self-illumination, so much so that thinking simply does not p,ursue it. The being itself does notstep into this light of Being. The unconcealment of beings, the brightness granted them, obscures the light ofBeing.

As it reveals itself in beings, Being withdraws.In this way, by illuminating them, Being sets beings

adrift in errancy. Beings come to pass in that errancy bywhich they circumvent Being and establish the realm oferror (in the sense of a prince's realm or the realm ofpoetry). Error is the space in which history unfolds. Inerror what happens in history bypasses what is like Being. Therefore, whatever unfolds historically is necessarily misinterpreted. During the course of this misinterpretation destiny awaits what will become of its seed. Itbrings those whom it concerns to the possibilities of thefateful and fatal [Geschicklichen und Ungeschicklichen] .Man's destiny gropes toward its fate [Geschick versuchtsich an Geschick]. Man's inability to see himself corresponds to the self-concealing of the lighting of Being.

Without errancy there would be no connection fromdestiny to destiny: there would be no history. Chronological distance and causal sequence do indeed belong to thediscipline of historiography, but are not themselves history. When we are historical we are neither a great nora small distance from what is Greek. Rather, we are inerrancy toward it.

As it reveals itself in beings, Being withdraws.Being thereby holds to its truth and keeps it to itself.

This keeping to itself is the way it reveals itself early on.Its early sign is 'A-A~()fLa. As it provides the unconcealment of beings it founds the concealment of Being. Concealment remains characteristic of that denial by whichit keeps to itself.

We may call this luminous keeping to itself in the truthof its essence the €7r0x~ of Being. However, this word,borrowed from the Stoic philosophers, does not here havethe Husserlian sense of objectification or methodical exclusion by an act of thetic consciousness. The epoche of


Being belongs to Being itself; we are thinking it in termsof the experience of the oblivion of Being.

From the epoche of Being comes the epochal essenceof its destining, in which world history properly consists.When Being keeps to itself in its destining, world suddenly and unexpectedly comes to pass. Every epoch ofworld history is an epoch of errancy. The epochal natureof Being belongs to the concealed temporal character ofBeing and designates the essence of time as thought inBeing. What is represented in this word "time" is onlythe vacuity of an illusory time derived from beings conceived as objects.

For us, however, the most readily experienced correspondence to the epochal character of Being is the ecstatic character of Da-sein. The epochal essence of Beinglays claim to the ecstatic nature of Da-sein. The eksistence of man sustains what is ecstatic and so preserveswhat is epochal in Being, to whose essence the Da, andthereby Da-sein, belongs.

The beginning of the epoch of Being lies in that whichwe call "Greek," thought epochally. This beginning, alsoto be thought epochally, is the dawn of the destiny in Being from Being.

Little depends on what we represent and portray ofthe past; but much depends on the way we are mindfulof what is destined. Can we ever be mindful withoutthinking? But if thinking does occur we abandon allclaims of shortsighted opinion and open ourselves to theclaim of destiny. Does this claim speak in the early saying of Anaximander?

We are not sure whether its claim speaks to our essential being. It remains to ask whether in our relation to thetruth of Being the glance of Being, and this means lightning (Heraclitus, fro 64), strikes; or whether in our knowledge of the past only the faintest glimmers of a stormlong flown cast a pale semblance of light.

Does the fragment speak to us of oVTa in their Being?Do we apprehend what it says, the €lvat. of beings? Doesa streak of light still pierce the misty confusion of errancyand tell us what OVTa and €lvat. say in Greek? Only in the


brilliance of this lightning streak can we translate ourselves to what is said in the fragment, so as to translate itin thoughtful conversation. Perhaps the confusion surrounding the use of the words f1vTa and €lvat, "being" and"to be," comes less from the fact that language cannot sayeverything adequately than because we cannot thinkthrough the matter involved clearly enough. Lessing oncesaid, "Language can express everything we can clearlythink." So it rests with us to be ready for the right opportunity, which will permit us to think clearly the matterthe fragment brings to language.

We are inclined to see the opportunity we are lookingfor in the Anaximander fragment itself. In that case westill are not paying sufficient heed to what the way oftranslating requires.

For before interpreting the fragment-and not with itshelp to begin with-it is essential that we translate ourselves to the source of what comes to language in it,which is to say, to To' oVTa. This word indicates the sourcefrom which the fragment speaks, not merely that whichit expresses. That from which it speaks is already, beforeany expression, what is spoken by the Greek language incommon everyday parlance as well as in its learned employ. We must therefore seek the opportunity which willlet us cross over to that source first of all outside the fragment itself; it must be an opportunity which will let usexperience what TtL oVTa, thought in Greek, says, Furthermore, we must at first remain outside the fragment because we have not yet delineated each of its terms; thisdelineation is ultimately (or, in terms of the matter itself,in the first place) governed by the knowledge of what inearly times was thought or thinkable in such a choiceof words, as distinct from what the prevailing notions ofrecent times find in it.

The text cited and translated above from Simplicius'commentary on the Physics is traditionally accepted asthe Anaximander fragment. However, the commentarydoes not cite the fragment so clearly that we can ascertain with certainty where Anaximander's saying beginsand where it ends. Still, our contemporaries who are ex-


ceptionally knowledgeable in the Greek language acceptthe text of the fragment in the form introduced at theoutset of our inquiry.

But even John Burnet, the distinguished scholar ofGreek philosophy to whom we owe the Oxford edition ofPlato, in his book Early Greek Philosophy expresseddoubts as to whether Simplicius' citation begins where itis usually said to begin. In opposition to Diels, Burnetwrites: "Diels (Vors. 2, 9) begins the actual quotationwith the words i~ 6lv 8£ ~ yf.Vf.Cfls. • • • The Greek practiceof blending quotations with the text tells against this.[Only seldom does a Greek author immediately beginwith a literal quotation.] Further it is safer not to ascribethe terms y/.Vf.UIS and ep(Jopa in their technical Platonicsense to Anaximander [and it is not likely that Anaximander said anything about TO. OVTa]."~

On this basis Burnet argues that Anaximander's sayingbegins only with the words KaTa TO XPf.wv. What Burnetsays in general about Greek citations speaks for the exclusion of the words preceding these. On the other handhis remarks, which rest on the terminological employment of the words y/.Vf.UIS and ep(Jopa, cannot be acceptedas they stand. It is correct to say that Y€Vf.ULr; and ep(Jopa

become conceptual terms with Plato and Aristotle andtheir schools. But y/.Vf.ULr; and ep(Jopa are old words whicheven Homer knows. Anaximander need not have employed them as conceptual terms. He cannot have applied them in this fashion, because conceptual language

o Heidegger cites the German translation of Burnet's third edi-tion by Else Schenkl, Die Anfiinge der griechischen Philosophie(Berlin: Teubner, 1913), p. 43, n. 4. I have cited the fourth English edition (London: Black, 1930), p. 52, n. 6, said to be "a renrint of the third edition" with "additional references and one~orrection." The first bracketed phrase does not occur in the English but appears in Heidegger's citation; the second does occur inthe English but not in Heidegger's citation. Nevertheless, the firstis a natural expansion of Burnet's view; as for the second, onemight expect that Heidegger's response to Burnet regarding Ta.OVTa would duplicate that respecting 'Yf.VEO'tS and l/J(Jopa: althoughnot yet a technical term, TO. oVTa is an old word, known already byHomer in the form T'iovTa, as the Iliad passage below (p. 599)attests. - TR.


necessarily remains foreign to him. For conceptual language is first possible on the basis of the interpretation ofBeing as l8€a, and indeed from then on it is unavoidable.

Nevertheless, the entire sentence preceding the KaTa 1'6XPfWV is much more Aristotelian in structure and tonethan archaic. The KaTa T~V TOV xpovov Ta~tV at the end of thenormally accepted text also betrays the same characteristic lateness. Whoever takes it upon himself to strike outthe part of the text which is dubious to Burnet cannotmaintain the usually accepted closing of the fragmenteither. Of Anaximander's original words, only thesewould remain:

••• lCaTa TO xpfWv· 8t8ovat yap

aAA~Aot~ T1j~ a8L1(la~.

, ,Kat TtUtV

. . . according to necessity; for they pay one another recompense and penalty for their injustice.

Now these are precisely the words in reference towhich Theophrastus complains that Anaximander speaksin a rather poetic manner. Since thinking through this entire question, which came up often in lny lecture coursesa few years ago, I am inclined to accept only these as theimmediate, genuine words of Anaximander, with theproviso however that the preceding parts of the text arenot simply set aside, but rather are positively retained,on the basis of the strength and eloquence of theirthought, as secondary testimony concerning Anaximander's thinking. This demands that we understand precisely these words Y€VfUIS and ep(}opa as they are thoughtin Greek, whether they be preconceptual words or Platonic-Aristotelian conceptual terms.

Accordingly, yf.VfUL~ does not at all mean the genetic inthe sense of the "developmental" as conceived in modemtimes; nor does epf)opa mean the counterphenomenon todevelopment-some sort of regression, shrinkage, or wasting away. Rather, yf.JlfUL~ and ep(}opa are to be thoughtfrom epVUL~, and within it, as ways of luminous rising anddecline. Certainly we can translate yf.JlfUL~ as origination;


but we must think this originating as a movement whichlets every emerging being abandon concealment and goforward into unconcealment. Certainly we can translateepOopa as passing away; but we must think this passingaway as a going which in its tum abandons unconcealment, departing and withdrawing into concealment.

Presumably, Anaximander spoke of ylv£uLr; and epOopa.It remains questionable whether this occurred in theform of the traditional statement, although such paradoxical turns of speech as ylv£uIs (UTLV (which is the wayI should like to read it) and epOOptL ylv£TaL, "coming-to-beis," and "passing-away comes to be" still may speak infavor of an ancient language. rlV£uLr; is coming forwardand arriving in unconcealment. <l>Oopa means the departure and descent into concealment of what has arrivedthere out of unconcealment. The coming forward into. . . and the departure to . . . become present withinunconcealment between what is concealed and what isunconcealed. They initiate the arrival and departure ofwhatever has arrived.

Anaximander must have spoken of what is designatedin ylv£uLr; and epOopa: whether he actually mentioned TtL6VTa remains an open question, although nothing speaksagainst it. The aUTa in the second clause, because of thescope of what it says and also because of the reference ofthis second clause back to the KaTtL TO XP£WV, can designatenothing less than being-in-totality experienced in a preconceptual way, TtL woAAa, TtL waVTa, "beings," We are stillcalling TtL OVTa "beings" without ever having clarifiedwhat 6V and £fvaL indicate when thought in Greek. Yet wehave in the meantime won a more open field in which topursue such clarification.

We began with the usually accepted text of the fragment. In a preliminary review of it we excluded the common presuppositions which determine its interpretation.In so doing we discovered a clue in what comes to language in ylv£uIs and epfJopa. The fragment speaks of thatwhich, as it approaches, arrives in unconcealment, andwhich, having arrived here, departs by withdrawing intothe distance.


However, whatever has its essence in such arrival anddeparture we would like to call becoming and perishing,which is to say, transiency rather than being; because wehave for a long time been accustomed to set Being opposite Becoming, as if Becoming were a kind of nothingness and did not even belong to Being; and this becauseBeing has for a long time been understood to be nothingelse than sheer perdurance. Nevertheless, if Becoming is,then we must think Being so essentially that it does notsimply include Becoming in some vacuous conceptualmanner, but rather in such a way that Being sustains andcharacterizes Becoming (YEVfU(S-ep(Jopa) in an essential,appropriate manner.

In this regard we are not to discuss whether and withwhat right we should represent Becoming as transiency.Rather, we must discuss what sort of essence the Greeksthink for Being when in the realm of the oVTa they experience approach and withdrawal as the basic trait ofadvent.

When the Greeks say TO. oVTa, what comes to the fore intheir language? Where is there, aside from the Anaximander fragment, a guideline which would translate usthere? Because the word in question, with all its modifications, €UTLV, ~v, (UTaL, ftvaL, speaks everywhere throughout the language-and even before thinking actuallychooses this as its fundamental word-it is necessary thatwe avail ourselves of an opportunity which in terms of itssubject matter, its time, and the realm to which it belongs,lies outside philosophy, and which from every point ofview precedes the pronouncements of thinking.

In Homer we perceive such an opportunity. Thanks tohim we possess a reference in which the word appears assomething more than a term in the lexicon. Rather, it is areference which poetically brings. to language what ()VT4

names. Because all AE~tft; of the lexicographic sort presupposes the thought of the A.fyOP.fVOV, we will refrain fromthe futile practice of heaping up references to serve asevidence; this kind of annotation usually proves only thatnone of the references has been thought through. Withthe aid of this commonly adopted method one usually ex-


pects that by shoving together one unclarifled reference'with another every bit as unclear clarity will suddenlyresult.

The passage upon which we wish to comment is foundat the beginning of the first book of the Iliad, lines 68-72.It gives us the chance to cross over to what the Greeksdesignate with the word 6vTa, provided we let ourselvesbe transported by the poet to the distant shore of thematter spoken there.

For the following reference a preliminary observationconcerning the history of the language is needed. Our observations cannot claim to present this philological problem adequately, much less to solve it. In Plato and Aristotle we encounter the words 6V and 6VTa as conceptualterms. The later terms "ontic" and "ontological" are formedfrom them. However, 6V and 6vTa, considered linguistically, are presumably somewhat truncated forms of theoriginal words eov and eOVTa. Only in the latter words isthe sound preserved which relates them to €UTLV and £tvaL.The epsilon in €oV and €OVTa is the epsilon in the root €U of€UTLV, est, esse, and "is." In contrast, OV and OVTa appear asrootless participial endings, as though by themselves theyexpressly designated what we must think in those wordforms called by later grammarians JL€TOX~, participium,i.e. those word-forms which participate in the verbal andnominal senses of a word..

Thus 6V says "being" in the sense of to be a being; atthe same time it names a being which is. In the duality ofthe participial significance of OV the distinction between"to be" and "a being" lies concealed. What is here setforth, which at first may be taken for grammatical hairsplitting, is in truth the riddle of Being. The participle OV

is the word for what comes to appear in metaphysics astranscendental and transcendent Transcendence.

Archaic language, and thus Parmenides. and Heraclitusas well, always employ eov and eOVTa.

But eov, "being," is not only the singular form of theparticiple €OVTa, "beings"; rather, it indicates what is singular as such, what is singular in its numerical unity andwhat is singularly and unifyingly one before all number.


We might assert in an exaggerated way, which nevertheless bears on the truth, that the fate of the West hangson the translation of the word €OV, assuming that thetranslation consists in crossing over to the truth of whatcomes to language in €OV.

What does Homer tell us about this word? We are familiar with the situation of the Achaeans before Troy atthe outset of the Iliad. For nine days the plague sent byApollo has raged in the Greek camp. At an assembly ofthe warriors Achilles commands Kalchas the seer to interpret the wrath of the god.

• 'TOLO'L 8' o.v£O''T'1]

Ka'\'xa~ efO'TOpl8'1]~ OLWV07rO'\'wv oX' /1PLO''TO~

()~ iJ8'1] 'Ta 'T' €ov'Ta 'Ta 'T' €O'O'o/LfVa 7rPO 'T' €OV'Ta

Kat n/fO'O" tt-qua'T' ,AXauov ·I'\'LOV ftO'W

~v 8m JLaV'TOuVV'1]V, 'T~V oi7r0Pf ipOLf30~ J A7ro,\,,\,wv·

and among them stood up Kalchas, Thestor's son,far the best of the bird interpreters, who knew allthat is, is to be, or once was, who guidedinto the land of Ilion the ships of the Achaeansthrough that seercraft of his own that Phoibos Apollogave him. 0

Before he lets Kalchas speak, Homer designates him asthe seer. Whoever belongs in the realm of seers is such aone O~ iJ8'YJ • • • "who knew . . .": iJ8'YJ is the pluperfect ofthe perfect 018fv, "he has seen." Only when a man hasseen does he truly see. To see is to have seen. What isseen has arrived and remains for him in sight. A seer hasalways already seen. Having seen in advance he sees intothe future. He sees the future tense out of the perfect.When the poet speaks of the seer's seeing as a having seen,he must say what the seer has seen in the pluperfecttense, iJ8'YJ, he had seen. What is it that the seer has seenin advance? Obviously, only what becomes present in

o Homer, The Iliad, Trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961) p. 61, with minor changes. Heidegger uses the German translation by Voss. - TR.


the lighting that penetrates his sight. What is seen insuch a seeing can only be what comes to presence in unconcealment. But what becomes present? The poet namessomething threefold: Tel T' £ovTa, that which is in being, Tel7' £uu0p-fva, also that which will be, 7rPO T' €OVTa, and alsothe being that once was.

The first point we gather from this poetic phrase isthat TO. £ovTa is distinguished from TO. €UU0p-fVa and 7rPO

€OVTa. Thus Td £OVTa designates being in the sense of thepresent [Gegenwiirtigen]. When we modems speak of"the present," we either mean what is "now"-which werepresent as something within time, the "now" serving asa phase in the stream of time-or we bring the "present"into relation with the "objective" [Gegenstandigen]. Assomething objective, an object is related to a representingsubject. However, if we employ "present" for the sake ofa closer determination of €OVTa, then we must understand"the present" from the essence of €OVTa and not vice versa.Yet lOVTa is also what is past and what is to come. Bothare ways of presencing, i.e, the presencing of what is notpresently present. The Greeks also named more preciselywhat is presently present TtL 7rapfOVTa, 7rapel meaning"alongside," in the sense of coming alongside in unconcealment. The gegen in gegenwarlig (presently) doesnot mean something over against a subject, but rather anopen expanse (Gegend) of unconcealment, into whichand within which whatever comes along lingers. Accordingly, as a characteristic of lovTa, "presently" means asmuch as "having arrived to linger awhile in the expanseof unconcealment." Spoken first, and thus emphasized,lovTa, which is expressly distinguished from 7rPO €OVTa andfuuop.fva, names for the Greeks what is present insofar asit has arrived in the designated sense, to linger withinthe expanse of unconcealment. Such a coming is properarrival, the presencing of what is properly present. Whatis past and what is to come also become present, namelyas outside the expanse of unconcealment. What presentsitself as non-present is what is absent. As such it remainsessentially related to what is presently present, inasmuchas it either comes forward into the expanse of unconceal-


ment or withdraws from it. Even what is absent is something present, for as absent from the expanse, it presentsitself in unconcealment. What is past and what is to comeare also €OVTa. Consequently €OV means becoming presentin unconcealment.

The conclusion of this commentary on €OVTa is that alsoin Greek experience what comes to presence remains ambiguous, and indeed necessarily so. On the one hand, TO.

€OVTa means what is presently present; on the other, it alsomeans all that becomes present, whether at the presenttime or not. However, we must never represent what ispresent in the broader sense as the "universal concept'> ofpresence as opposed to a particular case-the presentlypresent-though this is what the usual conceptual modeof thought suggests. For in fact it is precisely the presently present and the unconcealment that rules in it thatpervade the essence of what is absent, as that which is notpresently present.

The seer stands in sight of what is present, in its unconcealment, which has at the same time cast light onthe concealment of what is absent as being absent. Theseer sees inasmuch as he has seen everything as present;Kat, and only on that account v~faa' ~y~aaT', was he ableto lead the Achaeans' ships to Troy. He was able to dothis through God-given p.avToavV1J. The seer, 0 p.avTls, is thep.aLvop.fVO(), the madman. But in what does the essence ofmadness consist? A madman is beside himself, outsidehimself: he is away. We ask: away? Where to and wherefrom? Away from the sheer oppression of what lies before us, which is only presently present, and away towhat is absent; and at the same time away to what ispresently present insofar as this is always only somethingthat arrives in the course of its coming and going. Theseer is outside himself in the solitary region of the presencing of everything that in some way becomes present.Therefore he can find his way back from the "away» ofthis region, and arrive at what has just presented itself,namely, the raging epidemic. The madness of the seer'sbeing away does not require that he rave, roll his eyes


and toss his limbs; the simple tranquility of bodily composure may accompany the madness of vision.

All things present and absent are gathered and preserved in one presencing for the seer. The old Germanword war [was] means protection. We still recognize thisin uiahmehmen [to perceive], i.e. to take into preservation; in gewahren and verwahren [to be aware of, to keepor preserve]. We must think of wahren as a securingwhich clears and gathers. Presencing preserves [wahrt]in unconceaIment what is present both at the presenttime and not at the present time. The seer speaks fromthe preserve [Wahr] of what is present. He is the soothsayer [Wahr-Sager].

Here we think of the preserve [Wahr] in the sense ofthat gathering which clears and shelters; it suggests itself as a long-hidden fundamental trait of presencing, i.e.of Being. One day we shall learn to think our exhaustedword for truth [Wahrheit] in terms of the preserve[Wahr]; to experience truth as the preservation [Wahrnis] of Being; and to understand that, as presencing, Being belongs to this preservation. As protection of Being,preservation belongs to the herdsman-who has so littleto do with bucolic idylls and Nature mysticism that hecan be the herdsman of Being only if he continues to holdthe place of nothingness. Both are the Same. Man can doboth only within the openedness of Da-sein.

The seer is the one who has already seen the totality ofwhat is present in its presencing. Said in Latin, vidit; inGennan, er steht im Wissen [he stands in knowledge].To have seen is the essence of knowing, In "to have seen"there is always something more in play than the completion of an optical process. In it the connection with whatis present subsists behind every kind of sensuous or nonsensuous grasping. On that account, "to have seen" is related to self-illuminating presencing. Seeing is determined,not by the eye, but by the lighting of Being. Presencewithin the lighting articulates all the human senses. Theessence of seeing, as "to have seen," is to know. Knowledge embraces vision and remains indebted to presencing. Knowledge is remembrance of Being. That is


why MVYJp.ouVVYJ is mother of the muses. Knowledge is notscience in the modern sense. Knowledge is thoughtfulmaintenance of Being's preserve.

Whither have Homer's words translated us? To iOVTa.The Greeks experience beings as being present, whetherat the present time or not, presencing in unconcealment.The word by which we translate OV, "being," is now nolonger obtuse; no longer are "to be," as the translation of(IvaI., and the Greek word itself hastily employed ciphersfor arbitrary and vague notions about some indeterminateuniversal.

At the same time it becomes manifest that Being, asthe presencing of what is present, is already in itselftruth, provided we think the essence of truth as the gathering that clears and shelters; provided we dissociate ourselves from the modern prejudice of metaphysics-todayaccepted as something obvious-that truth is a propertyof beings or of Being. Being, saying the word thoughtfully now, is (Illal. as presencing. In a hidden way it is aproperty of truth, but clearly not of truth considered asa characteristic of human or divine cognition, and not asa property in the sense of a quality. Furthermore, it hasbecome clear that TO. iovTa ambiguously names what ispresently present and also what is not presently present;the latter, understood with regard to the former, meanswhat is absent. But what is at the present time present isnot a slice of something sandwiched between two absences. If what is present stands in the forefront of vision,everything presences together: one brings the other withit, one lets the other go. What is presently present in unconcealment lingers in unconcealment as in an open expanse. Whatever lingers (or whiles) in the expanse proceeds to it from concealment and arrives in unconceaIment. But what is present is arriving or lingering insofaras it is also already departing from unconcealment toward concealment. What is presently present lingersawhile. It endures in approach and withdrawal. Lingering is the transition from coming to going: what is present is what in each case lingers. Lingering in transition, itlingers still in approach and lingers already in departure.


What is for the time being present, what presently is,comes to presence out of absence. This must be said precisely of whatever is truly present, although our usualway of representing things would like to exclude fromwhat is present all absence.

Ta lOVTa names the unique manifold of whatever lingersawhile, Everything present in unconcealment in this waypresents itself to all others, each after its own fashion.

Finally, we gather something else from the passage inHomer: Ta lovTa, so-called beings, do not mean exclusively the things of nature. In the present instance thepoet applies iOVTa to the Achaeans' encampment beforeTroy, the god's wrath, the plague's fury, funeral pyres,the perplexity of the leaders, and so on. In Homer's language Ta lovTa is not a conceptual philosophical term buta thoughtful and thoughtfully uttered word. It does notspecify natural things, nor does it at all indicate objectswhich stand over against human representation. Man toobelongs to iovTa; he is that present being which, illuminating, apprehending, and thus gathering, lets what is present as such become present in unconcealment. If in thepoetic designation of Kalchas what is p-resent is thoughtin relation to the seer's seeing, this means for Greek thinking that the seer, as the one who has seen, is himself onewho makes-present and belongs in an exceptional senseto the totality of what is present. On the other hand, itdoes not mean that what is present is nothing but an object wholly dependent upon the seer's subjectivity.

Ta fOJ/Ta, what is present, whether or not at the presenttime, is the unobtrusive name of what expressly comes tolanguage in the Anaximander fragment. This word namesthat which, while not yet spoken, is the unspoken inthinking which addresses all thinking. This word namesthat which from now on, whether or not it is uttered, laysa claim on all Western thinking.

But only several decades later, not with Anaximanderbut with Parmenides, lov ( presencing) and €iVaL ( topresence) are expressed as the fundamental words ofWestern thinking. This does not happen, as the normalmisconception still insists, because Parmenides interprets


being "logically" in terms of a proposition's structure andits copula. In the history of Greek thinking even Aristotledid not go so far when he thought the Being of beings intenus of K.aT'YJyopLa. Aristotle perceived beings as what already lies before any proposition, which is to say, as whatis present and lingers awhile in unconcealment. Aristotledid not have to interpret substance, lJ1roK.€Lp.€VOV, on thebasis of the subject of a predicate phrase, because theessence of substance, ovuLa, in the sense of 7rapOVULa, wasalready granted. Nor did Aristotle think the presence ofwhat is present in terms of the objectivity of an object ina proposition, but rather as iv£pyf.La, which however is farremoved-as by an abyss-from the actualitas of actuspurus in medieval scholasticism.

In any case, Parrnenides' fUTLV does not mean the "is"which is the copula of a proposition. It names iov, thepresencing of what is present. The fUTLV corresponds tothe pure claim of Being, before the division into a firstand second ovuLa, into existentia and essentia. But in this,vay, iov is thought from the concealed and undisclosedrichness of unconcealment in lOVTa known to the earlyGreeks, without it ever becoming possible or necessaryfor them to experience in all its perspectives this essential richness itself.

From a thoughtful experience of the iov of iovTa, spoken in a preconceptual way, the fundamental words forearly thinking are uttered: cI>VUL~ and Aoyo~, MOLpa and"'EPL~, :J.A.A~(Jf.La and f/Ev. By means of the f/Ev, which is tobe thought back into the realm of fundamental words,lov and f.tvaL become the words which expressly indicatewhat is present. Only as a result of the destiny of Being,as the destiny of fIE,), does the modem age after essentialupheavals enter the epoch of the monadology of substance, which completes itself in the phenomenology ofspirit,

It is not that Parmenides interpreted Being logically.On the contrary, having sprung from metaphysics, whichat the same time it wholly dominated, logic led to a stateof affairs where the essential richness of Being hidden inthese early fundamental words remained buried. Thus


Being could be driven to the fatal extreme of serving asthe emptiest, most universal concept.

But since the dawn of thinking "Being" names thepresencing of what is present, in the sense of the gathering which clears and shelters, which in turn is thoughtand designated as the Aoyo~. The Aoyo~ (A€yfLV, to gatheror assemble) is experienced through 'AA~(JfLa, the sheltering which reveals things. In the bifurcated essence of,AA~(}fLa, what is essentially thought as JtEPL~ and Moipa,

which at the same time mean 4>VO'L~, lies concealed.In the language of these fundamental words, thought

from the experience of presencing, these words from theAnaximander fragment resound: 8{1('Y], T{O'L~, ci8LI({a.

The claim of Being which speaks in these words determines philosophy in its essence. Philosophy did notspring from myth. It arises solely from thinking and inthinking. But thinking is the thinking of Being. Thinkingdoes not originate: it is, when Being presences. But thecollapse of thinking into the sciences and into faith is thebaneful destiny of Being.

In the dawn of Beings destiny, beings, To' €OVTa, cometo language. From the restrained abundance of what inthis way comes, what does the Anaximander fragmentbring to utterance? According to the presumably genuinetext, the fragment reads:

• • • /(aTa TO XPf6JV· 8L8ovaL yap aUTo' 8{I('Y]V Kat T{O'LV

ciAA~AOL~ rYj~ ci8L1cla~.

In the standard translation:

. . . according to necessity; for they pay one another recompense and penalty for their injustice.

The fragment still consists of two clauses; of the first oneonly the closing words are retained. We will begin -bycommenting on the second clause.

The aUTa refers to what is named in the previous clause.The antecedent can only be To' OVTa, the totality of whatis present, whatever is present in unconcealment, whether


or not at the present time. Whether or not this is expressly designated by the word £Ol/Ta may remain an openquestion since the text is uncertain. The aVTa refers toeverything present, everything that presences by lingering awhile: gods and men, temples and cities, sea andland, eagle and snake, tree and shrub, wind and light,stone and sand, day and night. What is present coheresin unifying presencing, as everything becomes present toeverything else within its duration; it becomes presentand lingers with the others. This multiplicity (7roAAa) isnot a muster of separate objects behind which somethingstands, embracing them as a whole. Rather, presencing assuch is ruled by the lingering-with-one-another of a concealed gathering. Thus Heraclitus, catching sight of thisessential gathering, unifying, and revealing in presencing,named the r'Ev (the Being of beings) the A6yo~.

But before this, how does Anaximander experience thetotality of things present; how does he experience theirhaving arrived to linger awhile among one another inunconcealment? What at bottom runs through whateveris present? The fragment's last word gives the answer.We must begin the translation with it. This word designates the basic trait of what is present: ~ ci8LKLa. The literal translation is "injustice." But is this literal translationfaithful? That is to say: does the word which translates&8LKla heed what comes to language in the saying? Doesthe aVTa, the totality of what is present, lingering awhilein unconcealment, stand before our eyes?

How is what lingers awhile in presence unjust? Whatis unjust about it? Is it not the right of whatever is present that in each case it linger awhile, endure, and so fulfill its presencing?

The word ci-8LKLa immediately suggests that 8lK'YJ is absent. We are accustomed to translate 8lK'YJ as "right." Thetranslations even use "penalties" to translate "right." Ifwe resist our own juridical-moral notions, if we restrictourselves to what comes to language, then we hear thatwherever ci8LKLa rules all is not right with things. Thatmeans, something is out of joint. But of what are wespeaking? Of what is present, lingering awhile. But where


are there jointures ill what is present? Or where is thereeven one jointure? How can what is present withoutjointure be a8LKov, out of joint?

The fragment clearly says that what is present is inci8LKLa, i.e. is out of joint. However, that cannot mean thatthings no longer come to presence. But neither does it saythat what is present is only occasionally, or perhaps onlywith respect to some one of its properties, out of joint.The fragment says: what is present as such, being whatit is, is out of joint. To presencing as such jointure mustbelong, thus creating the possibility of its being out ofjoint. What is present is that which lingers awhile. Thewhile occurs essentially as the transitional arrival in departure. The while comes to presence between approachand withdrawal. Between this twofold absence thepresencing of all that lingers occurs. In this "between"whatever lingers awhile is joined. This "between" is thejointure in accordance with which whatever lingers isjoined, from its emergence here to its departure awayfrom here. The presencing of whatever lingers obtrudesinto the "here" of its coming, as into the "away" of itsgoing. In both directions presencing is conjointly disposed toward absence. Presencing comes about in sucha jointure. What is present emerges by approaching andpasses away by departing; it does both at the same time,indeed because it lingers. The "while" occurs essentiallyin the jointure.

But then what lingers awhile is precisely in the jointureof its presencing, and not at all, as we might put it, in disjunction, d8LK{a. But the fragment says it is. The fragmentspeaks from the essential experience that ci8LKLa is thefundamental trait of £OVTa.

Whatever lingers awhile becomes present as it lingersin the jointure which arranges presencing jointly betweena twofold absence. Still, as what is present, whateverlingers awhile, and only it, can stay the length of itswhile. What has arrived may even insist upon its whilesolely to remain more present, in the sense of perduring.That which lingers perseveres in its presencing. In thisway it extricates itself from its transitory while. It strikes


the willful pose of persistence, no longer concerning itselfwith whatever else is present. It stiffens-as if this werethe way to linger-and aims solely for continuance andsubsistence.

Coming to presence in the jointure of the while, whatis present abandons that jointure and is, in terms of whatever lingers awhile, in disjunction. Everything that lingers awhile stands in disjunction. To the presencing ofwhat is present, to the fOI' of €OJlTa, a8~Kla belongs. Thus,standing in disjunction would be the essence of all thatis present. And so in this early fragment of thinking thepessimism-not to say the nihilism-of the Greek experience of Being would come to the fore.

However, does the fragment say that the essence ofwhat is present consists in disjunction? It does and itdoesn't. Certainly, the fragment designates disjunction asthe fundamental trait of what is present, but only to say:

"They must pay penalty," Nietzsche translates; "Theypay recompense," Diels translates, "for their injustice."But the fragment says nothing about payment, recompense, and penalty; nor does it say that something is punishable, or even must be avenged, according to the opinion of those who equate justice with vengeance.

Meanwhile, the thoughtlessly uttered "injustice ofthings" has been clarified by thinking the essence of whatlingers awhile in presence as the disjunction in lingering.The disjunction consists in the fact that whatever lingersawhile seeks to win for itself a while based solely on themodel of continuance. Lingering as persisting, considered with respect to the jointure of the while, is an insurrection on behalf of sheer endurance. Continuance assertsitself in presencing as such, which lets each present beinglinger awhile in the expanse of unconcealment. In thisrebellious whiling, whatever lingers awhile insists uponsheer continuance. What is present then comes to presence without, and in opposition to, the jointure of thewhile. The fragment does not say that whatever is pres-


ent for the time being loses itself in disjunction; it saysthat whatever lingers awhile with a view to disjunction8L86vaL 8LKTjV, gives jointure.

What does "give" mean here? How should whateverlingers awhile, whatever comes to presence in disjunction, be able to give jointure? Can it give what it doesn'thave? If it gives anything at all, doesn't it give jointureaway? Where and how does that which is present for thetime being give jointure? We must ask our question moreclearly, by questioning from within the matter.

How should what is present as such give the jointureof its presencing? The giving designated here can onlyconsist in its manner of presencing. Giving is not onlygiving-away; originally, giving has the sense of accedingor giving-to. Such giving lets something belong to another which properly belongs to him. What belongs tothat which is present is the jointure of its while, which itarticulates in its approach and withdrawal. In the jointurewhatever lingers awhile keeps to its while. It does not incline toward the disjunction of sheer persistence. Thejointure belongs to whatever lingers awhile, which in tumbelongs in the jointure. The jointure is order.

~LKTj, thought on the basis of Being as presencing, is theordering and enjoining Order. :tA8LKLa, disjunction, is Disorder. Now it is only necessary that we think this capitalized word capitally-in its full linguistic power.

Whatever lingers awhile in presence comes to presenceinsofar as it lingers; all the while, emerging and passingaway, and the jointure of the transition from approach towithdrawal, continue. This lingering endurance of thetransition is the enjoined continuance of what is present.The enjoined continuance does not at all insist upo~ sheerpersistence. It does not fall into disjunction; it surmountsdisorder. Lingering the length of its while, whatever lingers awhile lets its essence as presencing belong to order.The 8L86vaL designates this "letting belong to."

The presencing of whatever is present for the time being does not consist in ci8LKLa by itself, i.e, not in disorderalone; rather, it consists in 8L86var. 8LKTjV ••• rij~ a8LKLa~,

since whatever is present lets order belong in each case.


Whatever is. presently present is not a slice of somethingshoved in between what is not presently present; it ispresent insofar as it lets itself belong to the non-present:

they, these same beings, let order belong (by the surmounting) of disorder.

The experience of beings in their Being which herecomes to language is neither pessimistic nor nihilistic; noris it optimistic. It is tragic. That is a presumptuous thingto say. However, we discover a trace of the essence oftragedy, not when we explain it psychologically oraesthetically, but rather only when we consider its essential form, the Being of beings, by thinking the 8L8ovaL 8LK'Y/V

• • • T~() ci8LKLa().

Whatever lingers awhile in presence, To' fovTa, becomespresent when it lets enjoining order belong. To whatdoes the order of jointure belong, and where does it belong? When and in what way does that which lingersawhile in presence give order? The fragment does notdirectly say anything about this, at least to the extent wehave considered it so far. If we turn our attention to thestill untranslated portion, however, it seems to say clearlyto whom or what the 8L8ovaL is directed.

Present beings which linger awhile let order belongciAA~AoL(), to one another. Thus we are generally accustomed to read the text; we relate the ciU~AOtS" to 8LK'1JV andTLULV, if we represent it clearly and name it expressly asdoes Diels-though Nietzsche passes over it entirely inhis translation. However, it seems to me that the immediate relation of aAA~AoLS" to 8L8ovaL 8LK'1JV KaL TLULV is neitherlinguistically necessary nor, more important, justified bythe matter itself. Therefore it remains for us to ask, fromwithin the matter itself, whether aAA~AoL() should be directly related also to 8lK'1JV, or whether it should be relatedonly to the TLULV which immediately precedes it. The de-


cision in this case depends in part on how we translatethe KaL which stands between 8LKT]V and TL(J'l,V. But this isdetermined by what TLUIS here says.

We usually translate TLUIS by "penalty." This leads us totranslate 8t801laL as "to pay." Whatever lingers awhile inpresence pays penalty; it expends this as its punishment( 8lKT] ). The court of justice is complete. It lacks nothing,not even injustice-though of course no one rightly knowswhat might constitute injustice.

Surely TLUt<; can mean penalty, but it must not, becausethe original and essential significance of the word is notthereby named. For TLUt<; is "esteem" [Schiitzen]. Toesteem something means to heed it, and so to take satisfactory care of what is estimable in it. The essential process of esteem, which is to satisfy, can with respect towhat is good be a magnanimous action; but with respectto wickedness giving satisfaction may mean paying apenalty. Yet a mere commentary on the word does notbring us to the matter in the fragment's use of the wordif we have not already, as with ci8LKLa and 8{K'Yj, thoughtfrom within the matter which comes to language in thefragment.

According to the fragment the aVTa (TtL iovTa), thosebeings that linger awhile in presence, stand in disorder.AB they linger awhile, they tarry. They hang on. For theyadvance hesitantly through their while, in transition fromarrival to departure. They hang on; they cling to themselves. When what lingers awhile delays, it stubbornlyfollows the inclination to persist in hanging on, and indeed to insist on persisting; it aims at everlasting continuance and no longer bothers about 8lKT], the order of thewhile.

But in this way everything that lingers awhile strikesa haughty pose toward every other of its kind. Noneheeds the lingering presence of the others. Whatever lingers awhile is inconsiderate toward others, each dominated by what is implied in its lingering presence,namely, the craving to persist. Beings which linger awhiledo not in this respect simply drift into inconsiderateness.Inconsiderateness impels them toward persistence, so


that they may still present themselves as what is present.Nevertheless, what is present in totality does not simplydisintegrate into inconsiderate individualities; it does notdissipate itself in discontinuity. Rather, the saying nowsays:

-beings which linger awhile let belong, one to the other:consideration with regard to one another. The translation of T{Ut~ as consideration coincides better with theessential meaning of "heeding" and "esteeming." It isthought from within the matter, on the basis of the presencing of what lingers awhile. But the word "consideration" means for us too directly that human trait, whilerlais is applied neutrally, because more essentially, toeverything present, avra (To' €OJlTa). Our word "consideration" lacks not only the necessary breadth, but above allthe gravity to speak as the word that translates TLUt~ inthe fragment, and as the word corresponding to O{KTJ,

order.Now our language possesses an old word which, inter

estingly enough, we moderns know only in its negativeform, indeed only as a form of disparagement, as withthe word Unfug (disorder). This usually suggests to ussomething like an improper or vulgar sort of behavior,something perpetrated in a crude manner. In the samefashion, we still use the word ruchlos (reckless) to meansomething pejorative and shameful: something withoutRuch (reck). We no longer really know what Ruchmeans. The Middle High German word ruoche meanssolicitude or care. Care tends to something so that it mayremain in its essence. This turning-itself-toward, whenthought of what lingers awhile in relation to presencing,is TLUIS, reck. Our word geruhen (to deign or respect) isrelated to reck and has nothing to do with Ruhe (rest):to deign means to esteem something, to let or allowsomething to be itself. What we observed concerning theword "consideration," that it has to do with human relations, is also true of ruoche. But we shall take advantage


of the obsolescence of the word by adopting it anew inits essential breadth; we will speak of TLUIS as the reckcorresponding to 8LK'Yj, order. When beings which lingerawhile do not entirely dissipate themselves in the boundless conceit of aiming for a baldly insistent subsistence,when they no longer share the compulsion to expel oneanother from what is presently present, they let order belong, 8"8ova,, 8{K'YjV. When beings which linger awhile giveorder, each being thereby lets reck belong to the other,lets reck pervade its relations with the others, 8"8ova,, • • •KaL T[U"V &.AA~Ao,,~. Only when we have already thought Td.£OVTa as what is present, and this as the totality of whatlingers awhile, does &.A'\~'\O"~ receive the significancethought for it in the fragment: within the open expanseof unconcealment each lingering being becomes presentto every other being. So long as we do not think Td. lovTa,the &.AA~'\Ot~ remains a name for an indeterminate reciprocity in a chaotic manifold. The more strictly we thinkin &.AA~'\O"~ the manifold of beings lingering awhile, theclearer becomes the necessary relation of aAA~AOt~ to TLUt~.

The more unequivocally Ithis relation emerges, the moreclearly we recognize that the 8,,8ovat • • • TLUtV &.AA~AO"~,

each one giving reck to the other, is the sole manner inwhich what lingers awhile in presence lingers at all, i.e.8"8ova,, 8{K'YjV, granting order. The KaL between 8LK'YjV andTLUtV is not simply the vacuous conjunction "and." It signifies the essential process. If what is present grants order,it happens in this manner: as beings linger awhile, theygive reck to one another. The surmounting of disorderproperly occurs through the letting-belong of reck. Thismeans that the essential process of the disorder of nonreck, of the reckless, occurs in &.8"K{a:

-they let order belong, and thereby also reck, to one another (in the surmounting) of disorder.

To let belong is, as the Kal suggests, something twofold,since the essence of lOVTa is dually determined. Whateverlingers awhile comes to presence from the jointure be-


tween approach and withdrawal. It comes to presence inthe "between" of a twofold absence. Whatever lingersawhile comes to presence in each case in accordance withits while. It comes to presence as what is present at thepresent time. With a view to its while it gives reck, andeven a while, to the others. But to whom does whateveris present let the order of jointure belong?

The second clause of the fragment, which we havebeen interpreting, does not answer this question. But itprovides a clue. For we have passed over a word: 8L8ovaLyap aVTd. • • • they (namely) let belong. . . . The yap,

"for" or "namely," introduces a grounding. In any case,the second clause delineates the extent to which the matter of the previous clause behaves in the prescribed manner.

What does the translation of the fragment's secondclause say? It says that the fovTa, whatever is present, asthat which lingers awhile, is released into reckless disorder; and it tells how present beings surmount disorder byletting order and reck belong to one another. This lettingbelong is the manner in which what lingers awhile lingersand so comes to presence as what is present. The fragment's second clause designates what is present in themanner of its presencing. The saying speaks of what ispresent and tells about its presencing. This it places inthe brilliance of what is thought. The second clause offersa commentary on the presencing of what is present.

For this reason the first clause must designate presencing Itself, and even the extent to which presencingdetermines what is present as such; only so can the second clause in turn, referring back to the first by means ofthe yap, comment on the presencing of what is present.Presencing, in relation to what is present, is always thatin accordance with which what is present comes to presence. The first clause names that presencing "in accordance with which. . . ." Only the last three words of thefirst clause are preserved:


This is translated: "... according to necessity;". Wewill leave TO XPfWV untranslated at first. But we can stillreflect on two matters concerning TO XPfWV which arose inour commentary on the second clause and its referenceback to the first. First, that it designates the presencing of what is present; second, that if XPfWV thinks thepresencing of what is present, then presencing may bethought somehow in terms of what is present; or it mayprove to be otherwise, that the relation of Being to beingscan only come from Being, can only rest in the essence ofBeing.

The word KaTa precedes TO XpfWV. It means "down herefrom above," or "over here." The KaTa refers back tosomething from which something lower comes to presence, as from something higher and as its consequent.That in reference to which the KaTa is pronounced retainssomething that has befallen it [Gefiille] , in accordancewith which such and such is the case, both for it and forothers.

But in consequence of what, or by what befalling, canwhat is present become present as such, if not in consequence of, or by the befalling of, presencing? That whichlingers awhile in presence lingers KaTU TO XPf.wv. No matterhow we are to think TO XPfWV, the word is the earliestname for what we have thought as the fOV of fovTa; TO XPfWV

is the oldest name in which thinking brings the Being ofbeings to language.

That which lingers awhile in presence become presentas it surmounts reckless disorder, ci8LKLa, which hauntslingering itself as an essential possibility. The presencingof what is present is such a surmounting. It is accomplished when beings which linger awhile let order belong, and thereby reck, among one another. The answerto the question to whom order belongs is now provided:order belongs to that which comes to presence by way ofpresencing-and that means by way of a surmounting.Order is KUTU TO XpfWV. At this point something of theessence of XPfWV begins to glimmer, though at first froma great distance. If, as the essence of presencing, XPfWV isrelated essentially to what is present, then TO XPfWV must


enjoin order and thereby also reck in that relation. TheXPf.WV enjoins matters in such a way that whatever is present lets order and reck belong. The xPf.WV lets such enjoining prevail among present beings and so grants them themanner of their arrival-as the while of whatever lingersawhile.

What is present comes to presence when it surmountsthe dis- of disorder, the a- of aOI.KLa. This a7rO in aOI.KLa corresponds to the KaTa of xPf.wv. The transitional yap in thesecond clause strings the bow, connecting one end to theother.

So far we have tried to think what TO XPf.WV means onlyin terms of the reference of the fragmenfs second clauseback to it, without asking about the word itself. Whatdoes TO XPf.Wv mean? This first word in the fragment's textwe are interpreting last because it is first with respect tothe matter. What matter? The matter of the presencingof what is present. But to be the Being of beings is thematter of Being.

The grammatical form of this enigmatic, ambiguousgenitive indicates a genesis, the emergence of what ispresent from presencing. Yet the essence of this emergence remains concealed along with the essence of thesetwo words. Not only that, but even the very relation between presencing and what is present remains unthought.From early on it seems as though presencing and what ispresent were each something for itself. Presencing itselfunnoticeably becomes something present. Represented inthe manner of something present, it is elevated abovewhatever else is present and so becomes the highest being present. As soon as presencing is named it is represented as some present being. Ultimately, presencing assuch is not distinguished from what is present: it is takenmerely as the Dl0St universal or the highest of present beings, thereby becoming one among such beings. Theessence of presencing, and with it the distinction betweenpresencing and what is present, remains forgotten. Theoblivion of Being is oblivion of the distinction betweenBeing and beings.

However, oblivion of the distinction is by no means


the consequence of a forgetfulness of thinking. Oblivionof Being belongs to the self-veiling essence of Being. Itbelongs so essentially to the destiny of Being that thedawn of this destiny rises as the unveiling of what ispresent in its presencing. This means that the history ofBeing begins with the oblivion of Being, since Beingtogether with its essence, its distinction from beingskeeps to itself. The distinction collapses. It remains forgotten....Although the two parties to the distinction, whatis present and presencing, reveal themselves, they do notdo so as distinguished. Rather, even the early trace of thedistinction is obliterated when presencing appears assomething present and finds itself in the position of beingthe highest being present.

The oblivion of the distinction, with which the destinyof Being begins and which it will carry through to completion, is all the same not a lack, but rather the richestand most prodigious event: in it the history of the Western world comes to be borne out. It is the event of metaphysics. What now is stands in the shadow of the alreadyforegone destiny of Being's oblivion.

However, the distinction between Being and beings, assomething forgotten, can invade our experience only if ithas already unveiled itself with the presencing of what ispresent; only if it has left a trace which remains preserved in the language to which Being comes. Thinkingalong those lines, we may surmise that the distinction hasbeen illuminated more in that early word about Beingthan in recent ones; yet at no time has the distinctionbeen designated as SUCll. Illumination of the distinctiontherefore cannot mean that the distinction appears as adistinction. On the contrary, the relation to what is present in presencing as such may announce itself in such away that presencing comes to speak as this relation.

The early word concerning Being, TO XP€WV, designatessuch a relation. However, we would be deceiving ourselves if we thought we could locate the distinction andget behind its essence merely by etymologically dissecting the meaning of the word XP€Wv with enough persistence. Perhaps only when we experience historically what


has not been thought-the oblivion of Being-as what isto be thought, and only when we have for the longesttime pondered what we have long experienced in termsof the destiny of Being, may the early word speak in ourcontemporary recollection.

We are accustomed to translate the word xp£wv by"necessity." By that we mean what is compelling-thatwhich inescapably must be. Yet we err if we adhere tothis derived meaning exclusively, Xp£wv is derived fromxpaw, xpaop.aL. It suggests ~ X£LP, the hand; xpaw means: Iget involved with something, I reach for it, extend myhand to it. At the same time xpaw means to place in someone's hands or hand over, thus to deliver, to let somethingbelong to someone. But such delivery is of a kind whichkeeps this transfer in hand, and with it what is transferred.

Therefore the participial xp£wv originally signifies nothing of constraint and of what "must be." Just as little doesthe word initially or ever mean to ratify and ordain.

If we firmly keep in mind that we must think the wordwithin the Anaximander fragment, then it can only meanwhat is essential in the presenci.ng ofwhat is present, andhence that relation to which the genitive so mysteriouslyalludes. To XPfWV is thus the handing over of presencewhich presencing delivers to what is present, and whichthus keeps in hand, i.e. preserves in presencing, what ispresent as such.

The relation to what is present that rules in the essence of presencing itself is a unique one, altogether incomparable to any other relation. It belongs to the uniqueness of Being itself. Therefore, in order to name the essential nature of Being, language would have to find a singleword, the unique word. From this we can gather howdaring every thoughtful word addressed to Being is.Nevertheless such daring is not impossible, since Beingspeaks always and everywhere throughout language. Thedifficulty lies not so much in finding in thought the wordfor Being, as in retaining purely in genuine thinking theword found.

Anaximander says, TO XpfWV. We will dare a translation


which sounds strange and which can be easily misinterpreted: TO XP€~V, usage [der Brauch].

With this translation we ascribe to the Greek word asense that is foreign neither to the word itself nor to thematter designated by the word in the saying. Nonethelessthe translation makes excessive demands. It loses none ofthis character even when we consider that all translationin the field of thinking inevitably makes such demands.

To what extent is TO XP€~V "usage"? The strangeness ofthe translation is reduced when we think more clearlyabout the word in our language. Usually we understand"to use" to mean utilizing and benefiting from what wehave a right to use. What our utilizing benefits from becomes the usual. Whatever is used is in usage. "Usage,"as the word that translates TO XPf:~V, should not be understood in these current, derived senses. We should ratherkeep to the root-meaning: to use is to brook [bruchen] ,in Latin [rui, in Gennan [ruchien, Fruchi;" We translatethis freely as "to enjoy," which originally means to bepleased with something and so to have it in use. Only inits derived senses does "enjoy" mean simply to consumeor gobble up. We encounter what we have called thebasic meaning of "use," in the sense of [rui, in Augustine'swords, Quid enim est aliud quod dicimus frui, nisipraesto habere, quod diligis?t Frui involves praestohabere. Praesto, praestitum is in Greek V7rOK€{P.€VOV, thatwhich already lies before us in unconcealment, ovu[a, that

o "To brook" is today used only in negative constructions-s-t'I'Ilbrook no rival!"-which suggest unwillingness to put up with astate of affairs. It shares its original Teutonic stem with the modem Gennan brauchen and the Middle High German bruchen:bruk-, from the Indo-European bhrug-, Its archaic senses include:to make use of, to have the enjoyment of, to bear or hold, to possess the right of usufruct-Leo the right to cultivate and use landone does not own, and to enjoy its fruits. - TR.

t "For what else do we mean when we say frui if not to have athand something that is especially prized?" De moribus ecclesiae,lib. I, c. 3; cf. De doctrina christiana, lib. I, c. 2-4. For the firstsee Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, 2 vols., ed. Whitney J.Oates (New York: Random House, 1948) I, 321; for the secondsee On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr. (NewYork: Liberal Arts Press, 1958), pp. 9-10. -TR.


which lingers awhile in presence. "To use" accordinglysuggests: to let something present come to presence assuch. Erui, to brook, to use, usage, means: to hand something over to its own essence and to keep it in hand, preserving it as something present.

In the translation of TO XPfWV usage is thought as essential presencing in Being itself. "To brook," frui, is nolonger merely predicated of enjoyment as a form ofhuman behavior; nor is it said in relation to any beingwhatsoever, even the highest (fruitio Dei as the beatitudohominis); rather, usage now designates the manner inwhich Being itself presences as the relation to what ispresent, approaching and becoming involved with whatis present as present: TO XpfWV.

Usage delivers what is present to its presencing, i.e,to its lingering. Usage dispenses to what is present theportion of its while. The while apportioned in each caseto what lingers rests in the jointure, which joins what ispresent in the transition between twofold absence (arrival and departure). The jointure of the while boundsand confines what is present as such. That which lingersawhile in presence, TO. £OVTU, comes to presence withinbounds ('1r€par;).

As dispenser of portions of the jointure, usage is thefateful joining: the enjoining of order and thereby ofreck. Usage distributes order and reck in such mannerthat it reserves for itself what is meted out, gathers it toitself, and secures it as what is present in presencing.

But usage, enjoining order and so limiting what is present, distributes boundaries. As TO XPfWV it is therefore atthe same time TO a:rrftpOV, that which is without boundary,since its essence consists in sending boundaries of thewhile to whatever lingers awhile in presence.

According to the tradition recounted in Simplicius'commentary on Aristotle's PhYSics, Anaximander is supposed to have said that whatever is present has its essential origin in what presences without bounds: apx~ TWV

OVTWV TO a:rrftpov. What presences without bounds, notjoined by order and reck, is not some present being butrather TO XpfWv.


Enjoining order and reck, usage delivers to each present being the while into which it is released. But accompanying this process is the constant danger that lingeringwill petrify into mere persistence. Thus usage essentiallyremains at the same time the distribution of presencinginto disorder. Usage conjoins the dis-.

Therefore, whatever lingers awhile in presence canonly come to presence when it lets order and thereby alsoreck belong: with respect to usage. What is present comesto presence KUTU. TO XP€WV, along the lines of usage. Usageis the enjoining and preserving gathering of what ispresent in its presencing, a presencing which lingersawhile according to each particular case.

The translation of TO XP€WV as "usage" has not resultedfrom a preoccupation with etymologies and dictionarymeanings. The choice of the word stems from a priorcrossing-over [Uber-setzung] of a thinking which triesto think the distinction in the essence of Being in thefateful beginning of Being's oblivion. The word "usage"is dictated to thinking in the experience of Being's oblivion. What properly remains to be thought in the word"usage" has presumably left a trace in TO XP€wv. This tracequickly vanishes in the destiny of Being which unfolds inworld history as Western metaphysics.

The Anaximander fragment, thinking of what is present in its presencing, elucidates what TO XP€WV means.What is thought as XP€WV in the fragment is the first andmost thoughtful interpretation of what the Greeks experienced in the name Moipa, as the dispensing of portions. Gods and men are subordinated to Moipa. To Xp€WV,

usage, is the handing over of what is in each case presentinto its while in unconcealment.

To Xp€WV harbors the still hidden essence of the gathering which clears and shelters. Usage is the gathering: 0Aoyo~. From the essence of Aoyo~, thought in this way,the essence of Being is determined as the unifying One,~Ev. Parmenides thinks this same "Ev. He thinks the unityof this unifying One expressly as the Moipa (Frag. VIII,37). Thought from within the essential experience of Being, Moipa corresponds to the Aoyo~ of Heraclitus. The


essence of Moipa and Aoyo~ is thoughtfully intimated inthe XpfWV of Anaximander.

To search for influences and dependencies amongthinkers is to misunderstand thinking. Every thinker isdependent-upon the address of Being. The extent of thisdependence determines the freedom from irrelevant influences. The broader the dependence the more puissantthe freedom of thought, and therefore the more foreboding the danger that it may wander past what was oncethought, and yet-perhaps only thus-think the Same.

Of course, in our recollecting we latecomers must firsthave thought about the Anaximander fragment in orderto proceed to the thought of Parmenides and Heraclitus.If we have done so, then the misinterpretation that thephilosophy of the former must have been a doctrine ofBeing while that of the latter was a doctrine of Becomingis exposed as superficial.

However, in order to think the Anaximander fragmentwe must first of all, but then continually, take a Simplestep: we must cross over to what that always unspokenword, lov, lovra, fX,laL says. It says: presencing into unconcealment. Concealed in that word is this: presencingbrings unconcealment along with itself. Unconcealmentitself is presencing. Both are the Same, though they arenot identical.

What is present is that which, whether presently ornot, presences in unconcealment. Along with the 'AA~()fLa

which belongs to the essence of Being, the A~()l'J remainsentirely unthought, as in consequence do "presently" and"non-presently," Le, the region of the open expanse inwhich everything present arrives and in which the presencing to one another of beings which linger awhile isunfolded and delimited.

Because beings are what is present in the manner ofthat which lingers awhile, once they have arrived in unconcealment they can linger there, they can appear. Appearance is an essential consequence of presencing andof the kind of presencing involved. Only what appearscan in the first place show an aspect and form, thinkingthese matters always from within presencing. Only a


thinking which has beforehand thought Being in thesense of presencing into unconcealment can think thepresencing of what is present as l8fa. But whatever lingers awhile in presence at the same time lingers as something brought forward into unconcealment. It is sobrought when, arising by itself, it produces itself; or it isso brought when it is produced by man. In both caseswhat has arrived in the foreground of unconcealment isin a certain sense an lpyov, which in Greek is thought assomething brought forward. The presencing of what ispresent, with respect to its lpyov character, thought in thelight of presence, can be experienced as that whichoccurs essentially in production. This is the presencing ofwhat is present: the Being of beings is iV€PYfta.

The iVfpYfta which Aristotle thinks as the fundamentalcharacter of presencing, of iov, the i8fa which Plato thinksas the fundamental character of presencing, the Aoyo~

which Heraclitus thinks as the fundamental character ofpresencing, the Moi'pa which Pannenides thinks as thefundamental character of presencing, the XpfWV whichAnaximander thinks is essential in presencing-all thesename the Same. In the concealed richness of the Samethe unity of the unifying One, the r'Ev, is thought by eachthinker in his own way.

Meanwhile an epoch of Being soon comes in whichlVfpYfta is translated as actualitas. The Greek is shutaway, and to the present day the word appears only inRoman type. Actualitas becomes Wirklichkeit [reality].Reality becomes objectivity [Objektivitiit]. But objectivity must still preserve the character of presencing if it isto remain in its essence, its objectivity [Cegenstiindlichkeit]. It is the "presence" [Priisenz] of representational thinking. The decisive tum in the destiny of Beingas lvl.pYfta lies in the transition to actualitas.

Could a mere translation have precipitated all this?We may yet learn what can come to pass in translation.The truly fateful encounter with historic language is asilent event. But in it the destiny of Being speaks. Intowhat language is the land of evening translated?


We shall now tty to translate the Anaximander fragment:

• ICaTa TO XpfWV· 81.80val. yap alrra 8LIC'YjV KaL TLUI.V

aAA~Aols T~~ a8I.KLa~.

. . . along the lines of usage; for they let orderand thereby also reck belong to one another (inthe surmounting) of disorder.

We cannot demonstrate the adequacy of the translation by scholarly means; nor should we simply accept itthrough faith in some authority or other. Scholarly proofwill not carry us far enough, and faith has no place inthinking. We can only reflect on the translation by thinking through the saying. But thinking is the poetizing ofthe truth of Being in the historic dialogue between thinkers.

For this reason the fragment will never engage us solong as we only explain it historiologically and philologically. Curiously enough, the saying first' resonates whenwe set aside the claims of our own familiar ways of representing things, as we ask ourselves in what the confusion of the contemporary world's fate consists.

Man has already begun to overwhelm the entire earthand its atmosphere, to arrogate to himself in forms ofenergy the concealed powers of nature, and to submitfuture history to the planning and ordering of a worldgovernment. This same defiant man is utterly at a loss tosay Simply what is; to say what this is-that a thing is.

The totality of beings is the single object of a singularwill to conquer. The simplicity of Being is confoundedin a singular oblivion.

What mortal can fathom the abyss of this confusion?He may try to shut his eyes before this abyss. He may entertain one delusion after another. The abyss does notvanish.

Theories of nature and doctrines of history do not dissolve the confusion. They further confuse everything UD-


til it is unrecognizable, since they themselves feed on theconfusion prevailing over the distinction between beingsand Being.

Is there any rescue? Rescue comes when and only whendanger is. Danger is when Being itself advances to itsfarthest extreme, and when the oblivion that issues fromBeing Itself undergoes reversal.

But what if Being in its essence needs to use [braucht]the essence of man? H the essence of man consists inthinking the truth of Being?

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

heidegger anaximander fragment

Documents

cfgt

whateverlingers

lingers awhile

lingers awhile

fundamental

whatis present

enjoined continuance

greek philosophy