Λόγος is constant gathering, the gatheredness of beings that stands in itself, that is, Being. So κατὰ τὸν λόγον in fragment 1 means the same as κατὰ φύσιν. Φύσις and λόγος are the same. Λόγος characterizes Being in a new and yet old respect: that which is in being, which stands straight and prominently in itself, is gathered in itself and from itself, and holds itself in such gathering. The ἐόν, the being, is according to its essence ξυνόν, a gathered coming to presence; ξυνόν does not mean the “universal,” but rather what gathers everything together in itself and holds it together. For example, according to fragment 114 such a ξυνόν is the νόμος for the πόλις, ordinance [positing as placing together],34 the inner composition of the polis, not something universal, not the sort of thing that floats above all and seizes none, but the originally unifying unity of what strives in confrontation. Caprice, ἰδία φρόνησις,35 for which λόγος remains closed off, always takes hold only of this side or the other, and believes that it thereby has the truth. Fragment 103 says: “gathered in itself, the same is the beginning and the end in the circumference of the circle.” It would be senseless to want to take ξυνόν here as the “universal.”36
34. “Satzung [setzen als zusammenstellen]”: the bracketed phrase is in parentheses in the 1953 edition. Here Heidegger draws attention to several related words and concepts. Νόμος in Greek means a law or convention, a way of doing things instituted by human beings. Satzung in German means ordinance or statute. Setzen and stellen both mean to set, put, posit, or place. The German word for a law is ein Gesetz, a rule that has been set down as binding. Heraclitus’s fragment 114 begins: “if we speak mindfully we must base our strength on what is common to all, as the city on law, and far more strongly” (ξὺν νόῳ λέγοντας ἰσχυρίζεσθαι χρὴ τῷ ξυνῷ πάντων, ὅκωσπερ νόμῳ πόλις καὶ πολὺ ἰσχυροτέρως).
35. “One’s own understanding”: Heraclitus, fragment 2.
36. A more conventional translation would render ξυνόν simply as “the same” instead of “gathered in itself, the same.”