ταὐτὸν δ' ἐστὶ νοεῖν τε καὶ οὕνεκεν ἔστι νόημα. οὐ γὰρ ἄνευ τοῦ ἐόντος, ἐν ᾧ πεφατισμένον ἐστιν, εὑρήσεις τὸ νοεῖν· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἢ ἔστιν ἢ ἔσται ἄλλο πάρεξ τοῦ ἐόντος, ἐπεὶ τό γε Μοῖρ' ἐπέδησεν οὖλον ἀκίνητόν τ' ἔμμεναι
"Dasselbe aber ist Denken als auch weswegen ist Gedachtes. Nicht nämlich ohne das Seiende, in dem es Gesagtes ist, wirst du linden das Denken—nicht war nämlich oder ist oder wird sein Anderes außer neben dem "Seiend," nachdem dies doch Geschick fesselte ganz, unbewegbar auch, zu sein."
"The same, however, is thinking as is also therefore what is thought. For not without beings, in which it is what is said, will you find thinking—nor was there nor is there nor will be there anything else outside of or besides that which is in "being," since destiny has bound this to be whole and immovable too."
Parmenides, Fragment B8.34ff.
What is said in these words concerning the relationship between νοεῖν and εἶναι, "thinking and Being"?
So far as I can see, the various interpretations that have become customary all maintain one of the following three perspectives, each of which also finds some support in the text.
One perspective regards thinking as something that is, something that we find before us like many other things. Such a being, like all of its kind, must accordingly be counted as belonging among other beings and as included among or "integrated" into these beings. The integral is a kind of sum-total arrived at by a process of adding together. According to this perspective, thinking is identical in kind to beings. The sum total of beings is called Being. Thinking thus proves to be identical to Being. We scarcely require any philosophy in order to arrive at this conclusion. What it says is valid not only for thinking as something we find before us. It is valid also for voyaging across the sea, for building houses, for all human activity. One wonders why Parmenides explicitly draws such a conclusion precisely with regard to thinking, why he bothers to specifically ground it by adding the commonplace remark that apart from beings and besides beings as a whole there are no beings. Or more accurately, whenever one considers the issue in this way, one no longer wonders about it anymore. For what the philosophers busied themselves with in their first attempts at philosophy, namely, classifying among beings all that is, loses the character of a genuine task of thinking as philosophy progresses. And it would scarcely be worth while our considering this interpretation of the relation between Being and thinking—an interpretation that “amasses" and represents beings as the mass aggregate that is Being—were it not for the fact that it gives us the occasion to expressly point out that Parmenides nowhere explicitly speaks of thinking as also being one of the many ἐόντα, one of the manifold beings of which each one sometimes is and sometimes is not, thus being fundamentally both at once: present and absent.
Another, more thoughtful approach at least finds "statements that are difficult to understand" at this point in the text. In order to facilitate our understanding, one seeks some assistance. Since, in the relationship between thinking and Being, the issue seems to be the relation of knowing to actual reality, one finds in the philosophy of modernity whatever assistance is needed. Modem philosophy has established a theory of knowledge that has passed through doubt, a theory that has become the authoritative fundamental trait of that questioning which modern philosophy pursues. Within such philosophy, which posits beings as objects of representation, we find a proposition that provides an illuminating pointer for interpreting the statement of Parmenides. It is a proposition of Berkeley's, one that rests on the fundamental Cartesian position and reads: esse = percipi: "Being is identical with being represented." By bringing this together with Parmenides' assertions, these assertions first attain the perspective of a distinct philosophical questioning.
Being is identical with thinking insofar as the objectivity of objects is "constituted" in representational consciousness. In the light of these determinations, Parmenides' statement proves to be an as yet unrefined and early form of the modern doctrine concerning the essence of knowledge. There can be no doubt that the modern proposition esse = percipi has its basis in the statement of Parmenides, irrespective of whatever historiographically ascertainable dependencies we have in view. Yet the way in which the modern proposition historically belongs together with this early Greek proposition entails an essential divergence in their meanings. If we are attentive, this divergence can already be seen from the manner in which the propositions speak. On both occasions, Parmenides names νοεῖν first and attributes it to εἶναι, and not the reverse. A formulation of the modern proposition fully corresponding to this would have to read: percipi = esse. The modern proposition by contrast attributes the esse, which is named first, to percipi, in keeping with the principle of the fundamental Cartesian proposition: ens = ens verum, verum = certum. The modern proposition asserts something about "Being," whereas the early Greek proposition asserts something about "thinking." For this reason, an interpretation of this early Greek statement in terms of the perspective of modern thinking is erroneous from the outset. And yet it remains an attempt to appropriate Greek thought, an attempt that gets played out in manifold forms.
Finally, however, ancient philosophy itself already attempted to lend weight to the Parmenidean statement in its own way, namely the Platonic way. Here, the guiding perspective is taken from the Socratic-Platonic doctrine concerning the Being of beings (das Sein des Seienden). According to this doctrine, the "ideas," which constitute the "being" ("seiend") in all beings (Seienden), do not belong to the realm of the sensible. They can be apprehended only in νοεῖν. Thus, as Plotinus would have the Parmenidean statement say, Being does not belong among the αἰσθητά, but is νοητόν. Being is, in essence, in the manner of "spirit." The statement that thinking is identical with Being means: both are in essence non- and supra-sensible. In the neoplatonic interpretation of the Parmenidean saying, this proposition is neither an assertion about "thinking" nor an assertion about "Being," nor even an assertion about the essence of their belonging together as divergent, but is an assertion about how both belong to the realm of the nonsensible.
Each of these three interpretations imports and attributes later ways of questioning to early Greek thinking. Presumably all later thinking that attempts to bring itself into a thoughtful dialogue with early thinking must speak from its own perspective and thus shatter the silence of the earlier thinking. Earlier thinking is thereby inevitably drawn into this later dialogue, transposed into its field of hearing and perspective, and thus robbed, as it were, of the freedom of its own telling. Nevertheless, this does not of itself necessarily entail its being recast into later thinking. Everything depends on whether the dialogue initiated by this later thinking opens itself freely from the outset, and constantly, so as to let itself be addressed in an authoritative manner by the earlier thinking, or whether it closes itself off from such earlier thinking and covers it over with the opinions belonging to later schools of thought. Such closing oneself off occurs whenever later thinking fails to embark on an inquiry into that perspective of hearing and seeing which is appropriate to the earlier thinking. Such inquiry, of course, must not exhaust itself in simply seeking to note the inexplicit presuppositions underlying the earlier thinking. The inquiring must become an explicit pronouncement in which the perspectives of seeing and hearing, as well as their essential provenance, come thoughtfully to language. Unless such meditation occurs, a thoughtful dialogue remains altogether absent. Alternatively, by contrast, the early thinking can, by way of such dialogue, unfold into its own worthiness in its very questionability. Every attempt in this regard will therefore direct its attention toward the obscure parts of the text that are worthy of question, rather than immediately taking up residence solely at those places that bear the appearance of being comprehensible; for in the latter instance, the dialogue is over before it has begun.
The following remarks, however, content themselves more or less with merely noting and enumerating the obscure places in the text. Such an undertaking can prepare for a translation to occur, but does not of itself bring this about.
What must be noted above all else is that the more detailed text in which the statement of Parmenides is handed down to us (Fragment B8.34ff.) speaks of the ἐόν. By the "beings" ("Seienden") thus named, Parmenides is by no means referring to beings in themselves as a whole, among which we could also classify thinking as being something. Yet nor does τὸ ἐόν mean εἶναι in the sense of "Being [taken] by itself" (des "Seins für sich"), as though it were a matter of merely delimiting the specifically nonsensible essence of Being from beings in themselves. In grammatical terms, the ἐόν is spoken as a participle and, with regard to the issue at stake, is thought in a twofold respect. This twofold respect may be named in the turns of phrase "Being of beings" and "beings in their Being." Yet such naming is far removed from thinking this twofold (Zwiefalt) itself as such, or even from raising it to something worthy of question.
This widely invoked "Being itself" as distinct from beings, however, is precisely "Being" in the sense of "Being of ... beings." At the beginning of Western thinking, what is nevertheless all-important is catching sight of what is named by "Being" (Φύσις, Λόγος, Ἕν) by sighting it in an appropriate manner. The appearance thus arises that this Being of beings is merely "identical" with beings as a whole, and as such is that which most is (das Seiendste). It looks as though the twofold has faded away into the inessential, because thinking from then on moves within this twofold in such a way that the latter gives no occasion for thought, not even where, in accordance with the way in which the "Being of . . . beings" comes to receive the historical coining of its essence in each case, the twofold comes to be coined in diverse ways. At the beginning of Western thinking, this twofold as such has already fallen away. Yet this falling away is not nothing; for with this falling away the twofold falls into forgottenness. The essence of forgottenness, however, announces itself in Λήθη. Here we must ward off any premature views, in noting that we are not to interpret Λήθη as forgottenness from the perspective of a commonplace, though indeterminate conception of "forgetting." Rather the reverse is the case: We must enquire concerning the essence of forgottenness, and the name accorded to it, from out of Λήθη as concealment.
According to Fragment B3 (earlier B5), thinking presumably belongs to Being. Yet such belonging must not, on the other hand, be prematurely interpreted as identity. Fragment B8, however, states more clearly, that is, pointing more penetratingly into what is worthy of questioning, the respect in which this belonging of thinking to Being must be heeded. The ἐόν is that, οὕνεκεν ἔστι νόημα. The ἐόν is that due to which there presences whatever has been "taken into heed." Thinking is neither needed by "beings in themselves," nor necessitated by "Being [taken] by itself." That, however, which for its part demands νοεῖν and at the same time along with it λέγειν, letting-lie-before, and calls them on the way to itself, is the ἐόν, the Being of beings. Thinking itself is singularly due to this twofold, which is, nevertheless, not explicitly pronounced. Beings (as) being (Das Seiende (als) seiend), the appearing of that which is present in presencing, needs the jointure of λέγειν and νοεῖν, from out of which the metaphysically coined essence of Western-European thinking henceforth unfolds. This thinking subsequently brings beings forth to appear explicitly as beings (ὂν ᾗ ὄν, ens qua ens), in a way that does not yet appear to appear in the ambiguity of the ἐόν, an ambiguity that can be readily overheard. In this way thinking belongs together with this twofold. As belonging together in this way, ἐόν (εἶναι) and νοεῖν are the Same.
What kind of belonging together is this? In accordance with the jointure of λέγειν τε νοεῖν τε which we have elucidated (Fragment B6), νοεῖν from the outset, and thus constantly, remains indigenous to λέγειν. Consequently the νόημα too, as νοούμενον, is a λεγόμενον. That which has been taken into heed is always already gathered as something lying before us. Taking into heed unfolds and preserves this gathering. Such λέγειν however, letting-lie-before, namely the letting-lie-before of that which is present in its presencing, determines the essence of saying experienced in a Greek way. The νοούμενον and its νοεῖν are in each and every case something said, not subsequently or arbitrarily, but essentially. Not everything said, however, is necessarily something spoken; what is said can also, and on occasion even must, remain something that is kept silent. Yet everything that is spoken is, before this, something said. Wherein does the distinction between the two consist? Why does Parmenides characterize the νοούμενον and νοεῖν as πεφατισμένον in Fragment B8? This word is translated correctly in lexical terms as "something spoken." Yet to what does this speaking refer which is here named by φάσκειν and φάσις? Does speaking here merely mean the utterance (φωνή) of the meaning of a word or statement (σήματα τῶν ὄντων)? Is speaking here merely the "phonetic" as distinct from the "semantic"? Not at all. In φάσκω there lies: to name in praise, to call forth before us, to let appear; φάσμα is, for example, the appearing of the stars and of the moon in its alternating shapes, whence the "phases" of the moon. Speaking, φημί, is of the same, though not identical, essence as λέγειν: letting that which is present lie before in its presencing.
Parmenides is concerned with saying to where νοεῖν belongs. We can find it only wherever it indigenously belongs. Where do we find νοεῖν? Only wherever it shows itself. And it can show itself only wherever it has come to appear? Where, and in what way is νοεῖν something that has appeared? It is this as ιτεφατισμένον. Thus νοεῖν comes to appear in what is spoken. As something that has been uttered, whatever is spoken is something that can be perceived in the realm of the sensible. Linguistic expression forces and pushes and carries the meaning of what can be said—a meaning that cannot be represented in the sensible—into the sensible realm of discursive utterance and written inscription. Yet does Parmenides here speak of an intended nonsensible meaning that then comes to appear in the sensible through the sound of a word? By no means. His questioning asks solely about the relation of νοεῖν to εἶναι. In this regard, Parmenides says: τὸ νοεῖν . . . πεφατισμένον ἐν τῷ ἐόντι, taking into heed has come forth to appear "in beings." Does this mean that νοεῖν can be found before us among the other ἐόντα, in the realm of beings, to which there also belongs whatever pertains to the soul? Were we to reflect upon νοεῖν as an experience in the soul or to attempt to find it within the field of the "facts of consciousness," then we would never be able to bring into view νοεῖν in Parmenides' sense. Yet Parmenides does say: ούκ &νευ τού ἐόντος εύρήσβις τό νοεῖν—not apart from "beings" can you find νοεῖν. Certainly. We find it only συν, gathered together with the ἐόν. Why? Because νοεῖν as λέγειν gathers itself of its own accord and in a singular manner in the direction of the ἐόν, and only as that which thus gathers does it prevail in the manner that it prevails. Only as λεγόμενον does the νόημα come forth to appear in the ἐόν and is thus: πεφατισμένον. How are we to understand this?
We can succeed in understanding it only if, rather than representing that which is "spoken" as that which has been uttered in the sensible, we think it in a Greek way as that which has appeared. This demands that we precisely do not restrict appearing and self-showing (σήματα) to that which emerges in the field of whatever can be perceived in the sensible, but think self-showing and appearing in the first instance in terms of what prevails as that which reveals itself before any distinguishing between the sensible and the nonsensible.
The πεφατισμένον is something that has appeared, but appeared ἐν τῷ ἐόντι, and that means: neither among those beings that are perceptible in the realm of the sensible, among those ἐόντα that can be taken up and taken on by δόξα (those that are actual "in themselves"), nor in the realm of εἶναι that is later named the ἰδέα, nonsensible "Being [taken] by itself." Νοεῖν shows itself only as νοεῖν, that is, as taking into heed the ἐόν ἕμμεναι in the ἐόν itself. The ἐόν itself prevails in the twofold of "beings being" ("Seiendes seiend"), and does so even when the twofold is not specifically named, nor even given thought as such.
Wherever that which is present shows itself in its presencing, wherever presencing in the sense of presencing of that which is present appears, there—namely "in" this twofold itself and in it alone—νοεῖν is in play and therefore comes forth to appear ἐν τῷ ἐόντι (thought participially); for νοεῖν does not apprehend just any arbitrary thing. It takes ἐόν ἕμμεναι, the being of beings (das Seiend des Seienden), into heed. Subsequent thinking says: Νοεῖν, in taking into heed the ἐόν ᾗ ἐόν, does not take that which is present into heed as that which is present, and thus it pays heed to the presencing of what is present, always asking: τί τὸ ὄν, what is that which is present in respect of its presencing? In what way is Being in regard to beings, in what way are these, as beings, to be determined in terms of Being, and how is Being to be thought?
Νοεῖν belongs to εἶναι. The relation of νοεῖν to εἶναι rests in the fact that, as the way in which λέγειν τε νοεῖν τε is drawn into the ἐόν ἕμμεναι, this relation is in accordance with χρή. To what is the οὕνεκεν ἔστι νόημα (B8.34) related back? Due to what does that which has been taken into heed prevail? Due to nothing other than that which, of its own accord, needs a taking into heed. And what is that? Presencing (εἶναι), namely as ἐόν, the presencing of that which is present. This, due to which the νόημα prevails, is the Same (ταὐτόν) as is taking into heed, that is, it is that with which νοεῖν belongs together: the ἐόν in its twofold.
What does this all mean? It calls upon us to think that, and to what extent, due to the twofold of presencing and that which is present, saying and that which it says is. Νοεῖν listens to εἶναι because, conjoining with λέγειν, it belongs to the twofold of the ἐόν. Saying is at home in the twofold of Being and beings. To what extent? Parmenides gives no answer, because of him the question is remote, as remote as is a discussion of the distinction between λεγόμενον and πεφατατμένον as a remote as is a meditation on the possible way in which the two fold essentially belongs together with the essence of language. With respect to this remoteness, we latecomers may conjecture and must ask Is saying at home in the twofold of Being and beings because of the house of Being (which always means: of the Being of beings), because the house of the twofold is—the house, however, having been built from the essence of language?
Yet wherein does the essence of language reside? We said that saying is letting-lie-before and letting-appear. Language prevails in its essence where appearing prevails, where coming-forth-before is appropriated (sich ereignet): arrival before us into unconcealment and forth from out of concealment. Language is insofar as unconcealment Ά-Λήθεια, is appropriated.
Who or what is Ἀλήθεια? Parmenides names her. His thoughtful telling speaks from out of a listening to her address. Thought in a Greek manner, this means something other than the assurance that what Parmenides pronounces is entirely correct and not false. The fact that Ἀλήθεια speaks in the thinker's saying means rather that the concealed essence of the twofold in the ἐόν and the likewise veiled essence of language accompany thinking onto the path that everywhere remains a three-way path.
And yet, Parmenides does not interrogate the essence of Ἀλήθεια. He no more asks concerning the essential provenance of Ἀλήθεια than does any other Greek thinker. Yet presumably they all—including their successors, and most lately Nietzsche in his unpublished essay from 1873, On Truth and Lie in the Extramoral Sense”—think everywhere under the umbrella and protection of Ἀλήθεια in the sense of the unconcealment of that which is present in its presencing. This occurs even where the relationship of human beings to what is present is explained with the aid of the lumen naturale. This "light” already presupposes Ἀλήθεια, and was first ignited historically in and through Ἀλήθεια. The visibility granted by Ἀλήθεια lets presencing arise as presencing as "outward look” (εἶδος) and "aspect” (ἰδέα), in keeping with which our fundamental relation to the presencing of what is present comes to be determined as seeing, εἰδέναι, i.e., as knowing—a determination that still comes to the fore most emphatically in the modern form of the essence of truth as certainty. The Augustinian and medieval theory of light is left in a complete vacuum with respect to the matter at issue—to say nothing of its Platonic heritage—if it is not thought back in the direction of Ἀλήθεια, whose essential provenance remains veiled. Within the same veiling, the essence of language withdraws for a vocation that gives thought to something other than those forms of language that appear and offer themselves to metaphysical (i.e., logical, grammatical, metrical-poetic, biological or sociological, and technological) representation. The theological explanation of the provenance of truth and language from God as first cause can never clarify the essence of what is supposed to be caused in this way, but rather always merely presupposes it; just as every question concerning the origin "of language" in general must already have brought the essence of language and the nature of its essential domain into the clear. At such a moment, however, the customary question of origin falls by the way.
Both fragments (B3 and B8.34ff) think the belonging of νοεῖν to εἶναι, and do so in such a way that each time this belonging is emphatically placed at the beginning of the sentences. In keeping with the Greek text, the τὸ αὐτό and ταύτόν must in each case be regarded as the emphatic predicate of a sentence that grammatically speaking has νοεῖν as its "subject." Only in the step back of a thinking that is no longer Greek and that no longer thinks in an ontological or metaphysical way at all can and must even τό αύτό be read as the "subject" of such a sentence. Τὸ αὐτό then names the as yet unthought essence of Ἀλήθεια, inasmuch as this essence unfolds into the twofold of the ἐόν, a twofold which for its part "needs" the λέγειν τε νοεῖν τε, even though Ἀλήθει α never in itself shelters the essential provenance of the χρή (Fragment B6), since it itself arrives from out of something more concealed.
Yet why, precisely with respect to the belonging together of νοεῖν with εἶναι, does Parmenides bring to the fore something apparently self-evident, namely that fact that "apart from beings" no beings can ever be found anywhere? Manifestly he does so only because νοεῖν gives rise to the appearance that it maintains itself alongside that which "is present." In which case, however, this appearance is not a mere appearance. For the λέγειν and νοεῖν let that which is present lie before in its presencing, and they lie over and against such presencing. The jointure of λέγειν and νοεῖν sets free the ἐὸν ἕμμεναι, the presencing in its appearing, and in so doing in a certain manner keeps itself removed from that which is present. Yet the jointure is able to keep itself removed in this way only insofar as the νοεῖν is a λεγόμενον and as such is something "spoken," that is, something that appears. Yet from where does νοεῖν appear, if not from the twofold itself, insofar as νοεῖν takes this twofold into heed and, from out of such taking, itself first receives the pledge that grants its [essential prevailing?]. Precisely inasmuch as it gives that which is present to be free in its presencing, νοεῖν is drawn into and retained in the twofold of the ἐόν. Nothing that concerns the presencing of that which presences, and certainly not the jointure of λέγειν and νοεῖν, is outside of the twofold or alongside the ἐόν.
Parmenides says (B8.36ff.):
οὐδὲν γὰρ ἢ ἔστιν ἢ ἔσται
ἄλλο πάρεξ τοῦ ἐόντος, ἐπεὶ τό γε Μοῖρ' ἐπέδησεν
οὖλον ἀκίνητόν τ' ἔμμεναι
Destiny has bound the ἐόν, namely into the twofold. In accordance with this twofold, presencing gathers that which presences in its presencing and absencing. Presencing is a singular and unifying One that prevails as an entirety, cannot be fragmented, and above all is never first pieced together from whatever is present or absent in any particular instance. By contrast to whatever is moved in the manner of what is present or absent, arriving or departing, coming forth or passing away, the ἐόν always remains "without movement" (κίνησις); for it is that στάσις which, in remaining steadfast, itself lets whatever is present be steadfast in its presencing and absencing. Μοῖρα is the dispensation into the twofold of beings and Being. Such dispensation bestows the destining that is the twofold within which whatever is present appears in presencing. The destiny of "Being" (ἐόν) is the destining of the twofold, a destiny which, however, keeps this twofold as such in the realm of that which is concealed. Only that which is not given up is truly given as a gift whose destining is bestowed the possibilities of its unfolding.
Accordingly, the "history of Being" is never a sequence of occurrences that "Being [taken] by itself," as set off from beings, passes through—as though that history simply opened up, for a new form of historiography, more profound insights into the history of metaphysics as it has hitherto been thought. The "history of Being" is the destiny of the ἐόν in which there occurs the destining of the twofold in the event of appropriation. With this destiny, that which presences comes into unconcealment as that which is present. And the destiny itself? It can neither be explained in terms of that which is present, nor can it be represented in terms of presencing, nor even thought in terms of the twofold as something ultimate.
For this twofold itself remains concealed in this destiny, and it does so precisely through the fact that only that which has become twofold is revealed, namely that which is present and presencing, and that these thereby lay claim upon thinking as representation. The twofold that is represented by way of these terms that belong to it appears in the form of the distinction between the πρότερον and ὕστερον ῇ φύσει, that which precedes and that which comes after with regard to its emergence: the a priori and a posteriori. With respect to this distinction, one can always insist with complete legitimacy that the difference which sustains all ontology has long been familiar to Western philosophy. It is so emphatically familiar that no occasion is sought or found to ever give thought to the essential provenance of this distinction as a distinction—and in so doing to become thoughtful with regard to thinking hitherto. The growing endeavors to "transform" the existing doctrine of thinking, namely logic, into logistics; the increasing calculative attempts to resituate language in general in the realm of logistical technology; the will to secure all saying (speaking on the radio) and writing as the production of ready-made literature—all these point to the fact that the consummation of metaphysics, which itself thrives from giving no thought to the twofold with respect to its essential provenance, stands only at its tentative beginning.
Nonetheless, this twofold of that which presences and presencing, withheld in its essence, announces its worthiness to be questioned already in the early period of Western thinking. It is all too easily overheard. For the authoritative path that thinking in its beginnings first has to traverse leads above all to its taking into heed the presencing of that which presences, so as to name that wherein it, presencing, shows itself (τὰ σήματα τοῦ ἐόντος).
The λέγειν that lets εἶναι as Ἕν lie before νοεῖν comes to language in such an unquestioned manner that one can all too easily lose sight of the extent to which this path, too, which provides the authoritative measure for the way in which thinking properly proceeds, runs its course within what is worthy of questioning. For it is the path that it is only in its unity with the remaining two paths: the second, which cannot be traveled, and the third, which cannot be circumvented. This three-way path is determined in its unity from out of the first. This unity of the three-way path determines the manner in which early thinking sets out.
From its being guided into paying suitable heed to the three-way path there speaks the gathering of that call which, calling through the twofold, calls upon us to let lie before and to take into heed: that which is present in its presencing (Anwesendes anwesend). In the following the gathering of this call, Western-European thinking catches sight of the presencing of that which is present in those coinages of its appearing in accordance with which the fundamental positions of metaphysics are determined.
The dialogue with Parmenides will never come to an end, not only because there remains much that is obscure in the fragments of his "poem" that have been passed on to us, but because what is said itself remains worthy of questioning. The unending nature of the dialogue, however, is not a deficiency, but is the sign of a fullness of that which is worthy of thought, something kept open for thoughtful remembrance.
Whoever, on the other hand, expects only assurance and appeasement from thinking is demanding the self-annihilation of thinking. Such a demand appears in an odd light when we meditate on the fact that the essence of mortals is called into a heedfulness of the gathering of that call which points them toward that which is to be thought.
Martin Heidegger - The Last, Undelivered Lecture (XII) from Summer Semester 1952