William J. Richardson, S.J.
That Heidegger should devote a formal study to λόγος in Heraclitus is not at all surprising.1 What is surprising is that it took him so long to do so. The indices in EM were, after all, only incidental to another problematic and deserved elaboration for themselves. The fact is that the problem of λόγος has been with him since the beginning, if only under the guise of "logic." We have only to look at the list of the author's lecture courses and seminars at Freiburg to realize how frequently he recurred to the theme.2
Of all these titles, perhaps the most significant for our present purposes is the lecture course of the summer semester of 1934. Prior to EM, prior even to the first of the Hölderlin courses, it must be considered as part of the movement of "reversal" to which WW(1930) bears first witness. According to the students who followed the course, Heidegger declared that his purpose was not to explain conventional logic but to shake it to its foundations in an attempt to develop a new and more original type of thought. This could be done by probing the essence of language, for although logic as a science deals with the laws of "thought," this thought crystallizes fundamentally in judgements which are expressed in the language of predication. The laws of language and the laws of thought are, from the beginning, inseparable, and the term "logic," the science of "thought," derives from λόγος in the sense of language. If logic is to be "shaken to its foundations" (and the necessity of such an effort was made abundantly clear in WM), the most effective method is to probe the nature of language. Hence:
... Because traditional logic, as a science of thought processes, vaunts itself as the supreme and authoritative norm for all determination of Being, this claim must [now] be examined in its origins and relentlessly renewed in terms of an original conception of the essence of language. ...3
How this was to be done we have some inkling already in the lectures of the following year (1935), published as EM. We recall that there the λόγος of Heraclitus was identified on the one hand with φύσις and on the other with νοεῖν. We recall, too, that the process of λέγειν was also the coming-to-pass of language. The present essay does nothing but elaborate these themes.
As before, we are engaged here in another re-trieve, this time of Fg. 50. The convolutions of the argument are less important for us than its general sense, which is to explain how λόγος passed from the original meaning of "gathering" to mean "language." This enables us to see more clearly the relation of thought both to Being and to language. Let us pass immediately, then, to the general remarks: A. Being, B. There-being, C. Language, D. Thought.
Λόγος, we are told, must be understood in terms of λέγειν, whose original sense, according to Heidegger, is to "lay," whether in the sense of "to-lay-down" or "to-lay-before." To lay-down-side-by-side is to lay-together, hence to bring together in the sense of gathering or collecting. Such a gathering or collecting, if we consider it closely, is not simply a transient accumulation but suggests a permanence by reason of which what is gathered-together is preserved and guarded in its collectedness.
The process of laying may be considered, of course, from the point-of-view of that which is laid, as a lying-forth. In this case, the lying-forth and the laying which lets it come-to-pass are correlative in a single process, which we may describe as a "letting-lie-forth-in-collectedness." It is with this formula that Heidegger describes the genuine sense of λέγειν. Notice in passing (we shall return to the point presently) that this single process may be conceived as proceeding from two directions at once: from that which lies-forth, as if it were emerging of itself; from that which lets it lie-forth, therefore lets it be, in the sense that it lays the being down.4
It is an easy step from here to see that the lying-forth in question is an emergence into non-concealment, hence the coming-to-pass of truth in that-which-lies-forth. But we are not allowed to forget that non-concealment is permeated with negativity, for λήθη not only is prior to ἀ-λήθεια but remains intrinsic to it at all times. However this may be, the process of truth which takes place in λέγειν is the coming-to-presence, therefore the Being, of beings. Hence to let beings lie-forth-in-collectedness is to let them be. Such a conception of λόγος perseveres in Greek thought even as late as Aristotle and accounts for the fact that there, as we saw in SZ, λόγος can mean ἀποφαίνεσθαι, sc. the process that lets-shine-forth in illumined self-revelation beings-that-appear, sc. which come-to-lie-forth in the Open.5
Up to this point we have been speaking of λέγειν. What, then, of Λόγος? We understand it as the absolutely original Source out of which the entire gathering-process proceeds. Heidegger claims that Heraclitus' formula "Ἓν-Πάντα (one-in-many [-beings]) describes the manner in which Λόγος functions. As Ἓν, Λόγος is the One, the Only, that unifies all beings in themselves, insofar as it gathers them into themselves, letting them lie forth in non-concealment as themselves. Because Λόγος is Ἓν, it may be called the utterly Simple. "Ev is likened to a lightning-bolt, by reason of which beings are lit up in their Being. "Ἓν Πάντα tells [us] what Λόγος is. Λόγος tells [us] how Ἓν Πάντα comes-to-presence. Both are but one."6 Briefly, Λόγος is the Being of beings-in-the-ensemble. "... The word o Λόγος names that which gathers all [beings] into [Being] and thereby lets [them] lie forth. ..."7 An important annotation: the event by which Being thus collects itself in beings is also called "mittence."8
Two observations are in order. In the first place, the implicit supposition here is that Ἓν and Πάντα are inseparable. Unless something is gathered-together (beings), there simply is no gathering (Being). Secondly, the gathering-process of Λόγος may be considered as a letting-lie-forth of beings in the sense of supplying for them a firm ground, that whereon they may rest firm.9 It is a simple inference from the first observation to add that just as no beings can be grounded unless Ground (Λόγος) comes-to-pass, so, conversely, Ground cannot come-to-pass except in and through the beings that it grounds. Λόγος, Being, Ground: but one!
Λόγος, the One, comes-to-pass in a λέγειν. Let us return now to λέγειν as a letting-(beings)-lie-forth and a preserving them in collectedness. The gathering-together which is in question here implies that the gatherer is itselfgathered together in and through the very process of gathering. We understand this to mean that the gathering-process supposes a certain point of concentration (the term is not Heidegger's), which itself must ipso facto be constituted in order that the gathering-into-unity be accomplished at all. What can we call this gathering-point "itself"? Heidegger does not give it a name. We venture to call it simply a "self," understanding by the term the There of Being, which, as we saw in SZ, is a self simply inasmuch as it is transcendence (ek-sistence), a unified place of open-ness unto Being among beings. At any rate, when we think of There-being as achieving its self, we understand this in the sense of fulfilling the function of a gathering-point.10
What may be said now about the nature of this gathering-point (There), through which the unifying process of Λόγος is achieved? In the first place, it takes place in the essence of man. Furthermore, it is itself constituted as a self by Λόγος, for it is part of the gathering-process as such. In this sense, we have every right to say that the gathering-point of There "belongs" to Λόγος.11 Λόγος, then, will always dominate its own gathering-point. Yet for all its primacy, Λόγος has want of this gathering-point in order to be itself, by reason of the very exigencies of the gathering-process as such. The There, then, in "belonging" to Λόγος, serves its needs. We might call it an "attend-ant" of Logos.
How does the gathering-point of There function? Its task is simply to enable the gathering-process of Λόγος among beings to proceed. The There is the "place" wherein the process takes place. It must let the process (and therefore itself) be. We have mentioned already that the unified process of lying-laying-out of beings may be imagined as proceeding from two different directions. On the one hand, as a lying-forth it seems to proceed from the beings themselves. From this point of view, the movement may be considered as proceeding ultimately from Λόγος. On the other hand, the laying-down seems to proceed from the gathering-point of There (though ultimately, of course, the There, too, derives its collecting-power from Λόγος. The There must lay-out (λέγειν) the very same (ὁμο) beings that Λόγος lets lie forth in the Open, and in the very same way. When this happens, the λέγειν of the There as a gathering-point "corresponds" (ὁμολογεῖν) with the λέγειν of the aboriginal Λόγος. Correspondence comes, however, at a price. The There must acquiesce to Λόγος, must so comport itself as effectively to commit itself (sich schickt) to Λόγος and for Λόγος. But There's acquiescence brings fulfillment, and, indeed, of a double sort: by acquiescence to Λόγος, There fulfills its own com-mitment to be the gathering-point of Λόγος among beings and thus achieves itself, sc. its own authenticity as a self; by acquiescence to Λόγος, There helps fulfill this gathering-process as such, for it lets Λόγος bestow itself as mittence upon beings and thus come-to-pass as what it is.12
From all this, observe: that the process of correspondence with Λόγος, concurs in its essentials with the process of re-solve in Heidegger I and at the same time with the notion of "fulfilling" Being as it unfolds in Heidegger II; that if Λόγος be conceived as Ground, then the function of There, simply because it is There, helps bring Ground (the grounding-process) to pass.
Heidegger's purpose in this essay is not explicitly to probe the nature of thought so much as the nature of language. From this point of view, it is extremely valuable. His thesis is radical and unequivocal: the sense of λέγειν, which unquestionably means "to speak," "to say," as it always has been translated, does not pass from one meaning (sc. "letting-lie-forth") to another (sc. "to speak," etc.), but the original sense of "speaking" is nothing less than "to-let-lie-forth":
... Uttering and speaking come-to-presence as [the process of] letting-lie-forth-in-collectedness everything that comes-to-presence [precisely inasmuch] as [it is] laid out in non-concealment. ... 13
The thesis is elaborated less clearly than it is enunciated, and we are often forced to conjecture. The principal difficulty arises once more from the obscurity as to the relation between Λόγος and its There. Making the most of what indices we have, we understand the author to mean: wherever we find λέγειν in the above exposition, we may read "to utter" (Sagen).14 This will mean that we may understand the Λόγος to be the aboriginal Utterance (Sage), sc. the utterance of Being, or Being-as-utterance, and human language as having the same relation to aboriginal Utterance as the gathering-point (among beings) has to the gathering-process as such, or as There-being has to the Being (of beings) to which it belongs. Presumably, authentic language comes-to-pass when There-being acquiesces to Being-as-utterance and, true to its com-mitment, achieves its own authenticity.
There are several things to underline here. Firstly, we must insist that for Heidegger the essence of language is not to be sought in terms of sound or meaning, but in the complete identity between uttering-in-language and letting-be-manifest.15 We see this conception clearly when the author explains what he understands by "name" and "naming." To name, he claims, is to call-forth, in the sense of laying a being out in the Open, in such a way that the being can shine forth as what it is:
... The process of naming (ὄνομα) is not the expressing of a word-signification but letting-something-lie-forth in that light wherein it takes its stand [as a being, simply] inasmuch as it has a name.16
Furthermore, we must realize that authentic utterance takes place only insofar as There-being achieves its own authenticity. In this respect, the author was more explicit in an aside during the Physics seminar (1940) than in 1944, at least according to the text we have at our disposal. In 1940, he remarked that λέγειν-λόγος signifies that relationship
... on the ground of which [beings] as such gather themselves for the first time around man and for him. And because man is only insofar as he comports himself with beings as such, revealing them and concealing them, man can and must have the "word," sc. utter the Being of beings. The words, however, that [daily] language uses are only the leftovers of the [original] Word, [and] on the basis of these man never finds his way back again to beings except on the ground of λέγειν. ... 17
Such a λέγειν as this occurs when human language concurs (ὁμολογεῖν) completely with the aboriginal utterance of Being (sc. with the Being-of-beings-as-utterance).18 By letting beings lie-forth in the Open as what they are, There-being concurs with the process of Λόγος, which is the process that gathers these beings at once unto themselves and unto itself as aboriginal Utterance. In concurrence, authentic language comes-to-pass. Notice that in this moment, language, insofar as it proceeds from There-being, is fundamentally an attending to the still more original Utterance of Λόγος (Being) itself as articulated in the beings that now come-to-presence insofar as this concurrence lets them be.19 By such an attending, There-being surrenders to its com-mitment as an attend-ant of Being, in complete acquiescence in Being's intimations.
So it comes about that Heidegger, re-trieving as he does the original sense of λέγειν, thinks "... the essenc[-ing] of language in terms of the essenc[-ing] of Being, indeed as this essenc[-ing] itself,"20 and from now on, to "bring something into language" means always "to guard Being in the coming-to-presence of language," sc. by letting Λόγος shine-forth in, through and as words.21 To the extent that Λόγος is Ground, then to bring Λόγος into language is to join in the "grounding" of Ground. This helps us to give a sense to the theses: that poetizing is an origin-ating (grounding) of Being-as-origin (-ground); that every work of art, because an origin-ating of truth (Being, Origin, Ground), is in its essence a poetizing.
What the essay tells us about thought is minimal, but what it shows us by way of example is important. We have a right to understand ὁμολογεῖν to be not only the coming-to-pass of language but also the process of thought, for insofar as the -λογεῖν of ὁμο- is conceived as proceeding from There in a direction opposite to the movement of Λόγος and bringing it to a point of concentration, there is no other way to understand it except in terms of νοεῖν.
What does the essay permit us to say of thought, once we interpret thought as ὁμολογεῖν? Firstly, that thought belongs to Λόγος as an attend-ant, insofar as it proceeds from Λόγος. Hence, what it lays-out in the Open, sc. lets-be (manifest), does not have its origin in thought as such but ultimately in the Λόγος wherein thought "reposes."22 In this sense, the coming-to-pass of thought is always an event of the primal Λόγος itself, by which Λόγος ap-propriates for itself that domain among beings of which it has want. Proceeding thus from Λόγος, thought is clearly the thinking "of" Λόγος.23
Furthermore, thought not only belongs but attends to Λόγος, and it is precisely by attend-ing that thought achieves the task of attend-ance in all its authenticity. For the attend-ant itself gathers There-being into its own fullness in endeavoring to respond to the demands and intimations of Λόγος coming to it through beings. How is authenticity achieved? By a comportment through which thought com-mits itself completely to Λόγος. And this comportment is described not only according to the metaphor of hearing but also of sight, anticipating thus the double modality of thought that we shall find in WD. It is important here to note only that both metaphors fuse into the conception of that complete abandonment and docility which we saw to characterize thought in the Epilogue to WM. Proceeding from Λόγος and attend-ing to it, thought is the thinking "of" Λόγος in a two-fold fashion.24
The coming-to-presence of thought is profoundly a historical process. On the one hand, Λόγος e-mits itself among beings. On the other, There-being, through thought, com-mits itself in free surrender to Λόγος thus bestowed, thereby fulfilling its own com-mitment as a There. This fusion of the e-mitting of Λόγος and the (self-) com-mitting of its There through thought is what constitutes the coming-to-pass of mittence as such, which is the structural unity of inter-mittence (Being-as-history).25 Notice: that the primacy in the process belongs clearly to Λόγος; that the correspondence of thought is, however, necessary to the process; that thought is genuinely historical, not by reason of itself but by reason of the Λόγος to which it does no more than respond; that the mittence takes place as the coming-to-presence of beings in their totality, Ἓν-Πάντα.26
Now what Heidegger is trying to do is to re-trieve the mittence of Being to Heraclitus that took place at the beginning of Western thought. But notice that despite his apparently meticulous care to expound the original sense of Λόγος, he does not really claim to be saying what Heraclitus said, but rather what he did not say. That is very clear when it comes to explaining the correlation between Λόγος as the process of letting-lie-forth in the Open and as the coming-to-pass of language. Λόγος does not lose one meaning and gain another, but language in its origin is the process of letting-be (manifest). The Greeks, he claims, experienced this identity but did not — even Heraclitus did not — think it as such. "... Nowhere do we find [any] trace of the fact that the Greeks thought the essenc[-ing] of language immediately out of the essenc[-ing] of Being. ..."27 On the contrary! From the very beginning, language was always interpreted in terms of phonetics and expression. Yet even if no one comprehended it as such, nevertheless the genuine sense of language comes into the words which Heraclitus used when he thought Being in terms of Λόγος. We have here a classic example of a mittence of Being bestowed upon a thinker and uttered in his words, yet with such re-serve that it withdrew from the thinker himself even in the bestowal, hiding, indeed, its own withdrawal.28
Heidegger's task has been to re-trieve this mittence precisely in its withdrawal and thus achieve in his own historical moment an authentic response to a mittence of Being. Such a re-trieve, of course, does not dissolve the essential mystery that accounts for the entire process, but it does recognize it as such and thereby preserves it in its original freshness. Briefly: Heidegger's own interpretation of language is not attributed as such to Heraclitus but results from his own free-wheeling effort to think Being that only takes its lead from what Heraclitus said and then proceeds to think the un-thought.29
With regard to Being as the to-be-thought in foundational thinking, there is one point which strikes a new note that will re-echo later. Up to this point we have underlined the fact that the search for the sense of Being has been an effort to understand it as the process of truth out of which the ontological difference arises. But the emphasis has been given to Being itself, on the grounds, as EM said explicitly, that this is a necessary preliminary to interrogating the ontological difference as such. Heidegger poses the question of the relationship between Λόγος (Being) and its gathering-point (There), or, as we may say now, thought, and then declares:
... Not only what comes-to-presence in the λέγειν of ὁμολογεῖν but also what comes-to-presence in the λέγειν of Λόγος has at once a [still] more original derivation in the simple middle [-point] between them. Is there for human thought a way to reach this middle [-point]?30
Notice: that the question presupposes the complete correlation, therefore inter-dependence, of Being and beings; that this "middle point" is really the ontological difference as such, which now emerges unequivocally as his principal theme (confirmed by the otherwise inexplicable phrase, "difference as difference");31 that the question whether or not the ontological difference as such is thinkable is posed but not answered; that the question is purely Heideggerean and bears testimony to his relentless pursuit of an always more fundamental, always receding Source.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the step we have accomplished here, and only the development that follows will enable us to see that in these few pages we touch the heart of Heidegger's whole endeavor. Being (Λόγος) at once aboriginal Truth, Ground, Utterance. There-being, as the concentrating point of the gathering-process, is ὁμολογεῖν. Whether under the guise of poetizing or of thought, There-being corresponds with Λόγος and thereby helps it come-to-pass as Truth, as Ground, as Utterance. Since Being in its truth is at once aboriginal Utterance, we may discern the sense of Being-as-truth by interrogating language. That is why the Hölderlin analyses, in groping for the sense of poetizing, are an unswerving interrogation of ἀ-λήθεια. The suggestion of some "middle-point" between Λόγος and its There suggests a new aspect of the Being-process, which it is the task of foundational thought to think.
1 "Logos" (Heraklit, Fg: 50), VA, pp. 207-229. Composed in 1951 as contribution to a commemorative volume for Hans Jantzen (Berlin, 1951) and delivered as a lecture (Bremen) in the same year, the essay is based on the University lecture course with the same title in summer semester, 1944. Hence we insert it here.
2 Restricting ourselves to those titles which explicitly mention logic or its principal themes, we find that the author treated logic in: 1916 (seminar, Aristotle's logic), 1922 (course, Aristotle's logic and ontology), 1925-26 (course on logic and seminar on Hegel's Logic), 1926-27 (seminar, construction of concepts), 1927 (seminar, Aristotle's ontology and Hegel's Logic), 1928 (course, logic), 1928-29 (seminar, ontological principles and the categories), 1930-31 (seminar, construction of concepts), 1933 (seminar, principle of contradiction), 1934 (course, logic), 1939 (seminar, the essence of language).
3 "... Und weil diese bisherige Logik als Lehre von den Denkakten beanspruchte, als oberste und maßgebende Regel aller Bestimmung des Seins zu gelten, deshalb muß dieser Anspruch ursprünglich gefaßt und rücksichtsloser erneuert werden aus den ursprünglichen Begriffen des Wesens der Sprache ..." Cited from students' lecture notes with Professor Heidegger's approval.
4 For the two preceding paragraphs, see VA, pp. 208-211 (legen, nieder- und vorlegen, zusammenbringen, Verwahren, beisammen-vor-liegen-lassen).
5 VA, pp. 220—221 (Ἀλήθεια), 213 (ἀποφαίνεσθαι). Cf. P, p. 271-272; SZ, pp. 32, 34.
8 "Ἓν Πάντα sagt, was der Λόγος ist. Λόγος sagt, wie Ἓν Πάντα west. Beide sind das Selbe." (VA, p. 221). Cf. pp. 215 (ausgezeichnete Legen), 220 (Einzig-Eine, Einende), 207 (Einfachen), 222 (Blitz). Cf. N, II (1941), p. 483 (Insichruhen des Einfachen).
7 "... Das Wort ὁ Λόγος nennt Jenes, das alles Anwesende ins Anwesen versammelt und darin vorliegen läßt. ..." (VA, p. 227).
8 VA, p. 218 (Geschickliches), afterwards passim.
9 See SG, pp. 178-188, n.b. p. 180; ID, p. 54.
10 VA, pp. 210 (Im gesammelten Sammeln waltet Versammlung), 226 (braucht, schickt sich). One wonders if the conception of a "gathering point" does not give us a fresh way of understanding There-being as the "ultimate whereunto" (Woraufhin) of beings.
11 VA, pp. 215, 216 and passim (gehören).
12 VA, pp. 215 (liegt aus einem Legen, ὁμολογεῖν), 217-218, 221 (Geschick, das-Geschickliche, vollbringen).
13 "... Sagen und Reden wesen als das beisammen-vor-liegen-Lassen alles dessen, was, in der Unverborgenheit gelegen, anwest. ..." (VA, p. 212).
14 We translate Sagen as "utter" because Heidegger finds an affinity between Sagen and Zeigen (to show-forth, let-appear-in-the-Open, in the same sense that we are using λέγειν), and the word "utter" derives from the comparative of AS ut, meaning "out," hence may be taken to mean "to give or bring out," sc. into the Open. (See US, pp. 145, 200* 214, 252). Where it is necessary to distinguish, we use "Utterance" for Sage, and "uttering" or "to utter" for Sagen. Incidentally, we sense here the importance of the word Zeigen in describing the poet's function (v.g. HD, pp. 138, 139).
15 VA, pp. 212, 228 (φωνή, σημαίνειν). Heidegger does not deny, of course, the correctness (richtige) of conceiving language as φωνὴ σημαντική, or, for that matter, as expression (Aussage). He merely denies that such a conception is the ultimate «explanation of its origin (Wesen). See VA, p. 229.
16 "... Das vom λέγειν her gedachte Nennen (ὄνομα) ist kein Ausdrücken einer Wortbedeutung, sondern ein vor-liegen-Lassen in dem Licht, worin etwas dadurch steht, daß es einen Namen hat." (VA, p. 223). Note that when in 1957-58 Heidegger gives a lecture course on "The Essence of Language," he meditates Stefan George's line (from "Das Wort"): "Kein Ding sei wo das Wort gebricht," but effectively he does no more than explicitate what is said here. See US, pp. 168-169, 170, 215.
17 "... jenes Verhältnis, auf dessen Grunde erst Anwesendes als ein solches um den Menschen und für ihn sich versammelt. Und nur weil der Mensch ist, sofern er zum Seienden als einem solchen, es entbergend und verbergend, sich verhält, kann der Mensch und muß er das 'Wort' haben, d.h. vom Sein des Seienden sagen. Die Wörter aber, die die Sprache gebraucht, sind nur die aus dem Wort herausgefallenen Abfälle, von denen aus der Mensch niemals zum Seienden zurück- und hinfindet, es sei denn auf dem Grunde des λέγειν. ..." (P, p. 272). Heidegger's italics. Notice how the negativity of Being is here transposed into terms of language through the negativity of There-being (entbergend-verbergend).
18 There is no mention of Eigentlichkeit, but the repeated insistence on eigentliche Hören is thoroughly convincing. See VA, pp. 214-218.
19 VA, pp. 213-214, 216 (Hören-Horchen). Heidegger describes There-being's attitude of complete docility to Λόγος by saying that we must be "all ears" (ganz Ohr) (VA, p. 214), a phrase not uncommon in colloquial English to suggest avid attentiveness to what is said. Its humorous connotation, however, leads us to avoid incorporating it into the text. It is typical Heidegger to be told that man doesn't hear because he has ears to hear with, but he has these organs to hear with because he is structurally an attend-ant of Being (VA, p. 215).
20 "... das Wesen der Sprache aus dem Wesen des Seins, ja sogar als dieses selbst gedacht. ..." (VA, p. 228).
21 "... Sein in das Wesen der Sprache bergen. ..." (VA, p. 228).
22 The word "repose," both as verb (beruht) and noun (Ruhe), suggests still another nuance for λέγειν, this time when used in the middle voice in the sense of "laying-oneself-down-to-rest," sc. the tranquility of complete (self) re-collection (VA, p. 208). The word will occur frequently in the later works and we must always understand it with these overtones. In the present case, thought reposes in Λόγος insofar as it is itself gathered-together into what it is by reason of aboriginal Λόγος.
23 VA, pp. 224 (er-eignet, vereignet), 226 (braucht). The fusion of ereignen and vereignen constitutes the phenomenon of Ereignis, as it will be explained later in ID (1957). It is important to note here simply how early the terminology crystallizes (1944). See ID, p. 28.
24 Vg. VA, pp. 215-217 (eigentlich), 214 (auf Anspruch, Zuspruch), 217 (Gehörthaben, Gesehenhaben, sich schicken).
25 VA, p. 221. It is impossible to suggest by a single word such as "com-mitment" all the nuances which Heidegger connotes with Geschick and geschicklich. If we understand Being as com-mitting There-being to the destiny of serving as Being's There among beings, we must understand, too, that There-Being is given the equipment for such a task. We may speak of such equipment as an "endowment," in the sense that we use the word to describe talent, etc. This is clearly one of the nuances of Geschick (v.g. VA, p. 217).
26 VA, pp. 221 (eigentlich Geschickliche), 218 (ereignet sich Geschickliches), 224 (nie das Geschick selbst), 221 (wie Ἓν-Πάντα west).
27 "... Nirgends finden wir eine Spur davon, daß die Griechen das Wesen der Sprache unmittelbar aus dem Wesen des Seins dachten. ..." (VA, p. 228).
28 VA, pp. 229 (der Blitz verlosch jäh), 213 (aufspart).
29 VA, pp. 208 (Rätsel als Rätsel), 207 (im freien Überlegen am Leitband).
30 ... Dann bat sowohl das Wesende im λέγειν des ὁμολογεῖν, als auch das Wesende im λέγειν des Λόγος zugleich eine anfänglichere Herkunft in der einfachen Mitte zwischen beiden. Gibt es dahin für sterbliches Denken einen Weg?" (VA, p. 225).
31 VA, p. 227 (Unterschied als Unterschied).
William J. Richardson - Λόγος Heraclitus Fg. 50