This essay written in 1946 deals with Heidegger’s conception of the self-revealing concealment of being and its relationship to being-there as its shepherd. Heidegger’s essay is a dialogue that takes the form of a translation of the oldest saying of philosophy: “. . . according to necessity; for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice. . . . ” Anaximander speaks to us from the earliest beginning of the history of being as metaphysics, which is at the same time the start of the forgottenness of being. Could it be that, at the end of philosophy, a new beginning is announced in the saying of Anaximander to those who are listening?
Heidegger’s dialogue begins with the interpretation of the Greek understanding of being: ἐόν. Ἐόν is the word for that which is present. Every entity is, because it has arrived at its while in unconcealment, ἀλήθεια. Entities are only insofar as they are coming to presence; they are coming to presence insofar as they emerge into unconcealment. Entities that are present through unconcealment, however, remain concealed in what they were and shall be. Heidegger can now interpret two words that bear faithful testimony to Anaximander’s thought. Γένεσις is the coming forth and arriving at the unconcealed. Φθορά means for that which has thus arrived to leave the unconcealed and pass into concealment. Γένεσις and φθορά are complementary moments of the same dynamic process by which entities come to presence. Every entity leaves concealment to abide in unconcealment for a time, before it passes away into concealment.
Ἀδικία denotes literally the privation of δίκη. Entities proceed out of concealment to reveal themselves in unconcealment before returning to concealment. This intermingling of revealment and concealment is the presencing of entities: a dynamic process of joining, δίκη, of assembling and gathering entities in their being. Ἀδικία refers to the tendency of entities to disjoin by refusing to abide and repose. Since this pull toward disjoining is only a tendency, the pattern of joining maintains the upper hand. The pattern of joining ensures that entities “while” and abide in compatibility with each other within the region of unconcealment. Heidegger can now interpret the second part of Anaximander’s saying. All entities come to presence insofar as, in compatibility with each other, they overcome the tendency within themselves to deny their passing away, that is, the condition of their coming to presence. Entities can only emerge into unconcealment if they make place for each other when their time has come to withdraw and disappear from unconcealment.
According to Heidegger, we have in the first three words of the saying, κατὰ τὸ χρεών, the oldest name by which thinking brings the being of entities into presence. He translates χρεών as Brauch, which means “use” and “handling.” Anaximander suggested that being hands out entities in that by which they come to presence. Being gives entities their limits. As a nonentity, being has no limits; it is limitless (ἄπειρον). Anaximander names being and its relationship to entities, but the ontological difference between being and entities remained forgotten. In the unconcealment of entities, being itself remains concealed and forgotten. Heidegger thereby emphasizes that the forgottenness of being is the forgottenness of the difference between being and entities.