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Fragment of Anaximander [119-120]

Thus conceived, however, permanence is contrary to the egressively enjoined essence of being, contrary to the ἀρχή, contrary to the ἄπειρον, the repelling of limit. But what presences essentially and yet contrary to the essence is the non-essence. What solidifies the enjoined upon itself, unto permanence and contrary to enjoinment, is the unfit, ἀδικία. This does not come to what presences from just anywhere, but is included in the essence of presencing and belongs to the necessity of being. This is, in itself, as the repelling of limit, already related to limitation unto permanence and thus to the unfit as a presencing possibility (inclination). (The "privative" character of the unfit thus attests simultaneously, as the counter-essence, to the essence of being, which has a "privative" character in the incipient sense of enjoinment itself: τὸ ἄπειρον.)

To the extent that what respectively presences corresponds to the essence of presencing, it does not consist in and solidify into duration unto permanence. Presencing is emergence as transition. What presences in this way gives what is fit, δίκην. It fits itself into enjoinment. That means to say: presencing is the transition of emergence into elusion. However, beings themselves give what is fit to being, and as beings of such an essence, they also allow each respective being to be what it is of itself. Giving what is fit to being, every being mutually acknowledges every other. Each thus allows the other its appropriate regard (καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις). The full essential relation of what respectively presences to the unfit determines itself only through this duality in which the various moments belong together in themselves (διδόναι δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις). Giving what is fit and granting mutual acknowledgment—that is in itself overcoming [Verwindung] the unfit. We do not say subduing [Überwindung] because that could mean the unfit would be eliminated. Indeed, the unfit belongs to the essence of presencing as non-essence. Permanence is not subdued in the sense of a complete dissolution, i.e., the revocation of its essential possibility. On the contrary: the essential tendency toward the unfit presences, but is overcome. What presences does not let itself become involved in the unfit, so far as it is something that presences. Overcoming the unfit belongs to the essence of what respectively presences as such, for as such it fits itself into transition. This


Basic Concepts (GA 51) by Martin Heidegger

GA 51: 119