—interpreted the Greek thesis in the sense of the immediate positing of the object. Setting in this sense, therefore, is for him still untrue, because it is not yet mediated by antithesis and synthesis. (See "Hegel und die Griechen" in the Festschrift for H. G. Gadamer, 1960.)*
But if, in the context of our essay on the work of art, we keep in mind the Greek sense of θέσις—to let lie forth in its shining and presencing—then the "fix" in "fix in place" can never have the sense of rigid, motionless, and secure.
"Fixed" means outlined, admitted into the boundary (πέρας), brought into the outline (See p. 188). The boundary in the Greek sense does not block off; rather, being itself brought forth, it first brings to its radiance what is present. Boundary sets free into the unconcealed; by its contour in the Greek light the mountain stands in its towering and repose. The boundary that fixes and consolidates is in this repose—repose in the fullness of motion. All this holds of the work in the Greek sense of ἔργον; this work's "Being" is ἐνέργεια, which gathers infinitely more movement within itself than do the modern "energies."
Thus the "fixing in place" of truth, rightly understood, can never run counter to the "letting happen." For one thing, this "letting" is nothing passive but a doing in the highest degree (see "Wissenschaft und Besinnung" in Vortrage und Aufsätze, p. 49†) in the sense of θέσις, a "working" and "willing" that in the present essay (p. 192) is characterized as the "existing human being's ecstatic entry into the unconcealment of Being." For another thing, the "happen" in the
* The reference was added to the Reclam edition in 1960. The essay appears also in Martin Heidegger, Wegmarken (Frankfurt-am-Main: V. Klostermann, 1967), pp. 255-72.—En.
† The reference is to a discussion of the German Tun, doing, which points to the core of its meaning as a laying forth, placing here, bringing here, and bringing forth— "working," in the sense either of something bringing itself forth out of itself into presence or of man performing the bringing here and bringing forth of something. Both are ways in which something that is present presences.—TR.