in the same manner, as thinking. But Aristotle's words in the Poetics, although they have scarcely been pondered, are still valid—that poetic composition is truer than exploration of beings.
But thinking is an adventure not only as a search and an inquiry into the unthought. Thinking, in its essence as thinking of Being, is claimed by Being. Thinking is related to Being as what arrives (l'avenant*). Thinking as such is bound to the advent of Being, to Being as advent. Being has already been dispatched to thinking. Being is as the destiny of thinking. But destiny is in itself historical. Its history has already come to language in the saying of thinkers.
To bring to language ever and again this advent of Being that remains, and in its remaining waits for man, is the sole matter of thinking. For this reason essential thinkers always say the Same. But that does not mean the identical. Of course they say it only to one who undertakes to think back on them. Whenever thinking, in historical recollection, attends to the destiny of Being, it has already bound itself to what is fitting for it, in accord with its destiny. To flee into the identical is not dangerous. To risk discord in order to say the Same is the danger. Ambiguity threatens, and mere quarreling.
The fittingness of the saying of Being, as of the destiny of truth, is the first law of thinking—not the rules of logic, which can become rules only on the basis of the law of Being. To attend to the fittingness of thoughtful saying does not only imply, however, that we contemplate at every turn what is to be said of Being and how it is to be said. It is equally essential to ponder whether what is to be thought is to be said—to what extent, at what moment of the history of Being, in what sort of dialogue with this history, and on the
* L'avenant (cf. the English advenient) is most often used as an adverbial phrase, a l'avenant, to be in accord, conformity, or relation to something. It is related to l'aventure, the arrival of some unforeseen challenge, and l'avenir, the future, literally, what is to come. Thinking is in relation to Being insofar as Being advenes or arrives. Being as arrival of presencing is the "adventure" toward which Heidegger's thought is on the way.—ED.