PART ONE
The dictum of Anaximander
of Miletus,
6th–5th century
Introduction
§1. The mission and the dictum
a) Cessation and beginning
Our mission: the cessation of philosophizing?1 That is, the end of metaphysics; by way of an originary questioning of the “meaning” (truth) of Beyng.2
We want to seek out the beginning of Western philosophy (cf. p. 31!).—Western philosophy takes its start in the 6th century BC with the Greeks, a minor, relatively isolated, and purely self-dependent(??) people. The Greeks of course knew nothing of the “Western” and the “West.” These terms express a primarily geographical concept, contrasted against the East, the Oriental, the Asiatic. At the same time, however, the rubric “Western” is a historiological concept and signifies today’s European history and culture, which were inaugurated by the Greeks and especially by the Romans and which were essentially determined and borne by Judeo-Christianity.
Had the Greeks known something of this Western future, a beginning of philosophy would never have come about. Rome, Judaism, and Christianity completely transformed and adulterated the inceptual—i.e., Greek—philosophy.
b) The dictum in the customary translations
We want to seek out the beginning of Western philosophy. What we find therein is little. And this little is incomplete. The tradition ordinarily calls Thales of Miletus the first philosopher. Much is reported about him and his teaching. But nothing is handed down directly.
After Thales, Anaximandros (ca. 610–545) is called the second philosopher. Preserved for us are a few of his words and statements. The one reads:
1 Cf. Überlegung II, 89. {In: Überlegungen II–VI. GA [Gesamtausgabe] 94.}
2 [Archaic form of “Being,” to render das Seyn, archaic form of das Sein.—Trans.]