broad, broadly encompassing, powerful, inasmuch as time, in its encompassing power, possesses all beings in their Being.
Let this suffice as an initial clarification of the words χρόνος—τάξις χρόνου.
We have now worked through Anaximander’s pronouncement in all its sections and have commented on the individual words and phrases. To recapitulate: “But whence beings take their stepping-forth, thence also their receding ensues (happens) according to necessitation (compulsion); for they (the beings) give compliance—maintaining correspondence with one another, acquiescing to a correspondence with one another—(in consideration of) in return for the noncompliance according to the allocation of time.” Will we dare to say we have understood this pronouncement? On the contrary, what initially looked like a exceedingly naive poetic-moral observation on the usual course of things besets us now as a thoroughly obscure pronouncement on the Being of beings as a whole (Being and time). Can the obscurity be cleared up? |