thinking; in opposition, the appeal to the fact that things “are,” even when we are not thinking of them. This constatation is correct; yet Parmenides’s statement is not thereby refuted. For the statement does not at all say that beings are thinking; on the contrary, it says Being belongs together with apprehending.
§21. Interpretation of fragments 6 and 7
a) Further clarification of the ways. The third way
Sufficient for now. We see: the statement grounds the separation of the ways. The statement thereby possesses a role of the greatest bearing. This is evident in the fact that it is immediately taken up again in the further clarification of the ways. For the clarification is by no means at an end. Quite to the contrary. Now D 6. |
D 4
χρὴ τὸ λέγειν τε νοεῖν τ᾽ ἐὸν ἔμμεναι· ἔστι γὰρ εἶναι, μηδὲν δ᾽ οὐκ ἔστιν· τά γ᾽ ἐγὼ φράζεσθαι ἄνωγα. πρώτης γάρ σ᾽ ἀφ᾽ ὁδοῦ ταύτης διζήσιος <εἴργω>, αὐτὰρ ἔπειτ᾽ ἀπὸ τῆς, ἣν δὴ βροτοὶ εἰδότες οὐδέν 5 πλάττονται, δίκρανοι· ἀμηχανίη γὰρ ἐν αὐτῶν στήθεσιν ἰθύνει πλακτὸν νόον· οἱ δὲ φοροῦνται κωφοὶ ὁμῶς τυφλοί τε, τεθηπότες, ἄκριτα φῦλα, οἷς τὸ πέλειν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶναι ταὐτὸν νενόμισται κοὐ ταὐτόν, πάντων δὲ παλίντροπός ἐστι κέλευθος.
1–2) The setting down as well as the apprehending must persist to the effect that Being (the act of being [das Seiend] qua Being) is the “is.” Nonbeing has no “it is”; by all means I command you to retain awareness of that.
3–4) Thus I first keep you away (exclude you) from this way of disclosive questioning (namely, the one altogether without prospects), but then also from the way humans, unknowledgeable humans, manifestly
5–7) forge for themselves—humans with two heads, for helplessness (ignorance of ways) aligns their errant apprehension; they are carried here and there, especially dull as well as blind, bewildered, the entire class of those who do not discriminate;
8–9) for their precept is: the present at hand and the not present at hand are the same and also not the same. This is so because in all things the path can be turned against itself.