SCHOLAR: The Greek word is translated into German as Herangehen, “going-up-to.”
SCIENTIST: I regard this word as an excellent name for naming the essence of cognition; for the character of actively going-forward [Vorgehens] and going-to [Zugehens] objects is strikingly expressed in it.
SCHOLAR: It also seemed to me that Ἀγχιβασίη, translated as “going-up-to,” is an apt word to characterize what we first made of cognition. This is probably also why the word occurred to me when, in our first conversation, we spoke of the action, achievement, work, [153] and implementation of modern research.
SCIENTIST: One could use this Greek word precisely in order to make clear that research in the natural sciences is something like an attack on nature, but one which nevertheless lets nature speak. Ἀγχιβασίη, “going-up-to”—in fact, I could think of this word of Heraclitus as a motto [Leitwort] for a treatise on the essence of modern science, historiological science no less than physical science in the broadest sense.
SCHOLAR: This is why I just now hesitated to pronounce this word yet, since it does not at all suit that essence of thinking which we surmised along the way today.
SCIENTIST: Since the waiting of which we spoke is indeed almost the counter-movement to going-up-to.
SCHOLAR: Which is not to say the counter-rest.
GUIDE: Or simply rest.—Yet is it then decided that Ἀγχιβασίη means “going-up-to”?
SCHOLAR: Translated literally, it says: “going-near.”59
SCIENTIST: If this word of the Greeks says just as little about the modern age as do others of its kind, what then should we make of it? If we try to merely set forth its opposite, then, rather than “going-up-to” and “going-near,” the word would have to mean so much as “remaining-away.”
SCHOLAR: Of that there is nothing in the least indicated in the word; for what is spoken of is ἀγχί, “near,” and βασίη, βαῖνειν, “to stride,” “to go.”
SCIENTIST: We are thus ill-advised if, in order to interpret the word, we flee into the mere opposite of what is modern. [154]
SCHOLAR: Moreover, against our own intentions, by positing the opposite we just entangle ourselves yet further in a dependence on that from which we want to free ourselves.
SCIENTIST: Yet what does the word Ἀγχιβασίη say if we think it in a Greek manner?
59. The following page and a half (up to the discussion of “going-into-nearness” on p. 102) do not appear in the 1959 excerpt (see G 70 / DT 89), and much of the remaining text was substantially abbreviated and in places rewritten.—Tr.