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< INJUNCTIONS OF MARX

fragment [des Spruches, i.e. of Anaximander] even use " penalties" to translate "right." If we resist our own juridical-moral notions, [juristich-moralischen Vorstellungen], if we restrict ourselves to what comes to language, then we hear that wherever άδικία rules all is not right with things [dass es, wo sie waltet, nicht mit rechten Dingen zugeht]. That means something is out of joint [etwas ist aus den Fugen]. But of what are we speaking? Of what is present, lingering awhile [Vom je-weilig Anwesenden].²⁰

It is important to recall here, regarding the translation of "je-weilig" ("lingering awhile") that Heidegger's meditative writing no doubt passes through this determination of the present (Anwesend) as je-weilig (of the moment, of the epoch, each time, and so forth) , as well as through this indispensable attribution as Weile (moment, passing moment, lapse of time) or weilen (to stay, linger, remain) . But still more important here appears to be the interpretation of weilen: a passage, to be sure, and thus by definition a transitory moment, but whose transition comes, if one can say that, from the future. It has its provenance in what, by essence, has not yet come-from [provenu], still less come about, and which therefore remains to come. The passage of this time of the present comes from the future to go toward the past, toward the going of the gone [l'en allé] (Das Weilen ist der Übergang aus Kunft zu Gang. Das Anwesende ist das Je-weilige).²¹ Heidegger continues: "But where are there j ointures in what is present? Or where is there even one jointure [nur eine Fuge]? How can what is present [das Anwesende] without jointure be αδικον, out of joint [aus der Fuge]"? One may, as the translator did here, translate Heidegger, the reader of Anaximander, into the language of Hamlet: how is it possible, that which is? Namely, how is it possibkthat the present, and therefore time, be out of joint? The rest of the interpretation cannot be reconstituted here. It would deserve long and minute approaches. Let us indicate merely a reading hypothesis and the principle of a question. Would the Spruch of Anaximander signify that to the presence of the present, to the εόν of the έόντα belongs the άδικία , the dis-jointure, which is most often translated, as Nietzsche did in this case, by injustice (Ungerechtigkeit)? Can one conclude from this that there was a "pessimism" or "nihilism" in the Greek experience of Being? Heidegger doubts it. To nihilistic pessimism, as well as to optimism, he opposes the "trace" of the "tragic", of an essence of the tragic (we are never far from Oedipus and Hamlet) that cannot be explained in an "esthetic" or "psychological" fashion,²²

²⁰ Holzwege, pp. 326-27; Early Greek Thinking, p. 41.
²¹ Holzwege, p. 323; Early Greek Thinking, p. 37.
²² Holzwege, p. 330; Early Greek Thinking, p. 44.