The Anaximander Fragment
and what is to come also become present, namely as outside the expanse of unconcealment. What presents itself as non-present is what is absent. As such it remains essentially related to what is presently present, inasmuch as it either comes forward into the expanse of unconcealment or withdraws from it. Even what is absent is something present, for as absent from the expanse, it presents itself in unconcealment. What is past and what is to come are also ἐόντα. Consequently ἐόν means becoming present in unconcealment.
The conclusion of this commentary on ἐόντα is that also in Creek experience what comes to presence remains ambiguous, and indeed necessarily so. On the one hand, τὰ ἐόντα means what is presently present; on the other, it also means all that becomes present, whether at the present time or not. However, we must never represent what is present in the broader sense as the "universal concept" of presence as opposed to a particular case—the presently present—though this is what the usual conceptual mode of thought suggests. For in fact it is precisely the presently present and the unconcealment that rules in it that pervade the essence of what is absent, as that which is not presently present.
The seer stands in sight of what is present, in its unconcealment, which has at the same time cast light on the concealment of what is absent as being absent. The seer sees inasmuch as he has seen everything as present; καὶ, and only on that account, νήεσσ᾽ ἡγήσατ᾽, was he able to lead the Achaeans' ships to Troy. He was able to do this through God-given μαντοσύνη. The seer, ὁ μάντις, is the μαινόμενος, the madman. But in what does the essence of madness consist? A madman is beside himself, outside himself: he is away. We ask: away? Where to and where from? Away from the sheer oppression of what lies before us, which is only presently present, away to what is absent; and at the same time away to what is presently present insofar as this is always only something that arrives in the course of its coming and going. The seer is outside himself in the solitary region of the presencing of everything that in some way becomes present. Therefore he can find his way back from the "away" of this region, and arrive at what has just presented itself, namely, the raging epidemic. The madness of the seer's being away does not require that he rave, roll his eyes, and toss his
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