The Anaximander Fragment

another. Thus we are generally accustomed to read the text; we relate the ἀλλήλοις to δίκην and τίσιν, if we represent it clearly and expressly name it, as does Diels—though Nietzsche passes over it entirely in his translation. However, it seems to me that the immediate relation of ἀλλήλοις to διδόναι δίκην is neither linguistically necessary nor, more important, justified by the matter itself. Therefore it remains for us to ask, from within the matter itself, whether ἀλλήλοις should be directly related also to δίκην, or whether it should not indeed rather be related only to the τίσιν which immediately precedes it. The decision in this case depends in part on how we translate the καί that stands between δίκην and τίσιν. But this is determined by what τίσις here says.

We usually translate τίσις by "penalty." This leads us to translate διδόναι as "to pay." Whatever lingers awhile in presence pays penalty; it expends this as its punishment (δίκη). The court of justice is complete. It lacks nothing, not even injustice—though of course no one rightly knows what might constitute injustice.

Surely, τίσις can mean penalty, but it must not, because the original and essential significance of the word is not thereby named. For τίσις, is "esteem" [Schätzen]. To esteem something means to heed it, and so to take satisfactory care of what is estimable in it. The essential process of esteem, which is to satisfy, can, in what is good, be a magnanimous action; but with respect to wickedness giving satisfaction may mean paying a penalty. Yet a mere commentary on the word does not bring us to the matter in the fragment's use of the word if we have not already, as with ἀδικία and δίκη), thought from within the matter which comes to language in the fragment.

According to the fragment the αὐτά (τὰ ἐόντα), those beings that linger awhile in presence, stand in disorder. As they linger awhile, they tarry. They hang on. For they advance hesitantly through their while, in transition from arrival to departure. They hang on; they cling to themselves. When what lingers awhile delays, it stubbornly follows the inclination to persist in hanging on, and indeed to insist on persisting; it aims at everlasting continuance and no longer bothers about δίκη, the order of the while.

But in this way everything that lingers awhile strikes a haughty

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