EARLY GREEK THINKING
Every utterance and every silence is already something said, though the reverse does not always hold.
In what does the difference between something said and something uttered consist? For what reason does Parmenides characterize the νοούμενον and νοεῖν (VIII, 34 ff.) πεφατισμένον? This word is correctly translated in dictionaries as "utterance." But how are we to experience an uttering which gets its name from φάσκειν and φάναι? Does "utterance" here merely stand for the vocalization (φωνή) of what a word or sentence signifies (σημαίνειν)? Is speaking out, uttering, to be grasped here as the expression of something interior (something psychical), and so divided into two component parts—the phonetic and the semantic? There is no trace of this to be found in the experience of speaking as φάναι, the experience of speech as φάσις. Φάσκειν implies "to invoke," "to name with praise," "to call upon," all of which depend upon the fact that the verb has its essence in letting something appear. Φάομα is the shining of the stars and of the moon, it is their way of coming forward into view and of self-concealing. Φάσεις means "phases." The changing forms of the moon's shining are its phases. Φάσις is the saying; to say means to bring forward into view. Φημί, "I say," has the same (though not identical) essence as λέγω: to bring what is present in its presencing forward into shining appearance, into lying-before.
Parmenides thus wishes to discuss where νοεῖν belongs. For only where it belongs and is at home can we find it; only there can we experience through our findings how far thinking belongs with Being. If Parmenides experiences νοεῖν as πεφατισμένον, this does not mean that he experiences it as an "utterance" which is to be discovered in spoken conversation or in written characters, i.e. in some sort of sensibly perceptible entities. We would miss the mark entirely, putting the greatest possible distance between ourselves and Greek thinking, if we accepted this notion, and if we further desired to represent both speaking and what is spoken as "conscious experiences," and to establish thinking within the confines of these experiences as an act of consciousness. Νοεῖν, taking-heed-of, and what it takes up, are something said, something brought forward into view. But where? Parmenides says: ἐν τῷ ἐόντι, in ἐόν, in the duality of presencing and what is present.
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