EARLY GREEK THINKING

Such objections are advanced as if we already possessed old and reliable knowledge about the divinity of the Greek gods—as if we were certain that it makes sense here to talk about "persons," and as if it had long been determined that if the essence of truth should appear as a goddess it could do so only as the abstract personification of a concept. Thought has scarcely touched upon the essence of the mythical, especially with regard to the fact that the μῦθος is the saying, while saying is the calling bringing-into-appearance. Consequently we would be better advised to continue questioning with caution, while listening to what is said (Frag. I, 22-23):

καί με θεὰ πρόφρων ὑπεδέξατο, χεῖρα δὲ χειρί
δεξιτερὴν ἕλεν, ὧδε δ' ἔπος φάτο καί με προσηύδα·

And the goddess received me with thoughtful affection, as hand with hand

she took my right and so gave voice and sang to me:

What is herewith given the thinker to think remains at the same time veiled with respect to its essential origins. This affirms rather than denies that disclosure rules in what the thinker says, and rules as what the thinker heeds, since this points the way into what is to-be-thought. But what is to-be-thought is named in the enigmatic key word τὸ αὐτὸ, the Same. What is so named expresses the relation of thinking to Being.

For that reason we must at least ask whether or not the unfolding of the twofold, taken specifically as the disclosure of the presencing of what is present, is tacitly contained in the αὐτὸ, the Same. When we presume that such is the case we do not advance beyond the thought of Parmenides; rather, we only reach back into what must be thought even more primordially.

A discussion of the saying that bears on the relation of thinking and Being inevitably succumbs to the appearance of being arbitrary and forced.

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