EARLY GREEK THINKING


This appearance is no mere illusion. For λέγειν and νοεῖν let what is present he before us in the light of presencing. Accordingly, they themselves lie opposite presencing, though certainly not as two independently existing objects. The conjunction of λέγειν and νοεῖν (according to Fragment VI) liberates the ἐόν ἔμμεναι, presencing in its appearance, for perception, and therefore does in a certain sense hold itself apart from ἐόν. In one respect thinking is outside the duality toward which it makes its way, required by and responding to it. In another respect, this very "making its way toward ..." remains within the duality, which is never simply an indifferently represented distinction between Being and beings, but rather comes to presence from the revealing unfolding. It is this unfolding that, as Ἀλήθεια, bestows on every presencing the light in which something present can appear.

But disclosure, while it bestows the lighting of presencing, at the same time needs a letting-lie-before and a taking-up-into-perception if what is present is to appear, and by this need binds thinking to its belonging-together with the duality. Therefore by no means is there somewhere and somehow something present outside the duality.

This entire discussion would be something arbitrarily spun out in thought and insinuated by hindsight had not Parmenides himself explained {GA 7: 256} why anything outside of presencing, anything besides the ἐόν, is impossible.


VI


Considered grammatically, what the thinker says here about the ἐόν stands in a subordinate clause. Anyone who has only minimal experience in hearing what great thinkers say will probably pause to ponder the strange fact that they say what is to be thought in a casually attached dependent clause and let it go at that. The play of the calling, brightening, expanding light is not actually visible. It shines imperceptibly, like morning light upon the quiet splendor of lilies in a field or roses in a garden.


96


Martin Heidegger (GA 7) Moira (Parmenides VIII, 34-41)