EARLY GREEK THINKING

In the "as well as," the ordinary opinion of mortals merely follows the "here and there" (ἀλλάσσειν, VIII, 41) of particular "places." Ordinary perception certainly moves within the lightedness of what is present and sees what is shining out, φανόν (VIII, 41), in color; but it is dazzled by changes of color, ἀμείβειν, and pays no attention to the still light of the lighting that emanates from duality and is φύσις: the bringing-forward-into-view—the way the word speaks, not the way in which terms as mere names speak.

τῷ πάντ' ὄνομ' ἔσται (VIII, 38): thereby will everything (that is present) become present in a merely presumed disclosure which permits the predominance of terms. How does this happen? Through Μοῖρα, through the destining of the disclosure of the duality. How are we to understand this? In the unfolding of the twofold what is present comes to appear with the shining of presencing. What is present is itself also something said, but said in name-words, in whose speaking the ordinary speech of mortals moves. The destining of the disclosure of the duality (of ἐόν) yields what is present (τὰ ἐόντα) to the everyday perception of mortals.

How does this fateful yielding occur? Already only insofar as the twofold as such, and therefore its unfolding, remain hidden. But then does self-concealment reign at the heart of disclosure? A bold thought. Heraclitus thought it. Parmenides unwittingly experienced this thought insofar as he heard the call of Ἀλήθεια and contemplated the Μοῖρα of ἐόν, the destining of the duality, with a view to what is present and also to presencing.

Parmenides would not have been a thinker at the earliest dawn of that thinking which is sent into the destiny of the duality if he had not thought within the area of the riddle which is silently contained in the enigmatic key word τὸ αὐτό, the Same. Herein is concealed what is thought-worthy, what in the very predominance of what is present (τὰ ἐόντα, τὰ δοκοῦντα) gives us food for thought: as the relation of thinking to Being, as the truth of Being in the sense of the disclosure of the 'duality, and as withholding from the twofold (μὴ ἐόν).

The dialogue with Parmenides never comes to an end, not only because so much in the preserved fragments of his "Didactic Poem" still remains obscure, but also because what is said there continually deserves more thought.

100