Aletheia (Heraclitus, Fragment B 16)

But ζωή and φύσις say the same: ἀείζωον means ἀείφυον, which means τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε.

In Fragment 30, the word ἀείζωον follows πῦρ, fire, less as a qualifier than as a separate name which begins the saying anew and which says how the fire is to be thought—as ever-enduring rising. With the word "fire" Heraclitus names that which οὔτε τις θεῶν οὔτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν "that which neither any of the gods nor any mortal brought forth," what on the contrary always already rests in itself before gods and men as φύσις, what abides in itself and thus preserves all coming. But this is the κόσμος. We say "world," and think it improperly so long as we represent it exclusively, or even primarily, after the fashion of cosmology or philosophy of nature.

World is enduring fire, enduring rising in the full sense of φύσις. Though we are speaking of an eternal world-conflagration here, we must not first imagine a world which is independent and is then set ablaze and consumed by some ever-burning torch. Rather, the worlding of world, τὸ πῦρ, τὸ ἀείζωον, τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε, are all the Same. Therefore, the essence of the fire which Heraclitus thinks is not as transparently obvious as the image of a glowing flame might suggest. We need only heed ordinary usage, which speaks the word πῦρ from diverse perspectives and thereby points toward the essential fullness of what is intimated in the thoughtful saying of the word.

Πῦρ names the sacrificial fire, the oven's fire, the campfire, but also the glow of a torch, the scintillation of the stars. In "fire," lighting, glowing, blazing, soft shining hold sway, and that which opens an expanse in brightness. In "fire," however, consuming, welding, cauterizing, extinguishing also reign. When Heraclitus speaks of fire, he is primarily thinking of the lighting governance, the direction [das Weisen] which gives measure and takes it away. According to a fragment in Hippolytus, discovered and convincingly authenticated by Karl Reinhardt (Hermes 77 [1942], 1 ff.) τὸ πῦρ is for Heraclitus also τὸ φρόνιμον, the meditative [das Sinnende]. It indicates the direction of everything, laying before it that to which it belongs. The meditative fire which lays before gathers all together and secures it in its essence.

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