potentiality, without reserve, but Heidegger never speaks of a reserve of force. "It is the covering over that vouchsafes to disclosure its unfolding."8 The second and the most important internal trait of physis comes to light in the word that translates philei; in fact, two words: "dispense favor" (Gunst). Blooming favors withdrawal. What is Gunst, "favor"? Favor is the freest gift that occurs as a moment of grace. Gunst comes from gönnen, "to grant a gift." As the gift par excellence, favor is the essence of physis and not an event or a particular attribute of an event. "Favor governs physis,"9 writes Heidegger.
Thought as the essence of physis, favor does not signify any being or thing that might exist outside of phyein and kryptesthai, but rather the very play of arising and withdrawal. That the disclosure bears within itself a fecund, "positive" covering over, such is "favor." That occlusion is favored by withdrawal, harmonized with it and in it; that it emerges only from a return into itself and from a saving, from the deep shelter where what does not spring forth collects itself—such is the marvel as well as the enigma of the "there is." The difference between, on the one hand, being such as it bestows itself and conceals itself in a history or gives and withdraws itself in an epoch and, on the other hand, "physical" being comes to light through the simple favor. Here it is not a question, as Reiner Schürmann supposes, of the difference between being as epochal and "a post-metaphysical determination"10 of being. How could Heraclitus be post-metaphysical since he is barely pre-metaphysical? Favor is the nonhistorical aspect of aletheia. Like the difference between things and the world, it marks a difference that is not situated in any determinate epoch of the History of Being and that nevertheless cannot be elsewhere than "in being." "Favor" does not indicate the possible appearing of "a space of presence deprived of the epochal principle,"11 nor does it mean that "the sending, where presence only grants itself while withdrawing, can reach its end."12 Physis holds itself in reserve only by showing itself and will always do so before, during, and after the History of being, if there is an after. It cannot overcome this law of all manifestation. Favor is immemorial. It is the non-epochal equivalent of Geschick or the sending of being which governs the "suspense" of its epochs, which surely is a poorer equivalent because it is without memory and thus without forgetting.
Heidegger's reading of Heraclitus is slow and painstaking, patient and persuasive. He knows how to persuade us of the derivative, belated character of the distinctions in force today, such as that between the "biological" and the "psychological," the "natural" and the "historical." He shows in a decisive manner that the Greek reflection on physis directly overcomes all these partitionings as well as every naive "physics" and points toward beings as such as a whole. Nevertheless, confirming that Heraclitus does not deal with nature in the strict sense but speaks of being paradoxically leads Heidegger, when speaking of "favor," not only to sketch an ontology of nature "in itself," which is supposed to escape the history of the names