For the sake of the consideration necessary here, only the following is of importance: namely, to recognize that the thinkers understand this foundational word in its verbal sense, and in such a way that the being, understood verbally (i.e., as being), is that in view of which the particular being, understood nominally, is questioned. The consideration necessary here depends upon the simple and ubiquitously operative experience—which is nonetheless quite rare—that what the inconspicuous words ‘is’ and ‘being’ name is neither a mere vapor nor merely ‘the most general,’ but rather ‘is’ that in whose light any being appears as such.
The reference to the way in which the participle ὄν is thought in metaphysics should provide us with a guide by means of which we might arrive at an understanding of the participle τὸ δῦνον.
If we understand τὸ δῦνον in a manner that corresponds to the metaphysical understanding of ὄν, then the former means the submerging thing in light of submerging. The submerging thing is hereby treated as some existing thing; were it not some existing thing, it could not submerge, i.e., it could not be deprived of the customary conception of being. Submergence, as a process of the deprivation of being in view of the still existing thing that submerges, is a way of being. Th us, when thought [100] in the manner of metaphysics, the submerging thing in its submerging (i.e., the δῦνον) falls under the highest genus and the most general concept of the being of beings. What applies to being thus also applies to submerging. ‘Never submerging,’ which aft er all means a persistent presence (i.e., οὐσία) is all the more so attributed to ‘being.’ Therefore, we must grasp δῦνον and τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε in a manner that corresponds to the metaphysical view of ὄν.
This conclusion is legitimate only under the assumption that the thinking of Heraclitus and the inceptual thinkers is already or solely a metaphysical thinking that asks about the beingness of beings. One takes this assumption as so self-evident that one further takes the inceptual thinkers not for metaphysicians, but rather assigns to them the ‘honor’ that their metaphysics is still something primitive and unformed, but is nevertheless the preliminary stage of metaphysics (i.e., the preliminary stage of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, who for many centuries in the Occident, and still today, count as ‘the’ philosophers par excellence). This, however, is the question: is inceptual thinking metaphysics or preliminary to it, or does something entirely different occur [ereignet] within inceptual thinking? This question is certainly not meant ‘historiographically’: rather, the question pursues whether and how being itself inceptually clears into the open within the history of the Occident, and whether and how being, even now, gleams in a faint light, which some suppose to be a mere vapor. Above all else, the question asks only how things stand with being and where we stand with regard to it.
The question of whether or not the μὴ δῦνόν ποτε of Heraclitus’s may be thought in the sense of the ὄν of metaphysics should not be used to bring about an academic controversy regarding how pre-Platonic philosophy is to be grasped in the most historiographically accurate way: rather, the question is meant to