also heard: “philosophy”—i.e., φιλία τοῦ σοφοῦ. We translated this in the first session as: friendship for the to-be-thought. In fragment 35 of Heraclitus’s, there is talk of the φιλόσοφοι ἄνδρες, that is, of the men who subsist on the φιλία for τὸ σοφόν. σοφόν, σαφές, originally means the bright, the manifest, the light. τὸ σοφὸν μοῦνον—that which is in the strict sense solely and uniquely the light—is ἕν, i.e., the One. In fragment 32, Heraclitus says the following about the One: ἓν τὸ σοφὸν μοῦνον λέγεσθαι οὐκ ἐθέλει καὶ ἐθέλει Ζηνὸς ὄνομα—“The One, alone to be thought, does not let itself and lets itself be called by the name ‘Zeus’ (i.e., The Lightning).” When we translate τὸ σοφόν with “the to-be-thought,” it is merely a very preliminary translation that only receives its content and ground when the to-be-thought is determined. We now translate the φιλεῖν in Heraclitus’s saying as “to give favor.” In doing so, we understand favor in the sense of the originary granting and bestowal, and therefore not in the secondary meaning of ‘benefit’ and ‘patronage.’ This originary granting is the bestowing of what is owed to the other because it belongs to the other’s essence, insofar as it bears that essence. Accordingly, friendship, φιλία, is the favor that grants to the other the essence that the other already has, and in such a way that through this granting the granted essence blossoms into its proper freedom. In ‘friendship,’ the essence that is reciprocally granted is freed to itself. Neither excessive solicitude nor even ‘jumping in’ to help in emergencies and dangerous situations is the defining characteristic of [129] friendship: rather, it consists in being-there for another, which does not require any kind of event or proof, and which works by abstaining from exerting influence.
It would be a mistake to believe that such bestowal of essence comes about all by itself, as though ‘being-there’ were here nothing other than something present-to-hand. The bestowing of essence requires knowledge and patience, and granting is the ability to wait until the other finds itself in the unfolding of its essence and for its part does not make a big fuss about this discovery of essence. φιλία is the granting of that favor that gives what strictly speaking it does not possess, while also guaranteeing that the other essence can remain as its own.
Friendship so understood, which reaches its apogee in the form of friendship for the to-be-thought (and receives its essential determination from there), is, to mention this only in passing, the concealed essential ground of all “upbringing.” Without ‘philosophy’ in the correctly understood sense, a historical people catches no glimpse of the essential, i.e., of the simplicity of all that is. Without this essential glimpse there can be no ability to stand in relation to the simple, i.e., to what prevails from out of itself. Without this relation there can never be the grounding relationship in which all upbringing rests, for upbringing merely awakens the attraction toward, and the state of being-drawn-toward, the essential. Without the concealed, prevailing essence of upbringing, all instruction and every schooling, all discipline and every training, go without this proper and nourishing foundation. What they bring forth instead is a training that caves in on its own vacuity just as
98 The Inception of Occidental Thinking
The Inception of Occidental Thinking