itself from out of this sheltering concealing. Emerging is, on account of this difference from self- concealing, [161] the revealing. ἁρμονία, thoroughly pervaded by the favor of the essential bestowal, joins and kindles revealing into concealing, and vice versa. Thus joined and kindled within the unity of the jointure, both are within the one-foldedness of their essence. Thus, φύσις is, as ἁρμονία, the enkindling of the lightening that itself unfolds simply in the unlightened. φύσις (thought now from out of its relational essence, and no longer as a ‘relatum’ of a ‘relation’) is the enkindling of the lightening, the enflaming of the flame. We must think φύσις as the flame and, at the same time, think the flame from out of the essential sway of φύσις. In doing so, we must voice the Greek word that corresponds to this: τὸ πῦρ, fire. Heraclitus uses this word, and uses it as the word that names the same as what φύσις names. Thus, here, where ‘fire’ is a foundational word of thinking, we must think the essence of so-called fire essentially and in the sense of essential thinking, and not according to any arbitrarily derived view.

Now, certainly the word πῦρ, in everyday speech, refers to fire in the sense of a sacrificial fire, to the fire of the funeral pyre, to the fire meant to give warning, or to a hearth fire, but also to the shine of torches, as well as to the glow of the stars. We think of the word ζάπυρος, which means “very fiery,” and note that, with the ζα, emerging, coming- forth, breaking- through, and breaking- out are named. In ‘fire,’ the relations among what lightens, glows, blazes, and creates an expanse, but also among what burns up, collapses and sinks into itself, occludes, and fades, are all essential. Fire flames and is, in enflaming, the excising separation between the light and the dark: enflaming joins the light and the dark against, and into, one another. In enflaming, there occurs something that the eye grasps in a glimpse, something instantaneous and singular, which decisively excises the bright from the dark. The instantaneity of enflaming makes room for appearance over against the region of vanishing. [162] In particular, the instantaneity of enflaming lightens the region of all indicating and showing, but also lightens, at the same time, the region of directionlessness, rudderlessness, and absolute opacity. This flaming/excising essence that first bears light and dark toward one another and yokes them together is the defining essence of fire—an essence that no chemistry could ever grasp, because it must destroy this essence in advance in order to then make it comprehensible to itself. The fundamental essence of πῦρ, insofar as it stands for φύσις, in no way consists only in the mere radiance of the lightening or even in an indifferent dispersal of mere brightness: for, if conceived of in this manner, the φύσις-character of fire, and also the fire-character of φύσις, would not be adequately comprehended. The essence of fire assembles and shows itself in what we call ‘lightning’. However, it now becomes necessary to think the essence of lightning from out of the above- mentioned connection. A saying of Heraclitus’s can be helpful to us, if we observe that φύσις, as the enkindling jointure, and as the joining enkindling and the decisively lightening enacting, concerns

122    The Inception of Occidental Thinking