thereby bringing about and leading into a transformation of that essence. So understood, the term ‘logic’ heralds a more originary task, one that appears only to contain the inconspicuous to which we [279] will barely manage to measure up for a long time yet. For, what matters in this process of learning to think is taking only a few steps, perhaps even only one step, which will then unlock for us the realm of the to- be-thought and the correct pathway to it. Th is more originary logic, as the consideration of the originary essence of the Λόγος , is essentially without doctrinal content: it is impoverished when compared to the richness of learnable propositions, information, systematicity, and the succession of theories of metaphysical logic. Th is more originary logic is merely the unceasing practice of—or perhaps even just the preparation for—taking a simple step in one’s thinking into the realm of the authentic to- be-thought. Logic in this more originary sense pertains to that particular ‘activity’ that is at the same time a ‘letting be’: namely, a letting unfold of being from out of its own truth.
On its own, the contemporary human is not able to enact such a thinking activity. Indeed, the contemporary human cannot even fi nd or invent a consideration of it, if the traces of such a thinking do not already address him and if he does not agree to enter into a conversation with this address. Th is possibility surely presumes the experience of history not as consisting of the bygone, and also not as that which has been handed down, out of whose ridges and valleys certain peaks of ‘greatness’ stand out. History is, in itself, the pre- articulated conversation of the essential with itself. Th e question nevertheless always remains whether and how the human enters into this conversation.
Initially, and above all, what matters now is to think- aft er, in a more proper way, the Λόγος as thought by Heraclitus along the lines of the already elucidated essential features of the ‘harvest’ and the ‘for- gathering.’ In order to do this, it is necessary to elucidate still other sayings of Heraclitus’s that deal with the Λόγος , though admittedly to do so only from within the limits set by the task of making the pre-metaphysical essence [280] of λόγος visible. Fragment 50, which has already been discussed, tells us the following:
Th e sole relation proper to the Λόγος that arises from out of a hearkening listening to the Λόγος can itself only be a λόγος , a λέγειν . It is ὁμολογεῖν —that is, to harvest the same thing that ‘the’ Λόγος harvests as ‘the’ harvest. Th at now means: to gather oneself toward the same as what the Λόγος , as the forgathering, holds gathered in and toward itself. Th e way in which the human gathers himself toward the forgathering is diff erent