way. From this it becomes clear that we cannot easily categorize the essential difference between poeticizing and thinking as belonging to the difference between the imagistic and the non-imagistic and, by extension, the difference of both of these from saying.

On what detour do our thoughts now find themselves? We are supposed to be concerned with the ψυχή, and yet we find ourselves now talking about the essential difference between poeticizing and thinking. But the view being indicated here, as we shall soon see, only has the appearance of a detour. For, we found ourselves on the path that led toward a consideration of the difference between the imagistic and the image-less because, for the sake of the essence of ψυχή being indicated—that is, for the sake of the drawing-out into the open which is at the same time a drawing-in—we were attempting to detect the relation between this drawing-out-with-itself and this withdrawing-back-into-itself, and thus detect the being of the self (and in so doing [303] determine the essential core of ψυχή). Such an approach does not immediately succeed. Perhaps the essential core of ψυχή, and thus of breath essentially grasped and understood as the drawing-out drawing-in, lies neither in an outside and an external, nor in an inside and internal, but perhaps rather in an intertwining that could be called ‘intimacy,’ assuming that we leave aside everything psychological, subjective, experiential, and emotional that is associated with the term.

How shall this circuitous and admittedly clumsy reflection eventually lead to the fundamental essence of the ψυχή, about which even the Greeks were only barely able to think clearly? In this essence of the ψυχή we should initially only observe this one thing: namely, to what degree the ψυχή, in accordance with its essence, can have something like a λόγος. For this is stated in fragment 45: the soul … not only has a λόγος, but indeed has a deep one. If we understand λόγος to be judgment and assertion, then it remains utterly incomprehensible how precisely the ψυχή relates to λόγος, and relates to it in such a way that it is a matter of λόγος and its depth when the outer extremities of the soul cannot be found. If, however, we understand λόγος as λέγειν in the sense of harvesting and gathering, and if we think gathering from out of its essential characteristic and thereby beyond its superficial attributes, then it no longer appears estranging when the saying of Heraclitus’s reflects on the ψυχή (i.e., the drawing-in drawing-out into the open) as being determined by λόγος (i.e., by gathering). Perhaps, then, this λόγος is not only one among many characteristics of the ψυχή, but perhaps it is even the ground of the essence of the ψυχή that is being discussed here (i.e., the human ψυχή). But before we specifically determine this essential connection between ψυχή and λόγος, let us consider what else the saying of Heraclitus’s says about the ψυχή and in what way the saying speaks about it.

ψυχῆς πείρατα: τὸ πεῖρας means the end, the extremity, that whereby something finally ends and ‘ceases’ and where something [304] else begins. However, ‘extremity’ and cessation are themselves determined from out of that whose end they bring about. A piece of wood or a stone end in different ways and have different endings

228    Logic: Heraclitus’s Doctrine of the Logos