presencing one. The unfolding and fulfilling of the history of the human issues forth from out of the human λόγος itself as a λόγος, insofar as the Λόγος forgathers it. Owing to a pointedness toward being, and not from out of a pursuance of beings, drawing-out and drawing-in increase.
Heraclitus’s saying states that the human being, in his essence, belongs to being and is determined in his gathering toward being, and that he receives his potentialities from this.
As an essential consequence of this, the human develops all manner of rigid focus upon his own abilities and competence at the expense of being: this is ὕβρις. Therefore, authentic knowledge is the following: namely, the obedient, self-gathering toward the originary forgathering. At first glance, saying 115 seems to be saying the opposite of what saying 50 says. In truth, however, the two say the same. For saying 115 does not state that the human λόγος is self-sufficient and does not require a relation to something else in order to become [357] richer. On its own—that is, in its essence—the human λόγος is only as the obedient self-gathering in the manner of ὁμολογεῖν as stipulated in saying 50. Conversely, the human self-gathering toward being is also not a blind sinking into, and dissipation into, the ether, but is rather the knowing turning-inward of the human into his own essence, which as λόγος is itself gathered into the presence of the Λόγος, therefore remaining distinct from it. In the self-gathering toward the Λόγος, the human forgathers himself into his own being. That toward which the soul draws-out through its λόγος—namely, being—is not something that the soul then takes back with it in the form of some kind of ‘subjective experiencing.’ The soul draws-in—but into where? Not into an inwardness meant in the subjective sense: rather, this drawing-in draws into λόγος, which in turn gathers in obedient emerging to the Λόγος.
At its core, the relation to be thought here of the human λόγος to the Λόγος is so simple that precisely its simplicity confounds our calculative thinking, which counts on stable points of reference. For our thinking immediately calls forth the conventional conceptions of a human subject whose subjectivity, for better or worse, reaches an accord with the objective. If indeed the human λόγος, and therefore the human essence, unfolds into its own richness as the relation to being (and that means, from out of being and not from out of beings); and if it is also the case that the human initially and for the most part remains turned toward beings, even remaining turned exclusively toward them and seeking refuge within them; if, moreover, what is always at stake for the human and, at the same time, for the proper relation to the Λόγος, is ὁμολογεῖν: if all of this is the case, then we can perhaps better understand why Heraclitus continually revisits the essence of authentic knowledge (i.e., of σοφόν). We can see more clearly why, in the characterization of the essence of authentic knowledge, λόγος and λέγειν are named. However, we can now also recognize, if only at first in a vague way, that we must think λόγος and the essence of λέγειν in the first place (and perhaps even exclusively) [358] in the light of being as experienced in an inceptually Greek way.