the ἀξύνετοι , and thinks that Heraclitus begins his saying with the following observation: “humans will always be too foolish to understand this particular lesson of mine.” It is surely foolish to believe the ‘interpreters’ who claim that a thinker, who according to the aforementioned fragment 50 expressly says that one must listen to the Λόγος and not what he himself says, would begin any writing with such a professorially vainglorious sentence. Indeed, even a glancing acquaintance with Heraclitus’s own way of thinking and saying suffices to show immediately that even just the first words name something opposite to how the Λόγος stands in relation to the comportment and faculties of solely self- interested humans. ἀεί (translated as “constantly”) belongs to ἐόντος , as the young Nietzsche already correctly surmised in his Basel lectures on the pre-Socratic philosophers (XIX , 172). However, it is certainly the case that this does not simply mean “to remain” (as Nietzsche suggests), but rather “to presence,” i.e., to give oneself in presencing over to harvesting as the harvest. Th e Λόγος thus constantly presences. By contrast, all the human being accomplishes (i.e., γίνονται ) on his own and on his transient way is a witless (i.e., ἀξύνετοι)2 missing of that activity that brings about συνιεῖν, i.e., the bringing- together of what is in itself the originary gathering as the originary one and only harvest. To bring- together/not to bring- together the originary gathering of the harvest of the Λόγος with experiencing and hearkening-following are, as possibilities, in opposition to one another. Even we are still familiar with the following expression: to not and to no longer be able to bring something together, i.e., not being able to understand or follow it. We must be attuned to the oppositional sounding that sways between the Λόγος and συνιεῖν , if we are [402] readily and precisely to grasp the enigmatic relation in which the Λόγος stands to the human, and the human to the Λόγος. For how can Heraclitus say that the human does not bring together the Λόγος, even before he has properly heard it? Is it even possible to posit and intuit a bringing- together before hearing and having heard? To assume something like this is certainly senseless. To be sure, this is the case as long as one is mistaken about the Λόγος always already presencing for the human and constantly offering itself up to the human for harvest, and all of this even before the human himself has heard the Λόγος. However, according to fragment 72, the Λόγος is that with which the human is in conversation, and in a manner that constantly bears it: it is that which the human encounters every day, but does so without grasping and engaging it. But even when the Λόγος is heard expressly by the human, there is not even the slightest guarantee that he will then correspond to (and with) it—there is no guarantee that he will bring the Λόγος together into his own proper gathering. Even when humans listen with their ears, it is not guaranteed that they have listened to what they have heard, and that they have gathered themselves toward it in a hearkening way.
2 Translators’ note: we have supplied the word ‘witless’ as a translation of ἀξύνετοι , which Heidegger himself leaves untranslated.