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of things, or than the wholeness of a summative kind. ἕν is also not to be understood like the κόσμος in Τίμαιος [Timaeus], which Plato specifies as a living being with extremities turned inside.13 The wholeness of ἕν means the totality which we must rather think as Σφαῖρος [sphere]. Thus we must discriminate the manifold of things and elements, the quintessential entirety of πάντα, and the totality thought in ἕν, which lets the entirety of πάντα come forth to appearance, and which surrounds it.
HEIDEGGER: What do you mean by entirety? Once one has arrived at entirety in thinking, the opinion may emerge that one is at the end of thinking. Is that the danger which you see?
FINK: At this point, I would like to speak of a double ray of thought. We must distinguish the thought of things in the whole and the thought that thinks the universe, the totality, or ἕν. I would like thereby to avoid τὰ πάντα, which are referred back to ἕν as lightining, becoming understood as a universe closed in itself.
HEIDEGGER: If we speak of wholeness in reference to τὰ πάντα, the danger then consists in ἕν becoming superfluous. Therefore, we must speak of entirety and not {GA 15: 53} of wholeness with regard to τὰ πάντα. The word "entirety" means that πάντα are in entirety not as in a box, but in the manner of their thorough individuality. We choose the word "entirety" on two grounds: first, in order not to run the danger that the last word be spoken with "the whole"; and second, in order not to understand τὰ πάντα only in the sense of ἔκαστα.
FINK: In a certain manner τὰ πάντα are the many, but precisely not the many of an enumerated set; rather, of a quintessential entirety.
HEIDEGGER: The word "quintessence" is on the one hand too static, and on the other it is un-Greek in so far as it has to do with grasping. In Greek, we could speak of περιέχον [embrace]. But ἔχειν [to hold] does not mean grasping and grip. What comes into play here, we will see from the following fragments.
In order to return now to the fragments which we went through in the last seminar: we have seen that they speak of τὰ πάντα in different ways. For example, Fr. 7 is the only one in which Heraclitus speaks of πάντα as ὄντα, and in which ὄντα is used at all. Precisely translated, it runs: If everything which is were smoke, noses would discriminate. Here διγιγνώσκειν is mentioned. We also speak of a diagnosis. Is a diagnosis also a distinguishing?
PARTICIPANT: A diagnosis distinguishes what is healthy and what is sick, what is conspicuous and what is not conspicuous in relation to sickness.
PARTICIPANT: To speak in the terminology of the physician: the physician seeks specific symptoms of sickness. The diagnosis is a passing through the body and a precise, distinguishing cognition of symptoms. {GA 15: 54}
HEIDEGGER: The diagnosis rests on the original meaning of δία an
13. See Timaeus 30 a ff. (Tr.)