35


to glow faintly and become dim. If, now, Ἥλιος in the sense of the long enduring lightning bolt replaces lightning, then we must not forget that this fire not only illuminates, but also {GA 15: 62} measures the times. Ἥλιος is the clock of the world, the world-clock; not an instrument that indicates times, but that which makes the seasons possible, which brings all. We cannot understand the seasons in the sense of fixed spells of time or as stretches in homogeneous time, but as the times of days and of years. These times of years are not the lingering but the bringing. πάντα are not so gathered that they are contemporaneous, but they are in the manner that they arrange themselves κατ᾽ ἔριν and κατὰ τὸν λόγον. πάντα rise, act, and are steered by the begetting, fulfilling, and producing seasons.

HEIDEGGER: Let us try to clarify the extent to which time is mentioned in Fr. 100. What are seasons? Alongside the three Hesiodic seasons, Εὐνομια, Δίκη, and εἰρηνη [Good Order, justice, and Prosperous Peace],15 there is also θαλλώ, Αὐξώ, and Καρπώ. θαλλώ is the springtime, which brings the shoot and blossom. Αὐξώ means summer, ripening and maturing. Καρπώ means autumn, picking of the ripe fruit. These three seasons are not like three time periods; rather, we must understand them as the whole maturation. If we want to speak of movement, which form of Aristotlian movement would come into question? First of all, what are the four forms of movement with Aristotle?

PARTICIPANT: αὔξησις and φθίσις [growth and wasting away], γένεσις and φθορά [genesis and corruption], φορά and as fourth ἀλλοίωσις [productiveness and alteration]. 16

HEIDEGGER: Which form of movement would be most appropriate to the seasons?

PARTICIPANT: αὔξησις and φθίσις as well as γένεσις and φθορά.

HEIDEGGER: ἀλλοίωσις is contained in these forms of movement. Spring, summer and autumn are not intermittent, {GA 15: 63} but something continual. Their maturation has the character of continuity, in which an ἀλλοίωσις is contained.

FINK: The movement of life in nature is, however, growth as well as withering. The first part is an increasing to ἀκμή [acme], the second part a withering.

HEIDEGGER: Do you understand fruit as being already a stage of decline?

FINK: The life of a living being forms a rising and falling bow. Human life is also a steady but arching movement, in its successively following aging.

HEIDEGGER: Age corresponds to fruit in the sense of ripening, which I understand not as a declining but as a kind of self fulfillment. If time comes into play with the seasons, then we must let go of calculated time. We must attempt to understand from other phenomena what time


15 These are the offspring of Zeus and Them is [Law]. See Hesiod, Theogony, translated, with an Introduction, by Norman 0. Brown (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1953), p. 78. err.)

16 Regarding growth, see Aristotle, Metaphysics 1069b 11; regarding wasting away, see History of Animals 582b 2, and Generation of Animals 767a 4; regarding genesis and ceasing to be, see On Generation and Corruption, passim; regarding productiveness, see Physics 243a 8, and Generation and Corruption 319b 32; and regarding alteration, see Physics, 226a 26. (Tr.)


Heraclitus Seminars (GA 15) by Martin Heidegger