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we walk. Light, as the element of the fiery, together with the element of the air, lies on the earth and in a certain manner also on the ocean. The ocean also forms a boundary for the realm of light, although the ocean lets in the light up to a certain depth. Its transparency is confined. The opaqueness of the earth, which leads to the boundedness of the open domain of light, is a peculiar phenomenon that is not evident to us for the most part. We find ourselves on the opaque earth, at which the domain of light has its boundary. Over us, however, light's domain of power extends in open endlessness. The opaqueness of the earth has a meaning for the passage of the sun. In accord with the immediate phenomenon, Ἥλιος rises out of the bowels of the earth at morning; in daytime he moves along the vault of heaven and he sinks again into the closed ground of earth at evening. That is said as a description of the immediate phenomena without esoteric symbolism.

Now we turn to Fr. 99, which evidences the general structure: εἰ μὴ ἥλιος ἦν, ἕνεκα τῶν ἄλλων ἄστρων εὐφρόνη ἂν ἦν. Diels translates: "Were there no sun, it would be night in spite of the other stars." Ἥλιος is the star that alone brings full brightness. Now, however, he is not only indicated in his power, in his superiority over the other stars, but the structure, which we do not see in Ἥλιος himself, becomes clear in the other stars. The other stars are lights in the night. We have here the noteworthy feature that luminescence exhausts itself in its radiated light space and is walled in by the dark of night. The other stars are gleaming points in the night heaven. The moon can also illuminate the night in a stronger manner than the stars, but the moon cannot extinguish them as alone Ἥλιος can. We must put the following question concerning the other stars in the night. If Ἥλιος presents himself as a realm of light above the opaque ground, and if he seems to go on in open endlessness, can we not also understand the structure of Ἥλιος and τὰ πάντα in terms of the other stars as lights in the darkness of night? That is, can we understand the whole world of the sun as a light in the night which, it is true, is not certified by the phenomena? We would then have to say that as the stars are a light in the night, and as the sun's domain of light has its boundary at the closedness of earth, so the entire world of Ἥλιος. to which the entirety of πάντα belong, is encircled in a deeper sense by a nightly abyss which confines the domain of power of Ἥλιος. The helpmates of Dike watch from the boundary between the light domain of Ἥλιος and the dark abyss. The sun herself we do not see like one of the stars in the night, but only in her own brightness. Fr. 3 speaks thereof: εὖρος ποδὸν ἀνθρωπείου. As phenomenon, the sun has the width of a human foot.

HEIDEGGER: When you speak of "phenomenon," you mean that which shows itself in its immediacy, and not the "phenomenological."

FINK: Fr. 3 also speaks in the manner of allegory. To begin with it


Heraclitus Seminars (GA 15) by Martin Heidegger