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the sun temporarily is absent and new on each new day. Thus seen, ἕν would be the vault of heaven. However, this explication is not acceptable to me. I do not understand, "there is ἕν," in this sense. {GA 15: 79}
HEIDEGGER: Why do you reject this interpretation?
FINK: Because for me the union of day and night under the vault of heaven is too easy a reading. When Heraclitus says "there is ἕν" in reference to day and night, the land of sun is meant with the day, and the dark abyss that incloses and encircles the land of sun is meant with night. The sun's domain and the nightly abyss together form ἕν.
HEIDEGGER: Is the ἕν that you now have in view something like an over-being that surpasses even being: I suppose that you want to get out of being with your interpretation of ἕν, which departs from the hitherto existing illuminating ἕν of lightning.
PARTICIPANT: I do not believe that ἕν as the double domain of the land of sun and the nightly abyss surpasses being. If the preceding interpretation has, in starting out from the Κεραυνός-fragment, focused first on the structural moment of the light character in being, the uncovering, then the current interpretation, when the nightly abyss is mentioned, focuses on the structural moment of closedness in being, on the concealment that belongs essentially to uncovering. Therefore, the explication does not surpass being; rather, it goes deeper into being than the preceding awareness, since it takes in view the full dimensionality of being.
FINK: Our explication of Heraclitus began by our illuminating the reference of lightning and τὰ πάντα. Lightning tears open the brightness, lets τὰ πάντα come forth to appearance and arranges each thing in its fixed outline. Another name for ἕν is the sun. The sunlight, which runs out over us in open endlessness, finds a boundary at the closedness of the soil. In his own field of light, Ἥλιος has only the width of a human foot. He moves along in fixed measures on the vault of heaven. {GA 15: 80} By his own measures, growth and living creatures, which are shined upon by Ἥλιος, have their specific measures. Within the realm of the sun there is a general distinction between day and night that is posited with the presence and absence of the sun. The domain that is encircled by the four τέρματα remains even when the sun seems to sink away. The structure of ἕν then shifts over from the temporary presence of the sun to οὐρανός [heaven]. One can then say that the distinction of day and night is not so important to grasp because under οὐρανός day and night alternate and the relation of a vault of heaven to the many thereunder remains. Hesiod had distinguished day and night and thereby not considered that day and night is only one distinction within οὐρανός. This interpretation still does not appeal to me. Precisely when we consult the fragments on death and life, the other dimension of closedness will show itself to us beside the already familiar dimensions of the light character