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HEIDEGGER: Then we must also put "the eternal living fire" as the subject of the second half of the sentence instead of Diels' translation "she" (i.e., the world order).
FINK: When Heraclitus now says of eternal living fire that it is kindled after measures and quenched after measures, that appears to contradict the ἀεί [eternal], and sounds like a shocking specification to us.
HEIDEGGER: Let us at first leave this question out of account. In order to stay with what you have first said: do you reject saying that the world order is the fire?
FINK: The world order is no work of gods and humans, but the work of the eternal living fire. It is not, however, the work of the fire that always was and is and will be, because the eternal living fire first tears open the three time dimensions of ·having-been, being-now, and coming-to-be. Heraclitus speaks in Fr. 30 first in a denial: the κόσμος is not brought forth (Diels' translation, "created," is out of place) by one of the gods or one of the humans. We can also say: the κόσμος is not brought forth to appearance by one of the gods or by a human. Therein, we already hear the fiery character of fire. The κόσμος as the beautiful joining of πάντα comes forth to appearance in the shine of fire. That the κόσμος as the beautiful jointed order is not brought forth to appearance by one of the gods or by a human, is first only to be understood in the sense that gods and humans have a share in the power of fire among all the beings of the κόσμος; and they are productive. Gods and humans are productive, however, not in the manner of the most original ποίησις [production], which produces the πῦρ ἀείζωον. In the explication of Fr. 30, however, I wish first to question whether time characteristics are asserted in the term πῦρ ἀείζωον. The πῦρ ἀείζωον is neither like a process within time, nor is it comparable with what Kant calls the world stuff as the basis of the constantly extant time. The fire mentioned by Heraclitus is not in time, but is itself the time-allowing time that first and foremost lets ἦν [was], ἔστι [is] and ἔσται [will be] break out; it does not stand under these. If we tentatively take πῦρ ἀείζωον as the time-allowing, time-opening, then lid stands in a taut relationship to ἦν, ἔστι, and ἔσται, and furthermore to what the concluding phrase of Fr. 30 concerns, in a taut relationship to the kindling after measures and quenching after measures.
HEIDEGGER: For me the central question now is where you start out. Do you start out from ἦν, ἔστι, and ἔσται or rather from πῦρ ἀείζωον?
FINK: I start out with πῦρ ἀείζωον and go from it to ἦν, ἔστι, and ἔσται. If one reads word for word, the three-fold of time is said from ἀείζωον.
HEIDEGGER: In other words, it is said out of what is perpetually, that it was, is, and will be.