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which the whole, to which we always already implicitly comport ourselves, suddenly flashes up.
HEIDEGGER: Thereby we turn our questioning to the reference of ἕν and its many forms, and to its inner reference to τὰ πάντα. It is always a difficulty for me that too little is said about τὰ πάντα in the text of Heraclitus. We are forced to supplement what we do not learn about τὰ πάντα from Heraclitus with what we know about the Greek world, and perhaps we let τὰ πάντα be expressed by the poets.
FINK: I said that we still do not have the possibility of declaring what the coming-forth-to-appearance of τὰ πάντα is in the always living fire. In order to investigate this problem {147} further, we cite Fr. 76, which appears to be one of the least certain fragments. There are more versions of it in which a turning (τρόπή) is thought. The Greek text handed down by Maximus Tyrius runs: ζῇ πῦρ τὸν γῆς θάνατον καὶ ἀὴρ ζῇ τὸν πυρὸς θάνατον, ὕδωρ ζῇ τὸν ἀέρος θάνατον, γῆ τὸν ὕδατος. Diels translates: "Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, and the earth that of water (?)."
What is surprising in the fragment is that the turning of earth into fire is mentioned in the formula: to live the death of something else. What is disconcerting is not so much the talk of arising and birth, but rather the pronouncement that fire lives the death of earth, air lives the death of fire, water lives the death of air, and earth lives the death of water. The most important thing seems to me to be that the annihilation of what precedes is the birth and arising of what follows. What follows comes forth in that it lives the death of what precedes. The fall of what precedes appears to be the way on which the new and other comes forth. It is not, thereby, a question of a superiority of annihilation over what is arising. That is of significance, because later when we consider in greater detail the formula, "to live the death of something other," we will not be able to say that it is a matter of a circular argument. For life turns into death, but death does not turn into life.
In Fr. 76, it says that the death of what precedes is the life of what follows. An amendment that Tocco (Studi Ital. IV 5) has made in the text, which is handed down by Maximus and which makes the relationship ambiguous, runs: Fire lives the death of air and air lives the death of lire. Water lives the death of earth, earth lives the death of water. Here the connections of fire and air and water and earth are posited as mutual relations. In the comments of Diels-Kranz we read that ἀήρ [air] is presumably smuggled in by the stoics. The following is given as a further variant from this: Fire leaves the death of water, water lives the death of lire or the death of earth, earth lives the death of water. {148} We have no familiar phenomena of a change over of elements. When sea and earth are talked about, it is a matter of elements on a large scale, a matter of the world regions. If water is mentioned, however, it is not dear whether