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PARTICIPANT: For Goethe, perdurance constitutes itself first and foremost in oscillation.
FINK: That is also true in regard to substantial perdurance. But Heraclitus means precisely not that something endures in temporal changing. For then we would have only the relationship of an original stuff to its forms of appearance. But that was precisely the question, whether the relationship of fire, sea, and earth is the relationship of a perduring original stuff (fire) in the oscillations of its conditions or appearances as alien forms, or whether it is a matter of quite another unique distinction. All inner-worldly entities have the structure of relatively perduring substances with changing conditions, or they belong to a unique substance as the continuous substrate that goes on and neither passes away nor comes into being. If we apply this scheme of thought for the turning over of fire, then fire behaves toward sea and earth no differently than an original stuff to its many forms of appearance. However, we have sought after another relationship of fire to sea and earth that pertains to the relatedness of ἕν and πάντα. The relationship of immortal gods and mortal humans takes on an analogous representation for this relatedness of ἕν and πάντα. Thereby, we think gods and humans not only in reference to the opposition of power and fragility, but such that gods and humans, in order to know their own being, have to know one another. If ἕν is ἕν τὸ σοφόν [the one, which alone is wise], it can only know itself in its highest opposition to τὰ πάντα and at the same time also as that which steers and guides τὰ πάντα. With this, we view a relatedness not of the kind in which a supertemporal sphere of entities relates itself to a temporal sphere of things. It is not a matter of a two-world doctrine of Platonic kind, but rather of a theory of the world, of the unity of the ἕν and of the individual things found in the passage of time. When Goethe speaks of perdurance in oscillation, he means, perhaps, the constancy of nature over against the appearances of nature. But he thereby finds himself in the neighborhood of the thought of an original stuff.
PARTICIPANT: I cannot associate myself with this conception. I am of the opinion that Goethe's thought of perdurance in oscillation comes into the neighborhood of your interpretation of Heraclitus.
FINK: In Fr. 30, ἕν is mentioned as πῦρ ἀείζωον, which is an immortal fire. The immortal gods are the analogical keepers of the immortal fire. In Fr. 100 it says: ὥρας αἳ πάντα φέρουσι [the seasons which bring all things]. Accordingly, πάντα, which is brought forth by the seasons, is therefore not perpetual, but something that abides in time. From there, ἕν behaves toward τὰ πάντα as πῦρ ἀείζωον or—since Professor Heidegger is not present today, we could dare say—as being itself, thought as time, behaves toward what is driven in time, temporally determined things. I did not say either that ἀθάνατοι and θνητοί are to be