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FINK: First, I would like to return once again to Fr. 88: Ταὐτὸ τ’ ἕνι ζῶν καὶ τεθνηκὸς καὶ (τὸ) ἐγρηγορὸς καὶ καθεῦδον καὶ νέον καὶ γηραιόν· τάδε γὰρ μεταπεσόντα ἐκεῖνά ἐστι κἀκεῖνα πάλιν μεταπεσόντα ταῦτα. Diels translates, "And it is always one and the same, what dwells (?) within us: living and dead and waking and sleeping and young and old. For this is changed over to that and that changes back over to this."
Here a τἀυτό is expressed, but not a same-being [Selbigsein] of a same thing [Selbigen] lying before us, not the empty identity that belongs to everything there is; rather a same-being that is referred to distinction. It is referred to that which seems to us to be most distinguished. The distinctions named here are not such as are in constant movement, but are such as concern all living things. Being alive, being awake, and being young have a positive character for our customary ideas vis-à-vis being dead, being asleep, and being old. But the fragment that expresses same-being speaks not only against the customary opinion of the superiority {192} of living, waking, and being young vis-à-vis the dead, the sleeping, and the old; rather, it also expresses a belonging together of the three groups. Being asleep, which stands in the middle, has a distinguished inbetween position out of which an understanding standing open is possible for being dead and being old in the sense of wasting away.
But the fragment says still more. Not only are living and dead, awake and asleep, young and old one and the same, but this is the change-over of that and that again is the change-over of this. A phenomenal changeover is only to be seen in the relationship of waking and sleep. For what goes to sleep from waking also turns again from sleep back into waking. Only the change-over from waking into sleep is reversible. Against that, the change-over of life into death and of being young into being old is not reversible in the phenomenon. But in the fragment it is said that as being awake goes over into being asleep and vice versa, so also the living changes over into the dead, the dead into the living, the young into the old, and the old into the young. It treats the distinction of waking and sleeping in the same manner as that of living and dead and of young and old. But of whom is this reversible change-over expressed? The expression, "changing over again," recalls the ἀνταμοιβή [interchange], the change of gold into goods and goods into gold. There, the relationship of the change-over is referred to the relatedness of ἕν and πάντα as well as πάντα and ἕν. The question is whether transitions, referred to the living who are named in Fr. 88, have their place within animalia [animals], or whether changes-over in the sense of πυρὸς τροπαί are meant by it. Is the τἀυτό said of animalia, or rather of πῦρ ἀείζωον, about which we hear that it always was and is and will be (ἦν ἀεὶ ἔστιν καὶ ἔσται), but which itself is no inner temporal constancy, but which rather makes possible the having been, being present, and coming to be of