120
HEIDEGGER: ... thus not dead nature. A stone, for example, is not dead.
FINK: In Fr. 88, life and death, which we know in phenomenon only in a specific domain, are referred to the whole relatedness of ἕν and πάντα. But let us leave this question open. For without further verification, it cannot be said what ταὐτο is. We can at first only presume that the same-being of life and death refers to {195} ἕν. Professor Heidegger has designated the relatedness of ἕν and πάντα as state-of-affairs [Verhalt], as being- and world-state-of-affairs. When this original state-of-affairs is mentioned in the ταὐτο of Fr. 88, then we have a contradiction in the phenomenon. For nobody dead becomes alive again. Living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old, are phenomena that in a certain manner mean all the sojourn of the living in time. Life is the whole time of a living being; death is the end of life-time. Waking and sleep form the basic rhythm during life. Being young and being old refer to being in the corrupting power of time which not only brings everything but also takes everything. The question for me is whether the relatedness of ἕν and πάντα is a relatedness of maturation.
Finally, I would like to attempt an explication of Fr. 26. It runs: ἄνθρωπος ἐν εὐφρόνῃ φάος ἅπτεται ἑαυτῷ [ἀποθανὼν] ἀποσβεσθεὶς ὄψεις, ζῶν δὲ ἅπτεται τεθνεῶτος εὔδων, [ἀποσβεσθεὶς ὄψεις], ἐγρηγορὼς ἅπτεται εὕδοντος. Diels translates: "A human touches on (kindles) a light in the night, when his eyesight is extinguished. Living, he touches on death in sleep; in waking he touches on sleeping."
This fragment clearly begins with a human. A human kindles a light in the night. Fr. 26 begins with the human and his capacity of kindling a light in the night, when his ὄψις is extinguished. Diels translates ἀποσβεσθεὶς ὄψις with "when his eyesight is extinguished." But the meaning thus suggests itself that a human sees in his dream—and that he is in a light while in darkness during the dream. I would rather translate the plural, ἀποσβεσθεὶς ὄψις, with "extinguished in his manners of seeing." A human has his uneasy place between night and light. The fragment refers to the unsteady place of a human between night and light. He is near to the light. That is indicated when he is able to lighten the night. A human is a kind of Promethean fire thief. He has the ability to make light in the night, when his manners of seeing are extinguished, i.e., not when he sleeps but when he relates to the dark. "Living, he touches on the dead in sleep; in waking, he touches on the sleeping." Life and death are here bound to one another by the in-between position of sleep. Sleeping is a manner of being alive akin with death; waking is a manner of lingering touching on death in the light in reference to the sleeping. Being alive and being awake, being asleep and being dead are not three conditions, but three possible manners of relationship of humans in