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the sleeping and the dreamed I will be overlooked and, on the other hand, the human situation, aimed at (in my opinion) in the fragment, of standing between light and night gets lost. Dreaming is not the essential distinction of humans vis-a-vis animals. Animals also dream, for example, the hunting dog, when they make noises in their sleep. There is also something like a dreamed dog-world. I myself reject the interpretation according to which the human position between night and light is a matter of dreaming. Indeed, it is a possibility of interpretation, but one must ask what philosophical relevance such an interpretation has in the whole context of the fragments.
HEIDEGGER: We must notice that the thesis "no sleep without dream" is an ontic discovery that suppresses the existential distinction of the sleeping and the dreamed I and only claims that all sleeping is also dreaming. {224}
FINK: The same thesis also levels down the distinction between waking in reality and the dreamed waking in the dream world.
HEIDEGGER: The phenomenological distinction between sleeping and dreaming is lacking in that thesis which identifies sleeping with dreaming. It is always an advantage to save the unity of the text, which is philologically always a principle to be positively valued. There are phases in philology in which everything is dropped and cancelled, and then again, phases in which one tries to save everything. When I came to Marburg in 1923, my friend Bultmann had stricken so much out of the New Testament that scarcely anything remained. In the meantime, that has changed again.
The whole of Fr. 26 is difficult, especially because of ἅπτεται. Perhaps more clarity in this regard will come if we now proceed.
FINK: I would like to say at the outset that the entire interpretation that I now give of Fr. 26 is only an attempt at interpretation. When we proceed from the fact that a human kindles a light in the night, he is spoken of as the fire kindler, that is, as the one who holds sway over the ποίησις of fire-kindling. We must recall that it was a decisive step in human cultural development to gain power over fire-which otherwise was perceived only, for example, as lightning-to get command and use of fire. A human is distinguished from all animals by the heritage of Prometheus. No animal kindles fire. Only a human kindles a light in the night. Nevertheless he is not able, like Helios, to kindle a world-fire that never goes out, that drives out the night. Fr. 99 said that if Helios were not, it would he night despite the remaining stars. The moon and stars are lights in the night. Helios alone drives out the night. Helios is no island in the night, hut has overcome the insular nature. A human is not able to kindle {225} a τὰ πάντα-illuminating fire like Helios. In the night, his possibilities of sight are extinguished, in so far as the dark makes seeing impossible despite open ὄψις. When a human, in the situation of wanting