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and what is felt, you go over to the touching of the waking on the sleeping and the touching of the sleeping on the dead.
FINK: I must make a slight correction of that. I am not so much starting out from a phenomenological investigation of seeing but more in reference to {230} the structure of brightness. A small, finite fire is also a unity that is not alongside things. The brightness of the fire kindled by humans is not only the radiance on things, but the space-and-time-filling light in which not only many things but many kinds of things show up. The way that the one who grasps is in the brightness is the way of distantial perception. If ἄπτεται ἑαυτῷ is pleonastic when seen linguistically, I would not reject the pleonism. For one can say that a human kindles a fire that is for him in contrast to the fire that is for all and in which, from the beginning, all humans reside as in the brightness of the day-star. A human kindles for himself a light that illuminates him as the one who is off the track and helpless. I started out from this phenomenon, and I have then characterized not only the relationship of ἕν (in the sense of the brightness cast by a human) to πολλά, but also the human dwelling in brightness as a distantial reference. Fire kindling cancels the moment of immediacy of touching because the fire in itself is cast over a distance.
HEIDEGGER: Somebody kindles a candle or a torch. What is produced with the kindling of the torch, the flame, is a kind of thing ...
FINK: ... that has the peculiarity that it shines ...
HEIDEGGER: ... not only shines, but also allows seeing.
FINK: It makes a shine, casts out brightness and lets what shows itself be seen therein.
HEIDEGGER: This thing at the same time has the character that it fits itself into the openness in which humans stand. The relationship of light and clearing is difficult to comprehend. {231}
FINK: The source of light is first seen in its own light. What is noteworthy is that the torch makes possible its own being seen.
HEIDEGGER: Here we come up against the ambiguity of shine. We say, for example, the sun shines.
FINK: If we think in terms of physics, we speak of the sun as light source and of the emission of its rays. We then determine the relationship of clearing to light such that the clearing, in which the sun itself is seen, is derivative from the light as the sun. We must put precisely this derivative relationship into question. The light of the clearing does not precede but, the other way around, the clearing precedes the light. A light is only possible as an individual because it is given individually in the clearing. The sun is seen in its own light, so that the clearing is the more original. If we trace the brightness back only to the source of light, we skip over the fundamental character of the clearing.
HEIDEGGER: So long as one thinks in terms of physics, the fundamental