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character of the clearing, that it is prior to the light, will not be seen.
FINK: A human, as the heir of the fire thief, has the possibility of bringing forth light in a certain sense, but only because there 1s a clearing ...
HEIDEGGER: ... because a human stands in the clearing ...
FINK: ... and indeed by nature. Not only does the occurrence of things belong to standing within the clearing, but also the grasping occurrence of the human who, however, is for the most part simply installed among things, and who does not think the light in which things are grasped. Grasping indeed stands in the light, but it does not properly grasp the light; {232} rather, it remains turned only toward the grasped things. The task of thinking, therefore, is to think that which itself makes shining up and grasping possible ...
HEIDEGGER: ... and also the kind of belongingness of the light to the clearing, and how the light is a distinctive thing.
FINK: No better analogy shows itself for the special position of humans in the midst of τὰ πάντα than that they, different from all other living beings, are light-nigh. Touching on the power of fire is the way of fire kindling. One can now interpret the phenomenal features mentioned ontologically in that one understands the light not only as the light perceptible by the senses, but as the light or as the light-nature of σοφόν, which makes all σαφές. The human comportment toward σοφόν is human standing within the original clearing, a touching being-nigh σοφόν in the manner of an understanding explication of things in their essence. The danger here is that the clearing or brightness itself is not thought. In the brightness many and various things show up. There is no brightness in which there is only one thing. In the brightness, many things set themselves off. In the light, their boundedness is outlined, and they have boundaries against one another. The seer sees himself distinguished from the ground on which he stands, and from the other things on the ground and round about him. But there is also no brightness in which only one kind of thing would be given. In the brightness, not only a great number show up, but also many and various kinds, for example, stone, plant, animal, fellow-human, and alongside natural things also artificially made things, etc. We do not see only things of the same kind, but also different kinds of things. A human, in the brightness brought about by him, is as the finite reflection of σοφόν in the midst of the entirety that is the articulated joining. Human understanding in the light happens as an understanding of πολλά, and this understanding is at the same time variously articulated according to kind and species. πολλά are not only {233} a multiplicity of number but also a multiplicity according to kind. In contrast to this articulated understanding in the brightness, there is perhaps a manner of dark understanding that is not articulated