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and that does not happen in the shine of brightness that sets apart and joins together. The dark understanding is a kind of nightly touching on, which can be characterized as the neighborhood of ontic relation. In the position of Being and Time, a human is regarded as the entity that is unique in the constitution of its being. Although he is ontically distinguished from all of what is, and customarily understands himself estranged from other entities, he has the understanding of the manner of being of all domains of things ...

HEIDEGGER: ... and indeed precisely on the ground of the ontic distinctness.

FINK: The ontic distinctness of nonhuman entities is no barrier for human understanding of the manner of being, but precisely goes together with it. But a human is not only a cleared being; he is also a natural being and as such he is implanted in a dark manner in nature. There is now also a dark understanding that presupposes not the ontic difference, but precisely the ontic proximity, an understanding, however, that lacks clarity and historical investigation. One such dark understanding of the nightly ground is also meant with the ἅπτεται in reference to εὐφρόνη, and in the manner that the waking touch on the sleeping and the sleeping touch on the dead. This dark understanding is no kind of distantial understanding, but an understanding that stands in, that rests on, the ontic proximity, but that exhibits no ontological abundance. A human is predominantly a light kindler, he who is delivered over to the nature of light. At the same time, however, he also rests on the nightly ground that we can only speak of as closed. The sleeping and the dead are figures indicated by human belonging in living and dead nature. {234}

HEIDEGGER: The concept of ontic proximity is difficult. There is also an on tic proximity between the glass and the book here on the table.

FINK: Between the glass and the book there is a spatial proximity, but not a proximity in the manner of being.

HEIDEGGER: You indeed mean an ontological and not an ontic proximity.

FINK: No, here it is precisely a matter of an on tic proximity. We can make clear what the ontic proximity implies on the opposite structure. As Dasein, a human is distinguished from the rest of what is, but at the same time he has the ontological understanding of all of what is. Aristotle says: ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ ὄντα πώς ἐστι πάντα. The soul is in a certain sense all things (περὶ ψυχῆς, Γ 8, 431 b 21). That is the manner in which a human comes nigh to σοφόν, to λόγος. to the articulated joining of the κόσμος· Because he himself belongs in the clearing, he has a limited lighting capacity. As the one who can kindle lire, he is nigh to the sun like and the sophon-like.


Martin Heidegger (GA 15) Heraclitus Seminars