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of the attempted explication, and I will in closing make an observation on what has transpired thus far.
FINK: I go to Fr. 27, which I would like to relate to Fr. 26. The text runs: ἀνθρώπους μένει ἀποθανόντας ἄσσα οὐκ ἔλπονται οὐδὲ δοκέουσιν. Diels translates: "When they are dead, what awaits people is not what they hope or imagine."
We can start the explication with the question of what ἐλπίζω [to hope] or ἐλπίς [expectation] means. People are not related only to what is immediately present, to what lies before them in their grasping apprehension. They are not dependent only upon what they can get hold of in the perceptible environment; rather, people are, as active beings in the encounter with what is present, projected into an anticipation of the future. This projection happens, among other instances, in hope. In Νόμοι [The Laws] (I 644 c 10-644 d 1) Plato distinguishes two forms of ἐλπίς: fear (φόβος) and confidence (θάρρος). He specifies fear as anticipation of what is painful (φόβος μὲν ἡ πρὸ λύπης ἐλπίς), and confidence as anticipation of the opposite (θάρρος δὲ ἡ πρὸ τοῦ ἐναντίου). A human behaves confidently toward the future in anticipation of future joy and fearfully in anticipation of the approach of what threatens. Beyond that, a human not only touches on the dead; he also comports himself toward death. So long as he so projects himself into the future, he stands in his ways of comportment in the project of the future, which is formed and mastered in part by him, but which is for the greater part determined by fate.
HEIDEGGER: How is the relationship of awaiting and hoping to be specified?
FINK: In hope, I hear the anticipation of something positive; in fear, on the contrary, the anticipation of something negative. The individual human lives beyond the immediate present in anticipation of what is outstanding in the formable future. Thus the Athenians, for example, stocked up in preview of the possible event that they should begin war with Sparta. A human also has this relationship to the future beyond the threshold of death. He comports himself not only toward the future of his coming life, but also beyond his future life toward his death. All people attempt in thought to populate and settle the land behind Acheron. They approach death with a hesitant hope.
HEIDEGGER: The relationship of hope and expectation is still not clear to me. In hope there always lies a reckoning on something. In awaiting, on the contrary-in the proper sense of the word-there lies the attitude of adjoining what is coming.
FINK: To be sure, one can specify hope and awaiting in this manner, but hope does not need to be reckoning on something. When people set up hope at the grave of the dead, they believe themselves able in a certain sense to anticipate the sphere of what cannot be anticipated.