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HEIDEGGER: Hope means "to concern oneself with something very
intensely," while there is an adjoining with what is to come in awaiting.
Hope at the same time includes an aggressive moment; awaiting, on the
contrary, includes the moment of restraint. It is in this that I see the
distinction of the two phenomena.
FINK: In Greek, ἐλπίς encompasses both. In Νόμοι, a human is determined by λύπη [pain] and ἡδονή [pleasure]. Expectation (ἐλπίς) of λύπη is φόβος; expectation (ἐλπίς) of ἡδονή is θάρρος.
HEIDEGGER: Both attitudes fix themselves on that to which they refer. But expectation is the attitude of restraint and of adjoining oneself to what is coming.
FINK: Expectation is the philosophical attitude. A human does not relate himself only to the future of his life, but he also reaches hopefully beyond the threshold of death. But death is what is closed, indeterminate, and incomprehensible. Therefore, the question is whether there is a land behind Acheron or a no man's land.
HEIDEGGER: Mozart said a quarter of a century before his death, "The grim reaper speaks to me."
FINK: The grim reaper also commissioned his Requiem. Rilke's epitaph also belongs here. "Rose, O pure contradiction, desire, I to be no one's sleep among so many I lids." The rose is the simile of the poet who in many songs, or under his lids, is no more he who wrote songs, but who has lost himself in the sleep of no one. An expectant attitude lies in the characterization of death as no one's sleep, a refusal to project what lies behind Acheron. In ἐλπίς, human comportment is determined by a preview, and indeed either in preview of the future of life or of the {247} threshold of death in reference to a postmortal life. Heraclitus says, however, that when they are dead, something awaits people that they do not hope for. Diels translates δοκέουσιν with "imagine." A derogatory connotation of false opinion lies in imagining. But I believe that δοκεῖν does not mean imagine here, but means "grasp." When they are dead, such things await people as they do not arrive at through anticipatory hope, such things as they do not grasp. The realm of death repels from itself every premature occupation and cognition.
HEIDEGGER: We must elucidate δοκεῖν still more closely.
PARTICIPANT: δέχομαι means to accept.
HEIDEGGER: "To accept," however, is not to be understood here in the sense of a supposition, as when we say "I suppose it will rain this morning." "To accept" here means, I tolerate. Ι accept what will be given to me. We are dealing here with the moment of toleration, because otherwise δοκεῖν means an incorrectly held opinion. We must therefore translate δοκέουσιν as to accept and to grasp. Accepting does not mean here supposition, for example, the supposition that is made thematic by