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that Heraclitus speaks once in the plural (τὰ ψυχρά) and three times in the singular (θερμόν, ὑγρόν, καρφαλέον). We must make clear to ourselves the distinction that lies between the going over of something out of being cold into being warm and the going over of being cold as such into being warm as such. If it were said that a human's being alive can go over into being dead, that wouldn't be an exciting thing to say. But the assertion that life itself goes over into death, and conversely, that death goes into life, would be more problematic, and a more trying proposition. That would be similar to the going over of being cold into being warm and of being warm into being cold.
HEIDEGGER: Are τὰ ψυχρά cold things?
FINK: That is precisely the question, whether cold things, or simply being cold is meant. Concerning things, there are such as are cold by nature, such as ice, and there are such as are occasionally cold, like {253} water, which can be cold but also warm. But water can also go from the liquid state over to the form of steam. There are, therefore, temporal and essential transitions. A more difficult problem, however, is the relationship of being cold and being warm as such. If τὰ ψυχρά are τὰ ὄντα, then are τὰ ὄντα things that are in the state of being, and that can go over into the state of not-being? Does τὸ ὄν mean the temporal state of something which lies at the basis like a substrate? Or is no thing and no matter meant with τὸ ὄν, but rather the being of what is? For Hegel, being goes over into nothing, and nothing goes over into being. Being and nothing are the same for him. But in that, as in this sameness, there is an ambiguity. Is the relationship of the being of what is and not-being a relationship analogous to that between cold and warm? When he speaks of cold and warm, does Heraclitus mean only cold and warm things? That cold things can warm up and vice versa is a banal assertion. But it could still be that the fragment includes a problematic that goes beyond this banality, if the fragment indeed would have it that being cold and being warm, as fixed contraries, themselves go over into one another.
PARTICIPANT: We must understand the opposition between cold and warm such that warming up is already included in the cold.
FINK: With that, you fall back again on the easier rendition of the fragment. The cold is then the cold thing that warms up. However, that is no transition of being cold as such into being warm as such, but only the transition of thermal conditions in a thing. This thought creates no difficulty. But a more difficult problem is given, if the cold and the warm are not cold and warm things, but being cold and being warm as such, of which it is then said that they go over into one another. We must attempt to read θερμόν or ὑγρόν {254} such as τὸ καλόν, τὸ δίκαιον, are to be understood in Plato. τὸ καλόν is not that which is beautiful, but what brings the καλά to beauty. For us, the question is whether only the everyday, familiar phenomenon is meant with the yoking of contrasting contraries, or