is visibly manifest, more powerful because it is the power proper to beyng as such. The poet thinks and poetizes in the direction of this ἁρμονίη ἀφανής when he says the words Innigkeit and innig—das innige Volk.1 Yet it must be noted: This ἁρμονία—harmony—is not some indifferent accord, that is, one without tension; it is not at all an agreement that comes about by leveling out and setting aside oppositions, but the converse: Opening up the conflicting parties proper opens up the harmony. It places the conflicting powers into their limits in each case. This placing of limits is not a restrictive limitation, but rather a de-limiting, the emergent setting out and fulfillment of the essence. If all beings thus stand in harmony, then precisely strife and battle must determine everything fundamentally. From this, we can first comprehend Heraclitus through one of his two sayings with which people are generally familiar, but in a corrupt and distorted form: “Battle is the father of all things.” The saying, however, properly and in its entirety reads thus (Fragment 53):
Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι, πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς, καὶ τοὺς μὲν θεοὺς ἔδειξε τοὺς δὲ ἀνθρώπους, τοὺς μὲν δούλους ἐποίησε τοὺς δὲ ἐλευθέρους.
“Battle is for all beings indeed the creator, yet for all beings also the ruler, and it indeed makes some manifest as gods, others as humans, bringing some to light as slaves, yet others as masters.” The saying is so profound in content that we cannot even remotely analyze it here. Just two things may be pointed out. Battle is the power that creates beings, yet not in such a way that, once things have come to be by way of it, battle then withdraws from them. Rather, battle also and precisely preserves and governs beings in their essential subsistence. Battle is indeed creator, yet also ruler. Wherever battle ceases as a power of preservation, standstill begins: a leveling out, mediocrity, harmlessness, atrophy, and decline. Such battle, however—and this is the other thing that must briefly be pointed out—is here not arbitrary discord or dissension or mere unrest, but the strife of profound conflict between the essential powers of being, such that in the battle the gods first come to appear as gods, humans as humans, over against one another and thereby in their intimate harmony. There are no gods and humans in themselves, or masters and slaves in themselves who then, because they are such, enter into strife or harmony. Rather, the converse is the case: It is battle that first creates the possibility of decision with regard to life and death. By proving themselves in one way or another, beings in each case first become what and how they
1. “The Archipelago,” IV, 91, line 90.