are, and this ‘are’—being—prevails in its essence only as such proving. Another saying, Fragment 80, belongs together with the one just cited:
εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὀν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ’ ἔριν καὶ χρεών.
“Yet there is need to know: battle is constantly there participating [in all beings], and therefore ‘right’ is nothing other than strife, and all beings that come into being are by way of strife and necessity.” δίκη ἔρις—right is strife. According to common understanding, right is something inscribed independently somewhere, and with its aid and through its application strife is precisely decided and eliminated. No! Originarily and in keeping with its essence, right first emerges as such in strife; in strife it forms itself, proves itself, and becomes true. It is strife that establishes the sides, and one side is what it is only through the other, in reciprocal self-recognition. For this reason we never grasp a being if we consider only one side, yet neither do we grasp it if we merely add on the other side as well: Rather, we grasp it when we comprehend both sides in their belonging together and know the grounds for such comprehension. Heraclitus expresses this in another saying, Fragment 67:
ὁ θεὸς ἡμέρη εὐφρόνη, χειμὼν θέρος, πόλεμος εἰρήνη, κόρος λιμός, ἀλλοιοῦται δὲ ὅκωσπερ πῦρ, ὁπόταν συμμιγῆι θυώμασιν, ὀνομάζεται καθ’ ἡδονὴν ἑκάστου.
“The God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger; he changes however like fire; every time the latter is mixed with incense it is named [which means: it is] according to the scent [of the incense] at that time.”
Only on the basis of what has been said does that word of Heraclitus—which, like the saying concerning battle as father of all things, is mostly repeated thoughtlessly—gain its proper content: πάντα ῥεῖ: “everything flows.” This does not mean that everything is continually in a process of change and without subsistence, but rather that you cannot take up position on any one side alone, but will be carried, through strife as conflict, to the opposite side. And only in the back and forth of the movement that is battle do beings have their being. Flowing does not here mean simply the stubborn, constant dissolution and annihilation of things, but the converse: The flowing pertaining to conflict, i.e., conflictual harmony, creates precisely subsistence and steadfastness, beyng. (The opposition between Heraclitus and Parmenides does not lie where it is commonly sought.)