begins something with these thinkers-by laying a claim on them in such a way that from them is demanded an extreme retreating in the face of Being. The thinkers are begun by the beginning, "in-cepted" [An-gefangenen] by the in-ception [An-fang]; they are taken up by it and are gathered into it.
It is already a wrong-headed idea that leads us to speak of the "work" of these thinkers. But if for the moment, and for the lack of a better expression, we do talk that way, then we must note that their "work," even if it had been preserved for us intact, would be quite small in "bulk" compared with the "work" of Plato or Aristotle and especially in comparison with the "work" of a modern thinker. Plato and Aristotle and subsequent thinkers have thought far "more," have traversed more regions and strata of thinking, and have questioned out of a richer knowledge of things and man. And yet all these thinkers think "less" than the primordial thinkers.
The problematic circumstance that a modern thinker needs a book of 400 or more pages in order to express something of what he has to say is an unerring sign that modern thinking stands outside the realm of the primordial thinking. In this connection we might recall Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Such signs make us realize that for a long time now the world has been out of joint and man is on the path of error. We must however. also bear in mind that the book grounding modern philosophy, Descartes's Meditationes de prima philosophia comprises little more than a hundred pages and that decisive treatises of Leibniz require only a few sheets of letter-writing paper These facts, apparently only extrinsic point out that in these treatises, very concentrated and simple as regards their internal construction, a transformation of thinking is enacted, one which, to be sure, does not arrive at the beginning but which once more approaches its perimeter. Because we have been forced, for a long time now, to procure our knowledge by a process of selection from the excess of what is spoken and written, we have lost the capacity to hear the few simple things said in the words of the primordial thinkers.
The difficulty in understanding, the reason it takes such pains to follow their path of thought, does not reside in the presumed difficulty of the "text" but resides only in the unwillingness and incapacity of our existence. With regard to the beginning there is no process of selection. All we can do is either set ourselves on the way toward the beginning or shun it. We shall attempt here to prepare for the first possibility.
We concentrate all our endeavors, therefore, toward becoming attentive for once to the word of the primordial thinkers. We begin with a reference to the word of Parmenides. It is handed down to us in fragments, some larger, some smaller. The whole into which the fragments fit is still clearly enough recognizable and expresses in verse form