period, looking as an act of the subject is decisive. Insofar as, in Nietzsche's terms, man is the animal identified as the superman, the animal that has its essence in the will to power, the look of the subject is the look of a being that advances by calculating, i.e., by conquering, outwitting, and attacking. The look of the modern subject is, as Spengler said, following Nietzsche, the look of the predatory animal: glaring.
The Greeks too experienced the look as an activity of man. But the basic feature of this grasping look is not glaring, by means of which beings are, so to say, impaled and become in this way first and foremost objects of conquest. For the Greeks, looking is the "perception" ["Vernehmen"] of beings on the basis of a primordial consent [Einvernehmen] given to Being, which is why the Greeks do not even know the concept of object and never think Being as objectivity. The Greeks experience the grasping look as perception, because this look is determined originally on the basis of the encountering look Within the domain of the essence of ἀλήθεια, this latter has the priority. In the ambit of this primordial look, man is "only" the looked upon. This "only," however, is so essential that man, precisely as the looked upon, is first received and taken up into the relation of Being to himself and is thus led to perception. What looks is what looks into unconcealedness: τὸ θεᾶον is τὸ θεῖον. We translate the latter correctly but thoughtlessly. and presumptuously though emptily, as "the divine." Θεάοντες are the ones who look into the unconcealed. Θεά, the look. as the essence of emergent existence, and θεά, goddess, are one and the same "word," considering the Greeks did not use accent marks in their writing and, above all, recognizing the original attentiveness the Greeks displayed for the essential homophony of words and hence for the hidden ambiguity of their expression. In this regard, think, for example, of Heraclitus, Fragment 48:
τῶι οὖν τόξωι ὄνομα βίος, ἔργον δὲ θάνατος.
"The proper name for bow is βίος"—the bow means and "is" in Greek existence (the) "life" (not as "biological" but as fateful life-course). what it produces, however, is "death." βίος is ambiguous From the bow there emerges and arises the flight and the course of the arrow But the "bow," which thus lets arise, may also bring down. Ὄνομα is the name, the word that expresses, not mere noise and sound. The word βίος is in itself ambiguous and expresses in such ambiguity precisely the essence of death-bringing life. The Greeks hear θεά—θεά just as they hear βίος—βίος. Θεοί, so-called "gods." as the ones who look into the unconcealed and thereby give a sign, arε θεάοντες, are by essence δαίοντες—δαίμονες, the uncanny ones who present themselves