That dialogue still awaits its beginning. It is scarcely prepared for at all, and yet it itself remains for us the precondition of the inevitable dialogue with the East Asian world.
But a dialogue with the Greek thinkers—and that means at the same time with the Greek poets—does not imply a modern renaissance of the ancients. Just as little does it imply a historiographical curiosity about that which meanwhile has indeed passed, but which still could serve to explain some trends in the modern world chronologically as regards their origins.
That which was thought and in poetry was sung at the dawn of Greek antiquity is still present today, present in such a way that its essence, which is still hidden from itself, everywhere comes to encounter us and approaches us most of all where we least suspect it, namely, in the rule of modern technology, which is thoroughly foreign to the ancient world, yet nevertheless has in the latter its essential origin.
In order to experience this presence [Gegenwart] of history,3 we must free ourselves from the historiographical representation of history that still continues to dominate. Historiographical representation grasps history as an object wherein a happening transpires that is, in its changeability, simultaneously passing away.
In the statement "Science is the theory of the real" there remains present what was prim ally thought, primally destined.4
We will now elucidate the statement from two points of view. Let us first ask, What does "the real" mean? And next, What does "theory" mean? At the same time our elucidation will show how the two, the real and the theoretical, join one another essentially.
3. The German noun Gegenwart means both "presence" and "the present." It thus speaks of presence expressly in the present. In Was Heisst Denken? (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1974), Heidegger writes: Anwesen und Anwesenheit heisst: Gegenwart. Diese meint das Entgegenweilen (very literally, "Presencing and presence mean: present-time-presence. The latter means tarrying over against and toward") (p. 141). Cf. What Is Called Thinking?, p. 234.
4. Literally, "that which was early thought, early destined." Cf. QT 31.