ahead of all that comes. . . . Recalling history is the only viable road toward what is inceptive."31
Ursprung, 'origination', first of all also expresses a certain destiny and its point of departure . Here are two examples of this use, one concerning the start and the other the end of the metaphysical itinerary: "In the equation between thinking and logos is hidden the origination of a Western destiny."32 "[To conceive of] man's thought as that of a ' subject' . . . is to fulfill an errancy that comes from far away and that originates in a misunderstanding of the essence of reflection."33 When the essence of logos falls into oblivion, a long errancy sets in-"originates"-at the end of which man comes to understand his own thought as subject opposite his objects. However, origination as the starting point of the European itinerary is not the proper locus of the concept of Ursprung in Heidegger.
That proper locus is better approached by examining the function of thinking prior to the Socratic tum toward man. Insofar as Presocratic thinking does not pursue ultimate entities, it is "essential thinking." "If common opinion represents entities and only entities, and if essential thinking thinks being . . . then the cleavage between originary thinking and essential thinking must originate in the difference between being and entities."34 This ontological difference makes the hiatus between thinking and opinion possible. Prior to the humanist and logical reversal, to think is "to correspond, by disclosing [phenomena]. to phusis." Correspondence so understood is the locus of the origin. "In the essence of phusis, as in the essence of those that, in disclosing, correspond to it, alētheia sways as the originarily unifying ground."35 Ursprung, then , is the "originary compliance"36 through which man gives himself over to unconcealment.
Ursprung harks back to unconcealment as the identical trait of both phusis and man, to their 'freedom' as one and the same opening. This is a more essential origination than the rise of an age in history. On the other hand, as long as the imperative of logic to "think correctly" predominates, "the ground and origination of correct thinking, and even of thinking as such, still remain hidden from us."37 Concealment, lēthē, remains hidden.
Heideggerian recollection has the consequence, infelicitous to some, that seen in light of alētheia the contrary of correctness, error, is as much thinking's originary "dowry" as is correctness.38 Some have indeed been scandalized by Heidegger's statement, "Who thinks greatly must err greatly."39 Whether scandalous or not, this consequence is inevitable once 'man' and 'nature' are traced to their common origination in unconcealment. So understood, the origin is irreducible to everything born of it, notably to technē and science.40 It is an origin, however, that can "come back." In these "times of reversal" which are ours, "the essential stamping" under which "the originary essence of logos has been lost" for twenty-five centuries can be placed in question. Could "this want of the originary sense
31. N II 481/EPh 75.
32. GA 55 222.
33. GA 55 220. The editor of this volume, who formulated the section titles, put it more straightforwardly: "The Equation of Thinking and Logic as The Origin of Western Destiny" (GA 55 221, emphasis added).
34. GA 55 150.
35. GA 55 174.
36. GA 55 245.
37. GA 55 196.
38. GA 55 197.
39. EdD 17/PLT 9, cf. W. Marx, op. cit., p. 251.
40. GA 55 227.