on the presence of what is present. Ἐόν, the presence of what is present, accordingly keeps and guards νοεῖν within itself as what belongs to it. From ἐόν, the presence of what is present, there speaks the duality of the two. There speaks from it the call that calls us into the essential nature of thinking, that admits thinking into its own nature and there keeps and guards it.
How is this so? Why and in what way is thinking directed and called into its own essential nature by the Being of beings? That it is so, Parmenides states unequivocally in fragments 5 and 8, 54/56. Parmenides, it is true, does not speak of the call. However, he does say: in the presence of what is present there speaks the call that calls us into thinking, the call that calls thinking into its own nature in this way, that it directs νοεῖν into εἶναι.
But in the second of the two passages just cited, Parmenides gives a decisive indication why and how νοεῖν belongs together with εἶναι. To follow this indication through, more is required than this course of lectures could provide. We would first have to give thought to the essential nature of language, in respect of what {GA 8: 246} was said earlier concerning λέγειν and λόγος. It remains obscure why precisely ἐὸν ἔμμεναι calls us into thought, and in what way. Let us note well—ἐὸν ἔμμεναι, the presence of what is present, and not what is present as such and not Being as such, nor both added together in a synthesis, but: their duality, emerging from their unity kept hidden, keeps the call.
Another thing, however, is clear: the saying τὸ γὰρ αὐτό νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι becomes the basic theme of all of Western-European thinking. The history of that thinking is at bottom a sequence of variations on this one theme, even where Parmenides' saying is not specifically cited. The most magnificent variation, which, despite all the variance of its basic metaphysical position, matches in its greatness the