Heidegger's history of being: from the Presocratics to Plato.

The question of being (ontology) has always occupied the central place in the
history of Western philosophy. Heidegger himself is what we may call a philoso-
pher of ontological recapitulation. His project is to review and reassess the en-
tirety of Western ontological thought from its very onset and to reveal that
which is 'un-thought' in the thinking of his predecessors (das Ungedachte in
dem Denken der Vorgänger), that is, their un-thought assumptions. In other
words, although he recognised the fact that all Western thinkers who enquired
into being asked the same ontological question (viz. how is being possible?), he
pointed to a certain key aspect of which they were not aware, which has funda-
mentally disoriented their inquiry at its very root. According to Heidegger, in
trying to explain being, philosophers since Plato and Aristotle thought of 'being'
as a kind of abstract general property, which all things that are exhibit, instead
of looking at it as the clearing within which anything that is, is. Thus the mod-
ern thinker unconsciously detached himself from the totality of being, and as-
sumed the role of an isolated thinking subject that confronts being as an
equally isolated thought object. As a result of this, being was first sterilised by
various conceptual names, terms, and ideas, and then eventually became rela-
tivised to the point of complete irrelevance. The very language of Western phi-
losophy as well as of everyday speech has been corrupted through the course
of history, and is to be broken down as a barrier that impedes the rediscovery
of being. The Western fund of philosophical notions and concepts that gradually
accreted from the time of Plato onwards is presented as a systematic and pro-
gressive process of being spinning into oblivion, and being covered up.

It is important to bear in mind that language in Heidegger is paramount, and in

certain ways tantamount to being itself. He goes even beyond what Hamman
wrote to Herder in 1784: "reason is language, logos". In his work entitled On
the Way to Language Heidegger writes: "we are, then, within language and with
language before all else" (112); "We are essentially bound to language and to
the experience of its essence." (Anax., 247). Language and being thus go hand

1
in hand, and the latter can be grasped only through the former and vice versa.
Within the framework of his ontological programme Heidegger sought to estab-
lish a radically new meta-language to fit his radically new form of philosophy.
Indeed, as a side project to his general thought, he founded a special philoso-
phy of language (Sprachphilosophie). His aims were, first, to dismantle the in-
fluences of Western-European philosophy and metaphysics on language and its
structures; second, to accomplish a return to words (die Rede) as opposed to
terms, categories and concepts (die Sprache), and their primary meaning extri-
cated from Western philosophy, logic, and metaphysics. This was to be a new
system of language to correspond to a new philosophy, based on sayings that
“speak being”, unlike the traditional philosophical discourse that “speaks of be-
ing” (Language, passim.). This is why reading Heidegger is a particularly chal-
lenging task even for a German-speaking reader; the various attempts at trans-
lating his texts actually led to the formation in the 20 th century of a special vo-
cabulary of 'Heideggerian terminology'.

It was Plato, Heidegger argued, who marked the first turning point in the his-
tory of being's oblivion by setting up a mode of logical thinking that eventually
achieved full dissolution of the union of thought and being, the thinking subject
and the thought object. It was Plato, accordingly, who laid the first blocks in
the foundation of conceptual Western language which, to reverse Heidegger’s
celebrated analogy1, was destined to mutate, and from “the house of being” to
become the locus of externalised consciousness of the modern man. This para-
digm of thinking is thus presented precisely as the cause and origin of the fault-
iness of Western thought and of deep deficiencies in Western culture. For Hei-
degger, this turning point was the first stage in the history of being's "forgetful-
ness" (Seinsvergessenheit), that is the history of being as a phenomenon, as
opposed to Being as the all-encompassing ontological whole such as it was be-
fore Plato. To provide an overall view of how Heidegger envisaged this history
let us very briefly outline its constituent stages.

1 “Language is the house of being, which is appropriated by being and pervaded

by being.” Heidegger, Letter on "Humanism" in Pathmarks (1998), 254.
2
The Presocratics or, as Heidegger often refers to them, 'early Greeks' are
marked off as "the first beginning" (der erste Anfang) of Western history. At this
point being is one and whole (as the Parmenidean One), including all manner of
things from nature and material things to "human beings, the things they pro-
duce, and the situations and circumstances effected and realised by human ac-
tions as well as omissions ... and also daemonic and divine things" (Anax., 249).
In the words of Heraclitus – the other major Presocratic of the first beginning
whom Heidegger evokes next to Parmenides – ἕν πάντα εἶναι, “all is one”. The first
beginning ends with the coming of Plato with his Forms, which effectively split
being in two between the intelligible realm and the realm of perception. At this
stage thought and being become disjoined, and being gradually disappears be-
hind a morass of concepts and notions that human thought, now divorced from
being, placed before itself (the German for concept is vor-stellung, literally
"that which is placed before, laid out in front"). Thus a paradigm is set. Being’s
history is traced all the way through Plato to the emergence of Christianity as
Nietzsche’s “Platonism for the people”, to Descartes who brings the subject-ob-
ject distinction to its apogee, to Hegel’s attempts to redefine the subject-object
problem in his Science of Logic, and finally to Nietzsche whose Will to Power
marks the demise of being and ushers in an era of nihilism, the end of the first
beginning (Das Ende des ersten Anfangs).

As for his own standing in this history, Heidegger writes:

Are we the latecomers of a history that now speeds towards its end, an end in
which everything terminates in an ever more desolate ordering of uniformity? Do
we stand in the very twilight of the most monstrous transformation of the whole
earth and of the historical space in which it is suspended? Do we stand before
the evening of the night of another dawn? (Anax., 245)

Thus Heidegger sees himself (potentially) as the prophet of "another dawn",

who stands at the very summit of being's destiny, ready to guide the world
through a "most monstrous transformation" to “another beginning” ( der andere
Anfang). Being has come full circle, reached a point of complete oblivion, and
can at last re-emerge. It is important to note, however, that in spite of this de-
terministic aspect, Heidegger’s history of being is by no means a cyclic model.
Throughout his works Heidegger stresses the notion of waiting ( Warten) for
something that is “not yet” (noch nicht), which is inherent in being (GA 77, 112;
3
DT, 64). Thus an element of doubt is ever present, and the new turning point in
the history of being is not pre-determined.

Heidegger's eschatological views can therefore be summarised as comprising

three complete stages, symbolised by the according pattern of the cycle of day:
the first dawn (the Presocratics), the sunset, i.e. the beginning of the end of
dawn (Plato), the evening2 / night (Nietzsche). The fourth stage – the new dawn
and the beginning of a new era – is yet to come about. The one fundamental as-
sumption or premise on which this entire construction hangs is that being's
destiny starts with Plato. It is Plato who activates the history of being’s obliv-
ion. Without this premise from a teleological stage-by-stage system Heidegger’s
thought risks turning into a series of connected but independent ontological ar-
guments. The obvious juxtaposition of Plato to the Presocratics that emerges
as a result is certainly not a groundbreaking one. Indeed, outside the Heidegge-
rian line of argument, it is conventional, in spite of the obvious dangers of mak-
ing too rigid a chronological delineation, to regard Plato as something of a turn-
ing point in the history of philosophy. Cornford neatly summarises it as “the
shift from the search for beginnings to the search for ends, … from external na-
ture to man” (Cornford, 32).

Indeed this distinction is contained within the very term ‘Presocratic’; and Hei-
degger with his acute sensibility to language lays emphasis on the fact. Diels’
Presocratics or Nietzsche’s Pre-Platonics – “both designations say the same
[that] the implicit standard for explicating and judging the early thinkers is the
philosophy of Plato and Aristotle” (Anax., 243). Heidegger builds this argument
around the concept of φύσις:
Phusis means sky and earth, plants and animals, and in a certain sense, human
beings as well. The word designates a special region of beings which, in Aristo-
tle and in the School of Plato in general, is separated from ēthos and logos. For
them Phusis no longer has the wider meaning of the totality of beings. From the
beginning of Aristotle’s thematic observations in the Physics, the kind of being
called phusei onta is contrasted with that of technēi onta. The former is that
which brings itself forth by arising out of itself, the latter is that which is brought
forth through human planning and production. (Ibid., 244)

2 Heidegger refers to Europe of his time as “Evening Land” (Abendland).

4
Already the language of subject and object is implicit: the dissolution of the in-
tegral Presocratic φύσις into natural world (φύσει ὄντα) and human impact (τέχνῃ
ὄντα) directs us straight to the dialectic of adequatio intellectus et rei, i.e. a
system of correspondence of objects in the natural world to their intellectual
value in the mind of the thinking subject. To what extent, then, could Heideg-
ger’s take on Plato and Aristotle be seen as valid? To mark the emergence of
Platonism off as the transition from natural cosmology3 to ethics is not too
problematic a task. The comparison of the Presocratics with Plato in the light
of Heidegger’s claims about being, however, is a different issue altogether. Can
Presocratic thought be viewed in terms of unity of being? Can Plato be re-
garded as the saboteur of that unity?

Before we even begin addressing these questions, it is important to establish

precisely what Heidegger means when he talks about the unity of being. What
kind of unity is it? It is certainly more complicated than just the unity of
thought and being. This question is fundamentally rooted in the so-called “onto-
logical difference” (ontologische Differenz), i.e. a distinction Heidegger draws
between beings (das Seiende) and Being (das Sein) or, as some translators ren-
der it, being and Being respectively. For convenience of future reference we
shall combine the two denominations (so: Being, beings). Heidegger’s das Sein
comes from the indefinite form of the verb sein plus the neuter article das,
which amounts to something like the Greek τὸ εἶναι. Seiend is the active partici-
ple of that same verb sein.

To illustrate properly the distinction Heidegger turns directly to language 4. Ac-

cording to his argument the original Greek terms πτῶσις and ἔγκλισις (later ren-
dered in Latin as casus and declinatio respectively) presuppose a “falling, tip-
ping, or inclining” (Intr., 63). That is to say that whenever “inflection of the fun-
damental form” (Ibid., 62) occurs, the verb becomes invested with meaning by
the context which its “declension” (Heidegger's term for conjugation) imparts

3 Cosmology within its own theological framework; see D.Sedley, Creationism

and Its Critics in Antiquity
4 See M.E. Zimmerman, ‘The ontological decline of the West’ and G.Fried,
‘What’s in a word? Heidegger’s Grammar and Etymology of “Being”’
5
to it, thereby falling into a particular case as opposed to being a general ab-
straction. To take a simple example, the verb “to say” does not in its infinitival
form “incline” towards anything – it cannot relate to any particular image as it
is not relevant to any particular object, person or situation. How can one imag-
ine the infinitive “to say”? Once, however, the verb is “declined” it becomes
manifest as a conceivable phenomenon. “She says” is no longer an abstraction
but an identifiable action. In other words, verb “declension” is “a deviation
which is capable of making manifest in addition person, number, tense, voice,
and mood” (Ibid., 70).

Thus, it would seem, the infinitive stands for the abstract, and the “declension”
brings in concreteness and meaning. Heidegger points out, however, that the
Greek term for such “declension” is “ἔγκλισις παρεμφατικός” from παρεμφαίνω which
literally means “to show oneself alongside (para) something”. Accordingly, the
infinitive was known as “ἔγκλίσις ἀ-παρεμφατικός” (Ibid.) i.e. something that has
nothing appearing by its side. It is still an ἔγκλίσις, nonetheless, and therefore
not just an empty abstraction as in the example above. The later Roman render-
ing “modus infinitivus” falls short of “ἔγκλίσις ἀ-παρεμφατικός” as it omits the
“ἔγκλίσις” part, and essentially strips the infinitive of meaning. If taken the right,
original way, the infinitive is also a “falling, tipping, or inclining” in its own right
– even without a subject to enable it. Heidegger arrives at the conclusion that
the infinitive as “ἔγκλίσις ἀ-παρεμφατικός” must carry the pure original meaning of
the verb itself: “[what it] means and makes manifest” (Ibid.).

The relation of the infinitival das Sein to its derivative das Seiende could thus
be formulated as the relation of the pure meaning of Being (i.e. unaccompanied
by anything else – ἀπαρεμφατικός) to its concrete manifestations (i.e. Being ac-
companied by gender, person, number etc. – παρεμφατικός). This linguistic aspect
of the “ontological difference” is vital to the understanding of the unity of be-
ing. It shows that das Sein is not only essentially related to das Seiende5 but

5 This may seem an obvious point to make. If, however, das Sein is ‘thought’ or
is itself the ‘thinking subject’, and das Seiende is the totality of being as in τὰ
φύσει ὄντα (see top of p.3), then the relation of the former to the latter is far from
obvious. Kant and Hegel, for example, believed object matter to be entirely ex-
ternal from subject matter. Locke famously argued that the senses never actu-
6
also primary to it, i.e. beings derive their meaning from Being; or (to use the
παρεμφαίνω reference) beings are Being with certain additional characteristics.
These assumptions will be of great help in understanding the semantic value of
Sein and Seiende.

For the sake of clarity let us, in spite of the anachronistic nature of such a mea-
sure, first round Heidegger’s arguments up to a conclusive formula before delv-
ing into explanatory detail. “Das Seiende” or “beings” is the totality of all things
present (nature, man, thought, etc.); it is made possible or present by the
agency of “Sein” - the unifying phenomenological framework within which be-
ings are made present or unconcealed out of concealment. “Sein” is the pure
action of being – the infinitive of being in the original (ἀπαρεμφατικός) usage of the
word. “Seiende” derives its existence from “Sein” (just as a “declined” verb de-
rives its meaning from the infinitive) and is thereby torn from non-existence (or
concealment) to existence (unconcealment). This is a simplified outline of what
one has to unravel from more or less all of Heidegger’s texts.

Several important questions may be raised at this point. First of all, does the
knowledge that beings exist belong to Seiende itself or to knowledge eo ipso,
i.e. knowledge as a separate metaphysical dimension? Is this knowledge one of
actual beings (τὰ φύσει ὄντα) or merely a putative predicate attributed to beings
by the mind as a unifying conceptual characteristic? To put it differently, is the
knowledge that "beings are" a matter of epistemology or ontology? Essentially
this question was first properly articulated by Kant, who raised the issue of the
possibility of knowledge independent of the senses and came up with the un-
knowable noumena. Husserl, who likewise recognised the need to address this,
put forth the concept of noema - the object of thought as a phenomenological
entity or the actual object of perception6. Within the context of Heidegger's "on-
tological difference" this question emerges in an entirely different light.

ally perceive the Physical Substance itself.

6 One has to tread carefully as interpretations vary and there is no clear-cut
definition of noema. See D. Woodruff Smith, Husserl (2007).
7
For Heidegger ontology is prior to and more basic than epistemology. Regard-
less of whether the knowledge of Seiende is a noumenon or a noema, for the
mind it is self-apparent that beings are. This is what may be called Heidegger's
ontic axiom: all thinking begins with the simple fact that beings exist. " Ontic"
is ontological without the logos part, it refers to the innate, unconscious as-
sumption that "beings are". The ontic axiom is thus a given premise as opposed
to an intelligent deduction. The mind unconsciously registers the basic fact of
existence before it can engage in any sort of intellectual analysis. To think that
beings "are not" would subvert the very mechanism of human consciousness,
and from Aristotle's "ζῶον λόγον ἔχον" (animal/creature in possession of reason-
ing/mind/logos) man would have to be classified as an entirely different
species.

Heidegger's ontic axiom does not, however, explain the nature of Seiende. That
beings exist may be a given axiom, but it does not mean that one should not
place it under the analytical scrutiny of an ontological study. How do beings ex-
ist? What is the essence that underlies all being? This, according to Heidegger,
is the “leading question” of ontology (Leitfrage), asked and answered in differ-
ent ways by philosophers of all times. This kind of ontological questioning,
however, is essentially taking its impetus from the "unthought" ontic assump-
tion that beings are – because by enquiring into “how is being possible?”, the
“what is being?” aspect is taken for granted. As a result the underlying essence
of being is treated as itself a property of beings, albeit unique in its status and
standing. In other words, in attempts to identify the fundamental essence of be-
ing (Being of beings), thinkers mistakenly took it as sharing in the quality of be-
ings, i.e. sharing in existence. Such were Plato’s Forms, Aristotle’s unmoved
mover, the concept of God, essentia, substantia, actualitas, ens perfectissi-
mum, etc. Interestingly it is not with Plato that Heidegger claims this trend to
have started; early Greek thought was guilty of the same crime. The key Par-
menidean axiom “Being is and cannot not be” (ἔστιν τε καὶ ὡς οὐκ ἔστι μὴ εἶναι) (B2)
is reflective of this kind of logic, i.e. if non-existence is impossible then Being
must be existent.

8
Heidegger argues that such an approach overlooks the fundamental difference
between Being and beings and essentially replaces Sein with various ontologi-
cal or theological concepts. Therefore the “leading question” of philosophy is
not asking the right thing. As a solution Heidegger introduces the so-called
"fundamental ontology" (fundamental-ontologïe) that poses the right or "ground-
ing" (Grundfrage) ontological question, and does not thereby conflate Being and
beings. Instead of asking "how are beings possible?", it asks "what is Being?".
If Being is not one of beings then, logically, it must be the opposite of exis-
tence, i.e. non-existence or nothing. Indeed from “Being is not beings” (“Sein
ist das Seiende nicht”) Heidegger proceeds straight to “Being is nothing” (“das
Sein ist das Nichts”7). How is it possible that Being is nothing? For Heidegger
the only conceivable alternative to being is non-being and anything that be-
comes must come out of non-being (ἐκ μὴ ἐόντος, Parmenides, B8). Therefore all
things present (Seiende) are present only by virtue of being forced out of non-
existence or concealment. It is worth noting that this is an essentially Par-
menidean mode of logic.

When in Fragment B3 Parmenides introduces the possible paths of enquiry he

calls the first two “the only conceivable” (B3,2: αἵπερ ὁδοὶ μοῦναι διζήσιός εἰσι
νοῆσαι): enquiry into that which exists and cannot not exist; and the “undiscov-
erable track of enquiry into the non-existent”. The third path “of the two-
headed” mortals who confuse being with non-being is given just as an adden-
dum, not as a third “conceivable way of enquiry”. Of course if one is to take
Parmenides at his word, there is only one real mode of enquiry – into that which
is. The reason Parmenides names enquiry into that which is not as the second
plausible way is that while in essence there can be no alternative to the exis-
tent, the only potential logical antonym of that-which-does-exist is that-which-
does-not-exist, i.e. the non-existent: “it must either be totally or not be at all”
(8,11).

And while Parmenides spurns this alternative as impossible on the grounds that
“everything is and nothing is not”, Heidegger does not. Thus the only place out

7 'Seminar in Le Thor, 1969' in Vier Seminare (Frankfurt a.M. 1977), 64-109, 101.
9
of which beings that are present might come is non-existence or nothing -- in
other words out of Sein. While Sein is not part of Seiende, it is its source - just
like the infinitive is the source of verb "declension" and yet cannot itself be
identified with the action of the "declined" verb. To give a rudimentary exam-
ple, let us consider the burning of fire: fire burns but its burning ("to burn") does
not itself burn; likewise Heidegger's beings are but their Being itself is not. The
fact that the infinitive "as the site for reflection on the full meaning of the verb
as such constitutes" (Fried, 130) was demoted to a mere abstraction resulted
in the development of misleading verbal substantives such as τὸ εἶναι in Greek
and das Sein in German. For Heidegger this played a key role in the general fail-
ure of Western philosophy to distinguish Being from beings: “The substantive
Sein implies that what is so named, itself ‘is’. ‘Das Sein’ [Being] now itself be-
comes something that ‘is’, whereas obviously only beings are, and it is not the
case that Being also is” (Intr., 73).

The right ontological difference therefore presupposes a peculiar distinction

between Being and beings: it is dissolution but dissolution within one-life cycle
framework (existence out of non-existence). After all, distinction between op-
posites is already determined by an intrinsic connection, so that 'cold' can ex-
ist only in contrast to 'hot', 'liquid' to 'solid', and 'being' to 'non-being'. Even
within this framework of opposition, however, Being and beings cannot be prop-
erly conceived of as distinct such as any normal set of opposites would be. Be-
ing is an intrinsic part of beings, it is the only conceivable context in which be-
ings exist; and so to think of Sein and Seiende as separate entities would be, to
begin with, as illogical as to treat two hands of the same body as two dis-
cretely defined parts. Beings can be explained only inasmuch as they are
present out of non-being; only thus can beings be present. To employ Heideg-
ger's language, we may call the ontological difference unthought: it cannot be
thought as an explicitly stated knowledge but must be appreciated and recog-
nised on an extra-rational level8.

8 The idea of unthought thoughts is ubiquitous in Heidegger: "The unthought is

the greatest gift that thinking can bestow" (What is called thinking, Part I, Lec-
ture VII).
10
The problem of post-Platonic philosophy, which Heidegger brands as meta-
physics, is that in trying to explain existence by identifying some indivisible
first principle that lies at the foundation of all things, it looks for it among the
selfsame things it is trying to explain. This in turn generates an infernal cycle
of regression because, as science, technology and human thought progress,
the first principle, that may have appeared indivisible at first, now turns out to
be itself divisible. Particle physics is an ideal illustration: before the discovery
of the electron in 1897 the atom was officially the smallest particle that consti-
tuted world matter; a century later the Standard Model revealed that all nature
is composed of twelve smallest particles called quarks and leptons. One can
only guess at what will come next. Similar division ad infinitum can be ob-
served in the context of metaphysical thought. The world is thus trapped in a
Zenonian aporia, not unlike Achilles, who is always trying to catch up with the
tortoise that had a head-start, but never does. Heidegger proposes to explain
existence with the only feasible first principle that lies outside beings, and is
therefore exempt from the cycle of divisibility. One must not, however, con-
ceive of Heidegger's non-being as death or some dark void; it is more like the
framework, the ultimate boundary of beings that explains on the technical level
the phenomenon of "presencing" as a whole.

The unthought ontological distinction marks the right ontological difference; it

is the key to the "grounding" ontological question and therefore to the con-
scious unity of being. It is important to emphasise at this stage that the sub-
ject-object distinction is a kind of younger brother of the ontological difference,
its direct corollary, but not its identical counterpart. The post-Platonic man in a
way supersedes Sein, and as a result himself becomes the limit of all beings,
separated from Seiende, which in turn assumes the status of an externalised
object; Being becomes irrelevant altogether and from the true ontological dual-
ism of Sein and Seiende, a dualism of thought and matter emerges. Interest-
ingly, according to Heidegger the early Greeks, though they asked the right on-
tological question, did not think in terms of the ontological difference as he
does, since they rejected the possibility of non-being (ref. Parmenides), thereby
allowing Sein to be subsequently replaced with Seiende. Indeed in this respect

11
the beginning of being's oblivion can be said to have its roots in the First Dawn
itself. Does this mean that Plato and Aristotle cannot take all the blame for be-
ing's oblivion after all? Building on the intellectual paradigm of the Presocratic
thinkers, they failed to make the right distinction and instead of looking at Sein
in itself, replaced it with an intellectual concept from the realm of Seiende.
Mindful of the emphasis Heidegger lays on Plato as the initial cause of being's
dissolution, one might accuse him of inconsistency.

It is important to remember, however, that at root Heidegger's history of being

is eschatological, and being's oblivion is a destiny, not an aberration or a sys-
tem failure. "The history of Being gathers itself in its departure" ( Anax., 246);
"as it discloses itself in beings, Being withdraws" (Ibid., 253), i.e. Being forgets
itself, and the history of Being's oblivion is a purposive process, not a mael-
strom. Therefore the idea of blame is essentially incongruous in the first place.
The stages of Heidegger's eschatology still retain consistency. In spite of the
fact that the Presocratics already determined the context in which being was
to perish, at their own stage of this history they managed to preserve the uni-
formity of being by simply not making any ontological differentiation to begin
with. The Presocratics can thus be said to mark a certain prelapsarian era
when Being remained one and whole, with Sein and Seiende cramped together
unconsciously under the all-encompassing aegis of τὰ φύσει ὄντα9. This uncon-
scious ontological recognition is reflected in the ambiguity which Heidegger
discovers in the way the Presocratics talk about Being: "In every word the say-
ing [of Anaximander] speaks of Being and only of Being; it does that even
where it specifically refers to beings" (GA 51, 123).

9 Heidegger's use of the day cycle metaphor is closely connected to the idea of
the fall and of pre-fall bliss, which he adopted from the poet Hölderlin, by whom
he was greatly influenced. For Hölderlin, the 'day' was the ancient world in
which - in one way or another - the gods were present on earth. "For Hölderlin's
historical experience, the appearance and sacrificial death of Christ mark the
beginning of the end of the day of the gods. Night is falling. Ever since the
"united three" - Herakles, Dionysos, and Christ - have left the world, the evening
of the world's age has been declining towards its night" (‘What Are Poets For’,
Language, 91). See poems 'Bread and Wine' and 'Patmos'.
12
At this point a qualification of Heidegger's use of the term Presocratics is due.
When talking about the thinkers of the First Dawn he does not include all
philosophers who precede Plato indiscriminately. "Anaximander, Parmenides,
and Heraclitus are the only inceptual (anfänglich) thinkers. Not because they
initiate and begin Occidental thinking. There "are" thinkers even before them.
They are inceptual thinkers because they think the onset ( Anfang). The onset is
what is thought in their thinking"10 (GA 54, 10) In addition to these three Heideg-
ger frequently quotes Homer and Hesiod11. Therefore, when he uses phrases
such as "early Greeks" or the "Presocratics" or the "Preplatonics", he means
precisely this small circle of "inceptual" thinkers and poets. Whether Heidegger
attributes the First Dawn mode of ontological thinking to all Greeks of the Pre-
socratic era by extension remains unclear; he certainly considers the "incep-
tual" thinkers as representatives of one homogeneous group. For the purposes
of consistency, however, we shall concentrate exclusively on the three
thinkers of the First Beginning.

The body of early Greek thought, according to Heidegger, is made up of three

essential components: φύσις, ἀλήθεια, and λόγος. These are the three building
blocks of the aboriginal unity of Being and beings that undergo dramatic trans-
formation with the coming of Plato and Aristotle. At the onset of Heidegger's
history, all three share an inextricable connection: "Being is logos, harmonia,
alētheia, phusis, phainesthai" (Schoenbohm, Companion, 156). The Presocratic
φύσις has already been defined here as the totality of all things present en
masse, including not only man, reason, nature, and the daemonic, but Sein as
well. How, then, do ἀλήθεια and λόγος relate to this? In Heidegger's view the abo-
riginal ἀλήθεια is what defines φύσις as "presenting", i.e. "unconcealment" or "un-
hiddenness"; and λόγος is where "the opening up of beings [out of concealment]
happens" (Intr., 198).

10 "Parmenides and Heraclitus - these are the names of the two thinkers ...
who at the outset of Western thought uniquely belong together in thinking the
true" (Parmenides, 1); "the two others, the only others besides Anaximander,
were Parmenides and Heraclitus" (Ibid., 2).
11 On the interlocution in Heidegger between poetry and ontological thinking
see Véronique M. Fóti, Heidegger and the Poets: poiēsis, sophia, technē (1992)
13
Heidegger rejects the conventional translation of ἀλήθεια as truth; instead he
proposes to render it as a compound of the alpha-privative plus the verbal stem
-ληθ- (oblivion, forgetfulness), amounting to ἀ-λήθεια as un-concealment or dis-
closure (die Un-verborgenheit).
The unhidden must be torn away from a hiddenness; it must in a sense be stolen
from hiddenness. Originally for the Greeks hiddenness, as an act of self-hiding,
permeated the essence of being and thus also determined beings in their present-
ness and accessibility ("truth"); and that is why the Greek word for what the Ro-
mans call "veritas" and for what we call "truth" was distinguished by the alpha-
privative (ἀ-λήθεια). Truth originally means what has been wrested from hidden -
ness. (Doctrine, 171)

Ἀλήθεια thus shares a fundamental connection with φύσις as it qualifies its essen-
tial characteristic of "unconcealment" wrested out of "concealment". In a trea-
tise entitled Plato's Doctrine of Truth Heidegger analyses the celebrated anal-
ogy of the cave of Republic VII, arguing that it marks the transformation of
ἀλήθεια from "unhiddenness" to "correctness of vision"12. His interpretation is
based on a reflection on the relationship between truth (ἀλήθεια), education
(παιδεία), and the good (ἀγαθόν). The imagery employed by Plato still reflects the
language of "unconcealment". The cavemen are described as discovering and
therefore un-concealing several cognitive layers: the objects behind the screen,
the dim-lit exterior of the cave, and finally the sun itself. The prevalent function
of the allegory, however, is that of illustrating παιδεία as progressive transforma-
tion in vision from what is perceived in one region to what is perceived in an-
other. In this context ἀλήθεια inevitably comes to designate the correspondence
between the perceived and the idea it represents. This notion of correspon-
dence Heidegger considers as the precursor of the adequatio intellectus et rei
line of metaphysical thinking and the end of the aboriginal ἀλήθεια.

As in the case of ἀλήθεια, to retrieve the original meaning of λόγος, Heidegger re-
sorts to linguistic ingenuity. Λόγος is taken as the derivative of λέγειν, which can
mean both "to say" and "to bring together", "arrange". "... λόγος means λέγειν as
a saying aloud. Λέγειν means what our similarly sounding legen [German] means:
to lay down and lay before. Λέγειν properly means the laying-down and laying-be -
fore which gathers itself and others.” (GA 51a, 60) Thus we get the inceptual

12 For more on Plato's Doctrine of Truth see Richardson, 1974, 211-212, 301,
308; Hyland, 57-58.
14
function of logos: it is the gathering together of fundamentally-ontological re-
flections on Being, the "domain and place where decisions are made about ...
the unconcealment of Beings" (Intr., 198). With ἀλήθεια turning into adequatio,
λόγος undergoes a corresponding transformation. It becomes mere γλῶσσα, i.e. a
statement or assertion as "the locus of truth in the sense of correctness" ( Ibid.,
199).

"In becoming a property of assertion, truth does not just shift its place; it
changes its essence ... [and] becomes a correctness of λόγος" ( Ibid.). At the
same time, φύσις no longer stands for the all-encompassing aboriginal whole but
assumes the role of ἰδέα, an independent object, now distinguishable from the
thinking subject. "... φύσις itself becomes for him [Plato] that-which-is-to-be-
seen, a being (εἶδος). Being thus becomes conceived as a being. Likewise truth,
no longer non-concealment, becomes correctness of view, conformity with the
Ideas." (Richardson, 2003, 308). So, the three component elements of the abo-
riginal formula of ontological unity are transmuted, and the Presocratic ontolog-
ical unity which was contained in ἀλήθεια as "unconcealment" and expressed by
λόγος as gathering now becomes metaphysics contained in truth as veridicality
of assertion.

To what extent can we accept Heidegger's reading of the three "inceptual"

thinkers based on his analysis of φύσις, ἀλήθεια, and λόγος? In ‘Anaximander's
Saying’ Heidegger writes:
To Chreōn harbors within itself [...] the essence of the gathering [Versammeln]
that clears and harbors [lichtend-bergenden]. Fruition [Brauch] is gathering: ho
Logos. When the essence of Logos is thought, the essence of Being is determined
from it as the unifying One: Hen. This selfsame Hen is thought by Parmenides. He
thinks the unity of this unification [...] as the Moira [sc. Fate, Destiny] [...]. The
Moira that is thought from the essential experience of Being corresponds to Hera-
clitus' Logos. The essence of Moira and Logos is prefigured in Anaximander's
Chreōn. [...] each thinker thinks, in his own way, the unity of the uniting One, the
Hen. (Anax., 369, 371)

Such a uniform approach is to say the least provocative, considering the strong
tradition in scholarship of treating Parmenides and Heraclitus as opposing
thinkers13. Indeed it seems difficult to reconcile some of the key dogmas of all
13 First articulated by Jacob Bernays, followed by Ingram Bywater, who actu-
ally claimed to identify textual references which proved that Heraclitus ex-
15
three philosophers, although the dearth of extant original texts may certainly
allow a high degree of hermeneutical generosity. The reason for quoting the
above passage, however, is not to emphasise that Heidegger is suggesting an
original reading of the Presocratics, but rather to expose the precise elements
of their teachings on which he bases this reading: Anaximander's Χρεών, Par-
menides' Μοίρα, and Heraclitus' Λόγος. All three concepts are viewed as essen-
tially three different ways of expressing one and the same truth. With this in
mind, instead of trying to cover all three thinkers separately, our analysis of
Heidegger's use of the "inceptual" fragments will be limited to one detailed
case study which will reveal the uniform logic behind Heidegger's way of think-
ing about the First Beginning.

Seeing that we have already talked extensively about logos and alētheia,
thereby touching on Heidegger's interpretation of Heraclitus and Parmenides
respectively, it seems appropriate to concentrate fully on Anaximander. The
only surviving fragment of Anaximander is preserved by Simplicius in his com-
mentary on Aristotle's Physics (Simpl., Phys., 24. 13; DK 12 A 9, B 1). Here is
the text of the fragment provided by Diels in his Die Fragmente der Vor-
sokratiker:
... ἀρχὴν ... εἴρηκε τῶν ὄντων τὸ ἄπειρον· ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς
ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών· διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ
χρόνου τάξιν·

The opening words of the fragment state that as the founding principle (ἀρχή),
the "limitless or indeterminate" source of being for "all the heavens and the
worlds within them", Anaximander named τὸ ἄπειρον (the infinite; boundless).
The ἄπειρον is distinguishable from the four elements (water, air, fire, earth) tra-
ditionally employed by the physikoi in their cosmological models. If all four ele-
ments are interchangeable, the first principle cannot be one of their number but
must be prior to all of them. Otherwise, being infinite par excellence, it could
never uphold the balance of opposites, as it would eventually consume all re-
maining elements. Aristotle explains: "There are some people who make this
[the first principle] the infinite [ἄπειρον], and not air or water, in order that the
pressly criticised Parmenides. E.g. the "palintropos harmoniē" of Heraclitus'
Fragment B51 is interpreted as an allusion to the Parmenidean " palintropos
keleuthos" (B6, 9). See J. Bernays, Ges. Abh. 1, 62, n. 1.
16
other elements may not be annihilated by the element which is infinite. They
have contrariety with each other—air is cold, water moist, fire hot; if one were
infinite, the others by now would have ceased to be. As it is, they say, the infi-
nite is different from them and is their source" (Phys. 204b14).

By discriminating between the ἄπειρον and the four elements Anaximander is im-
plicitly pointing out the impossibility of infinite regress in explanation of the
first principle. Already we can see that the logic behind Heidegger's ontological
difference is not lagging far behind this line of thinking. Heidegger's insistence
on drawing an antithesis between beings and the underlying principle that al-
lows existence as "presencing" is comparable to the way Anaximander isolates
his grounding principle from the four material stuffs of the world. There are,
however, certain points to be raised. Even if Anaximander's ἄπειρον is distinct
from the four elements, at no point is it explicitly placed in antithesis to them.
In other words, the jump from the ἄπειρον as distinct from the elements to the
Heideggerian nothing as the only feasible alternative to beings is not an obvi-
ous one. Indeed, most likely alluding to Anaximander, Aristotle provides a
rather materialist account of such a first principle as the ἄπειρον: "it is more rar-
efied than water and denser than air; and ... being infinite it surrounds all the
heavens." (De Caelo, iii. 5; 303 b 11). Interestingly in his 1926 lecture on Anaxi-
mander Heidegger himself describes τὸ ἄπειρον as "not a sensuous determinate
being, but a non-sensuous indeterminate one; nevertheless a being [ Seiendes]"
(GA 51, 53).

Bearing in mind, however, that for all Presocratic thinkers the fact that the nat-
ural world is structured into four elemental layers came as an axiomatic as-
sumption, it seems likely that by qualifying the ἄπειρον as "neither water nor any
other of the so-called elements, but a different substance" ( Simpl. Phys., 24.
13), Anaximander assigned to it an altogether unique status distinguishing it
from beings made up of the elements and their natural properties (cold, dense,
dry etc). Whether it is "the Divine" as Aristotle suggests 15 or the universal world-

14 Transl. by Hardie and Gaye

15 "They identify it with the Divine, for it is 'deathless and imperishable' as
Anaximander says, with the majority of the physicists." (Phys., 3.4; 203b)
17
stuff (Kirk, 120) which comprises all pairs of opposites that interchange "ac-
cording to necessity" (κατὰ τὸ χρεών), the fragment does not say explicitly. Al-
though for lack of evidence it is impossible to tell with precision what exactly
Anaximander meant by the ἄπειρον, Heidegger's ontological difference can cer-
tainly lay claim to be a plausible reading. Indeed in his later essays on Anaxi-
mander Heidegger changes the point of view he expressed in 1926, and takes
τὸ ἄπειρον precisely as Being in the sense of nothing: "The ἀρχή relates to being
(das Sein). Therefore the ἄπειρον cannot be a being (ein Seiendes)" (Grundbe-
griffe, 1941,110)16.

It is noteworthy that most scholars, including Heidegger, consider the first half
of the fragment concerning τὸ ἄπειρον as testimony or paraphrase, and acknowl-
edge only the second half that Simplicius calls "somewhat poetical"
(ποιητικωτέροις) as Anaximander's true words17. Heidegger follows Burnet in ex-
cluding everything that precedes "κατὰ τὸ χρεών" and goes beyond that by reject -
ing the final "κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν" as well18. The text that remains reads as
follows:
... κατὰ τὸ χρεών· διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας·
... according to necessity; for they pay one another punishment and penalty for
their injustice.

The basic interpretation of this excerpt can be relatively straightforward (see

Barnes19). Anaximander describes the universal interchangeability of opposites
in nature, e.g. day turns into night, hot into cold, wet into dry, and so forth. This
alternation is said to be determined by mutual retribution or punishment ( τίσιν).
This can be taken simply as a metaphor (hence the "somewhat poetic terms")
for the revertive nature of opposition. Thus, to give a plausible example, a dry
seed thrown into the earth rots and decays in order to produce life. The neces-
sity that guards the process is what ensures the balance of opposites since the
origin of these forces is the ἄπειρον, the source of all things, which includes all
opposites. This reading is relatively unproblematic. The one point of ambiguity

16 See also ‘Anaximander's Saying’, passim.

17 See also Kirk, Raven, Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (1983), 105-
108; C.H. Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology (1960), 166ff.
18 See ‘Anaximander's Saying’, 275-7.
19 Barnes on Anaximander in Philosophie grecque vol. 1.
18
is whether the opposites resolve into one another or into the ἄπειρον as the
grounding source that receives one opposite and discharges another. As we
shall see, Heidegger's ontological reflections form a peculiar middle-ground be-
tween these two readings.

Aristotle argued that Anaximander's opposites separate out of the ἄπειρον and
pay penalty to each other for their reciprocal impingement by lapsing back into
their source, so that "destruction of one thing is generation of another, pro-
vided the all is unlimited" (Phys. iii. 8; 208 a 8). The paradigm that emerges is
one of continuous interchange of opposites through the medium of a continuing
ground of change. "... Besides the contraries there is some third thing, the mat-
ter ... which admits of both contraries" (Metaph. xii. 2; 1069 b) and together
with them forms a holistic mixture (τό μίγμα). Kahn argued against this reading,
suggesting that the role of the ἄπειρον ends at its function as the inexhaustible
source for the opposites that resolve directly into each other without the need
of a third go-between element. The ἄπειρον is thus simply a kind of encapsulat-
ing framework, which "itself partially or wholly unknown, encloses from without
the body of the known world" (Allen, 116). Rather ironically, for all his rejection
of Aristotelian metaphysics, Heidegger's ontological difference is in tune pre-
cisely with Aristotle's interpretation.

Being (Sein) and beings (Seiende) have previously been described as two arms
of the same body. By this analogy the ontological relationship that Heidegger
draws describes a mutual resolvability of beings (φύσις) and nothing. Aristotle's
outlook on Anaximander offers a strikingly similar account: "so not only is it
very properly admitted that all things are generated from not-being [ ἐκ μὴ ὄντος],
but also that they all come from being: — potentially from being, actually from
not-being; and this is the unity of Anaxagoras (for this is better than to say that
all things exist together [ὁμοῦ πάντα]), and it is the mixture [ μίγμα] of Empedokles
and Anaximandros." (Metaph. xii, 1069 b18-20). Although unlike Aristotle Hei-
degger limits the make up of Anaximander's formula to just two opposing ele-
ments (and in this is closer to the duality of opposition suggested by Kahn), the
logic behind their models is the same. According to Aristotle, opposites resolve

19
into their original source to be regenerated; according to Heidegger the one in-
tegral Seiende resolves into and is wrested out of its only possible opposite -
Sein, or nothing. Heidegger's ontological theory can thus be found to relate to a
well-established Aristotelian tradition of reading Anaximander, which may ap-
pear disconcerting at a first glance, but, given Heidegger's Jesuit background,
is not so astonishing after all.

Overall, therefore, Heidegger's interpretation of the first of the "inceptual"

thinkers is plausible enough. When, however, one begins to delve into the par-
ticulars of his analysis, one may easily get lost in arguments that do not appear
altogether convincing. Here is Heidegger's own translation of the fragment:
... along the line of usage; for they let order [δίκην] and reck20 [τίσιν] belong to one
another (in the surmounting) of disorder [τῆς ἀδικίας] (Anax., 280)

The translation of "δίκη" as "order" and "ἀδικία" as "dis-order" should not require
too much explanation, as the jump from "justice" to "order" is not a problematic
one. Unfortunately one could not say the same about the translation of " τὸ
χρεών" as "usage", or of "τίσις" as "reck". Both these renderings appear to be
somewhat laboured if not far-fetched.

Heidegger points out that the original meaning of τίσις is "esteem", and "to es-
teem something means to pay heed to it and therefore find satisfaction in what
is estimable in it" (Anax., 270). By extension esteem can mean consideration or
"reck" (Ruch). When beings of the totality of what is present let order and reck
"belong to one another" they "let one thing belong to another [by showing] con-
sideration toward each other" (Anax., 271). The meaning of this postulation is
not entirely clear in the context of ‘Anaximander's Saying’. Most likely it is con-
nected to Heidegger's notion of persistence in "presencing", i.e. endurance of
beings that are present, each in its own "unconcealment" peculiar to itself. Hei-
degger believed that early Greeks understood beings as "taking and maintain-
ing a stand” (Intr., 63) in their individual limits (πέρας) that determine their indi-
vidual meanings, allowing each thing to be what it is. "The end [ telos] and limit

20 The unusual English word “reck” reflects the equally unusual German word
“Ruch”.
20
complete what stands there in itself, preventing it from slipping back into an
undifferentiated muddle ... Limit allows difference to take a stand, and so
makes room for identity and constancy" (Fried, 129).

Indeed the notion of persistence in limit can be traced through early Greek
philosophers to Aristotle. Parmenides defined "what is" as being held together
“in strong fetters” by justice, which “imprisons it in the bondage of a limit”
(B8,31). He envisaged the one (ἕν) as a self-contained, all-encompassing entity,
which marks its own limit and fills up the totality of space, being itself the to-
tality of existence. “Since now its limit is ultimate, being is in a state of perfec-
tion (τετελεσμένον ἐστί) from every viewpoint” (B8,42-3). In Heraclitus the idea of
limit as such is not as prominent, but does appear to play a similar role. The
sun, that "overseer and sentinel of cycles" (D. 100, M. 64), "will not transgress
his measures. If he does, the Furies, ministers of justice, will find him out"
(D.94, M.52). In Aristotle persistence is recognised as the key characteristic of
the actual as opposed to the potential: "Further, something [that is in actuality]
persists [ὑπομένει], whereas the contrary [not-being] does not persist." ( Metaph.,
xii, 1069 b8).

Although persistence in "presencing" is in its own right a topic that deserves

separate treatment, at this point we must return to Anaximander's "τίσις" as
"reck". If each being that is present remains unconcealed by virtue of persis-
tence in the bounds of its "unconcealment", by letting "order and reck belong
to one another" beings show consideration for each other's limits and thus pre-
serve their identities. Even if, to start with, we were prepared to render "τίσις"
as "reck", the question remains: could any of these arguments follow directly
from Anaximander's saying? Or are they more likely to make sense exclusively
within the context of Heidegger's own ontological theory? Heidegger's linguis-
tic inventions certainly do not come across as particularly obvious or straight-
forward. While "τίσις" on its own can on a rare occasion mean "esteem"21, the
phrase "τίσιν δοῦναί τινος" is an idiomatic, fixed expression that means to "suffer

21 LSJ: "power to repay or requite, both in bad and good sense", φίλων Thgn.
337, cf. 345. The connection is acceptable: if you have the “power to requite”
someone in “the good sense”, you are, by extension, esteeming that person.
21
punishment for an act" (LSJ). "διδόναι γὰρ ... τίσιν ... τῆς ἀδικίας" neatly corresponds
to this well-established formula and should, therefore, in all likelihood be trans-
lated as "they suffer ... punishment ... for injustice".

The same line of criticism can be applied to Heidegger's translation of " κατὰ τὸ
χρεών". Heidegger traces the etymology of "τὸ χρεών" back to the verb χράω (I
use), which, through its connection to ἡ χείρ, can mean "to place in someone's
hands, to hand over and deliver, to let something belong to someone" ( Anax.
276). With this etymology in mind, Heidegger assigns to "τὸ χρεών" by far the
most important role in the ontological equation: it is "the handing over of pres-
encing, a handing over which hands out presencing to what is present, and
therefore keeps in hand, in other words, preserves in presencing, what is
present as such" (Ibid.). At the same time this linguistic ploy is supported from
the perspective of the word "usage" itself. Heidegger argues that one of the
secondary meanings of "to use" is "to enjoy", not in the sense of "consume and
gobble up" (Ibid., 277) but in the sense of "to have present". To support this
reading he quotes St. Augustine's De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae: "Quid enim
est aliud quod dicimus frui, nisi praesto habere, quod diligis? " (lib. I c. 3). Thus
praesto habere, equivalent to ὑπόκειμαι in Greek, is presented as the defining
characteristic of the true nature of the verb "to enjoy".

What emerges in the end is a combination of "usage" as "handing over" (χράω)

and as "having present" (praesto habeo). Heidegger's "τὸ χρεών" can therefore
be described as the common denominator of the relationship between Being
and beings. It is what allows concealment out of unconcealment to take place
by handing over presencing. And, as we have seen already, to hand out pres-
encing is the same as to distribute individual boundaries or limits to individual
beings, since being present is persisting in limit (πέρας). In the final stage of this
overwhelming series of arguments Heidegger concludes that Anaximander's "τὸ
χρεών" is essentially tantamount to "τὸ ἄπειρον", because as the dispenser of
boundaries it must itself be boundless (ἄ-πειρον, i.e. without πέρας):
Usage ... [disposes] order and so containing that which presences, hands out
boundaries. As τὸ χρεών, therefore, it is at the same time τὸ ἄπειρον, that which is

22
 without boundaries since its essence consists in sending the boundary of the
while to that which presences awhile. (Anax., 277)

Without getting bogged down too much in the implications of this argument, let
us assess the premises. The etymological connection Heidegger draws be-
tween "χρεών" and "χράω" as "handing over" is not as obvious as he suggests.
The middle form of "χράω", "χράομαι"22, can indeed mean "to use", which is why
the translation of "χρεών" as "usage" does seem possible23. From "I use" to "I
hand over", however, there is quite a gap, which Heidegger does not explain be-
yond plainly stating it. Similarly, although the translation of "χράομαι" as "I en-
joy" is legitimate, the jump from "I enjoy" to "I make present", if at all possible,
requires further elaboration. The quotation from St. Augustine hardly works, as
it is torn out of context in a rather unjustified, ad hoc fashion. In this sentence
St. Augustine is reflecting on the way for humans to attain happiness ( beati-
tudo). Only by having what is best (id quod est hominis optimum) and enjoying
it can man be happy. Having present (praesto habere) things that are harmful
(si noxium sit), however, does not lead to happiness. "Praesto habere" in itself
is therefore not used as a qualifying characteristic of the act of enjoyment ("to
enjoy") in the way that Heidegger takes it. It is having the best ( optimum) thing
present that defines enjoyment according to this passage.

As in the case of "τίσις", therefore, we can see that Heidegger's reading of "τὸ
χρεών" is based more on his own philosophical arguments than on the actual
text of the fragment. His treatment of the Greek, though captivating in its origi-
nality, may often seem unjustified, as the etymological leaps that he makes are
rarely adequately developed. In spite of the fact, however, that Heidegger's lin-
guistic ingenuity can be found questionable, the general import of Anaximan-
der's saying, as we have seen earlier, can indeed be used to provide a plausible
paradigm for the logic behind the theory of ontological difference. A separate

22 According to LSJ the middle form χράομαι in the sense of "I use" is found in
Homer only once - "ἕξει μιν καὶ πέντε περιπλομένους ἐνιαυτοὺς χρεώμενος" (Il. 23.834). This is
interesting because Heidegger often refers to Homer as the poet of the First
Beginning.
23 In an article entitled "Heidegger and the Beginning of Metaphysics" Carol J.
White argues even against the simple etymological link between χρεών and χράω.
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology vol. 19, 1, 36.
23
study of the remaining two "inceptual" thinkers, Parmenides and Heraclitus,
would reveal that a very similar line of criticism can be applied in their cases
as well.

Heidegger's main achievement, therefore, lies not so much in his linguistic de-
construction of the Presocratic texts, as in the fact that he discerned certain
fundamental issues which these texts raise that have been altogether ignored
or misinterpreted by post-platonic philosophy. Heidegger showed that the Pre-
socratic discourse about the relationship between being and non-being can be
used to throw radically new light on the question of ontology. In his own words,
"only one question - why is there being and not non-being ( pourquoi ... у a-t-il de
l'étant et non pas rien?) - determined the fate of the Western world - first and
foremost through the answers to this question provided by the Presocratic
philosophers two and a half millennia ago." (L'Express, 1969. 20-26 Oct. 79-85)
By retracing the history of ontology to its roots he exposed the deficiency of
post-platonic philosophy, namely its failure to think the ontological difference,
that is the difference between Being and beings, and thus its construal of ‘Be-
ing’ either as one more being among others (e.g. God) or as the mere abstract
‘property’ which all beings instantiate. As a result of this fundamental failure
Western philosophy found itself forced into the impossible situation of prolifer-
ating complex but hopeless philosophical theories designed to ‘overcome’ a
gap (that between Being and beings) which, once it has opened, can never be
adequately bridged by further concepts or theories alone. Indeed the fact that
since Plato thinkers have not been able to achieve a consensus on what the in-
divisible ground of being is, speaks in support of Heidegger's views.

Furthermore, Heidegger claimed that ‘doing’ ontology was itself not correctly
understood as a purely theoretical activity, a deployment of concepts and theo-
ries of the usual kind, but rather as a different kind of activity altogether that is
prior to epistemology, phenomenology or any concept-based philosophical dis-
cipline of Western culture. How exactly to understand ‘ontologising’ in this new
and different way is not completely clear, and it seems that Heidegger himself
was not completely clear about it. Partly he thought that this should come as

24
no surprise. That which is to be completely different – in this case a kind of on-
tological thinking that would be utterly different from traditional theorising –
must of necessity be difficult to grasp. But although Heidegger gives no satis-
factory account, he does give a series of ‘pointers’ (Winke). The new ontologi-
cal thinking will be ‘like’ poetic saying (which is not conceptual), or ‘like’ the
building of a temple which gives new structure to a space, or ‘like’ religious
conversion, or ‘like’ the National Socialist project of exterminating the peoples
of Eastern Europe to make way for the opening up of new Lebenstraum for a
new German Reich. The last of these projects plays a less prominent part after
1945 in his discussion of what the new ‘ontological thinking’ will look like. Per-
haps the key to Heidegger lies in his emphasis on poetry as one of the few elu-
sive mediums for reflecting on the nature of Being without getting entangled in
conceptual thought. Whereas philosophers observe and explain being, poets re-
discover its very nature. "The voice of thought must be poetic because poetry
is the saying of truth, the saying of the unconcealedness of beings.” ( Language,
72.) Thus Heidegger's Being is in many ways comparable to the Heraclitean "or-
acle ... in Delphi [that] neither declares nor conceals, but gives a sign." (D. 93,
M. 14) By the same analogy, we can say that it is only by listening to the "lo-
gos" of Heidegger and not to the technical or linguistic side of his account that
we can properly understand his ontological theory.

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