Citation
Heidegger, Martin. Discourse on Thinking. 1959. Translated by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1966.
Abstract
“Martin Heidegger’s Discourse on Thinking which is translated here, was published in 1959. It comprises a statement of the point of view of his later thought. Since Heidegger’s later thought has evoked so much interest among philosophers and, in the last few years, theologians, it seems important to have significant examples of it available in English. Discourse on Thinking is a particularly good example for this purpose not only because it is so recent, but because of its format and style.”
Annotations
I. MEMORIAL ADDRESS
Heidegger takes the opportunity he has been given to honour Conradin Kreutzer to go off on his own ideas, just name-checking Kreutzer on either end of the address. His justification?
“In these sounds [Kreutzer’s compositions] the artist himself is present; for the master’s presence in the work is the only true presence. The greater the master, the more completely his person vanishes behind his work” (44).
The use of the terms work and presence in this vague statement signals some key themes of the thinking that Heidegger will undertake throughout the text.
Why must we think in the way that Heidegger requires of us?
“nowadays we take in everything in the quickest and cheapest way, only to forget it just as quickly, instantly” (45).
But we never lose our “capacity to think ... in thoughtlessness we let it lie fallow” (45).
“Still only that can lie fallow which in itself is a ground for growth, such as a field. An expressway, where nothing grows cannot be a fallow field.”
“growing thoughtlessness ... spring[s] from some process that gnaws at the very marrow of man today: man today is in flight from thinking” (45).
[This statement draws on the early concept of Dasein’s flight from himself, from his radical openness and freedom, into the world and the they. Sartre would also draw on this concept of flight for his discussion of bad faith. Now, this is not just a flight from Dasein’s openness but from his thinking].
“part of this flight is that man will neither see nor admit it” (45).
“whenever we plan, research, and organize, we always reckon with conditions that are given” (46).
[The given is what is present to us—thus harkening back to the first remarks on Kreutzer. What is is given for thought.]
“calculation is the mark of all thinking that plans and investigates ... Calculative thinking computes ... Calculative thinking never stops, never collects itself” (46).
But advocates of calculative thought say that “meditative thinking ... loses touch ... It profits nothing in carrying out practical affairs” (46).
[This is Heidegger’s purpose in linking thought with given and ground, with the earth. This will allow him to show that meditative thinking is in fact more primordial and more practical than calculative thinking.]
“meditative thinking does not just happen by itself ... it requires a greater effort [than calculative thinking]. It demands more practice. It is in need of even more delicate care ... it must also be able to bide its time, to await as does the farmer, whether the seed will come up and ripen” (46-47).
[This is key. The concept of awaiting will be discussed more fully in the “Conversation.” But here we see that the work and the presence is a ripening. It is not a finished, static thing, but a process, an emergence.]
“Yet anyone can follow the path of meditative thinking in his own manner and within his own limits” (47).
“It is enough if we dwell on what lies close and meditate on what is closest; upon that which concerns us, each one of us, here and now; here, on this patch of home ground; now, in the present hour of history” (47).
Heidegger then links all of this to the “Swabian land” where the memorial is taking place.
“does not the flourishing of any genuine work depend upon its roots in a native soil?” (47).
[From this, and the prior quote, we begin to see how the ripening of thought has roots and soil proper to it; this will be the ground spoken of above].
“For ... human work to flourish, man must be able to mount from the depth of his home ground up into the ether ... the open realm of the spirit” (47-48).
“Does man still dwell calmly between heaven and earth? ... Is there still a life-giving homeland in whose ground man may stand rooted, that is, be autochthonic?” (48).
[So where is the self-soil of man and his thought? Where is he a native? We will find that it is nowhere—which is the very clearing from which man flees].
We are “chained to radio and television ... the movies carry [us] off into uncommon, but often merely common, realms of the imagination, and give the illusion of a world that is no world” (48).
[Such is not the mounting up into the spirit that Heidegger desires].
The media is “closer” to man “than ... the tradition of his native world” (48).
“the rootedness, the autochthony, of man is threatened today at its core” (48-49).
“If this is so, can man, can man’s work in the future still be expected to thrive in the fertile ground of a homeland ... Or will everything now fall into the clutches of planning and calculation” (49)?
“The age that is now beginning has been called of late the atomic age. Its most conspicuous symbol is the atom bomb” (49).
[This is a point Baudrillard makes as well. He characterizes the “operation” of “simulation” as “nuclear and genetic” (2). Where age-old representation is grounded, the nuclear is suspended, it floats (32). Where the ground gathers, the nuclear disperses. It does not orient; it has no orientation. Where representation is a reference back, taking assurance from an origin, the nuclear is a “micromodel of control” that references only itself, in a web that becomes ever denser (35). For Baudrillard, “in this forking of the nuclear and the genetic ... ever principle of meaning is absorbed” (35).
Furthermore, the nuclear is an orbital concept. It brings together all people in a global mesh, a model, which is not a ground. Simulation is orbital: it “constitutes the genuine magnetic field of the event” (16).
Similarly, Berdyaev wrote in 1934 that technique “gives man a planetary feeling of the earth, very different from the one he experienced in former ages ... Theoretically, ... when the system of Copernicus superseded Ptolemy’s and, the infinity of worlds being discovered, the earth was no longer considered as the physical center of the universe” (208). The planetary feeling is the orbital, the nuclear. This is the logic of the atomic age.
As Flusser wrote in 1966, the reality of representation is gone: “The feeling of absurdity and the atomic mushroom are there to prove it.”]
“What is the ground that enabled modern technology to discover and set free new energies in nature?” (50).
“Nature becomes ... an energy source ... This relation of man to the world as such, in principle a technical one, developed in the seventeenth century first and only in Europe” (50).
[It culminated in the nuclear bomb.]
“The decisive question now runs: In what way can we tame and direct the unimaginably vast amounts of atomic energies, and so secure mankind against the danger that these gigantic energies suddenly ... break out somewhere ... and destroy everything” (51)?
“technological advance will move faster and faster and can never be stopped” (51).
This careening trajectory prevents us from thinking: “it is one thing to have heard and read ... it is another thing to understand ... to ponder” (52).
What “is threatened especially in the atomic age: the autochthony of the works of man” (53).
“even if the old rootedness is being lost in this age, may not a new ground and foundation be granted again to man, a foundation and ground out of which man’s nature and all his works can flourish in a new way even in the atomic age?” (53).
“What could the ground and foundation be for the new autochthony?” (53)
Heidegger begins along the way.
“the way to what is near is always the longest and thus the hardest for us humans. This way is the way of meditative thinking” (53).
“Meditative thinking demands of us that we engage ourselves with what at first sight does not go together at all” (53).
Need to think a new way of being with the technical that “does not affect our inner and real core” (54).
[Now we must be careful here not to fall into the trap of a substantial I-thing that is the “real core.” Heidegger does not think so; thinking is not such a thing. But the language here makes it easy to think so].
“Our relation to technology” requires a “comportment” which “expresses “yes” and at the same time “no””—a “releasement toward things” (54).
[Releasement = Gelassenheit. Used by mystics like Eckhart “in the sense of letting the world go and giving oneself to God” (Note 4)].
“Having this comportment we no longer view things only in a technical way” (54).
“There is then in all technical processes a meaning, not invented or made by us, which lays claim to what man does and leaves undone” (55).
[This is what Heidegger refers to as what is given, because it is not imposed by us, but it arises. The meaning is that for which we await, the emerging or outworking of what is in a specific presence].
“The meaning pervading technology hides itself” (55).
“such hidden meaning touches us everywhere in the world of technology” (55).
“That which shows itself and at the same time withdraws is the essential trait of what we call the mystery” (55).
[Thus, where the Vienna Circle thinks that ultimately no depth or mystery will remain obscure, Heidegger sees the mystery as foundational. The mystery is what is given, but the given is therefore mysterious in that it not only gives but withdraws].
So the “comportment” which is both yes and no, releasement, is an “openness to the mystery” (55).
“Releasement toward things and openness to the mystery belong together. They grant us the possibility of dwelling in the world in a totally different way. They promise us a new ground and foundation upon which we can stand and endure in the world of technology without being imperiled by it” (55).
[This comportment has strong ties to the early Heidegger, even though the language has changed. Releasement and openness are other ways of speaking of authenticity, which is a resolution in the face of one’s ownmost possibility (one’s death). Where the technique-infected being is entirely given over to technology (or the they) and is therefore inauthentic, the technique-releasing being can hold technology with an open hand as part of the mysterious whole that is the world-project in its unfolding, its coming to be and its withdrawing].
This is “a vision of a new autochthony which someday even might be fit to recapture the old and now rapidly disappearing autochthony in a changed form” (55).
Moving to conclude:
“In this dawning atomic age a far greater danger threatens—precisely when the danger of a third world war has been removed” (56).
[This is to say, Baudrillard’s deterrence. Simulation is a “deterring” of “every real process” (2). Disneyland is “a deterrence machine” (13). Crises and scandals are “scenarios of deterrence” (19). The “microscopic simulation” (ultimately penetrating to the genetic) is a “switch from the panoptic mechanism of surveillance ... to a system of deterrence” (29). “Nuclear suspension only serves to seal the trivialized system of deterrence that is at the heart of the media” (32). So the deterrence machine of the media is apotheosized by the nuclear. “Deterrence itself is the neutral, implosive violence of metastable systems or systems in involution” (32). “Deterrence is not a strategy, it circulates and is exchanged between nuclear protagonists exactly as is international capital in the orbital zone of monetary speculation whose fluctuations suffice to control all global exchanges” (33). So “deterrence by the orbital power” is “the nuclear or molecular code” (36). The “social order” is nothing but “self-deterrence” (39)].
“calculative thinking may someday come to be accepted and practiced as the only way of thinking” (56).
[Calculative thinking is the thinking of the nuclear and molecular codes].
The danger: “total thoughtlessness” (56).
[Individual conduct given over to molecular preprogramming; global conduct given over to nuclear deterrence].
In this “man would have denied and thrown away his own special nature—that he is a meditative being” (56).
“the issue is the saving of man’s essential nature” (56).
[Which, again, is not an I-thing].
“releasement toward things and openness to the mystery never happen of themselves. They do not befall us accidentally. Both flourish only through persistent, courageous thinking” (56).
And finally! He returns to Conradin Kreutzer. Oh right, I was commemorating him, wasn’t I?
So we must “respond ... by thinking of the origin of [Kreutzer’s] work, the life-giving powers of his Heuberg homeland” (56).
[Origin: thinking; homeland: man as thought].
“And it is we who think if we know ourselves here and now as the men who must find and prepare the way into the atomic age, through it and out of it” (56).
“If releasement toward things and openness to the mystery awaken within us, then we should arrive at a path that will lead to a new ground and foundation” (56-57).
[The path is the way].
“In that ground the creativity which produces lasting works could strike new roots” (57).
[Intimations of an autopoetic materialism here, a creative reality self-making of its ground, or in its ground. Perhaps].
II. CONVERSATION ON A COUNTRY PATH ABOUT THINKING
This dialogue was written prior to the Memorial Address, in 1944-45. In it, Heidegger follows the way, awaits the mystery, opening up some of these concepts only touched on in the Address.
The dialogue is set up as a conversation between a Scientist, a Scholar, and a Teacher. The scientist serves as the ignorant but insightful one; the scholar is there to provide academic context; the teacher is the Socratic figure.
“Scientist: ... the question concerning man’s nature is not a question about man” (58).
“Scientist: ... man’s nature is ever to be found by looking away from man” (58).
“Teacher: ... the nature of thinking, can be seen only by looking away from thinking” (58).
“Scholar: But thinking, understood in the traditional way, as re-presenting is a kind of willing; Kant, too, understands thinking this way when he characterizes it as spontaneity. To think is to will, and to will is to think” (59).
[Thinking = re-presenting = spontaneity = willing. This is the old formula for thought. Something is perceived, and then when one thinks about what one perceives, one is re-presenting it to oneself in one’s mind. But this is the “cabinet” or “theatre” metaphor of the mind that Heidegger has already repudiated in Being and Time].
“Teacher: ... [for] the nature of thinking ... I want non-willing” (59).
[So the question, then: what is a thinking that is not a willing?]
“Scholar: ... Non-willing means ... willingly to renounce willing ... non-willing ... remains absolutely outside any kind of will” (59).
[So two types of non-willing. Renouncing willing, which is a negating willing; and absolute non-willing, which is necessarily antecedent].
“Scientist: Am I right if I state the relation of the one sense of non-willing to the other as follows? You want a non-willing in the sense of a renouncing of willing, so that through this we may release, or at least prepare to release, ourselves to the sought-for essence of a thinking that is not a willing” (60).
[Heidegger’s Teacher gets excited at the Scientist’s insight. This is a hilarious staging of a conversation to make a point].
[Snarkiness aside, though: renunciation is a releasement to thinking (meditatively)].
“Scientist: That is succeeded in this [the lovely summation], was not my doing but that of the night having set in, which without forcing compels concentration” (60).
[The night is an important concept. We are moving away from the cave allegory, here, where the divine light is that which gives knowledge, but is also that which penetrates. This is, too, for Heidegger, a move away from the enlighting of truth that is the clearing of being. The night is also an important concept for Levinas].
“Scholar: It [the night] leaves us time for meditating by slowing down our pace” (60).
“Teacher: ... the unaccustomed task which consists in weaning ourselves from will” is difficult (60).
“Teacher: ... on our own we do not awaken releasement in ourselves” (61).
[Releasement is something given].
“Scientist: Thus releasement is effected from somewhere else” (61).
“Teacher: Not effected, but let in” (61).
“Scientist: ... [Releasement must be] a letting-be ... [that] is in no way a matter of weakly allowing things to slide and drift along” (61).
“Scholar: ... [It is] a higher acting” (61).
“Teacher: . . . which higher acting is yet no activity” (61).
“Scientist: ... beyond the distinction between activity and passivity” (61).
“Scholar: ... releasement does not belong to the domain of the will” (61).
“Scholar: ... what we have called releasement evidently does not mean casting off sinful selfishness and letting self-will go in favor of the divine will” (62).
“Scientist: ... What has releasement to do with thinking?” (62).
“Teacher: Nothing if we conceive thinking in the traditional way as re-presenting” (62).
“Teacher: We are to do nothing but wait” (62).
“Scientist: ... the horizon ... the field of vision ...” (63).
“Teacher: It goes beyond the appearance of the objects” (63).
[‘The horizon goes beyond the appearance of the objects.’ Which is pretty obvious. The horizon is the ground for the figure].
“Scholar: Just as transcendence passes beyond the perception of objects” (63).
“Teacher: Thus we determine what is called horizon and transcendence by means of this going beyond and passing beyond . . .” (64).
[If we think about this in terms of Merleau-Ponty and the figure-ground structure, we see that this transcendence remains in the world! The world contains the very structure of transcendence, is intratranscendental. Motricity, Merleau-Ponty writes, is bodily transcendence, a carrying outward of the person. So we think Heidegger here in fairly concrete terms].
“Teacher: ... the field of vision is something open, but its openness is not due to our looking” (64).
[Again, the open is given].
“Teacher: What is evident of the horizon, then, is but the side facing us of an openness which surrounds us; an openness which is filled with views of the appearances of what to our re-presenting are objects” (49).
[Profile and perspective, à la Merleau-Ponty. Perspective is an openness full of appearing].
“Scientist: ... the horizon is still something else besides a horizon. Yet after what has been said this something else is the other side of itself, and so the same as itself. You say that the horizon is the openness which surrounds us. But what is this openness as such, if we disregard that it can also appear as the horizon of our representing” (64).
[The horizon is only a side of the openness. It is something else. But this something else is just the other side, so it is itself. Heidegger is essentially increasing the dimensions of the ground from a flat canvas to an encompassing, surrounding, three-dimensional space].
“Teacher: It strikes me as something like a region” (65).
[That space is the region. Thus, the horizon is merely the perceptual ground of a perspective taken within the region].
“Scientist: ... what you call a region is exactly that which alone permits all sheltering” (65).
[Sheltering will be important either here or in QCT—can’t remember].
“Scholar: ... the region of all regions” (65).
“Teacher: You are right; what is in question is the region” (65).
[That is to say, the world in its intratranscendental unity].
“Scientist: ... its nature, its regioning” (65).
[That is, the nature of the region is regioning].
“Scholar: ... If now we comprehend the horizon through the region, we take the region itself as that which comes to meet us” (65).
“Teacher: ... we are searching for the nature, in itself, of the openness that surrounds us” (66).
“Scholar: In its [‘region’] older form it is “Gegnet” and means open expanse” (66).
“Teacher: The region gathers, just as if nothing were happening, each to each and each to all into an abiding, while resting in itself. Regioning is a gathering and re-sheltering for an expanded resting in an abiding” (66).
“Scholar: So the region itself is at once an expanse and an abiding. It abides into the expanse of resting. It expands into the abiding of what has freely turned toward itself. In view of this usage of the word, we may also say “that-which-regions” in place of the familiar “region”” (66).
[Region = Gegend. The older form, Gegnet, is therefore translated as ‘that-which-regions’].
“Teacher: That-which-regions is an abiding expanse which, gathering all, opens itself, so that in it openness is halted and held, letting everything merge in its own resting” (66).
“Scientist: I believe I see that-which-regions as withdrawing” (66).
“Scholar ... [because] things which appear in that-which-regions no longer have the character of objects” (67).
[They are appearances, or rather, appearings].
“Teacher: They not only no longer stand opposite us, they no longer stand at all” (67).
[We are not over and against a world. We are in the world. And nothing is self-subsisting (self-standing)].
“Teacher: [Things] rest in the return to the abiding of the expanse of their self-belonging” (67).
[We and things rest; we do not stand].
“Teacher: ... rest is the seat and the reign of all movement” (67).
[Heidegger employs a similar notion in On the Way to Language to link rhythm, rest, and structure].
“Scientist: ... I can’t quite re-present in my mind all that you say about region, expanse and abiding, and about return and resting” (67).
“Scholar: Probably it can’t be re-presented at all, in so far as in re-presenting everything has become an object that stands opposite us within a horizon” (67).
“Teacher ... Any description would reify it” (67).
“Scholar: Nevertheless it lets itself be named, and being named it can be thought about” (67).
“Teacher: ... we now are close to being released into the nature of thinking . . .
Scholar: . . . through waiting for its nature” (67).
“Scholar: ... waiting ... has no object” (68).
“Teacher: In waiting we leave open what we are waiting for” (68).
“Teacher: ... waiting releases itself into openness . . .
Scholar: . . . into the expanse of distance . . .
Teacher: . . . in whose nearness it finds the abiding in which it remains” (68).
“Scholar: Openness itself would be that for which we could do nothing but wait.
Scientist: But openness itself is that-which-regions . . .
Teacher: . . . into which we are released by way of waiting, when we think” (68).
“Scientist: Then thinking would be coming-into-the-nearness of distance” (68).
“Scientist: I only brought together that [this definition] which we have named, but without re-presenting anything to myself” (68).
“Teacher: Yet you have thought something” (68).
“Scientist: Or, really, waited for something without knowing for what” (68).
“Scientist: ... we all became more waitful along our path” (69).
“Teacher: ... a word does not and never can re-present anything; but signifies something, that is, shows something as abiding into the range of its expressibility” (69).
“Scientist: ... waiting moves into openness without re-presenting ... I tried to release myself purely to that-which-regions because that-which-regions is the opening of openness” (69).
“Scholar: ... the conversation brings us to that path which seems nothing else than releasement itself . . .
Teacher: . . . which is something like rest” (70).
“Teacher: Then releasement would be not only a path but a movement” (70).
“Scholar: Where does this strange path go? Where does the movement proper to it rest?” (70).
“Teacher: Where else but in that-which-regions” (70).
“Teacher: ... what we have designated by a word never has that word hanging on it like a name plate.
Scientist: Whatever we designate has been nameless before; this is true as well for what we name releasement. What do we go by, then, in order to estimate whether and how far the name is adequate?
Scholar: Or does all designation remain an arbitrary act with regard to the nameless?
Teacher: But is it really settled that there is the nameless at all? There is much which we often cannot say, but only because the name it has does not occur to us” (70).
[Some good philosophizing about language here].
“Teacher: Perhaps these names are not the result of designation. They are owed to a naming in which the namable, the name and the named occur altogether” (71).
“Scholar: ...the nature of words” (71).
“Teacher: I, as little as you, have done the designating” (71).
“Teacher: ... it is the region of the word, which is answerable to itself alone” (71).
[The word comes to us. The word is given].
“Scholar: So let’s not quarrel over who first introduced the name, releasement, let us consider only what it is we name by it.
Scientist: And that is waiting” (72).
“Scientist: Insofar as waiting relates to openness and openness is that-which-regions, we can say that waiting is a relation to that-which regions” (72).
“Teacher: ... the horizon is but the side of that-which-regions turned toward our re-presenting. That-which-regions surrounds us and reveals itself to us as the horizon” (73).
“Scholar: ... authentic releasement must be based upon that-which-regions, and must have received from it movement toward it” (73).
“Teacher: Releasement comes out of that-which-regions because in releasement man stays released to that-which-regions and, indeed, through this itself. He is released to it in his being, insofar as he originally belongs to it. He belongs to it insofar as he is appropriated initially to that-which-regions and, indeed, through this itself” (73).
“Scholar: ... waiting upon something is based on our belonging in that upon which we wait” (74).
“Teacher: Out of the experience of an in relation to just such waiting upon the opening of that-which-regions, waiting came to be spoken of as releasement” (74).
“Scientist: ... thinking changes in releasement from such a re-presenting to waiting upon that-which-regions” (74).
“Teacher: ... the nature of thinking lies ... in the regioning of releasement by that-which-regions” (74).
“Scholar: Thinking is releasement to that-which-regions because its nature lies in the regioning of releasement” (74).
“Scholar: ... wait upon the regioning of that-which-regions, so that this releases our nature into that-which-regions, and so into belonging to it” (75).
“Teacher: But if we are already appropriated to that-which-regions?
Scientist: What good does that do us if we aren’t truly appropriated?
Scholar: Thus we are and we are not.
Scientist: Again this restless to and fro between yes and no.
Scholar: We are suspended as it were between the two.
Teacher: Yet our stand in this betweenness is waiting” (75).
[As in the Memorial Address, releasement is the comportment of yes and no].
“Scholar: ... that-which-regions also makes things endure in the abiding expanse” (75).
“Scholar: ... regioning of that-which-regions with respect to things ...
Scientist: ... [is not] regioning with respect to man” (75).
[So what is it?]
“Scholar: ... the relation between that-which-regions and releasement, if it can still be considered a relation, can be thought of neither as ontic nor as ontological . . .
Teacher: . . . but only as regioning.
Scientist: Similarly, also, the relation between that-which-regions and the thing is neither a connection of cause to effect, nor the transcendental-horizon relation; and hence neither an ontic nor an ontological relation” (77).
“Scholar: Therefore, it is best called the determining” (77).
[In Merleau-Ponty, focus].
“Scientist: ... the relation of man to the thing ... [as the] relation between the ego and the object, the often mentioned subject-object relation ... is apparently only an historical variation of the relation of man to the thing, so far as things can become objects . . .” (77-78).
“Scientist: ... In the relation between ego and object there is concealed something historical, something which belongs to the history of man’s nature” (78).
“Teacher: ... from what we call that-which-regions and its regioning, does the history you presage become the history of that-which-regions” (78).
“Scientist: ... The program of mathematics and the experiment are grounded in the relation of man as ego to the thing as object” (79).
[Calculative thinking].
“Teacher: ... a history which does not consist in the happenings and deeds of the world” (79).
“Teacher: The historical rests in that-which-regions, and in what occurs as that-which-regions. It rests in what, coming to pass in man, regions him into his nature” (79).
“Scientist: ... we can do nothing but wait for man’s nature” (79).
“Teacher: Wait in a releasement through which we belong to that-which-regions, which still conceals its own nature” (79).
“Scholar: We presage releasement to that-which-regions as the sought-for nature of thinking” (79).
“Scientist: Releasement is indeed the release of oneself from transcendental re-presentation and so a relinquishing of the willing of a horizon” (79-80).
[That is, the release of the transcendental signified].
“Scholar: ... regioning ... [is] alien ... to anything pertaining to the will” (80).
“Teacher: For every will wants to actualize, and to have actuality as its element” (80).
“Scientist: Someone who heard us say this could easily get the impression that releasement floats in the realm of unreality and so in nothingness, and, lacking all power of action, is a will-less letting in of everything and, basically, the denial of the will to live!” (80).
[That is, accusations of relativity and nihilism].
“Scholar: ... one needs to understand “resolve” as it is understood in Being and Time: as the opening of man particularly undertaken by him for openness . . .
Teacher: . . . which we think of as that-which-regions” (81).
“Scholar: .… that-which-regions ... is presumably the hidden coming forth of this nature [of truth as a dis-closure and recovery]” (81).
“Scientist: ... the nature of thinking ... would be a resolve for the coming forth of truth’s nature” (81).
“Teacher ... steadfastness hidden in releasement ... in the fact that releasement becomes increasingly clearer about its inner nature and, being steadfast, stands within this” (81).
“Teacher: Releasement, thus composedly steadfast, would be a receiving of the regioning of that-which-regions” (81).
“Scientist: ... this steadfastness ... still lacks a name” (81).
“Scholar: Perhaps the word “in-dwelling” could name some of this” (81).
“Teacher: ... in-dwelling ... the real nature of the spontaneity of thinking” (82).
“Scholar: ... thinking would be commemoration, akin to what is noble”
“Teacher: ... noble-mindedness itself” (82).
“Scientist: It seems to me that this unbelievable night entices you both to exult” (82).
[Again, the night].
“Teacher: ... exulting in waiting ... become more waitful and more void” (82).
“Scholar: Apparently emptier, but richer in contingencies” (82).
“Scholar: Noble is what has origins” (82).
“Teacher: ... [nobility is what] abides in the origins of its nature” (82).
“Scientist: ... man in his very nature belongs to that-which-regions” (82).
“Scholar: ... [he does so] prior to everything” (85).
“Scientist: “The prior, of which we really can not think . . .
Teacher: . . . because the nature of thinking begins there” (83).
“Scientist: Thus man’s nature is released to that-which-regions in what is prior to thought” (83).
“Scholar: Evidently the nature of man is released to that-which-regions because this belongs to it essentially, that without man that-which-regions can not be coming forth of all natures, as it is” (83).
“Teacher: It cannot be conceived at all so long as we want to re-present it to ourselves, that is, forcibly bring before ourselves an objectively given relation between an object called “man” and an object called “that-which-regions” (83).
“Scientist: ... that-which-regions as the hidden nature of truth ... If ... we say truth in place of that-which-regions, then the statement of the relation of human nature to that-which-regions is this: human nature is given over to truth, because truth needs man. Yet [is not] ... truth ... independent of man?” (84).
“Teacher: ... man of himself has no power over truth and it remains independent of him. Truth’s nature can come forth independently of man only because the nature of man ... is used by that-which-regions in regioning both with respect to mana and to sustain determining. Evidently truth’s independence from man is a relation to human nature, a relation which rests on the regioining of human nature into that-which-regions” (84).
“Scholar: ... then man, as in-dwelling in releasement to that-which-regions, would abide in the origin of his nature ... man is he who is made use of for the nature of truth. And so, abiding in his origin, man would be drawn to what is noble in his nature” (85).
“Scholar: So if that-which-regions were the abiding expanse, patience would extend the furthest—even to the expanse of the abiding, because it can wait the longest” (85).
“Teacher: A patient noble-mindedness would be pure resting in itself of that willing, which, renouncing willing, has released itself to what is not will” (85).
“Scholar: Noble-mindedness would be the nature of thinking and thereby of thanking” (85).
[Thanks for the given origin].
“Scientist: But that-which-regions and its nature can’t really be two different things—if we may speaks here of things at all” (86).
“Teacher: ... we are coming near to and so at the same time remaining distant from that-which-regions” (86).
“Scientist: Then what is that nearness and distance within which that-which-regions opens up and veils itself, approaches and withdraws” (86).
“Scholar: This nearness and distance can be nothing outside that-which-regions” (86).
“Teacher: Because that-which regions regions all, gathering everything together and letting everything return to itself, to rest in its own identity” (86).
“Scientist: Then that-which-regions itself would be nearing and distancing” (86).
“Scholar: That-which-regions itself would be the nearness of distance, and the distance of nearness . . .
Scientist: . . . not ... dialectically . . .
Teacher: . . . but how?” (86).
“Scholar: ... Heraclitus’ word ... it stands alone ... Fragment 122 ... one can do hardly anything with a single word ... [but it might serve for a word other than dialectically]: [‘Anchivasii—which translates to anxiety in GT] ... The Greek word translates as “going toward”” (88).
“Teacher: ... [So the] nature of thinking (that in-dwelling releasement to that-which-regions) which is the essentially human relation to that-which-regions ... [is] the nearness of distance,” and this nearness is the towardness of anxiety (87).
“Scientist: ... waiting is really almost a counter-movement to going toward.
Scholar: Not to say a counter-rest.
Teacher: Or simply rest” (89).
“Scholar: Translated literally it says “going near” (89).
“Teacher: Perhaps we could think of it also as: “moving-into-nearness”?” (89).
“Scholar: ... The word could ... be the name for our walk today along this country path” (89).
“Teacher: Which guided us deep into the night . . .
Scientist: . . . that gleams ever more splendidly . . .
Scholar: . . . and overwhelms the stars . . .
Teacher: . . . because it nears their distances in the heavens . . .
Scientist: . . . at least for the naïve observer, although not for the exact scientist.
Teacher: Ever to the child in man, night neighbors the stars.
Scholar: She binds together without seam or edge or thread.
Scientist: She neighbors; because she works only with nearness.
Scholar: If she ever works rather than rests . . .
Teacher: . . . while wondering upon the depths of the height
...
Teacher: . . . from whence we are called” (89-90).