Being at the Beginning - Heidegger's Interpretation of Heraclitus Pt 2

III. Fuv s iV as the unproduced truth Two further aspects of Heidegger's interpretation of Heraclitus' experience of fuvsiV warrant consideration, not least because they have a particular bearing on what he takes to be Plato's departure from this experience. The first concerns Heraclitus' remark that the kovsmoV is not produced, either by gods or humans (Fragment 30). As noted above, Heidegger glosses this remark in terms of the ontological difference such that gods and humans are beings (Seiendes) in contrast to the kovsmoV. For Heidegger, this remark also underscores what he interprets as Heraclitus' insight that being itself lies beyond all human caprice or arbitrariness; in contrast to beings, fuvsiV is not itself something that can be produced or, in a certain sense, even manipulated. Heidegger's concurrence with this insight explains why according the highest level of being to humanity is, in his view, tantamount to nihilism (VS 131f/FS 77). But, taken together with Fragment 16 ("how might someone be concealed from it?"), the observation that being cannot be produced does not mean that being is opaque to gods and humans or far from them. To the contrary, hearkening back again – albeit with a marked difference – to the language of his earlier existential analysis, Heidegger glosses the "someone" (in Fragment 16) as ek-sistent, as herself emerging and standing out into the clearing, comporting herself to the emerging fuvsiV from which she cannot be concealed. The shift from the center of gravity in the existential analysis to that of this Heraclitus interpretation is noteworthy. In Sein und Zeit Heidegger declares that Dasein is illumined (gelichtet), but such that it is itself the clearing. In the Heraclitus lectures Heidegger observes that the emerging someone who comports herself towards the emerging fuvsiV "stands out into the clearing."41 This reference to the clearing and our place within it introduces the final aspect of Heidegger's reading of the Heraclitean fuvsiV, namely, its relation to ajlhvqeia. Heidegger insists that Heraclitus experiences fuvsiV in a way that is intimately related to the meaning of ajlhvqeia, namely, with reference to those to whom fuvsiV manifests and conceals itself. Thus, as the "primordially unifying ground," ajlhvqeia holds sway, Heidegger contends, in the essence of fuvsiV as it does in the essence of those – Gods and humans – who correspond to fuvsiV by way of unconcealing (entbergend) and by opening themselves up (Sicheröffnen)(GA 55: 173f). Heidegger makes no pretense here that Heraclitus explicitly says as much; it also remains unsaid, Heidegger adds, by Anaximander and Parmenides. But he regards the fact that it is not said as anything but a strike against his interpretation. The fact that ajlhvqeia, as he interprets it, remains unsaid signals that it is the phenomenon "from which or on the basis of which the thinking at the beginning speaks" (aus dem her das anfängliche Denken spricht) (GA 55: 174). Heidegger finds particular confirmation of this signal in his readings of Fragments 16 and 123. While Fragment 16, it may be recalled, is ostensibly about fuvsiV on Heidegger's reading, the depiction of it as the ever-emerging or, more precisely, "never going-under" and the plaintive question: "Who can hide from this?" clearly trade on the sense of ajlhvqeia as unhiddenness. However, just as it would be a mistake – an ontotheological mistake – to understand fuvsiV here as some entity (Seiendes) or even beings as a whole (das Seiende im ganzen) constantly on hand, apart from Dasein, so, too, it would be a mistake – an alethiotheological mistake – to understand ajlhvqeia here (a) as sheer and exhaustive presencing, devoid of any absence or (b) apart from those to/from it is present/absent. Contrary to (a), the unhiddenness of fuvsiV is in constant interplay with hiddenness as its very condition. The fact that fuvsiV needs and thus affords absence is precisely confirmed by Heidegger's interpretation of Fragment 123 (fuvsiV kruvptesqai filei:), as noted above. So, too, contrary to (b), Heraclitus himself emphasizes that no one can hide from it. Accordingly, since "ajlhvqeia is, as the name says, not pure openness but the unconcealment of the self-concealing," it is the name for "the essential beginning of fuvsiV itself and the gods and humans belonging to it" (GA 55: 175). Thus, if the experience of being at the beginning is the experience of fuvsiV (genitivus objectivus), it is no less the experience of ajlhvqeia (genitivus appositivus). Conclusion: from fuv s iV to ij d ev a How, on Heidegger's view, does Plato take up but fundamentally transform Heraclitus' understanding of fuvvsiV or (as Heidegger puts it) his understanding of being as fuvvsiV (VA 255/EGT 107)? Plato presupposes that to be is naturally (i.e., in accordance with the very meaning of being, i.e., kata; fuvsin) to be unhidden and, indeed, that the ijdeva is the really real (to; o[ntwV o[n) precisely as what is more unhidden than what it illuminates, indeed, the most unhidden (ajlhqinovn) and ever so. This presupposition echoes precisely the thought – or at least part of the thought – expressed by Heraclitus in Fragment 16 that Heidegger takes as a gloss on fuvsiV. Herein lies a central reason for Heidegger's contention that Plato's interpretation of being presupposes the Greek experience of o[n as fuvsiV. Yet even as Plato at one level supposes this understanding of being as fuvsiV, at another level he re-interprets being in terms of the ijdeva that illuminates things, enabling them to be seeable and thus to be.42 The primordial significance of ajlhvqeia gives way to the ijdeva as something always unhidden relative to ijdei:n, a perceiving, albeit in the sense of noei:n, qewrei:n. Through this subordination of ajlhvqeia to the ijdeva, it devolves into the alignment (oJmoivwsiV) of something perceived with a perceiver and, ultimately, the correctness of an assertion about them. By way of conclusion, I shall try to put some flesh on these bare-boned claims. In Heidegger's 1931/32 lectures on Plato, he emphasizes that the Platonic ijdeva is reducible neither to the particular being it illuminates (the object perceived) nor to the subject who perceives thanks to its illumination. 43 Exploiting the analogy that Plato himself draws between fw:V and ijdeva, Heidegger construes the idea as what, like light, lets us see what an entity is, "allowing it, as it were, to come to us."44 But the ideas can "let things through" only thanks to being seen in some way themselves.45 "But both, the seen as such and the way of looking, together belong to the fact that an unhiddenness of entities emerges, that is to say, that truth happens."46 This reference to the happening of truth and the emergence of unhiddenness hearkens back to the sense of ajlhvqeia that Heidegger identifies as a metonym for fuvsiV in Heraclitus. On Heidegger's reading, as we saw above, Heraclitus understands fuvsiV as the hidden unhiddenness of things that supposes hiddenness and can be equated with being as opposed to beings. The basic experience of truth is the experience of fuvsiV as "the never going under" such that no one can hide from it but, nonetheless, "everemerging" in a way that favors hiddenness. While Plato's treatment of being and truth in terms of ijdeva draws, in the senses suggested, upon the basic experience of fuvsiV and ajlhvqeia announced by Heraclitus, Heidegger finds clear signals that this basic experience begins to fade (schwinden) in Plato's thinking. Heidegger sums up the two most important signals in his observation "that Plato already construes ajlhvqeia as something that pertains to beings, – in such a way that beings themselves are addressed as unhidden, that beings and unhidden are lumped together [in eins gesetzt], and that the question of the unhiddenness as such is not alive at all" (GA 34: 123f/ET 89f). The two signals mentioned here are complementary, i.e., the construal of ajlhvqeia solely in terms of beings and the obliviousness to the question of the meaning of ajlhvqeia as such. As for the latter signal, the evidence that unhiddenness is not questioned can be found in the fact that hiddenness is not questioned. Again, Plato presupposes this very understanding, since he addresses what is unhidden or beings insofar as they are unhidden. Yet as he focuses on what is unhidden, i.e., beings insofar as they are unhidden, he does not call into question, let alone, address unhiddenness itself, which would entail examination of hiddenness as well. "Precisely the absence of the question of hiddenness as such is the decisive evidence for the already starting ineffectiveness of the unhiddenness in the strict sense" (GA 34: 125/ET 91). In his early lectures on the Cave Allegory, Heidegger makes specific note of Plato's departure from Heraclitus in this regard. But if hiddenness is not seized upon primordially and entirely, then unhiddenness cannot be correctly conceived. And yet Plato treats of ajlhvqeia in his critical confrontation with illusion! But that can only mean then that the cave allegory treats, to be sure, of ajlhvqeia, but not such that it would, in its essence, come to light primordially – in the position-of-the-struggle against the kruvptesqai filei: that is said of fuvsiV (of being), hence, against hiddenness in general and not only against the false, the illusion. But if this stands as such, then in Plato the basic experience out of which the word aj-lhvqeia sprung is already fading (GA 34: 93/ET 67). In these lectures in the Cave Allegory as in the Beiträge, Heidegger adds that Plato's tendency to construe ajlhvqeia in terms of light is part and parcel of his obliviousness to hiddenness supposed by it: "And because the ajlhvqeia thus becomes fw:V, the character of the a-privative also gets lost" (GA 65: 332/CPh 233). Heidegger also locates the onset of the transformation of truth into correctness in Plato's account of ajlhvqeia in terms of the illuminating ijdeva. Insofar as beings can be seen – and thus can be said to be – thanks to the ijdeva, "the brightness of the ijdeva is the yoke, sugovn although characteristically this is never articulated" (GA 65: 335/CPh 234f). Plato construes truth, at least sometimes, with the way the brightnesss of the ijdeva yokes subject and object. In this way he subordinates ajlhvqeia to the ijdeva – the fatal move that forfeits the primordial sense of ajlhvqeia, epitomized by the Heraclitean fuvsiV, and opens the way to conceiving truth as the correspondence between subject and object, perception and perceiver, sentence and its reference. "For Plato ijdeva moves above ajlhvqeia because the seeability [Sichtsamkeit] becomes essential for ijdei:n (yuvch) and not the unconcealing as pre-vailing of be-ing [Wesung des Seyns]" (GA 34: 99n2/ET 84n2).47 As noted above, the other signal of Plato's departure from Heraclitus in Heidegger's eyes is Plato's confinement of the discussion of ajlhvqeia to the realm of beings, indeed, to such an extent that the ijdeva is itself a particular being.48 Because Plato restricts truth to the truth of beings, he omits consideration of the truth of being itself. From this vantage point, Plato's proclivity to focus on what is unhidden, even what is most unhidden, i.e., what unhiddenness (pre-eminently) pertains to, at the expense of unhiddenness itself, signals a failure to attend to the ontological difference between beings and being. Were Plato to have remained closer to Heraclitus' lead and tried to say what unhiddenness (ajlhvqeia, being) itself is, he would have had to come to terms with the significance of 'hiddenness.' For Heidegger, then, Plato's crucial misstep, his departure from Heraclitus consists in taking unhiddenness (ajlhvqeia) for granted as the illuminating look (the ijdeva, ei\doV) of beings and, indeed, a look that is itself another being, rather than as the unhiddenness of the self-concealing of fuvsiV. FuvsiV is not the same as Ereignis, to be sure. But to think being at the beginning – and, not least, the movement and underlying hiddenness it signals – is a first step towards thinking the history of be-ing and, thereby, recognizing and being open to its end (Untergang).49 1 Walter Schulz, "...Als ob Heraklit daneben steht" in: Erinnerung an Martin Heidegger, ed. Günther Neske (Pfullingen: Neske, 1977), 228; Martin Buber, Briefwechsel, Band 3 (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1975), 291: "...obwohl ich mich...dem Heraklit nahe fühle, den Heidegger wie sein Vater behandelt (ich halte Heideggers HeraklitInterpretation für absolut falsch)." On Heidegger's decision to maintain the engagement with Greek thinkers, called for by – or even regardless of – the project of SZ, see Rudolf Bultmann/Martin Heidegger, Briefwechsel 1925-1975, herausgegeben von Andreas Großmann und Chistof Landmesser (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2009), 190 and Hans-Georg Gadamer, Heideggers Wege in: Gesammelte Werke 3 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1987), 287. See, too, Otto Pöggeler, Neue Wege mit Heidegger (München: Alber, 1992), 178 . 2 3 See Thomas Sheehan's essay "Facticity and Ereignis" in this collection. GA 70: 21: "Erst in der Überwindung des Seyns selbst sogar ist die Überwindung der Metaphysik ereignet." In this same context, it should be noted that Heidegger, by way of qualification, adds that what needs to be ventured is the Verwindung des Seyns and that Verwindung is more originary (anfänglich) than all Überwindung. Ibid., "Die Verwindung des Seyns enthält die Gewähr der eigentlichen, d.h. anfänglichen Fragwürdigkeit des Seyns. Die Verwindung ist nicht Entwürdigung des Seyns, sondern die letzte Würdigung." 4 Thinking this history of be-ing is difficult since it runs counter to customary patterns of explanation, causal and/or chronological, and it runs counter because, unlike anything else, it can be grounded neither in any entity nor in any account of what it means for any entity to be. The singular difficulty is thinking this history of be-ing (Seynsgeschichte) that grounds the meaning of any entity's coming to be, i.e., grounds the being of beings. GA 65: 297, 303f/CPh 209, 214ff. For a review of the senses of Ereignis, the event of appropriation discussed in this paragraph, and its relation to Seyn, see Richard Polt, The Emergency of Being: On Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006), 81ff. 5 GA 55: 113: “Seit Platon, d. h. seitdem die Metaphysik beginnt,….”; ibid., 56f. 6 Similarly, “since Plato” aletheia stands as the bright light in which entities stand, their visibility as their presence, but in the process also yoking them to perceivers and thereby yoking itself to correctness (GA 65: 333/CPh 233f); for other such remarks on developments "since Plato," see GA 65: 453, 457, 480/CPh 319, 322, 338. 7 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Free Press, 1969), 53: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” 8 Heidegger states explicitly that the thought of Ereignis does not belong to Greek thinking and, perhaps not surprisingly, he characterizes fuvsiV as o[n, (even if it is thought with the emphasis on ei\nai), and translates it as Sein, not Seyn; see VS 104/FS 61: "Mit dem Ereignis wird nicht mehr griechisch gedacht"; GA 55: 73-84. See, too, Thomas Sheehan, "Kehre and Ereignis: A Prolegomenon to Introduction to Metaphysics," in A Companion to Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics, edited by Richard Polt and Gregory Fried (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 14f; and Richard Polt, The Emergency of Being, 85n117. 9 GA 65: 126f, 184, 189-200, 222, 351, 381, 386, 425f, 457, 483/CPh 88, 129, 133-139, 155, 245, 266, 270, 300, 322, 340. 10 "Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit" first appears in Geistige Überlieferung, das zweite Jahrbuch (Berlin: Helmut Küpper, 1942), 96-124. However, already in his 1931/32 lectures on Plato's Cave Allegory, Heidegger registers the importance of Heraclitus' observations regarding fuvsiV in this connection; see GA 34: 93/ET 67. 11 As do Hölderlin, Eckhart, and Hegel, Heidegger observes in the winter semester, 1934/35 (GA 39: 134). In both semesters prior to these lectures on Hölderlin's Germanien, Heidegger comments on Heraclitean fragments; see GA 36/37 (winter semester 1933/34): 89-100; GA 38 (summer semester 1934): 112/LEL 93; This same engagement continues for the next decade, both in the Nietzsche lectures in the second half of the 1930s as well as in his 1943 and 1944 lectures (GA 55), the basis for the two Heraclitus essays "Logos" and "Aletheia", published in Vorträge und Aufsätze in 1954 (VA 199-221, 249-274/EGT 59-78, 102-123 ). See, too, the Heraclitus Seminar conducted by Eugen Fink and Heidegger in the Winter Semester, 1966-67 in GA 15. For Heidegger's assessment of the enormous influence of Heraclitus on Hölderlin and Nietzsche, see GA 39: 128, 133f. 12 On the change in the primacy Heidegger assigns to Heraclitus and Parmenides between the mid-1930s and his 1973 Zähringen seminar, see his response to Jean Beaufret in FS 81/VS 137f; see, too, Pöggeler, Neue Wege mit Heideggger, 180f, 247, 416 and GA 70: 21. 13 GA 65: 236/CPh 167; Pöggeler, Neue Wege mit Heideggger,182f: "Es ist ohne Zweifel so, daß Heideggers Heraklitaufsätze und auch die Parmenidesdeutung am klarsten Heideggers eigene späte Gedanken offenlegen." In his Heraclitus lectures Heidegger does not speak of the need for "another beginning," as he had in the Beiträge; see Heinrich Hüni, "Heraklit oder 'anderer Anfang'" in Heidegger und die Griechen, herausgegeben von Michael Steinmann Volume 8: Schriften der Heidegger Gesellschaft. (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2007), 43; on the first and the other 'beginning,' see Gregory Fried, Heidegger's Polemos: From Being to Politics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 116-135 and Daniela Vallega-Neu, Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy: An Introduction (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003), 61- 71, esp. 66f. 14 GA 55: 58, 100. On Heidegger's reading, the Heraclitean fuvsiV is also clearly distinct from the being of beings (Sein des Seienden) that supposedly forms the subject matter of classical metaphysics (inspired by Plato, drafted by Aristotle), i.e., an inquiry into whatit-means-to-be, guided by a particular conception of beings. But, as already noted (see n. 8 above), Heidegger nonetheless reads fuvsiV as an understanding of Sein, not Seyn. Still, though Heidegger finds more than an inkling of the difference between being and beings in Plato and Aristotle, he contends that Heraclitus' appreciation of its significance puts him at odds with his illustrious successors and the metaphysical tradition inaugurated by them. 15 Buber, for example, considered Heidegger's reading of Heraclitus "absolutely false"; see n. 1 above. Pöggeler, too, questions whether Heidegger's interpretation of Heraclitus and Lao Tse are "not simply, constructs through which he articulates his own thinking." Although Pöggeler initially criticizes the supposed implication of Heidegger's interpretation that there are no new and other beginnings than the Pre-socratics, he later backtracks, acknowledging that Heidegger, after beginning his discussion with the East Asian tradition, speaks of many paths. Nonetheless, Pöggeler continues to challenge the degree to which the interpretation corresponds to "what was actually thought on the coast of Asia minor"; Pöggeler, Neue Wege mit Heidegger, 179, 184, 293f, 412, 439. See below, however, Heidegger's response to the charge of anachronism. 16 For instructive treatments of Heidegger's treatments of Heraclitus, see Manfred S. Frings, "Heraclitus: Heidegger's Lecture Held at Freiburg University" in The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 21 (1990): 250- 264; Ivo De Gennaro, Logos-Heidegger liest Heraklit (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2001); and Parvis Emad, "Heidegger's Originary Reading of Heraclitus – Fragment 16" in Heidegger on Heraclitus: A New Reading, edited by Kenneth Maly and Parvis Emad (Lewiston/Queenston: Mellen, 1986), 103-120. 17 Given this interpretation of the original sense of fuvsiV, Heidegger cautions against anachronistically equating it with modern uses of ‘nature’ (GA 55: 101f). As Susan Schoenbohm puts it in a valuable gloss on Heidegger's interpretation of fuvsiV in the Introduction to Metaphysics): "Phusis is a name for the emerging of the originary difference of determination and no determination, the very occurrence of an articulation of a primordial difference between something and nothing"; Susan Schoenbohm, "Heidegger's Interpretation of Phusis" in: A Companion to Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics, edited by Richard Polt and Gregory Fried (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 149. 18 GA 55: 52f, 58, 85. Heidegger belabors the parallel ambiguity with to; o[n that has victimized metaphysical thinking; see GA 55: 71-80 (esp. 76f), 99f. 19 The positive formulation runs the risk of forfeiting the primordiality of the hiddenness, such that we take the ever-emerging sense of fuvsiV as privileging presence over absence; GA 55: 86f. A few years before the lectures on Heraclitus, Heidegger in fact ascribes to the to; mh; du:novn pote the springboard for the notion of constant presence (ajeiv der Beständigung); see GA 70: 86. This difference in emphasis, if not in the substance of the interpretation itself, suggests that Heidegger's interpretation of Heraclitus was anything but settled during this period; see n. 47 below. 20 GA 55: 87, 90, 101, 124; VA 261/EGT 112; see Schoenbohm, "Heidegger's Interpretation of Phusis," 153ff. 21 GA 55: 86; VA 262/EGT 112f; Heidegger cites, as an illuminating contrast, Clement of Alexandria's theological interpretation of to; mh; du:novn pote; see VA 251f /EGT 104f. 22 At times Heidegger gives a more qualified interpretation of Fragment 123, such that Aufgehen “stands in an essential relation” to Untergehen (GA 55: 125, 35). Mostly, however, Heidegger stresses the patent inconsistency of Fragment 123; in other words, he contends there is not merely a discrepancy between the subject and the predicate or an obscurity about the signified relationship, but an outright contradiction (GA 55: 110-116, 125f, 134ff). This construal is apt if the fragment is taken to mean that fuvsiV is not merely inclined to conceal itself, but does so as part of its very essence. (Analogously, we might say, for example, that an introvert likes to hide from others or a camouflaged soldier likes to conceal himself, where the phrase “likes to” supposes that both the introvert and the camouflaged soldier do what is essential for them.) It bears noting that in these passages, Heidegger is working to ward off three misinterpretations, two based in “normal thinking” and a third inspired by Hegel. Normal thinking may (1) simply dismiss the fragment as “illogical,” given its formal contradictoriness, or (2) construe the relation between “going-up” and “going-under” as two temporally distinct and thus noncontradictory processes. Finally, “speculative” thinking, having determined “the selfcontradictory precisely to be ‘the true’,” (3) resolves the contradiction dialectically into a unity. In Heidegger’s view, this dialectical approach avoids the effort to think what the fragment says and, instead, has recourse anachronistically to the “method of a late metaphysics” (GA 55: 112, 126f). 23 GA 55: 132f, 136; VA 263/EGT 114. The filei: meant in Fragment 123 is, Heidegger observes, not just any Gunst and Vergünstigung but a specific Gunst that he characterizes as Gönnen and Vergönnen. 24 GA 55: 136; VS 16, 81f/FS 6, 46. 25 GA 55: 137, 153f. In his essay on Fragment 16, Heidegger reverses the counterfactual; see VA 263/EGT 114: “Was wäre ein Sichverbergen, wenn es nicht an sich hielte in seiner Zuwendung zum Aufgehen?” 26 Heidegger in fact employs two word-plays in this connection. In addition to emphasizing that we heed the sense of bergen supposedly retained in verbergen (i.e., the rescuing and sheltering provided by concealing), he links verbürgen with verbergen, i.e., “the self-concealing secures [guarantees], in that it conceals” (Das Sichverbergen verbürgt, indem es verbirgt); GA 55: 138f; VA 263/EGT 114. 27 Still, insofar as contradiction is a law governing assertions or judgments, it would not apply to fuvsiV but neither would contradiction's ontological counterpart if that counterpart requires constancy of something or some A (where A is some intrinsically defining property) obtaining without relation to its opposite. 28 Alternatively, with a view to Aristotle's understanding, one might characterize fuvsiV as the enduring qua being constantly actualized out of the duvnamiV of the future and disappearing into the stevrhsiV of the past. I am grateful to Al and Maria Miller for this alternative characterization. 29 See Schoenbohm, "Heidegger's Interpretation of Phusis," 149f. 30 GA 55: 161. Heidegger sharply criticizes readings of Fragment 30 that construe its reference to mevtra as an anticipation of the modern conception of nature following the laws of physics rather than as the original expanse (Weite, to; mevtron) of expanse-forming fuvsiV, i.e., an expanse that qua original first yields and hence cannot be conceived as following measures or laws; see GA 55: 168-171. 31 Heidegger further supports this interpretation of fuvsiV as fire with a reading of Fragment 64 where Heraclitus observes that lightning (keraunovV) – the concentrated essence of fire – steers beings as a whole; see GA 55: 162f. 32 This gloss aptly suggests how closely Heidegger's gloss of the Heraclitean fuvsiV comes to his own senses of Ereignis and Seyn in contrast to Sein and Seiendes; see notes 8 and 14 above. There are at least two (complementary) ways we might interpret this interpretation of fuvsiV as fire: (1) insofar as a fire, e.g., a campfire, provides light to see one another in the midst of the darkness, we may ignore the fire in order to attend to the presences and absences it makes possible; (2) insofar as, gazing at a fire, we see the coals and embers glowing and darkening in a regular rhythm, taking on different shapes before disappearing into the flames, we see not the fire itself but something on fire; in this sense, the fire may be said to conceal itself in the process. 33 In making the latter point about the obliviousness to the adornment, Heidegger distinguishes the foreground adorned things (das Gezierde) from the original adorning (das Zieren) of the pure, but unapparent fit underlying them; see GA 55: 163-66; VS 20f/FS 7f. 34 It is noteworthy that the ontological difference that Heidegger recognizes in some fragments is a matter of beauty. Thus, however riveting and beguiling any foreground appearance of entities, indeed, even if it is the most beautiful adornment (Gezierde), it is no comparison with the “sole, original adorning” or, as Heraclitus puts it, oJ kavllistoV kovsmoV (Fragment 124; GA 55: 165; VS 20f/FS 8). See, too, Heidegger’s characterization of fuvsiV in the sense of aJrmoniva (Fügung) as the most beautiful (das Schönste) (GA 55: 144). 35 See GA 70: 68-83, esp. ibid., 68: "Wenn wir von >>der Unterscheidung<< sprechen, halten wir sogleich in zwei Hinsichten. Die eine geht auf ein Denken, das unterscheidet und die Unterschiedene (Sein und Seiendes) gleichsam vorfindet....Die andere Hinsicht ... geht auf das Seyn selbst und denkt aus ihm und als es selbst die Unterscheidung"; ibid., 76: "Sein als Seyn >>ist<< selbst Unterschied und niemals ein Glied und eine Seite der Entscheidung und Eines der beiden Unterschiedenen"; ibid., 80: "Der Unterschied wird nicht ausgelöscht. Aber er wandelt sich wesentlich." 36 The fact that Heidegger largely ignores – at least in his 1943 Heraclitus lectures –other readings reinforces the impression that his interpretation is idionsyncratic. In his later seminars, Heidegger engages different interpretations, e.g., interpretations by his respective interlocutors, Fink and Beaufret. 37 Karl Marx, Grundrisse de Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Berlin: Dietz, 1974), 26: "In der Anatomie des Menschen ist ein Schlüssel zur Anatomie des Affen....Man kann Tribut, Zehnten, etc. verstehen, wenn man die Grundrente kennt. Man muß sie aber nicht identifizieren." 38 The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, volume I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 75. 39 This sort of beginning dictates both what it means to be caught up (auf-gefangen) in what is begun (an-gefangen) and the future of those caught up in it. For mundane examples of this convergence of the meanings of thrownness and beginning, consider fatefully beginning life as a slave or serf, the perilous inception of a revolution, or simply the ever-operative origins of any personal life-history. Given this convergence, the analysis of temporality in SZ, far from being abandonded, survives the seynsgeschichtliche Kehre; see GA 70: 176, 180. 40 GA 55: 175; see, too, GA 70: 93-96, 105, 140f, esp. ibid. 141: "Das seynsgeschichtliche Denken ist Erinnerung in den ersten Anfang als Vordenken in den anderen"; for a particularly thoughtful treatment of Anfang (aptly translated 'inception') and inceptual thinking, see Polt, The Emergency of Being, 115-128. 41 GA 55: 168f, 172f; SZ 133. Heidegger acknowledges the shift himself; see VS 121f/FS 71. In the Heraclitus' lectures, Heidegger adds that someone who emerges and comports herself towards fuvsiV – in effect, mimicking it – "can, because she is emergent [aufgegangenes] in this sense, look back at herself and thus herself be herself, that is to say, be a Self as such an entity that we address through the tivV – someone" (GA 55: 173; gender specification added). Notable here is a basic continuity with the specification of the 'da' of Dasein as the Lichtung in SZ, particularly if due consideration is given to Dasein's thrownness and the irreducibility of its horizons to its projections, its ecstases. 42 The conception of being in terms of ei\doV is tied, Heidegger contends, to two further reinterpretations, consideration of which is omitted here: a reinterpretation of fuvsiV to make it conform to tevcnh, given the productiveness of the look, i.e., its role in production, and a reinterpretation of being as something common, given the commonness of the look; see, respectively, GA 65: 126, 184/CPh 88, 129 and GA 65: 63, 75f, 206, 209/ CPh 44, 52, 144, 146. 43 Heidegger's interpretation of Plato's ijdeva reflects his phenomenological pedigree, indeed, his long-time fondness for Husserl's doctrine of categorial intuition. Thus, Heidegger emphasizes that Plato's "discovery of the 'so-called' ideas" was not some flight of speculation; instead Plato found "what everyone sees and grasps when he comports himself to entities," namely, the looks (Anblicke) of things, the way they present themselves as being what they are (freely translating: als was seiend sich etwas darbietet). In these looks "the individual thing presents itself; present and presencing [präsent und anwesend]" (GA 34: 51/ET 38; see, too, GA 65: 208/CPh 145). Heidegger rightly insists that the ijdeva, so understoood, is not to be confused with the notion of something re-presented in the mind [das Vor-gestellte des Vorstellens], the modern gloss that anchors everything in the perceiver and leads to idealism. As noted at the outset, Heidegger refuses to saddle Plato with responsibility for this sort of idealism since the term ijdeva signifies precisely the appearing or “shining forth” of the look itself, what offers a view or outlook for looking upon it. 44 GA 34: 57/ET 42: ">> jIdeva << meint das im voraus Gesichtete, das im voraus Vernommene und Seiendes Durchlassende, als Auslegung des >>Seins<<. Die Idee läßt uns das, was das Seiende ist, sehen, läßt gleichsam durch es hindurch das Seiende auf uns zukommen." Ibid., 106/77: "Dem Bilde des Lichtes, der Helle, entsprechen die Ideen." 45 GA 34: 70, 73/ET 51, 53. Cognizant that his interpretation goes beyond Plato on this point, Heidegger nevertheless insists on the need to take the meaning of "ideas" literally as something seen. If Heidegger's phenomenological interpretation is right on this score, the fact that the look of the book is a condition for seeing the book does not entail that the look exists or takes shape apart from looking that way to someone, i.e., apart from a seeing. 46 GA 34: 72/ET 53. To the extent that the good is the highest idea, what applies in general to the ideas applies in the greatest degree to the good, namely, having an essential relation to a seeing that "forms the idea, pre-forms it for itself.... neither objectively on hand nor subjectively fabricated [Erdichtetes], it [the good as the highest idea] is precisely what empowers every objectivity and every subjectivity to what they are because it spans the yoke between subject and object" (GA 34: 111/ET 81). 47 For Heidegger's discussion of 515c11 (ojrqovteron blevpei), heralding the shift to correctness, see GA 34: 34f/ET 26. Between the time of the Beiträge and his Heraclitus lectures, Heidegger may have changed his interpretation of the Heraclitean fuvsiV. In the earlier text he places fuvsiV in apposition to Seiendheit or das Seiende als Seiendes by way of explaining how it serves as a condition for Plato's thinking; see GA 65: 332, 351/CPh 233, 245 and GA 70: 86; but for a positive albeit qualified assessment of Heraclitus opposite Plato in another connection, see GA 65: 360/CPh 252. 48 " The word ajlhvqeia stands for the most part simply for the being [Seiende] itself, for what the being is that most pre-eminently is [das seiendste Seiende]....The unhidden, that is to say, that to which unhiddenness pertains [zu-kommt] is the being that genuinely is [das eigentlich Seiende]; but it itself [the unhiddenness] is not meant as such.... ajlhvqeia stands here already for that to which it pertains [zu-kommt], but not for what it itself is"" (GA 34: 124/ET 90). 49 GA 70: 45: "Daß das Sein als Entborgenheit Aufgang ist, ohne in die Verbergung zu wesen, kündet, wie noch der Anfang kaum angefangen. Noch steht der Anfang bevor und deshalb ist der Untergang einziger denn vormals." Ibid., 19: "Der anfangende Anfang ist Er-eignis, ist Untergang in den Abschied. In der Vorsicht des vorbereitenden anfänglichen Denkens kann aber der anfangende Anfang erst nur der >>andere<< Anfang zum ersten genannt werden." I am grateful to Matthew Meyer and Al and Maria Miller for their critical readings of this paper.