Theophil Spoerri welcomes Martin Heidegger and thanks him for his willingness to assume the direction of the seminar. Subsequently, Emil Staiger speaks:
Yesterday’s lecture seems to me to have gathered together and further developed what was said in “On the Essence of Truth” and “On the Essence of Ground.” In particular, I believe I recognize, in the concept of “dimension,” the ontic–ontological difference once again. In order now to give the discussion a somewhat more definite direction, I should like, with the agreement of my colleagues Spoerri and Keller, to pose the following questions: Why do you place importance upon linking the presentation of your thinking with interpretations of texts (philosophical or poetic)? To begin with, one notices that you give preference to fragmentary texts (Anaximander, Hölderlin). This alone could already give rise to reservations. More specifically, one might ask whether the Hölderlin text underlying yesterday’s lecture really stems from Hölderlin, since it has been transmitted by Hölderlin’s friend Waiblinger. The question is: is this truly Hölderlin? If so, did Hölderlin mean it as we heard it yesterday? Herr Heidegger anticipated and invalidated this objection in advance with the statement: “Anything can be proven.” Now I would maintain that only what is correct can be proven, and that at times we succeed in proving that something is not correct. Heidegger himself proceeds philologically. He has manuscripts brought to him from the Hölderlin Archive. Why does he do this? In order to safeguard himself against arbitrariness. And how can one do this? Precisely through the philological procedure. – I therefore formulate two questions: