self-disclosing is that which cannot withdraw itself from the grasp of the human. However, perhaps the contemporary and the inceptual have yet another relationship with one another beyond that of a mere inversion. The inceptual word, in any case, demands that we think ‘submerging’ and ‘submergence’ in the sense of ‘entering into concealment.’

We need only to regard the saying of Heraclitus’s from the outside in order to recognize more clearly that an essential relationship exists between δῦνόν and λάθοι. The only two substantive words of the saying think the same thing: namely, that which has the essential feature of concealment, that which perhaps is nothing other than concealment and self-concealment itself. In order to recognize this, we must listen to the saying even more carefully and remain mindful that it is the saying of a thinker whose thinking is different from conventional thinking. The saying of Heraclitus’s directly compels us into testing the difference between conventional and essential thinking, and thereby to practice the latter. So long as we fail to endure the test of this difference, we remain incapable of thinking-after the saying of the thinker. Thus, we must first put ourselves to the test. We must first reflect upon whether we, with all of our hurried zeal to understand the saying, are really thinking with care.


[52] c) The characteristics of the foundational word τὸ δῦνόν and its exposition in the guiding question of metaphysical thinking (Aristotle)


As soon as we hear the saying, we would also like to know what τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε, “the never submerging thing,” is. We are therefore asking about that which never falls prey to submerging. We thereby differentiate something that submerges, or alternatively does not submerge, from submerging itself. The latter we can name the process or the event by which something—namely, the submerging thing—is affected. Through this question we do not so much want to find out something about the event of submerging; rather, the question wants to know what that is which, as the never submerging thing, remains withdrawn from the event of submerging: for in the saying there is talk of τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε. By asking in this way, we penetrate into the substance of the saying. Or at least it appears so. In truth, with this apparently forceful question about the submerging thing, we do not think properly about the saying of the thinker, on account of the fact that we are not thinking essentially but rather only ‘conventionally.’ How so? Where is there in reference to the talk about τὸ δῦνόν—the submerging thing, or the never


42    The Inception of Occidental Thinking


Heraclitus (GA 55) by Martin Heidegger