lyre unfolds herself only from out of the essence of φύσις, and compliantly joins herself to this. Therefore, she roams, as the huntress, the entirety of what we call ‘nature.’ We certainly must not think about the essence of ‘tension’ in modern dynamical and quantitative terms, but rather as the lightened apartness of an expanse that is, at the same time, held together. In emerging, emerging receives the self-concealing in itself, because it can emerge as emerging only from out of self-concealing: it draws itself back into this. Because emerging and self-concealing each bestow to each other the favor of essence, the jointure of self-concealing into emerging, which at the same time joins emerging into self-concealing, is. Emerging and self-concealing (i.e., submerging) are the same. However, according to our interpretation of the first saying, φύσις is precisely τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε, the ‘never submerging.’ How can these two things square with one another? We must nevertheless question whether we are here justified in making the claim that they ‘square’ with one another, and thus make sense. φύσις is the never submerging precisely because it compliantly joins constantly to submerging as that from out of which it emerges. Without closure’s bestowal and its continual essence, emerging would cease to be what it is. The ‘never submerging’ in no way means that in φύσις the relation to submerging is obliterated: rather, it means that this relation must constantly and inceptually unfold. The ‘never submerging,’ and precisely and solely it, must grant favor to self-concealing. [154] Were the ‘never submerging’ to deny favor to the self-concealing, it would be without that from out of which it, as emerging, emerges, and that in which it as ‘the never submerging’ can unfold. The ‘never submerging’ does not submerge, and indeed unfolds within self-closure. Th at self-closure necessarily unfolds within emerging by no means indicates that emerging ‘submerges.’

(Were it to do so, its essence would of necessity decompose into non-essence. Were it the case that it could not bestow essence constantly, the ‘never submerging’ would still not even ‘become’ a mere submerging and revert to this.)


c) The inadequacy of logic (dialectic) in the face of the jointure thought in φύσις. The two-fold meaning of φύσις and the questionable ‘priority’ of emerging


If, however, emerging and submerging are in a certain manner the same, why then does the thinker always say φύσις when he thinks of this sameness? Why does he not say τὸ δῦνόν, since within the essence of φύσις self-concealing has the same claim to essence as emerging does? And why, instead of τὸ δῦνόν, is the opposite τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε (i.e., emerging) used? In all of this, φύσις seems to have priority. However, this is merely an illusion that persists only so long as we think φύσις in a


116    The Inception of Occidental Thinking


Heraclitus (GA 55) by Martin Heidegger