18
WHAT IS CALLED THINKING?

Thinking has entered into literature; and literature has decided the fate of Western science which, by way of the doctrina of the Middle Ages, became the scientia of modem times. In this form all the sciences have leapt from the womb of philosophy, in a twofold manner. The sciences come out of philosophy, because they have to part with her. now that they are so apart they can never again, by their own power as sciences, make the leap back into the source from whence they have sprung. Henceforth they are remanded to a realm of being where only thinking can find them, provided thinking is capable of doing what is its own to do.

When man is drawing into what withdraws, he points into what withdraws. As we are drawing that way we are a sign, a pointer. But we are pointing then at something which has not, not yet, been transposed into the language of our speech. We are a sign that is not read.

In his draft for the hymn "Mnemosyne" (Memory) ? Hoelderlin says:


"We are a sign that is not read,
We feel no pain, we almost have
Lost our tongue in foreign lands."


And so, our way toward thinking, hear a of poesy. the question to end with what right, upon ground within limits, our attempt to allows itself to get involved in a dialogue with poesy, let alone with the poetry of this poet this question, which is inescapable, can discuss only after ourselves have taken the path of thinking.


Martin Heidegger (GA 8) What Is Called Thinking?