source of the call itself appears, though not in its full radiance nor under the same name. But before inquiring about the calling that encompasses all Western and modem European thinking, we must try to listen to an early saying which gives us evidence how much early thought generally responds to a call, yet without naming it, or giving it thought, as such. Perhaps we need no more than to recall this one testimony in order to give the fitting, that is, a restrained answer to that question of the initial calling.
The doctrine of thinking is called logic because thinking develops in the λέγειν of the λόγος. are barely capable of comprehending that at one time this was not so, that a calling became "needful" in order to set thinking on the way of the λόγος into the λέγειν. A fragment of Parmenides, which has been given the number 6, begins with these words: χρὴ τὸ λέγειν τε νοεῖν τ' ἐὸν ἔμμεναι." The usual translation of the saying is: "One should both say and think that Being is."
Summary and Transition
The answer to the question "What is called thinking?" is, of course, a statement, but not a proposition that could be formed into a sentence with which the question can be put aside as settled. The answer to the question is, of course, an utterance, but it speaks from a correspondence. It follows the calling, and maintains the question in its problematic. we follow the calling, we do not free ourselves of what is being asked.
The question cannot be settled, now or ever. If we proceed to the encounter of what is here in question, the calling, the question becomes in fact only more problematical. we are questioning within this problematic, we are thinking.
Thinking itself is a way. We respond to the way only by