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WHAT IS CALLED THINKING?

must set itself limits. This is why we turned the decisive fourth question, ""What is That which directs us into thinking?,'' in the direction of the second, "What is thinking in the traditional sense?"

But this is not an historical inquiry into the various views of thinking which have been formed in the course of its history. Rather, our question is: what is That which directs and disposes us toward the basic characteristics of what in time develops into Western-European thinking? What is it that calls, and to whose call something responds in such a way that it is then called thinking, in the sense of the λέγειν of λόγος, as the νοεῖν of reason? That which calls is what λέγειν and νοεῖν refer to because it relates them to itself, and that means uses them. It is what the saying in its final words calls ἐὸν ἔμμεναι.

We are laboring to translate these words for one reason, and one reason only: our sole question is, what is it that calls on us to think. else shall we ever hear That which calls, which speaks in thinking, and perhaps speaks in such a way that its own deepest core is left unspoken?

The question of That which calls on us to think gives us the mandate to translate the words ἐὸν ἔμμεναι. But have they not already been translated into the Latin ens and esse, the English "being" and "to be"? It is indeed superfluous to translate ἐὸν ἔμμεναι into Latin or English. But it is necessary for us to translate these words finally into Greek. Such translation is possible only if we transpose ourselves into what speaks from these words. And this transposition can succeed only by a leap, the leap of a single vision which sees what the words ἐὸν ἔμμεναι, heard with Greek ears, state, or tell.

Can we see something that is told? can, provided what is told is more than just the sound of words, provided the seeing is more than just the seeing with the eyes of the body. Accordingly, the transposition by the leap of such a


Martin Heidegger (GA 8) What Is Called Thinking?