A wide range of meaningbelongs generally to the nature of every word.This fact, again, arises from the mystery of language.Language admits of two things: One, that it be reduced to a mere system of signs,uniformly available to everybody,and in this form be enforced as binding; And two, that language at one great momentsays one…
Yesterday was Autumn Equinox. If we think of the progression of the months as relative to the position of the earth and the sun, September 22nd is the point at which the length of daytime and darkness is roughly equal. A pivot point between summer’s warmth, and the chill of winter’s season of sleep….
In order to get underway, we do have to set out. This is meant in a double sense: for one thing, we have to open ourselves¹ to the emerging prospect and direction of the way itself; and then, we must get on the way, that is, must take the steps by which alone the…
You cannot talk of colors to the blind. But a still greater ill than blindness is delusion. Delusion believes that it sees, and that it sees in the only possible manner, even while this its belief robs it of sight. What Is Called Thinking by Martin Heidegger, Part II, Lecture…
“What is it that calls on us to think?” Which is the call that claims man’s/woman’s thinking? This question, one might say, already presupposes that thinking is by nature something that is called for, and is maintained and, so to speak, retained within its nature only by the call. The question “What is This…
The thanc [Old English] means man’s/woman’s innermost mind, heart, the heart’s core, that innermost essence of man/woman which reaches outward most fully and to the outermost limits, and so decisively that, rightfully considered, the idea of an inner and out outer world does not arise. When we listen to the word thanc in its…
Words are not terms, and thus are not like buckets and kegs from which we scoop a content that is there. Words are wellsprings that are found and dug up in the telling, wellsprings that must be found and dug up again and again, that easily cave in, but that at times also well…
The overman surpasses man as he is by entering into the relatedness to Being— Being which, as the will of the eternal recurrence of the same, eternally wills itself and nothing else. The overman goes toward the eternal recurrence of the same, because that is where his essential nature is rooted. Nietzsche cast the…
Revenge, for Nietzsche,is the will’s revulsion against time.This now means: revengeis the will’s revulsion against the passing awayand what has passed away,against time and its “It was.”The revulsion turnsnot against the mere passing,but against that passing away which allowswhat has passed to be only in the past,which lets it freeze in the finality of…
I am reading What Is Called Thinking by Martin Heidegger. I have finished nine of the lectures which he delivered in 1951 and 52. One more and I will have finished the tenth one, and the reading though difficult has been satisfying. Anyone who believes that Martin Heidegger is not inordinately difficult to understand…
