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 basic meaning, we hear at once
the essence of two words:
  thinking and memory,
    thinking and thanks,
      which readily suggest themselves
         in the verb “to think.”

The thanc, the hearts core,
is the gathering of all that concerns us, all that we care for,
all that touches us insofar as we are,
as human beings.

What touches us in the sense
that it defines and determines our nature,
what we care for,
we might call contiguous or contact.

What Is Called Thinking by Martin Heidegger, Part II, Lecture III, page 144

Such a strange title!

Strange, although actually I am enjoying this book. Heidegger’s work is burdened with a reputation for difficulty. Whether a text feels easy to comprehend or feels like a slog across a mud-field has much to do with what one anticipates before the inception of the journey. I merely began reading with a yellow highlighter in hand…

Thinking! What!? And what do we call “that”?

The title alone ought to be a clue to the author’s attitude, the approach which he chooses to take. Only a poet, (or a philosopher) would dedicate a segment of time and life-energy for adventuring the dimensions, to “see how deep” is the woods – of something so close, so native, and intricate to our nature. Heidegger’s prose is near poetic as he traverses a ground of related concepts with vocabulary now historical, then linguistic, and again scientific, then cosmic/metaphysical.

Lines quoted above retrieve from an old Saxon English word, the root of our modern term “thought”: thanc.  Originally thought/memory was analogous to a burrito, a fulsome meal of related ingredients, than to a single tortilla with slice of melted cheese. To we moderns, memory is a collection of thoughts retrieved from a dust bin, abstract, we are separated us from the “done-with”. How depleted, and vapid our concept seems by comparison to the sensual original, to such intimacy of care borne of the root term. We make do with tortilla and cheese.

Of the most fascination for me is the link to our notion of thanks giving, that when provoked to thought, to remember, – we have received a gift that is consonant with our human nature. To contemplate, to dedicate ourselves to think, thoughtfulness is a form of thanksgiving, a offering of sorts to the universe.

Thinking as an act, is a demonstration of thanks-giving, a harmonizing of our individual and species nature with the cosmos from which we came.

Heidegger ventures to the edge of the spiritual dimension of thinking – which I will do my best to present tomorrow.

Be well.