Scholar: [...] I know a word which up to now seemed to me appropriate to name the nature of thinking and so of knowing.

Scientist: I would like to hear this word.

Scholar: It is a word which had occurred to me as early as out first conversation. I had this in mind when I remarked at the beginning of today's conversation that I owed a valuable suggestion to our first conversation on a country path. Several times in the course of today's conversation, I was about to propose this word; but each time it seemed to fit less what neared us as the nature of thinking.

Scientist: You talk mysteriously about this thought of yours. It is as if you didn't want to reveal your discovery too soon.

Scholar: The word I have in mind was not my discovery; it is merely a scholarly thought.

Scientist: And thus, if I may say so, an historical reminder?

Scholar: If you want to put it that way. Also it would have suited well the style of today's conversation, for in the course of it we often threw in words and sentences from Greek thought. But now this word no longer suits what we are attempting to name by a single word.

Teacher: You mean the nature of thinking (that in-dwelling releasement to that-which-regions) which is the essentially human relation to that-which regions, something we presage as the nearness of distance.

Scientist: Even if the word is no longer suitable, you might divulge it to us at the end of our conversation; for we again near human habitation, and in any case, must break off our discussion.

Teacher: And even if this word, earlier esteemed by you as a valuable suggestion, is no longer suitable, it could make clear to us that meanwhile we have come to confront something ineffable.

Scholar: This word is Heraclitus' word.

Scientist: From which fragment did you take it?

Scholar: This word struck me because it stands alone. It is that word, which, all by itself, constitutes Fragment 122.

Scientist: I don't know this shortest of Heraclitus' Fragments.

Scholar: It is scarcely noticed by others either, because one can hardly do anything with a single word.

Scientist: How does the fragment read?

Scholar: 'Αγχιβασιη

PP. 87-88

¶ 6:57 PM