And both Parmenides and Heraclitus are of one mind in this regard, namely, truth's belonging to being and the necessity of thinking being (in accordance with the authentic Logos) from out of its truth. Heidegger does not agree with the opposition which is often set up between Parmenides ("All is permanence") and Heraclitus ("All is flux"), a dramatic presentation of their respective ways of thinking which goes back to Plato. In Heidegger's view Heraclitus would not be one of the greatest of the great Greek thinkers were he to say something other than Parmenides. In fact, Anaximander can also be found to say essentially the same thing as Parmenides and Heraclitus. But although it is true that behind Parmenides and Heraclitus there stands Anaximander, and although in Heidegger's view it is the τὸ Χρεων in Anaximander's first fragment that the oldest name wherein thinking brings the being of things to speech, nevertheless, it is upon the translation of Parmenides' ἐόν that the fate of being in the West has hung. This does not simply mean the way in which the Latins translated Physis into natura, a translation which in Heidegger's view destroyed the philosophical force of the Greek word, but also the way in which Parmenides' notion of being was "put across" (Übersetzung) in the thought of Plato and Aristotle that the whole fate of the Occident hung in the balance. Thus even though certain things which were to come later were pre-thought (vorgedacht) in Anaximander, and even thought Anaximander was the first to think the being of things (Sein des Seienden), it nonetheless remains true to say that he does not have the decisive significance for the fate of thinking on being in the West that Parmenides has. And Heidegger's primary interest in all his historical investigations is the fate of being in the West.

¶ 7:35 PM