Abstract

This volume contains the minutes of a seminar which was held on Heraclitus in the University of Freiburg under the joint direction of Heidegger and Fink. The seminar was to be conducted over a series of semesters, but since only the Winter Semester in 1966-1967 proved feasible, the current work is in Fink's words "a fragment on the Fragments." The text takes the form of a dialogue between "Heidegger," "Fink," and "Participant," Using the fragments of Heraclitus as a point of departure, the dialogue partners cover a terrain by now familiar to readers of Heidegger: the hermeneutic circle, metaphysics, the "mortals" and the "gods," Hegel's idea of Logic. Heidegger clearly leads the discussion and hence his unique reading of the pre-Socratic philosopher is always the central theme. As Fink says, not the philological problematic, as important as that may be, but rather the attempt to think through the thought of Heraclitus is the issue in this seminar. Fink usually opens the discussion with a preliminary interpretation of Heraclitus in order to provide a common basis for the participants which will be more familiar to them. The volume is frequently punctuated with insights into Heraclitus' text, as anyone who has learned to stay with Heidegger's thoughtful dialogue with classical sources has discovered.--J. D. C.