I open the seminar with hearty thanks to Professor Heidegger for his readiness to assume spiritual leadership in our common attempt to advance into the area of the great and historically important thinker Heraclitus. Heraclitus’ voice, like that of Python, reaches us over a thousand years. Although this thinker lived at the origin of the West, and to that extent is longest past, we have not overtaken him even now.
From Martin Heidegger’s dialogue with the Greeks, in many of his writings, we can learn how the furthest becomes near and the most familiar becomes strange, and how we remain restless and are unable to rely on a sure interpretation of the Greeks. For us, the Greeks signify an enormous challenge. Our seminar should be an exercise in thinking, that is, in reflection on the thoughts anticipated by Heraclitus. Confronted with his texts, left to us only as fragments, we are not so much concerned with the philological problematic, as important as it might be,’ as with advancing into the matter itself, that is, toward the matter that must have stood before Heraclitus’ spiritual view. This matter is not simply on hand like a result or like some spoken tradition; rather, it can be opened up or blocked from view precisely through the spoken tradition. It is not correct to view the matter of philosophy, particularly the matter of thinking as Martin Heidegger has formulated it, as a product lying before us. The matter of thinking does not lie somewhere before us like a land of truth into which one can advance; it is not a thing that we can discover and uncover. The reality of, and the appropriate manner of access to, the matter of thinking is still dark for us. We are still seeking the matter of thinking of the thinker Heraclitus, and we are therefore a little like the poor man who has forgotten where the road leads. Our seminar is not concerned with a spectacular business. It is concerned, however, with serious minded work. Our common attempt at reflection will not be free from certain disappointments and defeats. Nevertheless, reading the text of the ancient thinker, we make the attempt to come into the spiritual movement that releases us to the matter that merits being named the matter of thinking.