62 Martin Heidegger: Discourse on Thinking
MARTIN HEIDEGGER
DISCOURSE
ON THINKING
A Translation of Gelassenheit
by
JOHN M. ANDERSON and E. HANS FREUND
With an Introduction by
JoHN M. ANDERSON
HARPER & ROW, PUBL I SHERS
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
PREFACE
7
INTRODUCTION
11
DISCOURSE ON THINKING
41
I. MEMORIAL ADDRESS
43
U. CONVERSATION ON A COUNTRY PATH
ABOUT THTh”‘KING
58
GLOSSARY
91
II
C ONVE RSATION ON
A COUNTRY P ATH
ABOUT THINKIN G *
Scientist: Toward the last you stated that the question concerning
man’s nature is not a question about man.
Teacher: I said only that the question concerning man’s
nature makes a consideration whether this is the case
unavoidable.
Scienti’St: Even so, it is a mystery to me how man’s nature
is ever to be found by looking away from man.
T eacher: It is a mystery to me too; so I seek to clarify how
far this is possible, or perhaps even necessary.Scientist:
To behold man’s nature without looking at man!
Teacher: Why not? If thinking is what distinguishes man’s
nature, then surely the essence of this nature, namely the
nature of thinking, can be seen only by l ooking away
from thinking.
Scholar: But thinking, understood in the traditional way,
as re-presenting is a kind of willing; _Kant, too, under-
• This discourse was taken from a conversation written down in 1944–45
between a scientist, a scholar, and a teacher.
58
CONVERSATION ON A COUNTRY PATH 59
stands thinlcing this way when he characterizes it as
spontaneity. k think is to will, and to will is to think.
Scientist: Then the statement that the nature of thinking is
something other than thinking means that thinking is
something other than willing.
Teacher: And that is why, in answer to your question as
to what I really wanted from our meditation on the
nature of thinking, I replied: I want non-willing.
Scientist: Meanwhile this formulation has proved ambiguous.
Scholar: Non-willing, for one thing, means a willing in
such a way as to involve negation, be it even in the sense
of a negation which is directed at willing and renounces
it. Non-willing means, therefore: willingly to renounce
willing. And the term non-willing means, further, what
remains absolutely outside any kind of will.
Scientist: So that it can never be carried out or reached
by any willing.
Teacher: But perhaps we come nearer to it by a willing in
the first sense of non-willing.
Scholar: You see, then, the two senses of non-willing as
standing in a definite relation to each other.
Teacher: Not only do I see this relation, I confess that ever
since I have tried to reflect on what moves our conversation,
it has claimed my attention, if not challenged
me.
Scientist: Am I right if I state the relation of the one sense
of non-willing to the other as follows? You want a nonwilling
in the sense of a renouncing of willing, so that
through this ~ may release, or at least p_re.E_are to re60
DISCOURSE ON THINKING
lease, ourselves to the sought-for essence of a thinking
that is not a willing.
Teacher: You are not only right, but by the gods! as I
would say if they had not flown from us, you have
uncovered something essential.
Scholar: I should now be tempted to say that y ou, in your
interpretation of the ambiguous talk about non-willing,
have surpassed both us and yourself- if any one were entitled
to mete out praise and if that were not contrary
to the style of our conversations.
Scientist: That I succeeded in this, was not my doing but
that of the night having set in, which without forcing
compels concentration.
Scholar: It leaves us time for meditating by slowing down
our pace.
Teacher: That is why we are still far from human habitation.
Scientist: Ever more openly I am coming to trust in the inconspicuous
guide who takes us by the hand-or better
said, by the word- in this conversation.
Scholar: We need this guidance, because our conversation
becomes ever more difficult.
Teacher: If by “difficult” you mean the unaccustomed task
which consists in weaning ourselves from will.
Scholar: Will, you say, and not merely willing . . .
Scientist: … and so, you state an exciting demand in a
released manner.
Teacher: If only I possessed already the right releasement,
then I would soon be freed of that task of weaning.
Scholar: So far as we can wean ourselves from willing, we
contribute to the awakening of releasement.
CONVERSATION ON A COUNTRY PATH 61
Teacher: Say rather, to keeping awake for releasement.
Scholar: Why not, to the awakening?
Teacher: Because on our own we do not awaken releasement
in ourselves.
Scientist: Thus rei easement is effected from somewhere else.
Teacher: Not effected, but let in.
Scholar: To be sure I don’t know yet what the word releasement
means; but I seem to presage that releasement
awakens when our nature is let-in so as to have dealings
with that which is not a willing.
Scientist: You speak without letup of a letting-be and give
the impression that what is meant is a kind of passivity.
All the same, I think I understand that it is in no way
a matter of weakly allowing things to slide and drift
along.
Scholar: Perhaps a higher acting is concealed in releasement
than is found in all the actions within the world
and in the machinations of all mankind . . .
Teacher: . .. which higher acting is yet no activity.
Scientist: Then releasement lies-if we may use the word
lie–beyond the distinction between activity and passivity
…
Scholar: . . . because releasement does not belong to the
domain of the will.
Scientist: The transition from willing into releasement is
what seems difficult to me.
Teacher: And all the more, since the nature of releasementis
still hidden.
Scholar: Especially so because even releasement can still
be thought of as within the domain of will, as is the
case with old masters of thought such as Meister Eckhart.
62 DISCOURSE ON THINKING
Teacher: From whom, all the same, much can be learned.
Scholar: Certainly; but what we have called releasement
evidently does not mean casting off sinful selfishness and
letting self-will go in favor of the divine will.
Teacher: No, not that.
Scientist: In many respects it is clear to me what the word
releasement should not signify for us. But at the same
time, I know less and less what we are talking about.
We are trying to determine the nature of thinking.
What has releasement to do with thinking?
Teacher: Nothing if we conceive thinking in the traditional
way as re-presenting. Yet perhaps the nature of thinking
we are seeking is fixed in releasement.
Scientist: With the best of will, I can not re-present to myself
this nature of tbinlcing.
Teacher: Precisely because this will of yours and your
mode of thinking as re-presenting prevent it.
Scientist: But then, what in the world am I to do?
Scholar: I am asking myself that too.
Teacher: We are to do nothing but wait.
Scholar: That is poor consolation.
Teacher: Poor or not, we should not await consolationsomething
we would still be doing if we became disconsolate.
Scientist: Then what are we to wait for? And where are
we to wait? I hardly know anymore ~ho ~<Lwh.ere.I_am .
Teacher: None of us knows that, as soon as we stop_io.oling
ourselves.
SchoTar: And yet we still have our path?
Teacher: To be sure. But by forgetting it too quickly we
give up thinking.
C ONVEI\SATION 0 N A COUNT!\ Y PATH 65
Teacher: ~es me as something like a region, an enchanted
r~~n where everything belonging there returns
to that in which it rests.
Scholar: I’m not sure I understand what you say now.
Teacher: I don’t understand it either, if by “understanding”
you mean the capacity to re-present what is put before
us as if sheltered amid the familiar and so secured;
for I, too, lack the familiar in which to place what I
tried to say about openness as a region.
Scientist: That is perhaps impossible here, if for no other
reason than because presumably what you call a region
is exactly that which alone permits all sheltering.
Teacher: I mean something like this; but not only this.
Scholar: You spoke of’~” region in which everything re~
turns to itself. Strictly speaking, a region for everything
is not one region among many, but the region of all
regi_ons.
Teacher: You are right; what is in question is the region.
Scientist: And the enchantment of this region might well
be the reign of its nature, its regioning, if I may call
it that.
Scholar: It seems a region holds what comes forward to
p1eet us; but we also said of the horizon that out of the
view which it encircles, the appearance of objects comes
to meet us. If now we comprehend the horizon through
the region, we take the region itself as that which comes
to meet us.
Teacher: In this way, indeed, we would characterize the
region through its relation to us, just as we did a moment
ago with the horizon-whereas we are searching for the
68 DISCOURSE ON THINKING
Teacher: Waiting, all right; but never awaiting, for awaiting
already links itself with re-presenting and what is
re-presented.
Scholar: Waiting, however, lets go of that; or rather I
should say that waiting lets re-presenting entirely alone.
It really has no object.
Scientist: Yet if we wait we always wait for something.
Scholar: Certainly, but as soon as we re-present to ourselves
and fix upon that for which we wait, we really wait no
longer.
Teacher: In waiting we leave open what we are waiting for.
Scholar: Why?
Teacher: Because waiting releases itself into openness …
Scholar: … into the expanse of distance …
Teacher: … in whose nearness it finds the abiding in
which it remains.
Scientist: But remaining is a returning.
Scholar: Openness itself would be that for which we could
do nothing but wait.
Scientist: But openness itself is that-which-regions …
Teacher: … into which we are released by way of waiting,
when we think.
Scientist: Then thinking would be coming-into-the-near-
;::::: ness of distance.
Scholar: That is a daring definition of its nature, which
we have chanced upon.
Scientist: I only brought together that which we have
named, but without re-presenting anything to myself.
Teacher: Yet you have thought something.
Scientist: Or, really, waited for something without knowing
for what.
Scholar: But how come you suddenly could wait?
CONVERSATION ON A COUNTRY PATH 71
Scholar: By virtue of what kind of designation would it
have i ts name?
Teacher: Perhaps these names are not the result of designation.
They are owed to a naming in which the namable,
the name and the named occur altogether.
Scientist: What you just said about naming is unclear to me.
Scholar: Probably that is connected with the nature of
words.
Scientist: However, what you noted about designation, and
about the fact that there is nothing nameless, is clearer
to me.
Scholar: Because we can test it in the case of the name
releasement.
Teacher: Or have tested it already.
Scientist: How so?
Teacher: What is it that you designated by the name releasement?
Scientist: If I may say so, not I but you have used this name.
Teacher: I, as little as you, have done the designating.
Scholar: Then who did it? None of us?
Teacher: Presumably, for in the region in which we stay
ever.Y.thing is in the best order only if it has been no one’s
doing.
Scientist: A mysterious region where there is nothing for
which to be answerable.
Teacher: Because it is the .region of the word, which is
answerable to itself alone.
Scholar: For us it remains only to listen to the answer
proper to the word.
Teacher: That is enough; even when our telling is only
a retelling of the answer heard . . •
72 DISCOURSE ON THINKING
Scientist: . and when it doesn’t matter in this if there
is a first retelling or who does it; all the more since
one often doesn’t know whose tale he retells.
Scholar: So let’s not quarrel over who first introduced the
name, releasement, let us consider only what it is we
name by it.
Scientist: And that is waiting, as the experience I referred
to indicates.
Teacher: And so not something nameless, but what is
already designated. What is this waiting?
Scientist: Insofar as waiting relates to openness and openness
is that-which-regions, we can say that waiting is a
relation to that-which-regions.
Teacher: Perhaps it is even the relation to that-whichregions,
insofar as waiting releases itself to that-whichregions,
and in doing so lets that-which-regions reign
purely as such.
Scholar: Then a relation to something would be the true
relation if it were held in its own nature by that to which
it relates.
Teacher: The relation to that-which-regions is waiting.
And waiting means : to release oneself into the openness
of that-which-regions.
Scholar: Thus to go into that-which-regions.
Scientist: That sounds as if before then we had been outside
that-which-regions.
Teacher: That we were, and yet we were not. Insofar as
we as thinking beings (that is, beings who at the same
time re-present transcendentally) stay within the horizon
of transcendence, we are not and never could be
outside that-which-regions. Yet the horizon is but the
CONVERSATION 0 N A COUNTRY PATH 79
Scientist: Now I see what was meant. The _program of mathematics
and the experiment are grounded in the relation
-of man as ego to the thing as object.
Teacher: They even constitute this relation in part and unfold
its historical character.
Scientist: If any examination which focuses on what is a
part of history is called historical, then the methodological
analysis in physics is, indeed, historical.
Scholar: Here the concept of the historical signifies a mode
of knowing and is understood broadly.
Teacher: Understood, presumably, as focused upon a history
which does not consist in the happenings and deeds
of the world.
Scholar: Nor in the cultural achievements of man.
Scientist: But in what else?
Teacher: The historical rests in that-which-regions, and in
what occurs as that-which-regions. It rests in what, coming
to pass in man, regions him into his nature.
Scholar: A nature we have hardly experienced as yet, supposing
it has not yet been realized in the rationality
of the animal.
Scientist: In such a situation we can do nothing but wait for
man’s nature.
Teacher: Wait in a releasement through which we belong
to that-which-regions, which still conceals its own nature.
Scholar: We presage releasement to that-which-regions as
the sought-for nature of thinking.
Teacher: When we let ourselves into releasement to thatwhich-
regions, we will non-willing.
Scientist: Releasement is indeed the release of oneself from
transcendental re-presentation and so a relinquishing of
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