Aletheia (Heraclitus, Fragment B 16)
Perhaps the φιλία of φιλεῖν in Fragment 123 and the ἁρμονίη ἀφανής, in Fragment 54 are the Same—granted that the jointure thanks to which revealing and concealing are mutually joined must remain the invisible of all invisibles, since it bestows shining on whatever appears.
The reference to φύσις, φιλία, ἁρμονίη, has diminished the vagueness in which τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε, "the never in any case setting," was first heard. But it is {GA 7: 280} difficult to suppress any longer the wish that instead of this explanation of unconcealing and concealing which has no images and no fixed place, some clear information might surface, indicating just where the phrase we have identified properly belongs. We arrive too late with this question, of course. Why? Because τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε names the realm of all realms for early thinking. It is not, however, the highest genus which subordinates different species of realms to it. It is the abode wherein every possible "whither" of a belonging-to rests. Thus the realm, in the sense of μὴ δῦνόν ποτε is unique by virtue of the extent of its gathering reach. Everything that belongs in the event of a rightly experienced revealing grows upward and together (concrescit) in this realm. It is the absolutely concrete. But how can this realm be represented as concrete on the basis of the foregoing abstract expositions? This question appears justified only as long as we fail to see that we must not precipitously assault Heraclitus' thought with distinctions like "concrete" and "abstract," "sensuous" and "nonsensuous," "perceptible" and "imperceptible." That they are and have long been current among us does not guarantee their supposedly unlimited importance. It could very well happen that Heraclitus, precisely when he utters a word which names something perceptible is just then thinking what is absolutely imperceptible. Thus it becomes obvious how little we profit from such distinctions.
According to our interpretation, we can replace τὸ μὴ δῦνόν ποτε with τὸ ἀεί φύον on two conditions. We must think φύσις from self-concealing, and we must think φύον as a verb. A search for the word ἀείφυον in Heraclitus proves fruitless. We find instead the word ἀείζωον, ever-living, in Fragment 30. The verb "to live" speaks in the largest, uttermost, and inmost significance, which Nietzsche too, in his note from 1885/86, was thinking when he said: "'Being'—we have no conception of it other than as 'life.'—How can something dead 'be'?" (Will to Power, no. 582).
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