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life and death—a problem to which we will pay attention separately. Also concerning {GA 15: 116} Fr. 31, we wish to use here only the words of Heraclitus himself in our consideration: πυρὸς τροπαὶ πρῶτον θάλασσα, θαλάσσης δὲ τὸ μὲν ἥμισυ γῆ, τὸ δὲ ἥμισυ πρηστήρ (γῆ) θάλασσα διαχέεται καὶ μετρέεται εἰς τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον, ὁκοῖος πρόσθεν ἦν ἢ γενέσθαι γῆ. Diels translates: "Change of fire: first sea; of sea, however, one half earth, the other half breath of fire. The earth melts as sea, and this receives its measure according to the same sense (relationship) as it acknowledged before it became earth."
HEIDEGGER: Let me refer at this point to an essay by Bruno Snell on τροπή in Hermes 61, 1926.
FINK: Diels translates, "Change of fire," while Heraclitus speaks in the plural of τροπαί, changes, transformations. But how should we understand the transition of fire into sea and from sea into earth and breath of fire, as well as from earth into sea and sea into fire? Is it here a question of the familiar phenomenon of one aggregate state passing over into the other? Is it intended here that some elements go over and turn themselves into others? Does Heraclitus speak of transformations of elements, such as we see aggregate states going over; as, for instance, liquid goes over into steam or fire into smoke? What are the τροπαί? Does Heraclitus speak of a multitude because fire converts itself into a series of different things? At first, it looks like a series: fire converts itself into sea, sea converts itself half into earth and half into breath of fire. Can we inquire here at all about everyday, familiar kinds of events? From the phenomenon, we know only the change of aggregate states. However, we are not witnesses of a cosmogonic process. What is very difficult to see is the conversion of fire into sea, while the sea, that is, water, is nevertheless that which most quenches fire. The general question is whether we are right if we take the transformations of fire as if everything were first fire, and as if there were then a {GA 15: 117} separation of water, of which one half would be earth and the other half the breath of fire. Presumably, we are not dealing at all with a relationship of mixing in sequence and at the level of πάντα. Rather, I would suppose that the fire is opposed to the sea, the earth, and the breath of fire, that the fire thus relates itself in opposition to the sea, the earth and the breath of fire as κεραυνός and Ἥλιος are in opposition to πάντα. The fire, as the ἕν, would then turn about in different ways, as τὰ πάντα show themselves. This interpretation should at first be formulated only as a question. If we understand τροπή only as turning over in a local motion, Fr. 31 is not at all intelligible. For we cannot say that fire turns into water, earth, and breath of fire in a local motion. If τροπή means turning in a local motion, what then do the overturnings of fire mean? Nevertheless, Heraclitus says that fire turns first into sea. Yet here a local motion is evidently not thought. Does φire move in such a way that it first becomes water, and