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Limits of Thought in the Light of Nature and Divinity. A Return to Ancient Thought or the Quest for the Being of Primordial Thinking in the Later Heidegger
Viktor Okorokov
Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, Professor, Oles Gonchar Dnipro National University
(Dnipro, Ukraine) Email: [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0001-8606-677X
Question about the essence of thought itself may be formulated in two ways: is it a manifestation of the existential presence or a habit to considerate a Universe as a representation of its rational core? Among various methods of inquiry of essential nature of thought, I would emphasize a Martin Heidegger's approach, which was represented in his late papers. I mean, widely accepted in oriental culture but almost forgotten in European intellectual tradition approach which considers thought as luminous and light-bearing logos - the fundamental origin and principle of the Universe.
The problem of logos appearance in primordial chaos and discovery of the thought origins, on Heidegger's opinion, becomes the crucial matter of his "fundamental ontology ". Heidegger is confident that the problem of transformation ofprimordial chaos into well-ordered (by "logos") Universe was the most significant topic which the ancient philosophers (Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides) were focused on. My research, represented in this article, discovers European philosopher's acceptation and reception of the ancient interpretation of primordial thought as a "divine light".
My conclusion is that all classical European philosophical ontological theories (since the first philosophers to Plato, Aristotle, post-Aristotelian thinkers, and to the contemporary philosophers) may be considered as the different varieties of interpretation of the primordial (given by gods) luminous thinking itself and became a simulation of the primordial nature of thought. Another conclusion is, that origins of mentioned above ancient philosophical inquiries on the divine-light essence of primordial thinking, may be found in earlier, than Heidegger thinks, texts composed by Homer, Hesiod, and perhaps even in the religious philosophical texts of the Orient heritage (India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and other ancient states), created before the sixth century BC.
Keywords: primordial thinking, return mechanism of thinking, life, Logos, nature, topos, light of mind, primordial source, beginning of thinking, divine life, Heidegger, Parmenides, Heraclitus.
Received 29 September 2017; accepted 20 November 2017
Philosophy and Cosmology, Volume 20, 2018: 170-184
DOI: 10.29202/phil-cosm/20/17
© Okorokov, Viktor, 2018
Introduction
In the visible historical retrospective thinking has always held the most stable position (place) among other possible ways of existence and understanding of reality. We used to trust such a (reasonable) way of existence or the almighty power of all-controlling thought as a judge and interpreter of everything that there is. The question therefore arises of what is thought: is it a way of persistence of our existence (thought as the existential presence) or a habit of accepting the world as order (thought as a repetition of logos of the beginning of beings)? There are two probably the most important factors logos and topos to bring into existence a phenomenon we call thought. However, if it is the case, we should ask about its origin - the alternative beginning that is brought in by logos. Where and when does the order begin, if in its very beginning the world was chaos? (In this aspect, following Iliya Prigogine, we see the order out of chaos). Such ontology is marked with a rupture; therefore, we can speak of the divine order of creation (logos), because we do not know the measure of initial creative power, and only at times, we perceive of its echoing. Topos of the created world reveals itself as the chaos, which has been marked out by reason (as a construction of logos). Thought (or the order of logos), topos (or the order of space), time (or cyclical order) all these are contrary to chaos (original unordered darkness of primary indiscernibles).
In this context, at first sight, there is clearly seen a formula of primordiality which is the formula of bringing together created and chaotic - shaping a logos-language or a sign (of divinity), which simultaneously brings together creating and created, rational and natural principles, signifying and signified. Logos-language becomes an image of the first formula of rational, which in general reflects the duality of the first principle (the creative nature and chaos, the light and the darkness). Existence into light possesses the duality, since it brings together the divine (creative, life-giving) and the natural (chaos). It is not the language alone, but existence also is shaped by signs, by that mechanism which bears in itself simultaneously both rational and material elements. Number (in Pythagoras), chora (in Plato), entelecheia (in Aristotle) have the capability of doubling. Say, early Greek philosophers were aware of unbreakable unity of God and the world created by him. Existence and accompanying signs appear in heterogeneous environments or dimensions in areas of their contingence, where they come into contact. Signs reflect a process of transference wherein the features of divine nature are being transferred to the created one (human or the world). Here we can use the notions of matrix, programme, and so on, which contain the idea of transformation. In ancient mythologies, the essence of such matrixes appears in a number of concepts: desire and the will (the Vedas), the word (the Bible), the will, God's power, energy or emanation (in Plotinus). However, there is another formula of sign: a transition from invisible into visible (as the truth in Aristotle, according to Heidegger's transcription), or from nonbeing into being (the formulae of Heraclites and Parmenides). Moreover, analytical vision of different mythologies allows deducing a formula: God's name as a sign unfolds the process of initiation. Thought finds its embodiment in either in sign or in the form of essence (essential form).
Now and then in various philosophical works, we encounter the global problem: how is it possible to determine the essence of mind and thought? Understanding of philosophy begins where reason becomes wisdom, in the topos of true thinking. However, even today we still do not fully know how to listen to and understand the wisdom of thought. Martin Heidegger and Sri Aurobindo show us a one of interesting ways of interpreting and understanding the essence of thought. They invented and applied the method of destruction or the way of return to its origins [see Heidegger 1994, 1994 a; Satprem 1984]. One of the greatest scholars of mythological and religious systems Mircea Eliade is seemingly not far from the
interpretation either [Eliade 1981]. Results of my preliminary studies of the present issue have been published in a series of articles and can also be easily accessed [see Okorokov, 2013; 2015; 2016]. The studies on problems of mind and thinking in Heidegger are numerous and can be found in a great many books and articles [e.g. see Alweiss 2002: 117-132; Beistegui 2000: 145-158; Buben 2016: 384-399; Hadjioannou 2017: 350-359; Iyer 2011; Regan 2015: 376-394; Zuckerman 2015: 493-516; Watts 2014]. However, in these generalising works you can hardly find anything on the return mechanisms of thought. Focusing on the method of destruction, they merely say that it refers to early Greek thinking or simply state the necessity of its further analysis. Concerning ontology of the earliest thinking and what was its origins, there is scarcely said anything at length if anything at all, or they barely refer back to Heidegger and other philosophers. Although Heidegger himself warned that the true being of thought can be revealed only by its origins.
In the present paper, I am going to focus on the interpretation of human thought as a gift of gods that can be revealed only in the divine light. The most extensive illustration of such an approach can be found in Heidegger's late comments on Anaximander, Heraclites, and Parmenides [see Heidegger 1984, 1992, 1994, 1994 a, 1995].
1. Nature of Thought: Sign vs. Essence
In the beginning of the created world (and in the beginning of thought) there are two quite distinct markings: the sign (logos) and the essential. Sign appears where two environments meet, and it shares the properties of them both simultaneously (one, which is higher, appears to be thought, as the other, which is lower (e.g. created one), is matter that can be used for creative purposes and activity of the first). Sign therefore, on the one hand, bears in itself the properties of thinking (thought), as, on the other hand, is a bearer of properties of material nature. Everything brought forth in accordance with the world of signs (the logos-language) is similar to it, bearing its likeness. Sign per se is always a form of natural equivalency (likeness) to the thinkable. It is whence two famous formulae come: Aristotle's of a thought's correspondence (likeness) to a thing or fact (which reflects in the language-sign), and another one of Descartes' two distinct substances, in which however a fundamental rupture opens between these two environments - the thinking thing (res cogitans) and the extended thing (res extensa). It may also be noted that when a transition is made from the rational to the natural environment, the transition passes through a surface that communicates senses. Logos-nature (sign) passages bring forth senses, and the most picturesque representations of the transition are human beings themselves, who simultaneously abide in - at least - two (incommensurable) worlds. Sophists, Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Kant, Husserl, poststructuralists, and many others tried to solve that kind of anthropological riddle. In addition, as the transition is made from a higher (which logos and thought have already marked: here the thought is a form of marking of the higher dimension level) to a lower (where thought lowers its dimension), from a higher dimension to a lower, where a lower thought starts speaking of holiness and divinity of the higher. Language is a form of transition from a higher dimension to a lower (say a transition from ten-dimensional or five-dimensional to four-dimensional or bodily). Thus, thought is always contiguous to the higher (through language) and to the lower (through meaning) worlds; senses appear due to these transitions. Human being is a bearer of two worlds (two elements), it is a creature that is capable of unfolding senses (thinking and constituting objects).
2. Spatial-Temporal Nature of Thought (and Sign)
If we take note of how signs are written on paper (on the surface), we can probably notice that they are unfolding in space and time making rational sequences. In other words, the algorithm of how writing works (and thinking, and reason correspondingly) consists in that how we trace out signs one by one on a surface, embedding them with meaning, and then we read them in the same sequence in space and time. It is hardly possible to imagine any other way of how else thinking could work. Thinking is marked out according to ancient prescriptions, in accordance with which there must be consecutive advancing in a spatial sequence of signs as well as temporal advancing in the same sequence. If either spatial or temporal mechanisms of consecutive reading of these sequences of signs disappear, then, senses will also either disappear or suffer a radical transformation. It is clear that the system of unfolding senses has (as well as the system of language and thinking development) the same spatial-temporal nature. Topos of thought and language consists in unfolding of signs, images (and sounds) in space and time, as far as the topos has always had twofold marking (senses can only be born where is both the sign part, pointing to higher thought - the matrix of senses, and material part, pointing to the system of adequate meanings in the lower, material world). Any language is always a duality, a dichotomy expressed in the form of signs. In addition, apparently there is no alternative way for shaping thought. This formula may change in the world of deities (e.g., in the Upanishad we can find a new formula of thought), when a higher mind has instantaneous speed of reading, empowering him to overtake any material move and outrun even the light. It means that higher entities (from a higher dimension) can grasp a lower dimension in whole (as a finite system); and I may presume that the theories like ones of Cantor, Tarsky, and Godel emerge apparently at the intersection of different dimensions. In order to create any closed set we must have a meta-language (more sizeable dimension) that could determine the reading of information from (lower) closed dimension, since creating a closed set and reading it are single-type. Any way is but unfolding existence in space and time. Both thought and thinking intended for unfolding existence in space and time therefore they are closed within the space-time topos of existence. Human way is always a pacing, not a grasping. Thought shapes in the same manner: it moves like a flow, it does not grasp in whole (all the philosophical phenomenology is contingent on this trait of thought and thinking).
3. Active Nature of Thought
In the aspect that has been considered above, we may trace the way of thought from its very beginning until now (or vice versa). Thinking, flowing on the surface of contiguous environments, bears in itself the properties of both environments simultaneously: that is not only the sense of creating and created, but contains the whole story of creation. Being of thinking is formed by its origins. A sign (or signs) unfolds its sense from the beginning till the present day (in a temporal sequence of senses). Something similar we may observe in the mechanism of runic writing: depiction of signs unfolds real events in accordance with senses embedded in them. Mathematical signs and formulae unfold the mathematical reality, physical signs - the physical reality, cosmological signs - the cosmological, and so on. However, are there any two-way passages between these different dimensions? - must be, yes. Pythagorean cosmology or Einstein's general theory of relativity are the most vivid examples of such transitions. Socratic definitions, Platonic ideas, and Aristotelian genera, on the one hand, point out to the higher nature (gods, the world of ideas, absolute or general forms), however, on the other hand, they also point out to material things (the physical world). Alternatively,
putting it rather more precisely, all the ancient Greek formulae of thought and truth point out to the same dual nature of sign (thinking and thought).
The system of signs (language) becomes an art of unfolding them in space and time. The signs follow one another and the mode of their existence - the surface of contiguity, i.e. language (and thinking) - is the art of rational and logical contiguity of signs with one another. The world, according to Ludwig Wittgenstein, is the totality of facts in logical space. Logic always formalise or unfolds thought (senses) in a transitory environment from one dimension to another, i.e. it is a spatial mechanism (or precisely, superficial, matrix). In the topos understanding and thinking (both language and logic) are single-type, shape-generating phenomena that unfold the space and time of sensible being on a surface, in other words, they are the formal (junction) phenomena that unfold a projective trace in both a divine (higher) dimension and a physical (lower) one. Gods are entities of a higher dimension. Humans are entities that comprise both dimensions (or a number of dimensions), they are capable of unfolding their visions and ideas in all these dimensions with the means of senses (becoming thereby able to harmonise themselves with them). Where senses are set forth, there is also thought (logos).
Alexei Losev pointed out that primary becoming of signs was a consequence of the primary acts of creating which caused the creation of the world. The Bible says that "In the beginning was the word," Plotinus says of "The One," the Vedic texts speak of "the one Absolute," the author of the "Tao Te Ching" speaks of the eternal "Tao," and so on. All these are the Higher Beginnings that initiate the creation (unfolding) of the world (cosmos) and the human race (in their image and likeness, according to their senses). They are all share the same principle: in the beginning of creation there was God as the Higher Beginning. In accordance with this interpretation the most important motive of any religion is not as much the believing in God as the return to the topos, in which God created the world (cosmos and humankind). And so far as human beings have in their possession that unique divine gift which is called thought - an ability to reproduce, re-create (or return to the beginning of creation), then, in religious sense, coming back to the beginning is the highest way of thinking, the highway of any human being. Mircea Eliade convincingly reveals the formula of return to the divine origins (see the chapters on Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ancient India, Abrahamic religions) [see Eliade 1981].
In the first act of creation the created is but a repetition of the essence (and the mode of existence) of Higher Beginning, and it can be communicated only in a form of signs, as there is no direct transition from a Deity (existing in a higher dimension) to created things (including human beings), appearing in a lower dimension. Therefore, in the ancient sources, it is written: in the beginning was the word (logos), lotus, etc. - which are the symbols or signs that transform through the frontier (between the higher and the lower dimensions) the form of higher, as a transition of senses becomes possible only in the form of signs.
4. Luminous Nature of Thought as Logos and Return Mechanisms of Thinking
Let us try - going by Heidegger's subtle knowledge of the ancient Greek mentality -finding what is there divine in humans. Ancient sources say that in religious and philosophical understanding of human being we can encounter two divine gifts. According to the evidence of the Bible, human beings were created "in the image and after the likeness of God." However, the image and the likeness are consequences of but a formal transformation, the soul (mind) does not manifest itself there. Either the translation of the ancient sources we have is not fully faithful or we must search now another source of the divinity of human soul:
that higher principle which cannot be explained in a mere formal way. There must probably be said of a transformation of - crossing the border, tunnelling into - the human being of the essence of Higher Principle (Beginning), which could not be communicated in a formal way. The transformation results the appearance of an element of human being, which cannot be formalised, since it cannot be communicated in a formal way: soul can be discovered only when you are drawing closer to the divine beginning (using the means of purification, for instance, the yoga, or coming back to the beginning). The presence of soul as a divine gift can be discovered examining the most ancient religious and mythological texts (the Avesta, the Vedas, the sources from the ancient China, the Old Testament, etc.). All these texts in one or another metaphorical way (form) directly witness the presence of a spiritual foundation of human being (and the Universe): the mind imprisoned into the cage of the body (as if it were a sepulchre), Atman craving for Brahman, the higher wisdom of the old kings of China as a mandate of heaven, God created man, etc. Most ancient mythologies speak of the spiritual gift of gods (gods granted to human being a gift - mind, soul - which can be fully revealed only in the act of self-knowledge, on the way leading to God).
However the second most valuable human quality, which systematically was also discovered by the ancient Greeks is also a divine gift: the gift, which has been granted by the means of form (and correlated with bodily potencies of human being), can be formalised, since it has been communicated with means of the system of signs (and can be found but in the light of the divine Beginning).
Also the ancient Greeks discovered this new sign form of human being and the Universe, called it with the name of the universal logos-thought, as the Christian theologians got it formalised, having uttered "in the beginning was the Word (logos), and the word was God." This new sign form, de facto, also draws us back to the act of creation, to the first Beginning, it can be discovered but in the light of divinity (thought is that which can be revealed but in the light, since any possibilities of understanding conceal in the darkness). Thus, the ancient Greeks discover thought as a gift of gods, but a formal one (in a form of Logos, which may be formalised in language as a system of signs). If thought is a spiritual gift of gods (which can be reviled but in spiritual practices), thinking (and thought), then, their formal gift (can be obtained through discursive or spatial-temporal - and in this sense historical -practices). Here I can mention that language (and thinking) is a kind of spatial-temporal practice of human being (in this dimension any transitions are made with the means of forms, and language is one of them).
Formalisation of human thought begins in the light of divinity (in ancient Egypt the source of rising is the sun god Ra that brings the light of sunshine; in the doctrines of Heraclites and Parmenides the way of thought is also lightened by gods, they bring the light of thought, teaching people proper, logical, or logos-bearing thinking). Gods enlighten (bless and sanctify) the human way to origins (to the beginning of his origin). It is possibly complicated to understand that our (human) divinity is not momentary (disclosing itself in the present, in reality), but historical (that can be disconcealed but by its very origins).
Thus, in the ancient (as much as in modern) texts we encounter two distinct ways, bringing us back to the beginning of divinity: a formal (logos, philosophical and scientific) and a spiritual (religious and mythological). In addition, as far as we can know up to date, it seems, there are no other ways to God (or to own origins).
Let us hearken to what we often say unconsciously: in the light of reason, in the light of the divine wisdom, etc. Is it so much important that "in the light of..."? Can thought be disconceal without light?
At first sight, the question is easily answered. In the light of the Sun (as well as the Moon also) everything becomes visible. However, what about the inner light of thought, what shall we do with it? The subtlest thinkers like Zoroaster, Egyptian pharaohs, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Socrates, Thomas Aquinas, Hegel, the wise men of the Orient, etc. say about the rollback of thought to the far remote past (to the ancient wisdom), where the light of thought disguises itself. In the twentieth century, one of such a subtle thinker, perhaps, was Martin Heidegger. Examining the origins of European thinking (the East was for him a closed subject, since he believed the oriental thought becomes clear only in spiritual practices), he states: "In the hidden being of..." (the truth,) "nature... and the light... find the hidden unity of their being" [Heidegger 1994: 17]. Ancient Greek thinkers believe that the light is a necessary (pre)condition of the pursuit (and becoming) of the truth. Only when the light appeared in an ancient Greek's thought, then, along with it there appeared the conditions for emergence of the truth and philosophy. Heidegger had to go the longest European way to the beginning of thinking (in the ancient Greece). In the Oriental philosophy, this reverse way to antiquity has always been rather evident. If there is a discovery it is a discovery for European intellectuals only.
Let us hearken to how Heidegger goes this way (subtly, scarcely audible, on the level of oblivion and boring), sometimes he reaches the region of thinking and thought where no foot of European man (and mind) has ever stepped. It is not a slip or lapsus linguae, since thinking, according to Plato, it is the movement corresponded with things. "The name 'judgment'.," he writes, "expresses the fact that to judge is to examine or study whatever is begotten... And if you want yet another example, understanding. itself is the longing for the new... But to say that the things that are are new is to signify that they are always coming into being. 'Knowledge'. indicates that a worthwhile soul follows. the movement of things, neither falling behind nor running on ahead" [Plato 1997: 129-130]. As though having perceived the changes in things, following them, and synchronising with them, reflects such "steps" as thought. In this case, thinking is but the synchrony (or likeness) of thought and the things of the world, encrypted (according to Derrida) in writing (that exists in the topos of postponement (delay) from reality). The synchrony results naming (things get names), names correspond with things, and the soul manifests itself in the world of things as thinking (by the means of names). However, the names (as much as things) come up to the surface of thinking only in the lighted space.
Heidegger examines the origins and significance of the light for the truth of thinking in his book Heraklit. Der Anfang des abendländischen Denkens... (Heraclites. The Beginning of Western Thinking): "From Plato to Nietzsche," he writes, "theological moment is supremely predominant in metaphysics, since the cause of the world is indispensably thought to be something 'divine'.; (and in Heraclites) 'reigns the proximity to gods. Heraclites' goddess (Artemis). is the goddess of that the thinker must think. Greek attitude to gods, among the rest of things, is it is the knowledge, and not the faith in a sense of intended acceptance of something for the truth on the basis of. the authoritative declaration. Artemis appears holding in both of her hands the torches of fire. She is called. light-bearing; a being of light. she is the clarity that makes possible any appearance, and therefore the passage from the hidden to the unconcealed. Equally the essence of the physis. that manifests itself in ascend and self-unfolding to the unconcealed and clarified. (the light)' (the physis as an ascend and radiance of light, phenomenon) 'is rooted in one and the same which . still has not been sufficiently considered in the unity of the wealth of its essence. I call this a clearing, which however has not been sufficiently considered yet" [Heidegger 1994: 13-17]. Thus, thinking, according to Heidegger, works in a clearing that is in the topos in which thought
revives, where it manifest itself lighting the space of mental events. Mind clarifies nature (or according to Heidegger the nature is getting clarified in a clearing). And as much clear and distinct is the thought of a thing (and nature) as clearer and more distinct in the light of signs the essence of thing (and nature) can be traced.
Here it is important to notice that the essence of thing can only be revealed in divine light, which reveals its existence. Existence is a sign of creation (of a thing), with respect to mind it is a sign of its being lighted up (transillumination). That is perhaps the reason why Heidegger's Dasein manifests itself in the light of understanding (that is of sensibility as highlighting). When the darkness of existence is getting illuminated in the light of appearing understanding, the human being becomes able to perceive (hear, clear up) the sense of the phenomenon. Language is the house of being: that is Heidegger's revelation. Senses of existence (according to Karl Jaspers, the codes of existence) manifest themselves (are heard) there, where a thing is distinctly and clearly lighted up by the light from above (here the thought brings forth signs and by their means synchronise itself with things). It may seem that here Heidegger is getting closer to the famous Berkley's definition: esse estpercipi - to be is to be perceived. However, George Berkeley rather means rational perception - which positivists define as sensual - and, certainly, Heidegger in this sense is rather a Berkeleyan idealist than a positivist. However, the language should be given from the very beginning, or otherwise thinking has no chance to grasp the essence of thing. A thing appears in a mind only when there is light (divine or logos), which makes its essence and existence manifest.
It is highly symbolical that language, logos (logic), divine light, existence, and craving for origins simultaneously awake in a mind (as thought also exists, manifests itself, and gets clear, which has been Heidegger's discovery, or, in a sense of phenomenology of mind, Edmund Husserl). Thinking is what it is just because once it has already been as such in the beginning (Plato writes about it when he speaks of anamnesis or soul's recollection of the past), and now it is merely clarifying the present (things, nature) in the light of what has already been revealed unto her in the beginning (Heidegger says: in the light of the beginning). Thinking has been lighted up by its origins, and there it has found the mode of its existence.
Another important issue stems naturally from that: how we can find the origins of thought, when the soul has found her in divine light. Heidegger, who had carefully traced the becoming of European thinking, saw its origins in ancient Greece in the primordial thinkers (Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides) [see Heidegger 1994, 1994 a]. However, as I have already tried to show in one of my recent publications, these origins are much more ancient, and they should not be reserved for Europe alone [see Okorokov 2016]. Heidegger expresses his idea of the beginning in the following way: "In essential history the beginning comes last. Naturally, to a way of thinking acquainted only with the form of calculation, the proposition 'The beginning is the last' is nonsense. To be sure, at first, at the outset, the beginning appears veiled in a peculiar way. Whence stems the remarkable fact that the beginning is easily taken for the imperfect, the unfinished, the rough. It is also called the 'primitive.' Therefore, the thinkers before Plato and Aristotle are said to be 'primitive thinkers.' Of course, not every thinker at the outset of Western thought is by that very fact also a thinker of the beginning, a primordial thinker." [Heidegger 1992: 1-2]. These primordial thinkers - Heidegger continuously reminds his readers in his future works are Anaximander, Heraclites, and Parmenides.
A bit later Heidegger writes: "To think is to heed the essential." [Heidegger 1992: 3], may we note - the essential, not the existential. It seems there is a subtle verge to perceive where the essential corresponds with the existential, since thinking it is not merely unveiling
the essence (of thing), but also that which discloses in the light (in the world of creation), i.e. in existence. The verge between the essential and the existential is very subtle, as well as between the existential and being.
If we may hear that Parmenides relates exactly the same revelations on reason (logos) as Heraclites, than, it is evident that the source they had should have been the same. In his Parmenides, Heidegger indicates the similar roots of human reason: "The thinker Parmenides tells of a goddess, from then on we shall take our direction from the insight, to be acknowledged gradually, that the dictum of the thinker speaks by bringing into language the word of this goddess... The goddess is the goddess 'truth.' 'The truth' - itself is the goddess." Then he adds: "It is distinctive of the thinkers who later, i.e, from the time of Plato, are called 'philosophers' that their own meditation is the source of their thoughts." [Heidegger 1992: 4-5]. It is clear enough that it is also the goddess who reveals to Parmenides the way of thought. When Parmenides is saying, he utters the same words as the goddess. Parmenides' thought reproduces exactly the same what was there in the beginning when the goddess directed it immediately. However, is the direction not the same as being in the light (of the goddess), and in the present case the goddess 'Truth'?
Heidegger unfolds this idea further, in the following way: "Thinking does not mean here the course of psychologically represented acts of thought but the historical process in which a thinker arises, says his word. 'Outset' has to do with the debut and the emergence of thinking. But we are using 'beginning' in a quite different sense. The 'beginning' is what, in this early thinking, is to be thought and what is thought." [Heidegger 1992: 7]. Here we can hear the same idea: to think is to slide along the history (of our mind), to return to the beginning, to repeat again that which was in the beginning when the thought was uttered by the goddess ('Truth') in the beginning of its outset. Since that which is-to-be-thought in this early thinking means the return to the beginning (outset) of thought. Thus, according to Heidegger, in Heraclites, and in Parmenides the thought (of a human thinker) is brought forth in one and the same scenario: in the light of divinity (either being directly lighted by gods through illumination or imitating the divine, repeating the words of the goddess — which is the truth). Therefore, in this context, the truth (in the Presocratics) is hardly a correspondence, but the repetition what gods have said.
The same scenario reproduces another thinker, who also subtly feels the beginning of logos, Gilles Deleuze in his Difference and Repetition [Deleuze 1994]. However, Deleuze introduces here his own topos of thought: "Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter. What is encountered may be Socrates, a temple or a demon." [Deleuze 1994: 139]. Here we may distinguish the glimpses of Heidegger's ideas: to think means to encounter the source of light (from the past), encountering with the space of thought that has already been lighted (with the topos of a long since past thought). However Deleuze distinguishes a higher (primordial) thought from a form of dogmatic image, for instance, in Plato's Republic, when the he "erects the dogmatic and moralising image of thought" [Deleuze 1994: 142]. Basing on Plato, the future culture and tradition retranslates the idea in the same form of dogmatic image. Therefore he concludes, the same as Heidegger, that the true thought is the thought in the beginning, when it was divine (pure and true), but not a profanely human (burdened and dogmatic). In the beginning of thought Socrates also has his doubts. Seek the truth in thyself. In this sense, promoting ethics Socrates replaces with it the primordial thought of gods. Since the man, according to his teaching, should not meddle in divine matters but rather is to be versed in human affairs (or moral relations between people), which do not exceed his forces. It
is possible that this human ethics was the first coarse surrogate to replace the primordial (divine) thinking.
The history of state witness that the state flourishes only when there is a (wise) ruler (king), reigning in the name of gods. However, wherever the divine beginning were replaced with a secular (human) power (the history of Roman papacy or the contemporary globalism), the state or society (people) would most likely choose the totalitarian road. Plato felt this (and turned to the world of ideas), Deleuze also knew that (having traced the way of logos, knowledge, and written his Capitalism and Schizophrenia). Scientific thought (of man) that breaks with its beginning becomes external to its beginning and human being himself (trivialised, as Heidegger puts it). Is a positive human being, who has broken ties with his beginning, able to make a return to the true thought? - apparently it is the major challenge in the contemporary information society. Analysis of the contemporary (scientific information) thinking demonstrates that such a system of thought causes self-reproducing processes of simulation and makes people to lose contact with true being (their nature). The simulation processes result that both state and society in general, and human beings in particular lose the opportunity of being true (and authentically corresponding to the divine - in its very beginning - nature).
Contemporary people who choose to read Plato, Aristotle, and post-Platonists (Plotinus, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, etc.), trust not in the higher wisdom (coming from gods), but in the human thought, plunged into intellectual history (of - sometimes - very significant thinkers), in the thought that has already lost the statues of popular wisdom. "Only the primordial thinking hides in itself the wealth which remains ever unthinkable.. .Today we must simply accept the mysterious fate that for more than two thousand years in the West the attitude to the word was defined by grammar; the grammar in its own turn was founded on what today is called logic; and the logic was a one - but not a single one - construction of thinking and speech, and namely the interpretation of the essence of thinking peculiar to metaphysics" [Heidegger 1994: 64, 70].
As Heidegger puts it, there are two principal directions in European philosophy: one goes back to Plato and Aristotle [see Heidegger 1994, 1995], and the second one that ascends even to earlier sources - to the primordial thinkers - Anaximander, Heraclites, Parmenides [see Heidegger 1984, 1992, 1994, 1994 a].
Heidegger lays the responsibility for the state of affairs in the contemporary culture upon the former: "The old name 'Philosophy' stems from the primordial circle of western thinking. In its essence 'philosophy' is so originally western that it lays the foundation of western history. technology appeared upon only this foundation. There is no other but the western technology. It is a result of nothing else but 'philosophy'." [Heidegger 1994: 3]. Both the metaphysical and the scientific (technological) thinking appear in the circle of philosophical world outlook - Heidegger demonstrates it, yet they appear already cut off from their beginning (simulation, replacement of the primordial thought has already happened there). This direction (this way) lost its primordial (divine) light, having preserved but the second (philosophical and scientific) light of technological thought. The latter Heidegger traces back to the primordial thinkers (pre-Socratics) - Anaximander, Heraclites, and Parmenides. He believes that they were the only ones who have ascended to logos in the radiant light of gods.
Following the path of Heidegger's logic of destruction (the historical setting forth to the beginning of European thinking), we can discover that metaphysics appears as a result of erroneous interpretation (a wrong, inadequate translation) of the fundamental concepts of primordial thinkers by Plato and Aristotle. Searching for the (first) principles (essences)
of nature and thinking they did not use the return mechanisms of thinking, and they did not turn to the primary sources of primordial thought either (as it was in pre-Socratics, who had found the logos-ness of thought in the divine light), but to the first principles of beings (to substances), designing ideas and categories as the (only) adequate criteria of their fullness, which brought merely an illusion (simulation) of light. They formalised the nature using the first principles, they formalised beings using ideas and truths, and the thought itself with use of the means of logic. Science and technology appear as a result of the erroneous interpretation (inadequate translation or transmutation of senses) of "fundamental concepts of philosophy" (it was already the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle), causing the origin of logic and metaphysics, which brought to even a deeper and harder trivialisation or transmutation of philosophy into science and technology.
Therefore, as Heidegger puts it, philosophy has gained a twofold status: on the one hand, it is the primordial (due to the primordial thinkers) as on the other hand it is European (Plato, Aristotle, and their followers). In this sense, Heidegger believes that thinking also gains the twofold status: "Ordinary thinking, whether scientific or prescientific or unscientific, thinks beings. This thinking is an acquaintance with beings, a knowledge that masters and dominates beings in various ways. In distinction from the mastering of beings, the thinking of thinkers is the thinking of Being. Their thinking is a retreating in face of Being We name what is thought in the thinking of the thinkers the beginning. Which hence now means: Being is the beginning." [Heidegger 1992: 7].
Thus, Heidegger clearly distinguishes two types of thinking: the ordinary (scientific and prescientific) that focuses on beings, and the primordial that focuses on being. The former is the thinking of scientists (post-Aristotelians), who already do not see light but basing on previous (so-called self-evident) knowledge (Platonic ideas, Aristotelian metaphysics and logic, Euclidian geometry, and sciences constructed in the similar way), as the later, thinking of primordial thinkers (pre-Socratics), as Heidegger puts it, directed to the light of wisdom, coming from gods alone (he believes that it is a thinking coming from the origin, or the beginning, or being). From this viewpoint he can see two (possible) ways of European culture: the scientific (external, which is alien to man and his nature), and the primordial (divine, discovered in the light of divine wisdom).
An astonishing coincidence is waiting for us as we are trying to solve a problem about Parmenides' doctrine on truth. Heidegger also noticed this perspective of Parmenides' teaching. All the future culture understands Parmenides' formula of being in the light of Aristotle: it interprets being as the beings, and truth as the correspondence, meaning the complete coincidence of the order of things and the order of words. And all this because, according to Aristotle, there is no need in either unveiling or lighting the ideas, as they are resting in things, it is sufficient to find the correspondence between them. In the meantime as a careful analysis of Parmenides fragments, quoted by Heidegger, demonstrates that the truth is not a correspondence, but disconcealing or disclosing of concealed things. "The word "unconcealedness" indicates that something like a suspension or cancellation of concealedness. In the essence of truth as un-concealedness there holds sway some sort of conflict with concealedness and concealment." [Heidegger 1994: 14]. However, does not it mean that the authentic formula of the truth (or the goddess of justice Dike) consists in disclosing of the concealed in the light of appearing goddess Dike ("Truth"), i.e. we again encounter with the problem of divine illumination.
The truth is that which illuminates the way for us in order to know the authenticity (unconcealment) of things. Pre-Socratics (primordial thinkers) understood the essence of
the disclosing in thought (appearing to it) namely like that. The truth is the process of turning on the light or setting before the eyes of our mind what we need to see in the thing (disconcealment of a thing before our mind's eye). Disclosing is only that what is lighted (illuminated). Concealing is that what is receding into darkness. Therefore, thought is related to processes of concealment / disconcealment of the world. Thought goes out, vanishes, and dissolves in ignorance, when it recedes into maya, the haze of dispersion of authentic knowledge, i.e. when the primordial light of the truth (the light of far remote gods, who originally lighted up the way of ancient men in the beginning of thought) goes away. Heidegger pays no heed to these ancient bounds. Heidegger believes that the light of thought first manifests itself in European primordial thinkers; the light of European thought appears when there is logos (logic of thinking as the light of reason). Our thought discovers logos in the light of the goddess "Truth." The goddess marks the thought after her own likeness, and in this marking there begins disclosing or disconcealing of the authenticity of things (their essence). In contrast to it, the truth (and the world) conceals itself when the light of thought goes out. Heidegger states that the event of concealment is but forgetting [Heidegger 1994: 71]. Thought discloses in recollection (and it is a gift of the goddess "Truth") (for Greeks this process is equal to the memories of mind when it still dwelt in the world (in the light) of gods), but it can also conceal, i.e. purify (and this is purification of the soul from false knowledge). Thus, Greeks understand thought as a struggle between recollection and forgetting (the battle between the light of the truth and the darkness of sensual ignorance), the final outcome of which is a venture (though predestined, and in general predictable).
Parmenides firmly distinguishes two human ways: the way of justice (truth), i.e. the way of thought which goes in the path of day (in the light of higher thought of the goddess "Truth"); and the way of untruth (errors) that is the way of sensuality, which begins in the path of night, when the light of thought disappears and the hazy "chaos" with manifoldness of its sensuality comes into play. Among these interchanges of days and nights, each human being unavoidably doomed to choose his way of development. Parmenides insists that we should choose the way of gods, and do only that which is given to us in the light of the truth, being disconcealed in being (that is to follow the way of thought): there is nothing true but being, the darkness of non-being is unacceptable for us since there is no being, and therefore in this darkness there is nothing that could disclose to thought as the truth. The only problem is that the contemporary philosophy and science, on the one hand, and Parmenides, on the other, under stood thought differently.
However, even Parmenides recedes from the primordial motives of Greek philosophy -the doctrine of Homer and Hesiod, in particular - in the beginning was the primordial chaos, and everything else came afterwards. In these two doctrines - one of Hesiod, and the other one of Parmenides - we also find two alternative approaches to non-being (nothing): nothing as the primordial chaos which can bring forth something (being) - and in this topos they (being and nothing) are equal is the way of Hesiod; and nothing as non-existence, when there is nothing but being - and in this topos there is only something and it is existing (being), and it can be known is the way of Parmenides. Certainly, these are only two possible global ways of any future culture: European civilisation chose the way of Parmenides-Plato-Aristotle, and focused only on what there is (existing), or, being more precise, submitting what there is to the will and creativity of gods, who also existed already somewhere. We can endlessly set limits between gods (demiurges, architects of beings) and beings (created), as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Aquinas, and many others did it before, but upon this way we venture to
lose the beginning which disappears, being cut off in transcendence (philosophico-scientific thought cuts off everything which goes beyond the limits, exceeds its own existence, which disconcealed to it). This approach, in the late period of Heidegger's work, contains a contradiction: on the one hand, he equalises being and nothing, and acknowledges the creative role of non-being; on the other hand, he limits the primordiality of European culture with Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, banning European culture from the way to earlier beginning (from the search for the beginning of non-being and chaos). In the synchronic topos of thought, Heidegger opens the door to non-being (nothing) (calling the way the fundamental ontology), in the diachronic one, he limits himself with the only primordial - as he believes them to be - thinkers, closing it (he is calling the way with the name of destruction, and ends up the tracing of it in the maturity of ancient Greek thought).
Truth of Parmenides is the truth of being. However, in Heideggerian transcription of the concept of being a mere truth of thought is insufficient. There must also be psychical processes reflecting the complicated play of the existential forces of thought. Conventionally speaking, we accustomed to see being of thought as if on a surface (logical, two-dimensional), though in reality there are at least tree dimensions, but to put it rather more precisely, thought is four-dimensional (since the forgetting includes the dimension of time). Thought includes the process of unfolding in the time of the world (or things) according to formulae of sign (language), and these formulae are the keys from above (matrixes connecting to light, or formulae of logic as a game of thought within the limits of its consistency, within the limits of bright and distinct illumination from the ancient sources). Logic is the logos-ness, spied out by humans in gods (in the light of the truth), and this spying out means to be distinct only within certain spatial-temporal bounds (for instance, a film shown in a faster stream of time becomes a meaningless sight). Thought is a tool that is proportionate to nature (as we know it) and divinity (in obscurity of the beginning of such knowledge). Synchronised with the rhythms of life, thought resembles a film stream in which either slowing down or speeding up leads to separation from actual sensing (from the correct perception of the film), disbalance that causes senses either completely disappear or making them utterly distorted, so that they become unrecognisable.
When senses disappear, the knowledge of reality becomes dim: the haze of maya covers thought, which becomes useless. Life is complicated because it is a continuous process of birth and death, disconcealing and concealing of reality, synchronicity and diachronicity with nature and gods. Considering the primordial thought of ancient Greeks, Heidegger writes that the goddess Artemis, who gave the light of thought to Heraclites, it is the "goddess of rising, light, and game. But the rising, the self-awareness, and the game are rather the essence of 'life'. and the living. Our word 'life' is burdened with Christian and modern European thinking that there are scarcely left anything from that which Greeks meant" (uttering the word "life") [Heidegger 1994: 17-18]. The life of a contemporary human being becomes either an "affliction" or a rational pursuit for scientific knowledge: there is no more "zest for life" (lofty sentiments, affection), it disappeared, became unknown. Moreover, it happened in spite of the narrow bounds of human existence. Inadequately strong light kills, insufficient, dim light kills human sight, life; if so — we are balancing in the light on different verges of light. Even the gods of Egypt were born (Osiris-Ra identified with the dawn of the light-bearing Sun) and died (Horus came down to the netherworld, where there is no light, died, and came to life again). Life is continuous falling and rising, it is based on the categories which — as we can hear in Heidegger's interpretation — were the most important for the primordial thinkers of Greece. Ancient Greeks were very sensitive for the breathing of life,
well-aware of it. They identified life with the rhythms of the truth, and formulae of the ultimate differences of thought and cosmos they reflected in the dialectical concepts of space (chora), embodied form (entelechy), lekton (stoics), etc.
Conclusion
Therefore I conclude that the quest for the light-bearing foundations of the European culture enables us to find that - despite the destructive positions of Heidegger with respect to this question, referring only to Anaximander, Heraclites, and Parmenides - on the return way of our thinking we need to go further to the origin of Homer and Hesiod, and perhaps even further to the religious philosophical thinkers of the Orient, who created a precedent of philosophical thinking before the sixth century BC. The deep destruction, plunging down into the origins of European thinking, where divine light first shined upon human thought, reveals ancient (and it might even be the most ancient) roots of thinking. They are probably (considering the thinking of ancient India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and other ancient states) much more ancient than European thinking has accustomed to suppose, since at all the stages of the thought development there are surrogate systems, differences, alternative versions, erroneous interpretations, perversions of the thought of ancient thinkers (or primordial, but not in a Heideggerian sense) whose light was lighted by gods.
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