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