I would like here to conclude my thoughts on Hölderlin’s poem Germania.

It is not the case, as is popularly thought, that Parmenides taught the One while Heraclitus taught the many, since Heraclitus too taught the One.  So, for example, we gave the example previously that Life is understood in the context of death, specifically that we live “as though” the next moment won’t be denied in death (though it could be), and so we live on a spectrum from (i) assertive carpe diem to (ii) the restraint of memento mori:

The wisdom of Heraclitus was condensed in an almost formulaic manner into the words of Fragment 50: ἓν πάντα εἶναι—One is all. But “One” does not mean uniformity, empty sameness, and “all” does not mean the countless multitude of arbitrary things: rather, ἕν, “One” = harmony, is all—that which arises in each case essentially constitutes beings as a whole as diverse and in conflict with one another.  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (pp. 177-178). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.). 

Parmenides said apprehending and Being are the same.  For example, with a headache a pall might be cast over beings and so beings appear irritatingly, just as beings for the schizophrenic may appear conspiracy-saturated.  It is very rare that we attend to “appearing” at all these days when considering beings. The sameness of apprehending and Being is made conspicuous when it breaks down, such as trying to apprehend movement through fractions: In order to cross distance A-D, you must first reach halfway point B, yet to reach B, you must first reach halfway to B, point C, and so on to infinity.  In terms of the Logos, to encounter beings is to “encounter as:” in terms of einai, Being, choris, separate from, ton allown, the others, and kath auto, in itself.  I encounter the dog “as” not me, for instance.    Our normal dealing with beings is in terms of something “as” something else – the dog “as” badly behaved. This becomes conspicuous when we “mis-take,” such as in the forest I hear a living thing at my feet just to look down and see I mis-took rustling dead leaves in the wind “as” a living thing. Our normal stance toward the world is “taking-as,” we “encounter-as.”  Breaking down is in fact implicated in the logos, and so in tearing the sock inconspicuous Unity is made conspicuous “as” a lost-Unity. 

As Heidegger said, gods for Hölderlin refers to time, and so ‘gods,’ as Hölderlin uses the term, according to the spirit of the time, means something like ‘ground.’ Heidegger comments, in relation to the way Schelling, Hegel and Hölderlin. understood Heraclitus’ hen panta einai, that

“In its formal meaning, pantheism means: pan-theos, ‘Everything – God’; everything stands in relation to God; [this means] all beings are in relation to the ground of beings. This ground as the One, hen is as ground what everything else, pan, is in it, in the ground. Hen kai pan. The One is also the whole and the whole is also the One … Hen kai pan, this followed Heraclitus’ fragment hen panta einai, Fr. 50, and was according to the spirit of the time the chosen motto of the three young Swabian friends, Schelling, Hegel, and Hölderlin. (S, 68)”

Next time I will look at Hölderlin’s poem “The Rhine.”