“We ask: How long then?  So long that it even reaches beyond our present, godless age (Heidegger, Elucidations of Holderlin’s Poetry, 211)”

We are looking at a poet from the lens of our secular age, Heidegger’s and Hölderlin’s theological language conveying a message that is also available to a secular reader.  Hölderlin says “Gods who are fled!  You too, present still, once more real, you had your times (Germania)!”  Somehow, the old gods are gone and yet still present, as though our concepts that are vague and general ghosts once had a more animated and lofty sense.  And who are the gods who are to come and yet can’t be named because “Whoever has a name is known far and wide (Heidegger, E, 215)?” – and such naming is not proper here?

What is a poem or thought?  You can impotently struggle all night to try to figure something out when suddenly in a flash it is given (Es Gibt) to you (Heidegger, E, 140-141), like finally seeing difference between objects and things which first enables the two to stand forth as what they are.  Heidegger comments:

“Whatever man brings about and pursues is earned and merited by his own efforts.  ‘Yet’ – says Hölderlin in sharp opposition – all this does not touch the essence of his dwelling on this earth, all this does not reach into the ground of human existence.  Human existence is “poetic” in its ground.  But we now understand poetry as a founding – through the naming of gods and the essence of things.  ‘To dwell poetically’ means to stand in the presence of the gods and to be struck by the essential nearness of things.  Existence is “poetic” in its ground – which means , at the same time, as founded (grounded), it is not something earned, but is rather a gift (Heidegger, E, 60).” 

What are things?  Heidegger suggests

“The Roman word res designates that which concerns somebody, … that which is pertinent, which has a bearing … In English ‘thing’ has still preserved the full semantic power of the Roman word: ‘He knows his things,’ he understands the matters that have a bearing on him … The Roman word res denotes what pertains to man, concerns him and his interests in any way or manner. That which concerns man is what is real in res … Thus Meister Eckhart says, adopting an expression of Dionysius the Areopagite: love is of such a nature that it changes man into the things he loves (Heidegger, Poetry Language Thought, T, 175-6).”

Heidegger says that the thing things, it gathers. The sense here is not, in relation to the thing, an entity is dispersed into the totality of its relations or that a man is something similar to this, but rather the opposite, that in love for his ‘thing’ man is less himself and more at home as the thing (does not disperse itself but rather) gather the totality of its relations, including the man, into a unity.

We thought in previous posts this unity with Anaximander, Browning, and Montgomery of a jointure that for a time overcomes out-of-joint-ness, such as when the negative or randomness of life is overcome when things fall into place and “God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.”  Heidegger comments

“And the god is nearer to man.  The countryman wants to see how his fruit has survived the thunderstorm that came out of the hot night and threatened the harvest.  The distant, withdrawing thunder is still reminiscent of the terror.  But no deluge endangers the field.  The land is fresh and green.  The grapevine delights in the blessing of the heavenly drink.  The forest stands in the still light of the sun.  The countryman knows that his possessions stand under the constant menace of the weather, yet he finds that everything around him is at peace and delightful (Heidegger, E, 74).” 

In the transition from terror to serenity we see the inconspicuous “one” that is always there become conspicuous, such as the blueing of the sky after the storm shows the everyday blue sky is always blueing, just we don’t see it and so interpret the sky as a static object with static properties.  Similarly, when we turn down an unknown street looking for the yellow house, the yellowness leaps out at us when we see it.

Heidegger comments that “Nature comes to presence in human work and in the destiny of peoples, in the stars and in the gods, but also in stones, growing things, and animals as well as in streams and in thunderstorms.  ‘Wonderful’ is the omnipresence of nature (Heidegger, E, 75).”   Calasso comments:

But how does a god make himself manifest? In the Greek language the word theos, “god,” has no vocative case, observed the illustrious linguist Jakob Wackernagel. Theos has a predicative function: it designates something that happens. There is a wonderful example of this in Euripides’ Helen: “O theoi. theos gar kai to gigno’ skein philous”–“O gods: recognizing the beloved is god.” Kerenyi thought that the distinguishing quality of the Greek world was this habit of “saying of an event: ‘It is theos.'” And an event referred to as being the?s could easily become Zeus, the most vast and all-inclusive of gods, the god who is the background noise of the divine. So when Aratus set out to describe the phenomena of the cosmos, he began his poem thus: “From Zeus let our beginning be, from he whom men never leave unnamed. Full of Zeus are the paths and the places where men meet, full of Zeus the sea and the seaports. Every one of us and in every way has need of Zeus. Indeed we are his offspring… ‘Iovis omnia plena,’ Virgil would later write, and in these words we hear his assurance that this was a presence to be found everywhere in the world, in the multiplicity of its events, in the intertwining of its forms. And we also hear a great familiarity, almost a recklessness, in the way the divine is mentioned, as though to encounter divinity was hardly unusual, but rather something that could be expected, or provoked. The word atheos, on the other hand, was only rarely used to refer to those who didn’t believe in the gods. More often it meant to be abandoned by the gods, meant that they had chosen to withdraw from all commerce with men. Aratus was writing in the third century b.c., but what became of this experience that for him was so obvious and all-pervasive in the centuries that followed? How did time affect it? Did it dissolve it, destroy it, alter and empty it beyond recognition? Or is it something that still reaches out to us, whole and unscathed? And if so, where, how? (Calasso, 5-6).

Heidegger comments 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 kaipan. The One is also the whole and the whole is also the One … Hen kaipan, 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 Holderlin. (S, 68).” 

Hence, the term God implies no creator figure in the sense of the God of the New Testament who is present somewhere. The term ground here is, though, still ambiguous.  There is a “unity of the whole of earth and heaven, God and man (Heidegger, E, 187).”  This center mediates gods and man, earth and heaven (Heidegger, E, 188).”  Heidegger says “The friendly openness of the homeland, and everything there that is brightened up, and glows and gleams, and casts forth its light, comes forth in one single gracious appearance upon one’s arrival at the door of the Homeland (Heidegger, E, 33).”

Let’s think this presencing of gods in relation to the person to bring out pantheism.  In Ancient Greek, “enthusiasmos” referred to a state of being filled with a god. It was often used in religious or poetic contexts, describing someone overtaken by divine frenzy, passion, or prophetic zeal—think of the ecstatic worship of Dionysus (see Heidegger, E, 142-143) or the inspired utterances of the Oracle at Delphi.  The divine within vibrates with or attunes to the divine without such as the divine beauty of the cosmos – pan theos, pantheism.  Thinkers for Aristotle were athanatizein, a previously chaotic restless soul attuned to the eternal with a calm mind.  Horace’s description of Bullatius’s boredom and restlessness as horror loci woes in Epistles I. II were countered by philosophy (verses  25-30), with the exercise of logic (ratio) and prudence (prudential) that brought about a calm mind (aequus animus).  As cabin fever shows, separated from our distractions there is cabin fever, “Horror loci:” revulsion at where one is.  Aristotle says in the Politics only a god (athanatizein) or beast is at home in solitude.

The Oracle at Delphi, known as the Pythia, was indeed believed to be possessed or inspired by a god—specifically Apollo, the god of prophecy, music, and truth.  Ancient sources, like Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch, describe her inhaling vapors (possibly ethylene or methane, per modern theories) that rose from the ground, inducing a trance-like state. In this altered state, she was said to be filled with Apollo’s presence—his divine voice speaking through her.  Pythia was understood as being possessed by Apollo, her human agency temporarily overtaken by divine influence. 

Similarly, The Maenads (or Bacchae), female followers of Dionysus, were famous for entering ecstatic states during his rituals, the Dionysia or Bacchanalia. They danced wildly, tore apart animals (and sometimes people, as in Euripides’ The Bacchae), and lost themselves in a collective frenzy.  This was seen as possession by Dionysus—his divine essence overtaking their bodies and minds. The Greek term μανία (manía), meaning “madness” or “frenzy,” often described this, and it was linked to ἐνθουσιασμός (enthousiasmos) as well.  Euripides’ play depicts the Maenads as unstoppable, their human boundaries dissolved by the god’s power: “He fills them with his breath, and they are no longer themselves.”

Beyond Delphi, other prophetic women like the Cumaean Sibyl were said to be inspired by Apollo or other gods, entering trances to deliver prophecies. Their possession mirrored the Pythia’s but varied by region.  Initiates in cults like those of Demeter (Eleusinian Mysteries) or Orpheus might experience a form of divine communion, though it was less about possession and more about revelation or unity with the divine. 

Hesiod, in Theogony, claims the Muses breathed inspiration into him, a milder form of divine influence akin to possession. This reflects a broader Greek belief that creativity could stem from a god taking hold of a mortal.  This will help us understand the Parousia of the form/idea presencing through the thing mediated by divine Beauty in Plato.  For example, Heidegger says “The athletic character of the “heroic body” [in antiquity] is neither merely physical nor the plastic.  It is the shining appearance of the spirit which struggles forth into its corporeal measure and form, and grasps itself therein (Heidegger, E, 185).” 

In Plato, Beauty is ekphanestaton, “that which, as most of all and most purely shining of an from itself, shows the visible form and thus is unhidden (Heidegger, Pathmarks, PDT, 1 78; also at Nietzsche book 1, 80).” Referring to Plato’s Phaedrus, Heidegger says that beauty is “what is most radiant and sparkling in the sensuous realm, in a way that, as such brilliance, it lets Being scintillate at the same time (Nl, 197).”  Beauty such as that of the cosmos also awakens the enthusiasmos of the person – hence pantheism.  Heidegger notes in our secular age “The enchantment of the world has been displaced by another enchantment (Heraclitus, 41).”  The new enchantment is the achievements of man – man enchants himself through himself.

In order to understand beauty as the ekphanestaton, we need to think the relationship between forms and particulars as presencing/appearing in the sense of Parousia.  Plato writes “as you call beautiful those in whom beauty is present?  Callicles: “I do.” Plato Gorgias: [497e].  Let’s look at some instances where Plato employs parousia:

Phaedo (100d-e): This is one of the clearest examples tied to Plato’s theory of Forms. Socrates discusses how beautiful things are beautiful because of the “presence” of Beauty itself. The Greek text at 100d5-6 reads: “οὐδὲν ἄλλο ποιεῖ αὐτὸ καλὸν ἢ ἡ τοῦ κάλλους παρουσία” (“Nothing else makes it beautiful except the presence of Beauty”). Here, parousia refers to the Form of Beauty being present to or in the particular thing, enabling it to partake in beauty. Beautiful objects participate in the eternal Form. Some translations render parousia as “presence,” others as “participation,” reflecting its role in Plato’s ontology.

Theaetetus (153e): In a discussion about perception and change, Plato uses parousia more casually. Socrates says, “ἐν τῇ παρουσίᾳ τοῦ θερμοῦ” (“in the presence of heat”), describing how heat affects perception. Here, it’s less metaphysical and more about the immediate presence of a quality or condition, though it still ties into Plato’s broader exploration of how we encounter reality.

Parmenides (131b-c): This dialogue, which critiques the theory of Forms, uses parousia when Parmenides questions how Forms relate to particulars. He asks whether a Form (e.g., Largeness) is wholly present (parousia) in each thing it informs, or only partially. The text at 131b says: “ἆρ’ οὖν οὕτως ἕκαστον τῶν εἰδῶν ἔστιν, ὥστε αὐτοῦ μέρος τι εἶναι ἐν ἡμῖν, ἢ πῶς καὶ τίνα τρόπον παρουσίαν αὐτοῦ ληπτέον;” (“Is each Form such that a part of it is in us, or how and in what way should its presence be understood?”). Here, parousia probes the mechanics of participation—how a Form’s “presence” connects the intelligible to the sensible.

In this way, there are going to be various degrees of appearing of Being (e.g., houseness)  through the medium of Beauty.  As background, Plato suggests certain things in the sensible world come close to embodying or reflecting a Form more perfectly than others:

Symposium (210e-211b) 

Context: Diotima describes the ascent to the Form of Beauty, culminating in seeing Beauty itself, “not infected with the flesh and color of humanity” (211e). Earlier (209a-b), she mentions how a lover might see beauty in a person’s soul or actions, calling them “beautiful and divine.”  A person’s virtuous soul or a beautiful act might reflect the Form of Beauty closely.

Republic (500e-501c, 592b) 

Context: Philosophers, gazing on the Forms (e.g., Justice, Beauty), try to “imprint” (tupos) these patterns onto the city and its citizens. In 592b, Socrates speaks of an ideal city as a “paradigm laid up in heaven” that a just man might embody in his soul.  The philosopher-king or just soul comes closest to “incarnating” a Form like Justice, in the sense of living it out perfectly.

Timaeus (30c-31a, 37c-d) 

The Demiurge crafts the cosmos as a “living being” modeled on the eternal Forms, making it a “visible god” (92c). The universe reflects the Form of the Good or Being as perfectly as a sensible thing can.  The cosmos could be seen as a Form “incarnate” on a grand scale—it’s a physical entity embodying intelligible order. Heidegger comments “We must think the radiant, the ornamental, and the decorative element together in cosmos, which was for the Greeks a customary thought (HS, 116).”  For the Greeks, kosmos didn’t just mean the physical universe. It comes from the verb κοσμέω (kosméō), “to order,” “to arrange,” or “to adorn.” So, kosmos originally meant something like “order,” “harmony,” or even “beauty”—a well-arranged whole, like a decorated or structured thing. Think of a soldier’s gear neatly arrayed or a woman’s jewelry enhancing her appearance. Heidegger latches onto this to suggest that the Greek kosmos wasn’t a sterile, scientific “cosmos” but a living, radiant unity.  

Phaedrus (250c-d) 

Socrates describes how souls, before birth, behold the Forms, and later, seeing beauty in a human reminds them of the Form of Beauty: “When one sees a godlike face or bodily form that imitates Beauty well, he reveres it as a god.”  A beautiful person might seem like Beauty “incarnate” to the lover.

Plato does explore how certain beings—like the cosmos (Timaeus), a just soul (Republic), or a beautiful person (Phaedrus)—can embody or reflect a Form so vividly that they serve as exceptional images of it. The language of parousia (presence) in Phaedo 100d comes closest, suggesting a Form’s active role in a particular.  If you mean “incarnate” as a perfect exemplar—like a human being Justice itself—Plato expresses this (e.g., the philosopher-king).  Hölderlin’s poetry holds this status for Heidegger (Heidegger, E, 210), not just being another example of poetry, but the poesis of Hölderlin poetizing his own poesis.

In the Republic, the philosopher-king is an exemplary human figure, ruling with wisdom and justice, the idea of a person aligning with the Forms could suggest an “exemplary” quality.  Similarly, the “true friend” is exemplary in this way.

Why is this important? Plato doesn’t have a mere metaphysical dualism (Form-Particular) any more than Kant does (sense/understanding).  Rather, these two systems are mediated which allows their dualisms to be what they are.  In Plato, the aestheton/noeton distinction points back in the Timaeus to a khora which the demiurge needs to construct things.  Metaphysics is “reality to be equated to true being (Heidegger, E, 136)” and thinking according to pre-established categories (eg., Anthropology, Heidegger, E, 144), and is predicated on the idea of true being (alethos on) vs deficient being (me on) vs non-being (ouk on).  The true is the “really real,” and yet Heidegger asks “Is it then true that only the real has being, that the non-real has no being and is nothing?  Where does the boundary lie between the real and the non real (Heidegger, E, 135).”  Counter this, Heidegger and Fink in the Heraclitus Seminar note true wakeful life can sometimes be hardly worth the attention while non-real dreams can be a vivid form of human absorption (Heidegger, HS, 137).  Contrasting metaphysical thinking, Heidegger speaks of Hölderlin’s poetry about his poetizing as “poetic activity that we shall never be able to grasp by means of the guidelines of literary and aesthetic categories (Heidegger, E, 177)” because it is singular and unique to Hölderlin and his life.      

Similarly, like beauty as medium for Plato, the connection between sense and understanding in Kant is only possible via the mediating function of the imagination.  In Volume I of his Nietzsche book, Heidegger writes: “Beauty is not something hovering above us and our existence; it is the way in which the highest rapture of life radiates and shines” (Krell translation, p. 108).  And so, just as we have the mansion as (i) houseness incarnate vs (ii) houseness being merely present in the average house and (iii) deficient in the dilapidated shack as degrees of Beauty, “Cause” in Kant has the same threefold structure, in Kant’s case of the rule of irreversibility whereby (i) a ball hitting another ball and knocking it forward is minimally causal, whereas (ii) applying heat to an ice cube in a freezer temporarily changes form until the heat is removed, and (iii) perfectio/complete cause-effect when you cook an egg so the egg can’t be uncooked. (iii) is a “true” example of cause – cause in the most proper sense.  We see the same structure of deficient/present/exemplary Being, and so Kant rightly notes the imagination is the faculty that deals with Beauty and mediates Sense and Understanding.  This is why the movement of Hegel’s dialectic is threefold, not only the whole sock and the torn sock, but the tearing that makes conspicuous Unity “as” a lost Unity.  Heidegger comments:

“In order to understand, Heidegger says, one must see phenomenologically. He thus invites us to the first exercise of phenomenological “kindergarten.” To tear apart [zer-reissen] means: to tear into two parts, to separate: to make two out of one. If a sock is torn, then the sock is no longer present-at-hand—but note: precisely not as a sock. In fact, when I have it on my foot, I see the “intact” sock precisely not as a sock. On the contrary, if it is torn, then THE sock appears with more force through the “sock torn into pieces.” In other words, what is lacking in the torn sock is the UNITY of the sock. However, this lack is paradoxically the most positive, for this Unity in being-torn is present [gegenwärtig] as a lost unity.” (Heidegger, Martin. Four Seminars p. 11)

In order to accommodate the Greek thought of beauty, Plato had to incorporate another element since Homer notes the gods don’t appear to everyone in their fullness, so another person may encounter the mansion as gawdy or the shack as quaint, just as a tourist may encounter Niagara Falls as a wonder of the world whereas the local resident may see it as noise pollution.  In this way, Plato introduces in the Timaeus the concept of a receptacle of kora that excludes characteristics and is neutral so that while a particular may embody a form for one person it need not of the next person.

In the Timaeus, the cosmos is indeed described for most people as beautiful (e.g., 29a–b, where the Demiurge crafts the world to be as beautiful as possible, modeled on the Forms), but khora itself isn’t the source of that beauty. Instead, it’s the passive, pre-cosmic “space” that enables the ordered, beautiful world to emerge when the Forms are imposed upon it.  As I said, khora mediates so that the thing is neutral, so that the gods don’t appear to everyone in their fullness (enargeis, Odyssey 16.161).  Matter conceals the beauty of the forms, but must attune to the enthusiasmos of the observer for the being to fully stand forth as what it is.  What does this mean?

The more you learn about the criteria for evaluating fine wine, the more your palate awakens to what wine truly is.  Yet, the next person may find wine disgusting, in which case the criteria are meaningless.  Niagara Falls couldn’t appear as a wonder of the world to a tourist and as noise pollution to the local resident unless Niagara Fall’s essence is neutral, or in Plato’s system from khora.  A right triangle appears very differently to an infant, as opposed to a grade 3 child learning her shapes, as opposed to a mathematics professor dissecting angles.  As Protagoras said, (cf. Plato, Theaetetus. 152, Heidegger’s translation) “Of all things (those, namely, that man has about him in customary use, and therefore constantly, chremata chresthai) the (particular) man is the measure, of those that presence, that they presence as they presence, but also of those to which it remains denied to presence, that they do not presence.”

Timaeus introduces the receptacle as a “third kind” (triton genos, 48e4) alongside forms and their imitations. He apologizes for the obscurity of the concept, and attempts to explicate its role by means of a series of analogies: it is variously compared to a lump of gold (50a4–b5), a mother that together with a father produces offspring (50d2–4, 51a4–5), a plastic, impressionable stuff (50c2–6, e7–51a1), and an ointment that serves as a neutral base for various fragrances (50e5–8). These images suggest that it is devoid of any characteristics in its own right (except those formal characteristics necessary to its role, such as malleability):

The complete metaphysical scheme of the Timaeus that is summed up at 50c7–d4 and again at 52a1–b5 is thus as follows: (i) the eternal and unchanging forms, the “model,” or “father”; (ii) the receptacle, or “mother,” and (iii) the copies of the model or “offspring” of the father and the mother. These three are the components of Plato’s analysis; they are not three ontologically distinct ingredients.. Zeyl, Donald and Barbara Sattler, “Plato’s Timaeus”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/plato-timaeus/>.

And so, we note the importance of the mediating function in Plato (Beauty) and Kant (imagination).  Heidegger comments

“Any individual actuality in all its connections is possible only if before all else nature grants the open, within which immortals and mortals and all things are able to encounter each other.  The open mediates the connections between all actual things.  These latter are constituted only because of such mediation, and are therefore mediated.  What is mediated in that way only is by virtue of mediatedness.  Thus, mediatedness must be present in all.  The open itself, however, though it first gives the region for all belonging-to and -with each other, does not arise from any mediation.  The open itself is the immediate… What is first present in all gathers everything isolated into a single presence and mediates to each thing its appearing.  Immediate all presence is the mediator for everything mediated, that is, for the mediate …all experience, which only knows what is mediated (Heidegger, E, 83-85).” 

The poet is spiritual and thinks spirit, the reality of what is real (see Heidegger, E, 86), the god in them (Dionysus – ethusiasmos) vibrates with the encountered divine Beauty.  The mediatory is like a giant rubber khora where occasionally a coordinate swells up in tandem with the god inside.  Heidegger notes “spirit/the holy completely unifies everything through thinking (Heidegger, E, 89).” So, “In its origin, the holy is the ‘firm law,’ that ‘strict mediatedness’ in which all relations and everything actual are mediated.  Everything is, only because it is gathered into the all-presence of the undamageable, within the undamageable (Heidegger, E, 94-5).”  This uses the language of religion to distinguish the holy concepts from the profane, but this is perfectly amenable to a secular reading, and in fact points in that way.  Thereby, Heidegger prompts “Let no one disfigure Hölderlin’s poetry by ‘the religious element’ of a ‘religion’ which expresses the Roman interpretation of the relation between men and gods…The holy which is foretold poetically merely opens the time for an appearing of the gods, and points into the location of the dwelling of historical man upon this earth (Heidegger, E, 137).” Heidegger’s phrase, “Der Glaube hat im Denken keinen Platz” (translated as “Belief or faith has no place in thought”), appears in his 1953 essay “The Anaximander Fragment.” 

Regarding the nature of man, Hölderlin says in Hyperion’s Song of Fate the following:

“Radiant the gods’ mild breezes / Gently play on you / As the girl artist’s fingers / On holy strings. – Fateless the Heavenly breathe / Like an unweaned infant asleep; / Chastely preserved / In modest bud / For even their minds / Are in flower/And their blissful eyes / Eternally tranquil gazey / Etemally clear. – But we are fated / to find no foothold, no rest, / And suffering mortals / Dwindle and fall/ Headlong from one/ Hour to the next Hurled like water / From ledge to ledge / Downward for years to the vague abyss (Hölderlin’s “Hyperion’s Song of Fate” quoted in Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink, Heraclitus Seminar, 101)” … [Heidegger and Fink commenting on the passage say] “the gods wander without destiny, their spirit eternally in bloom, while humans lead a restless life and fall into the cataract of time and disappear.” (Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink, Heraclitus Seminar, 101). 

There is temporality to the gods in contrast to the temporality of humans.  Husserl noted we never leave the present.  The past was a past present and the future will be a future present.  This moves forward as clock time.  On the other hand, as I observed in my master’s thesis on Heidegger and the Greeks (2002, pg 10), there is another experience of time moving in the opposite direction of, say, Christmas is coming / is here / has gone into the past.  For Hölderlin, there is an abandonment of the gods.  If we are talking about the abandonment of the gods and waiting on new gods, what are “gods” for Hölderlin?  Heidegger comments “For Hölderlin the gods are ‘nothing other than time’ (Heidegger, Germaania and the Rhine, 92).”  There are two kinds of time:

Which time is long? It is “the time” of the everyday and the time on the peaks, yet each in a different way. Everyday time is “long” [lang] in boredom [Langeweile], where time holds us in limbo and in so doing leaves us empty, where we hurriedly and indiscriminately reach for whatever makes the long time pass or makes for diversion [kurzweilig macht]. The time of the peaks is long, because on the peaks reigns a persistent waiting for and awaiting the event [Ereignis], not boredom or diversion. There is no passing or even killing of time there, but a struggle for the duration and fullness of time that is preserved in awaiting. The time on the peaks is essentially long; for a making ready for the true that shall once come to pass [sich ereignen] does not happen overnight or to order, but consumes many human lives and even ‘generations.’ This ‘long time’ remains closed to all those who are overcome with boredom and have no intimation of their own boringness. This long time, however, “once” lets the true—the becoming manifest of beyng—come to pass. (Cf. “Germania,” line 93: “Something true must once appear.”)  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 93). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

This highlights Desire/Love as lack, eros, versus desire/love as overabundance of Agape (Heidegger, E, 140-141; 146; 154).  In eros someone is desirable because they temporarily complete you vs godless Christian agape transfiguring widow, orphan, stranger and enemy to be more important than yourself (Matthew 5:43-44).  Heidegger says “I am a Christian theologian in the sense that I am trying to think the truth of the Christian faith, but not in the sense of a confessional theologian.” Heidegger, M. (letter to Karl Löwith dated August 19, 1921).  And there is a love that does not see the flaws of the beloved (Heidegger, E, 164-165).  Nietzsche once commented in a letter to Overbeck about the crippling cabin fever of his companions at a rainy cottage while he joyfully worked on his Untimely Meditation.  Nietzsche said in the Will to Power notebooks the highest kind of Will to Power was stamping becoming with Being and that his Overman was a roman Caesar with the soul of Christ.

For the Greeks man is fated to go from the fire of youth to the listless tedium of old age.  Where is Hölderlin getting this from?  Aristotle speaks of the epitome of human life as Theoria, the contemplative life, which is godliness/deathlessness: athanatizein.  Deathlessness doesn’t mean immortality, since the Greeks thought everyone were immortal, but rather childlike absorption in life like the eternally youthful ambrosia eating gods among even the old.  By contrast Apollo spoke of most humans in the passage Hölderlin bases his Hyperion’s Song of Fate on: “Mortals, who are as wretched as the leaves on the trees, flourishing at first, enjoying the fruits of the earth, but then, their hearts no longer absorbed in life (Akerioi), vanishing (my translation modifying Krell, 1999, 105).”  We have Apollo contrasting between the fire and absorption of youth and the listless tedium of old age.  In Epistles 1.8 Horace describes the lethargic illness of boredom as a trait of old age.

Holderlin speaks of March time of transition that allows the harshness and sterness of winter and ease and force of summer stand forth as what they are (Heidegger, E,132).  The idea of the poetic is the naming where the poets laid down the names of gods and man in distinction to one another (eternally in bloom vs restless) so that they were able to stand forth as what they are (Heidegger, E, 128-129).  Heidegger says the humans stay close to the path along the river because that is the path along the poetic.  What is poetry?  Heidegger says “Certainly that is true-if we understand by ‘essence of poetry’ whatever is drawn together into a universal concept, one that would be valid for every kind of poetry.  But a universal like that, equally valid for every particular instance, always proves to be something neutral or indifferent.  An ‘essence’ of that kind always misses what is truly essential (Heidegger, E, 52).”  What does the poet do?  “[T]he poet’s naming first nominates the beings as what they are.  Thus they become known as beings (Heidegger, E, 59).”  

This is also key to more fully understanding Kant’s understanding of causality as the imagination mediates between understanding and sense.  Hume rightly pointed out we do not “sense” cause, but rather only ever B following upon A all the time, not that this happens according to a rule.  Kant countered that we do indeed experience B following A according to a rule, namely the rule of irreversibility, specifically reflecting beauty as the structure of the imagination.  So, ball hitting ball is a physical one directionality, while boiling water is a temporary one directional change of form until the heat source is removed, and thirdly there is a complete change of form such as the cooked egg that can’t be uncooked.  The cooking of the egg is causality in the true/complete sense, what causality fully actualized is, just as the mansion is truly houseness.  Heidegger gives the example of the bird circling as being nature incarnate, or the Picasso being Art incarnate.  The mind doesn’t experience everything as superlative causality, but specifically and always each time of cooking an egg that can’t be uncooked, so there has to be something in sense conveying superlative causality that isn’t just the freedom of the Understanding, and so Kant’s account of causality makes no sense unless we understand the mediating role of the imagination between sense and understanding.

(i) We have Houseness (true being) appearing via of various degrees of beauty: mansion (exemplary presencing)-average house (mere presencing)-(deficient presencing) dilapidated shack;

(ii) So too, we have Cause appearing via various degrees of the faculty dealing with Beauty, the imagination: Positive one directionality (ball hits ball)-comparitively greater one directionality (heated ice cube at winter carnival the melts when heated, but becomes ice again when heat removed-superlative cause as perfectio/complete when cooked egg can’t be uncooked.

Heidegger argues for Kant the understanding is the capacity to think. But thinking is the uniting of representations in one consciousness: eg “room” and “warm” united: “I think” means “I combine.” In representational terms, I put one represented thing together with another: “The room is warm.” “Wormwood is bitter.” “The sun is shining.” “The unification of representations in one consciousness is judgment. Therefore, thinking is the same as judging or relating representations to judgments in general” (Prolegomena, §22, 4:305). 2248.  The understanding is the faculty of rules: The concept of “dog” signifies a rule according to which my power of imagination can specify the form [Gestalt] of such a four-footed animal in general, without being limited to any particular form which experience offers to me, or also to any possible image which I can present in concreto.  Imaginative synthesis of the transcendental power of imagination, is that “without which we should have no knowledge whatsoever” as Kant says.  Kant is obviously thinking of the fact that a mathematical schema-image, e.g., a specific triangle, must necessarily be either acute, right, or obtuse. With that, however, the possibility of being just anything is already exhausted [in the case of the triangle] whereas it is greater in the case of the presentation of a house.  And, for instance, we understandingly use language buy following rules, just as we think by avoiding the rule of “we think by avoiding contradiction.”

Heidegger ties Kant’s aesthetics back to the imagination, echoing his earlier analysis in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. He sees Kant’s emphasis on the imagination as a synthetic power—unifying sensory intuition and conceptual thought—as a key insight. In the lectures, he mentions this briefly (around Lecture 5 of the Nietzsche lectures), suggesting that Kant’s imagination bridges the gap between the sensible and the intelligible.

As I said, In Plato, beauty is ekphanestaton, “that which, as most of all and most purely shining ofan from itself, shows the visible form and thus is unhidden (PA, PDT, 1 78; also at Nl, 80; E, 99, 155-156).” Referring to Plato’s Phaedrus, Heidegger says that beauty is “what is most radiant and sparkling in the sensuous realm, in a way that, as such brilliance, it lets Being scintillate at the same time (Nl, 197).”  Also, it incarnates the enthusiasmos of the person – hence pantheism.  For Hölderlin, in skipping over Plato to Aristotle, we abandoned Plato’s key insight into beauty as the way beings appear/presence.  Holderlin says “I think that at the end we will all say: holy Plato! Forgive!  One has (originally we have) badly wronged you (cited in Heidegger, E, 156).”  Heidegger comments: “For the Greeks, however, what is to be shown, that is, what shines of its own power, is therefore true: beauty.  That is why truth needs art, the poetic being of man.  Poetically, dwelling man brings all that shines, earth and heaven and the holy, in which every appearance is preserved as permanent and for itself, he brings it, in the form of the work, to a secure stand (Heidegger, E, 187).”

What is the holy?  The ancient Greek word for “profane” was bebēlos (βέβηλος), which referred to something secular, common, or unhallowed—essentially, anything not set apart for sacred purposes. It derives from bainein (“to walk” or “to go”) with the prefix be- (indicating something accessible or trodden), suggesting something ordinary and open to all, lacking special sanctity.

In contrast, the Greek word for “holy” was hagios (ἅγιος), which denoted something sacred, pure, or consecrated—set apart for divine use or reverence. Its root connects to notions of awe, reverence, or being inviolable, often tied to the divine or religious rituals.  Heidegger writes “Celebrating is a becoming-free for the unaccustomed element of the day which, in distinction to the dull and gloom of the everyday, is what is clear (Heidegger, E, 126).” 

The key distinction lies in their relationship to the sacred: bebēlos described the everyday, the mundane, or even the impure that existed outside the sphere of the divine, while hagios marked what was elevated, reserved, or dedicated to the gods or spiritual purity. For example, in Greek culture, a temple (hieron) was hagios because it was consecrated, whereas the marketplace (agora) was bebēlos, part of common life.

The Greek word hagios (ἅγιος), commonly translated as “holy,” indeed carried a broader and sometimes figurative meaning beyond strictly religious or spiritual connotations, depending on context. Its root sense is tied to being “set apart,” “sacred,” or “distinct,” which allowed it to be applied in both literal and metaphorical ways in ancient Greek usage. Let’s break this down and explore some examples.

Hagios derives from the idea of separation or consecration—something or someone distinguished from the common or profane. In religious contexts, this often meant “dedicated to the gods” or “pure,” as seen in its frequent use in the New Testament (e.g., “holy saints,” “Holy Spirit”). However, in broader Greek literature and culture, its meaning could extend to anything marked as special, revered, or inviolable, not always tied to divinity.

Examples of Broader or Figurative Use:

Sacred Places or Objects (Literal but Non-Spiritual)

In Homer’s Iliad (e.g., Book 1, line 366), the term hagios can describe places or things set apart as inviolable, like a sacred grove or an altar, without implying modern notions of “holiness” as purely spiritual. For instance, a “holy precinct” (hagios temenos) might simply mean a space reserved for a specific purpose, revered by custom rather than divine mandate.

Figurative “Set Apart” in Social Contexts

In some classical texts, hagios could imply something or someone uniquely distinguished, not necessarily in a religious sense. For example, in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (line 287), the adjective can hint at a person or thing being “marked off” as extraordinary—say, Oedipus himself as a figure separated by fate. While not explicitly “holy” in a spiritual way, the term carries a sense of being untouchable or notable.

Moral or Ethical Distinction

By the time of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, ~3rd–2nd century BCE), hagios was used to translate the Hebrew qadosh, which also means “set apart.” This broadened its scope to include moral purity or separation from the mundane, as in Leviticus 19:2 (“You shall be holy, for I am holy”). Here, it’s less about ritual and more about a figurative state of being distinct in character.

Poetic or Elevated Language

In Pindar’s odes (e.g., Olympian 1), hagios might describe a hero or victor in a way that elevates them above the ordinary, akin to “venerable” or “exalted.” This isn’t strictly religious but uses the word to convey awe or reverence, as in “holy strength” (hagios sthenos), suggesting exceptional, almost untouchable prowess.

Evolution in Later Usage

In secular Greek, hagios didn’t always carry the heavy spiritual weight it gained in Christian texts. Pre-Christian writers might use it for anything from a revered law to a consecrated boundary stone, showing its flexibility. By the time of the New Testament, though, it’s heavily spiritualized—e.g., “the saints” (hoi hagioi) as believers set apart for God (Romans 1:7). Even then, the figurative undertone of “distinctiveness” persists.

 Hagios had a broader scope than just “religious” or “spiritual.” It could signify anything set apart—whether a place, person, or quality—literally or figuratively. Examples range from a sacred battlefield in Homer to a morally distinct community in scripture, showing how context shaped its nuance.

Contrasting hagios (ἅγιος) with its rough opposite, bebēlos (βέβηλος), sharpens our understanding of how “holy” carried broader and figurative meanings in ancient Greek. While hagios centers on being “set apart” or “sacred,” bebēlos refers to what is “common,” “profane,” or “accessible to all,” often with a negative slant. By exploring their interplay, we can see how hagios stretched beyond religious confines into metaphorical territory.

Hagios (ἅγιος): As we’ve discussed, it fundamentally means “set apart,” “sacred,” or “consecrated,” implying something removed from ordinary use, often revered or inviolable. Its flexibility allowed it to describe places, people, or qualities distinguished in various ways.  Bebēlos (βέβηλος): Derived from baino (“to walk”) and bēlos (“threshold”), it literally means “that which may be walked on” or “open to tread.” It denotes the everyday, the mundane, or that which lacks separation—sometimes carrying a sense of irreverence or defilement when contrasted with the sacred.

Hagios: A temple or altar might be hagios, set apart for divine use, untouchable by common hands (e.g., Homeric descriptions of a “holy shrine”).  Bebēlos: The ground outside, trampled by all, is bebēlos—ordinary, unprotected, and accessible. In Aeschylus’ Persians (line 810), profane spaces are implicitly bebēlos when contrasted with sacred ones, emphasizing their lack of distinction.

Hagios: A priest or hero could be hagios, marked off by ritual or exceptional status. In Euripides’ Ion (line 131), the Delphic oracle’s servants are implicitly “set apart” in a way hagios could describe.  Bebēlos: The average person, uninitiated or undistinguished, fits bebēlos. In later Christian texts (e.g., 1 Timothy 1:9), bebēlos describes the “profane” who disrespect sacred boundaries, highlighting their ordinariness or irreverence.

Hagios: Beyond religion, hagios could elevate abstract concepts—say, “holy wisdom” (hagios sophia) in a philosophical sense, meaning rare or exalted insight, as might appear in Plato’s dialogues.  Bebēlos: Conversely, bebēlos could describe shallow chatter or “profane babbling” (e.g., 2 Timothy 2:16), mundane and unworthy of reverence. In secular Greek, it might simply mean trivial or common speech, as in Aristophanes’ comedies where everyday banter lacks gravitas.

Distinction vs. Accessibility: Where bebēlos implies something anyone can approach or misuse, hagios suggests restriction or elevation. This allowed hagios to figuratively describe anything exceptional—like a “holy law” (not just divine, but uniquely authoritative) versus a bebēlos custom, easily ignored.

Reverence vs. Contempt: Hagios carries an aura of awe, even in non-religious contexts (e.g., Pindar’s “holy victors”), while bebēlos can edge into disdain, as in defiling what’s sacred (Herodotus, Histories 2.64, on profane acts).

Moral or Cultural Weight: In the Septuagint, hagios expands to moral separation (e.g., “be holy” in Leviticus), while bebēlos marks the impure or excluded (e.g., Hebrews 12:16, Esau as “profane”). This shows hagios flexing into ethical territory, beyond ritual.

Imagine a Greek festival: the sacred fire is hagios, tended only by priests, symbolizing its separation and reverence. The marketplace nearby, noisy and open to all, is bebēlos—common and unremarkable. If a poet then calls the victor’s courage hagios, it’s figurative: not divine, but set apart as extraordinary, far from the bebēlos cowardice of the crowd.  By opposing bebēlos, hagios reveals its broader reach. It’s not just “religious” but anything distinguished—physically, socially, or metaphorically—from the accessible, mundane, or contemptible. This elasticity let it describe a sacred grove, a revered hero, or a pure ideal, always contrasting the bebēlos norm.  

And so, Heidegger says

“The beautiful is here not some pleasing or charming thing that is collected. ‘The beautiful of the Earth’ is the Earth in its beauty; it refers to beauty itself. For Hölderlin, during the period when Hyperion is poetized, this is the name for ‘beyng.’ In place of many pieces of evidence, we cite one excerpt from a draft, first discovered in 1920, of a preface to Hyperion (II, 546): “I believe in the end we shall all say: … holy Plato, forgive! one has [originally: “we have”] sinned against you mightily.” Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymn “Remembrance” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 150). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition. 

Heidegger and Fink comment: “Fr. 29 also names the polloi next to the aristoi (the best). In Fr. 1, the polloi are compared with the apeiroisin, with the untried, who are contrasted with ego, that is, with Heraclitus … The many do not strive, like the noble minded, after the radiance of glory; they indulge in transitory things and therefore do not see the one … Pindar also connected gold, and thus the radiant, with fire and lighting (HS, 22; also cf HS, 106-7). “There is one thing which the best prefer to all else; eternal glory rather than transient things”; Heidegger also treats this passage at IM, 103-4)

How do we get to the essence of how the Greeks understood the person?  For the Greeks, the person, if stripped of all connection to life and its distractions, is a restless shade in Hades, caught in subtle cabin fever forever.  In Sophocles’ Antigone this is exemplary with the opposition between Creon and Antigone of being who they were “as” driven by competing causes – like two of Melville’s Ahabs in Moby Dick.  The tragic insight is thus the melancholic person envying the oppressed person thinking “At least the oppressed person has a cause.”  This is the deinon/apolis/homelessness of the human condition, with Creon who comes to see his collective polis cause abandons him to nothingness as opposed to Antigone who never becomes self-aware of her own petty crusade.  Why petty? 

At the end of Sophocles’ Antigone, Creon is indeed portrayed as a man stripped of vitality, teetering on the edge of listlessness and emptiness. After the deaths of Antigone, Haemon, and Eurydice—all precipitated by his stubborn adherence to his edict—he’s left shattered. His final speeches reveal a man who’s lost his animating force, reduced to a husk of his former self. He says, “Take me away, quickly, away. I am a rash, foolish man… I’ve killed you, my son, and you, my wife, without meaning to.” His words drip with despair, and his repeated pleas to be taken away or to die—“Let it come, let it come, that best of fates for me”—suggest a profound emotional and spiritual exhaustion. He’s not just grieving; he’s unmoored, a king whose authority and purpose have collapsed.

Antigone sees herself in her own mind nobly crusading for the cause of familial bonds and the will of the gods, but the chorus sees her clearer than she sees herself, determined by the stubbornness of the Oedipus line and the Chorus goes further, implying that her “reckless spirit” is part of what she’s inherited. Earlier, they call her “raw and wild” (line 929) and note her “self-willed pride” (line 917), traits that echo Oedipus’s own headstrong determination.  Sophocles thus determines the essence of man saying manifold are the extraordinary but nothing more homeless than man, the irony being the all-encompassing abilities of man are yet unable to escape the tragedy of the human condition like the tragic family of Oedipus.  This is the Greek understanding of desire/love as eros and lack, as opposed to the godless Christian agape love/desire as transfiguring that we see with German thought beginning with who Heidegger considers the first German Philosopher (who wrote in German for clarity of presentation to the people) Christian mystic Meister Eckhart.  Heidegger says “Thus Meister Eckhart says, adopting an expression of Dionysius the Areopagite: love is of such a nature that it changes man into the things he loves (Heidegger, PLT, T, 175-6).”  For the eros of Achilles and Odysseus, the foreign is exotic like a drug (Heidegger, E, 158), though what is really craved for by Odysseus is home.  To speak of “the Germans” is not bigoted but like saying the athletic character which constituted the spirit of antiquity (Heidegger, E, 184-185).” 

What is spirit?  Hegel, for instance, is a key figure here. In his Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes), “Geist” isn’t just a personal soul—it’s the unfolding of reason and self-consciousness through history, a kind of world-spirit driving human development. He uses it figuratively to describe the collective mind or spirit of humanity as it evolves. Similarly, in his Philosophy of History, Hegel talks about the “Geist” of a nation or epoch—like the “spirit of the Greeks” embodying freedom in a nascent form. So, while “Zeitgeist” pins it to a specific time, Hegel’s broader use of “Geist” can stretch across cultures or phases of history.  For Hölderlin The Garonne is the beautiful, makes the land fertile and habitable so they can show themselves as what they are, in their being (121).  The river is the spirit, and spirit is the spirit of everything and everyone (114).  The banks and the garden becomes green by the river, the town thrives. 

Later in the same Antigone ode, they broaden the scope to the house of Labdacus (Oedipus’s grandfather), singing, “No generation frees another, / some god strikes them down” (lines 665-666). This reinforces the idea that Antigone’s traits—noble yet fatal—are ironically her own invention and a legacy she can’t escape. Her pride and resolve, like Oedipus’s, are double-edged: they make her heroic but also doom her. The Chorus does tie Antigone’s negative traits—like her reckless, self-willed nature—to Oedipus. They see her as both a product and a victim of her father’s character and curse, inheriting a tenacity that’s as much a burden as it is a strength, a poetic lament, steeped in the play’s tragic worldview. For if Antigone was really doing the gods’ will, why her tragic end?

It is this homelessness that Philosophy was meant to counter. Heidegger notes:

Aristotle, Plato’s disciple, relates at one place (Nicomachean Ethics, Z 7, 1141b 77ff ) the basic conception determining the Greek view on the essence of the thinker: ‘It is said they (the thinkers) indeed know things that are excessive, and thus astounding, and thereby difficult, and hence in general ‘demonic (daimonia)’but also useless, for they are not seeking what is, according to the straightforward popular opinion, good for man.’ … The Greeks, to whom we owe the essence and name of ‘philosophy’ and of the ‘philosopher,’ already knew quite well that thinkers are not ‘close to life.’ But only the Greeks concluded
from this lack of closeness to life that the thinkers are then the most necessary – precisely in view of the essential misery of man (Heidegger, Parmenides, 100)