The language of philosophy is based on a philosophy of language, which is considered as instrument. The traditional speech of Being and of God, which makes them objects, is also understood as a designation, not a pointing. Finally, the conventional question about Being moves on its tracks. It takes its starting point from Being, as if it were given without question. Instead, Heidegger poses it in the origin from Being itself.

One of Heidegger’s main interests in Heraclitus’ concept of Λόγοζ regards the phenomenon of corresponding (Entsprechen). While λέγειν is interpreted as an obedient joining (Fügen), harvesting (Lesen), gathering (Sammeln, Versammeln) and lying-before (Vorliegen lassen), the movement of essential thinking picks up the idea of corresponding (όμολογεἴν) to a subtle ‘claim’ (Anspruch) of being throughout appearance (εἴδοζ Anblick) which addresses i. e. calls for being put into words. The λέγειν of human Λόγοζ can thus become (at times) the same with the one Aôyoç of being while the act o f corresponding holds being and thinking together. “Truth” can lie before in λέγειν, but only for the one listening attentively to what is spoken and so by hearing (Vernehmen) what is not spoken (out loud) in the spoken word. It is to this dimension of concealment (Verborgenheit), that speech still belongs to, even as result of an essential thinking that gathers and brings into presence: The brightness of essential thinking seems to owe itself to this darkness crossed by the fire of lightning. άλήθεια can thus be conceived in the Greek context of a special concept of ‘emerging into the light of φύσιζ‘, which also corresponds to the revealing movement of inceptually unfolding Λόγοζ in the gathering true human Xôyoç. Far from being able to dispose of being as knowledge remains a movement between the concealed toward unconcealment, essential thinking stays indepted to something “never-submerging” as (φύσιζ and the salvaging event of gathering into one Λόγοζ. To be freed from metaphysical for the inceptual thinking means learning to listen to how the essence of φύσιζ and άλήθεια address as the one Λόγοζ and to correspond to it, insofar as clearing is always carried by it i. e. can never remain permanently concealed from it. The present contribution follows the train of thought summarized here in brief through Heidegger’s confrontation with Heraclitus.

Heidegger, Lukacs and Heller confronted the “crisis” of modernity already at the beginning of their own paths of thinking and asked how to address it. Lukacs did never completely lose faith in politics, whereas Heidegger and Heller only briefly leant on a party to direct the course of history. Heidegger and Lukacs described modem life as an “unowned” existence occasioned by the metaphysics’ “forgetfulness of Being” and the “reification of consciousness” in the late capitalism respectively. Whilst Heidegger entrusted the task of preparing a “turning” to the thinking of the truth of Being and Lukacs assigned materialistic dialectic to undertake a revolution, Heller worked out an ethics of responsibility that can both keep under control the modernity’s “dark side” and make again fruitful in today’s multicultural society the main achievement of the modem age, that is, freedom.

Although Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the problem of art and space leads in part to comparable results, the differences between the two phenomenological approaches should also be pointed out. As such a difference the relationship between the space of art (and craft) and the space of nature is first brought into view - as described by Heidegger in §§ 22-24 of Being and Time (1927) and by Merleau-Ponty in §§ 29-33 of his second fundamental work Phenomenology o f Perception (1945). More concrete studies of space and art can be found in later texts by the two philosophers. For this comparison Merleau-Ponty’s essays “Cézanne’s Doubt” (1945), “Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence” (1952) and in particular “Eye and Mind” (1961) as well as Heidegger’s texts “Building Dwelling Thinking” (1951) “Remarks on Art - Sculpture - Space” (1964, published 1996 in German: “Bemerkungen zu Kunst - Plastik - Raum”) and “Art and Space” (1969) are regarded.

Φρόνησις and σοφία, practical and theoretical knowledge, were described by Aristotle as essential for the perfection of human life and thus for achieving happiness, the supreme good. The investigation of the relationship between the “highest” virtues and between the correspondent life ideals by Heidegger and Gadamer “made” the Stagirite “talk” in the 20th century from the perspective of Heidegger’s question of Being and Gadamer’s philosophical Hermeneutics. A renewed interpretation of the πρᾶξις/θεωρία interrelation elaborated by Aristotle could contribute to the development of attitudes required to face the current challenges, and so keep on making the Stagirite’s “doctrine” fruitful for our present.

Since objective time cannot be presupposed in phenomenology, the question of the constitution and nature of time represents a central task of every phenomenological analysis. The purpose of this contribution is to offer a comparison of the phenomenological analyses of time and temporality in Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and thereby to set out the fundamental differences of their approaches. In addition to the foundational lectures and texts On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), Husserl’s Bernau Manuscripts on time-consciousness (1917/18) and the late texts on temporal constitution (1929–1934), the C-Manuscripts, are considered. In the case of Heidegger, besides Being and Time and the lecture series The Basic Problems of Phenomenology from summer semester 1927, attention is focused primarily on the early lecture series and texts in which the development of his thinking becomes evident. Thereby it becomes clear that Heidegger’s question concerning the nature (Wesen) of time and history, with its point if departure from factical-historical life, from the outset moved in a different direction to that of Husserl. In conclusion, the principal differences of the two phenomenological approaches to time are drawn out and clarified in relation to the phenomenon of death.