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One of the Largest and Most Visited Sources of Philosophical Texts on the Internet.
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 Martin Heidegger
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It runs from the court-garden gate to Ehnried. The old linden trees of the castle-garden gaze after it over the wall, whether it shines brightly between the growing crops and awakening meadows at Easter time, or disappears under snowdrifts behind the next hill at Christmas time. From the fieldcross it bends toward the forest. Onward, past its edge it greets a tall oak, under which a roughly hewn bench stands. Occasionally there lay on the bench some writing or other of the great thinkers, which a young awkwardness attempted to decipher. Whenever the riddles pressed upon each other and no way out was in sight, the Fieldpath helped, for it quietly guided the foot on a turning path through the expanse of the barren land.Time and again, thinking follows in the same writings, or goes by its own attempts on the trail where the Fieldpath passes through the field. The Fieldpath remains as close to the step of the Thinker as to that of the farmer who walks to his mowing in the early morning. As the years pass, the oak in its path more often carries one off to reminiscence of early play and first choices. Occasionally when an oak fell under the blow of a wood axe in the middle of the forest, Father, crossing through woodland and over sunny clearings, was seeking the cord allotted him for his workshop. Here he spent the time, thoughtfully, during pauses in his service at the tower clock and the bell, which keep their own relation-ship to time and temporality. From the oak's bark, however, the boys cut
out their ships which, equipped with rudder
and tiller, floated in the Metten brook or
in the school well. The worldwide voyages
still reached their goal easily and returned
to shore again. The reverie in such voyages
remained concealed in an erstwhile yet hardly
visible splendour which lay over all things.
mother's eye and hand surrounded their empire.
It was as if her unspoken care watched over
all beings1. These journeys of play did not yet know
of wanderings in which all shores remain
behind. Meanwhile, the hardness and scent
of the oakwood began to speak more distinctly
of the slowness and steadiness with which
the tree grows. The oak itself said that.
“ In such growth alone is grounded that
which lasts and fructifies ” ;
growing means : to open oneself to the
expanse of the heavens as one takes root
in the darkness of the earth ; that
everything genuine thrives only when man
is both in right measure : ready for
the claim of the highest heavens and elevated
in the protection of the bearing earth. Again
and again the oak says it to the Fieldpath
passing securely by. Whatever has its being
coming-to-presence2 around the Fieldpath it gathers, and to
each who walks on it, it bears what is his.
The same fields and meadow slopes follow
the Fieldpath each season with a constantly
changing nearness. Whether the mountains
of the Alps above the forest sink away into
the evening twilight, whether there where
the Fieldpath swings itself over a hilly
ridge a lark ascends in the summer morning,
whether the wind from the East roars across
from the region where mother's native village
lies, whether a woodcutter lugs his faggot
to the hearth at nightfall, whether a harvesting
wagon plods homeward in the furrows of the
Fieldpath, whether children pluck the first
cowslips on the edge of the meadow, whether
day after day the mist casts its gloom and
burden over the fields, always and from everywhere
there is around the Fieldpath the message
of the Same. But the message of the Fieldpath speaks only as long as there are human beings who, born in its air, are able to hear it. They are hearers of their Origin, but not servants of machination. Man in vain attempts to bring the globe in order through his plans whenever he is not in harmony with the message of the Fieldpath. The danger threatens that men of today remain hard of hearing to its language. They have ears only for the noise of the media, which they take to be almost the voice of God. So man becomes fragmented and pathless. To the fragmented the Simple seems monotonous. The monotonous becomes wearisome. Those who are weary find only uniformity. The Simple has fled. Its quiet power is exhausted. Indeed, the number of those who still recognize the Simple as their acquired possession is quickly diminishing. But the few will everywhere be the abiding. From the gentle might of the Fieldpath they will some day be able to outlast the gigantic power of atomic energy, which human calculation has artifacted for itself and made into a fetter of its own doing. The message of the Field path awakens a spirit which loves the open air and, at a favourable place, leaps over even heaviness into an ultimate serenity. This protects against the nuisance of mere toil , which promotes only futility when pursued for itself. In the seasonally changing air of the Fieldpath the knowing serenity, whose expression often seems melancholy, thrives. This serene knowing is a Kuinzige. Nobody gains it, who does not have it. Those who have it, have it from the Fieldpath. On its trail the storm of winter and the day of harvest encounter each other, the agile thrill of springtime and the calm demise of fall meet each other, the play of youth and the wisdom of the aged behold each other. But in one single harmony, whose echo the Fieldpath carries with it silently to and fro, everything is made serene. The knowing serenity is a gate to the eternal. Its doors swing on hinges which were once forged from the riddles of existence3 by a skilful smith . From Ehnried the way turns back to the court-garden gate. After passing over the last hill its narrow ribbon leads through an even slope till it reaches the town wall. Dimly it shines in the starlight. Behind the castle soars the tower of St. Martin's Church. Slowly, almost hesitatingly, eleven strokes of the hour fade away in the night. The old bell, on whose ropes boys' hands often were rubbed hot, trembles under the striking of the hour hammer, whose dark-droll face no one forgets. The silence becomes, with the last stroke, more silent. It reaches those who were sacrificed before time through two world wars. The Simple has become yet simpler. The Ever-Same appears strange and releases. The message of the Fieldpath is now quite clear. Is the soul speaking ? Is the world speaking ? Is God speaking ? Everything speaks the renunciation unto the Same. The renunciation does not take. The renunciation gives. It gives the inexhaustible power of the Simple. The message makes us feel at home in a long Origin. 1. Wesen: essence, being, nature. Related to Anwesen, it also means “ coming to presence ”. Published in Journal of Chinese Philosophy 13 (1986) 455-458 BACK TO TOP OF PAGE |
