To Think Is to Thank: Heidegger and the Art of Thinking Through Wonder

The fugitive gods and the thought that sings

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What is thinking? Heidegger famously noted,

“The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.”

According to Heidegger, thinking isn’t what we think it is. Proper thinking is rare. He claims that since Plato, people have forgotten the mystical link between “thinking” and “thanking” (denken and danken in German).

Heidegger often refers to this the etymological connection between thinking and thanking. Both words come from the same linguistic and conceptual root shared by older Germanic languages. In ancient times, people were more aware of the connection between thought and gratitude.

Gratitude is a state of mind when I acknowledge the Presence. I become aware of the Presence of something infinitely valuable behind phenomena. At this moment, the phenomena become a window to peep into the world beyond. I look through them and “drink” of the otherworldly Presence that enters my world. I become thankful — “full of thanking.”

When I am “full of thanking” I become “full of thinking.” Thinking proper is what happens in the Presence. I never come to thinking; thinking comes to me.

“We never come to thoughts. They come to us.” (What is Called Thinking?)

Strictly speaking, we cannot come to thoughts. Thinking proper is not in our power. It’s what happens to us when we immerse ourselves in Being. Being engenders thoughts — thoughts that align with the nature of Being. True thinking comes to us in the state of thanking.

We must acknowledge Being before we can think of Being. We must participate in Life before we can describe it. Thinking is traditionally associated with rationality, reason, judgement. And yet, Heidegger, provocatively says: “Man today is in flight from thinking.” (Discourse on Thinking).

“Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking.”

Unenlightened reason is the worst enemy of thinking precisely because it is not thanking. Unenlightened reason refuses to see through phenomena — and therefore, it is incapable of glimpsing what lies beyond. It is incapable of detecting or appreciating Presence. Unenlightened reason cannot see the invisible and therefore is incapable of poetry.

“To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world’s night utters the holy.”

A poet thinks because they sing in the trace of the fugitive gods. As a result, they feel their Presence, they step into the Holy of Holies, and utter the holy in the world’s night. The words of poets are holy and holistic — they make us whole. They capture the traces of the fugitive gods by piercing the phenomena with the imagination.

They stand in awe — they are thanking and thinking at the same time, in the same breath of holy utterance. The unenlightened mind thinks about; the enlightened mind allows itself to be claimed by Being and allows the thought to arise out of the Source. To start thinking, we must start thanking — allow ourselves to be claimed by Being.

Wonder is the only state of mind where we truly think. We look at the natural but perceive the supernatural:

“What seems natural to us is probably just something familiar in a long tradition that has forgotten the unfamiliar source from which it arose. And yet this unfamiliar source once struck man as strange and caused him to think and to wonder.” Heidegger