Epilogue: Conversations With Landscape

A lizard basks upon a stone in the warm sunshine of a summer’s day. The stone lies on the ground, beside a path along which a man is strolling. The sight of the lizard brings him up short. Fascinated by the jewel-like precision of the lizard’s form, which contrasts so strikingly with the rough-cut stone, and by the lizard’s capacity to remain completely motionless while yet fully alert, he begins to reflect on the relationships between the lizard and the stone and between the stone and the ground on which it lies, and on his own relationships with both lizard and stone. This man, you see, is a philosopher, and he considers it his business to reflect on such matters. Later on, his reflections would figure in a course of lectures in which he would try to explain, once and for all, the difference between what it means to be a stone, a lizard and a human. The lectures, delivered in 1929-30 but not published until 1983, were called The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics and the philosopher’s name was Martin Heidegger.