Heidegger and Plato: Toward Dialogue

Amicus Plato magis amica veritas: Reading Heidegger in Plato’s Cave

From the way in which Plato employed the expression idea we can readily see that he meant by it something that not only is never borrowed from the senses, but that far surpasses even the concepts of understanding —with which Aristotle dealt—inasmuch as nothing congruent with it is ever found in experience. . . . I do not here want to enter into any literary inquiry seeking to establish what meaning the august philosopher linked with his expression. I shall point out only that there is nothing at all unusual in finding, whether in ordinary conversation or in writings, that by comparing the thoughts uttered by an author on his topic we understand him even better than he understood himself.1 We can find this passage partially transcribed by Heidegger in his Phänomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reiner Vernunft (WS 1927–28).2 The same idea is expressed in Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (1927): “We not only want to, but also must understand the Greeks better than they understood themselves” (GA 24, 157; my translation). Through his career, Heidegger retained a strong interest in the Greeks. In fact, his insistence on the need to overcome metaphysics never meant to overcome the Greeks but rather capture the roots of their deepest insights. Being and Time (1927) starts with the question which had been in Heidegger’s mind for several years, also raised by Plato in the Sophist, the question of being as such. The Eleatic Stranger raises this radical question in order to understand what is really meant by “being.” The passage offers a clue about the beginning of Being and Time which continues the lecture course on the Sophist that Heidegger delivered in 1924–25. The Platonic text suggests a possibility, which Heidegger reinforces in asking whether we in our time have an answer to that question, or whether we are perhaps still perplexed about how are we to understand the meaning of being. His Amicus Plato magis amica veritas: Reading Heidegger in Plato’s Cave María del Carmen Paredes 108 answer that it is first of all necessary to reawaken an understanding for the meaning of this question points to the basis of his own venture. As for those listening to the Eleatic Stranger, Heidegger’s approach to the question of the meaning of being is apparently determined by the aporetic character underlined in Plato’s dialogue. In Being and Time Heidegger begins his ontological investigation in a Platonic manner. According to Heidegger, the question which interests him has been long abandoned by the history of Western philosophy. He refers to a forgetfulness, a silence that comes after Plato and Aristotle, “only to subside from then on as a theme for actual investigation.”3 Heidegger might mean—as he puts it more explicitly elsewhere—that this subsidence encompasses the long path of Western philosophy, from Plato to Husserl. Certainly Heidegger poses the question of the meaning of being in a way pointing to the special importance of Plato. Heidegger held courses and seminars on Plato and Aristotle over a period of several years. His exegetical work with the texts had a significant influence on the development of his philosophy. It follows that we cannot understand Heidegger merely in terms of his intention to overcome metaphysics. For it is precisely this beginning that made his path of thought so fruitful (Figal 1988, 18–19). It is reasonable to assume that his intended destruction of the Western ontological tradition has its limits in these sources. This assumption allows us to mention briefly the question of the possibility of constructing a philosophy understood as fundamental ontology without raising the main questions raised by Plato. The Meaning of Philosophy The theoretical discourse initiated by Plato is central for the kind of intellectual activity called “philosophy.” It further defines a type of philosophy that has long been influential on Western thought. In favor of this interpretation , two reasons can be cited. First, the philosophical experience proposed by Plato perhaps requires a new way of living but by no means imposes a rupture with everyday experience. Philosophy appeals to ordinary experience from within, as it were, as cave-dwellers reflecting on the true meaning of shadows and sensible figures. The second reason is that Plato does not invoke extraordinary experience of any kind. He merely opens the way toward reflection and independence. We see this in Plato’s struggle against sophistry. Philosophy has a double task. It must not only overcome (initial) ignorance . It...