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Galiet & Galiet
less clarity towards more clarity towards absolute clarity, in other words, from conjecture as mimesis or similitude (εικασια), to belief (πιστις) to discursive and deductive thought (διανοια) to pure intellection (νοεσις). Moreover, the released, illuminated prisoner does return to the cave to dwell in penumbra:49 the very space of interplay between the hidden and unhidden, in Heidegger’s sense.
Moreover, Plato, and not error-amending Aristotle,50 demotes aletheia from its natural link to phusis and, instead, associates it to “correctness” and “truth as agreement.”51 Aletheia, Heidegger posits, is originally the basic feature, not of the Idea, but of φυσις.52 Thus, it “essentially rejects any question about its relation to something else, such as thinking.”53 He insists that in Plato, aletheia “comes under the yoke of the Idea.”54 That is, Plato, in identifying phusis with the Idea, turns the static, essential aspect of beings into a constant, interfering representation between beings and humans. Logos, then, becomes a proposition, an assertion about beings, and aletheia the assertion’s correctness, its truth. An individual becomes an “animal having logos (discourse, reason). Originally, phusis was logos (gathering, collection) having man.”55
Plato, in the Phaedo,56 uses the concept of Idea (Gr. Ιδεα) or Form to show an immutable and eternal reality. This is why it is frequent in Plato that the vision57 of a thing, that
49 There are two moments of confusion: one produced by going from darkness to light and the other from light to darkness. In the first instance, the prisoner feels the confusion between convention (dark) and nature (light); he opts to retreat back. The second instance expresses the march of the soul from hypothesis to the first principle without needing to resort to images but only to ideas. It simply means the release prisoner knows truth and reality and that he is obfuscated by darkness. The return of the prisoner to the cave 3⁄4 having looked at tangible things, the heavens and the primordial light in itself (the Form of the Good) aims at persuading his fellow prisoners that they live in a realm of deceiving shadows. Plato. Republic. Book VII. 516 e3 – 517 a6. Plato. Complete Works. Republic. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 1997.
50 Nietzsche. Vol. II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same. Trans. D.F. Krell. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984. 228 and Nietzsche. Vol. IV: Nihilism. Trans. F.A. Capuzzi. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982. 171 Please note that Nietzsche’s references from Vol. I to 4 appear in Michael Inwood’s A Dictionary of Heidegger. Cited too in Michael Inwood’s A Heidegger Dictionary 14-15. Inwood, Michael. A Heidegger Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
51 Heidegger. Vol. 34: Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Zu Platons Hohlengleichnis und Theatet. Ed. H. Morchen, 1988. 1931-1932 Lectures. 21. Heidegger. Plato’s Doctrine of Truth. Trans. J. Barlow. In Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, vol. 3. Ed. W. Barrett and H.D. Aiken. New York: Random House, 1962. Based on 1931-1932 Lectures. 201, 215
52 Originally phusis was not too distinct from Aletheia, the unhiddenness into which beings emerge, or from logos, the ‘gathering’ or ‘collection’ of beings in the open. Inwood, Michael. A Heidegger Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. 137
53 Heidegger. Vol. 65: Beitrage zur Philosophie. Vom Ereignis. Ed. F.W. von Hermann, 1989. Manuscripts of 1936-8. 329
54 Heidegger. Plato’s Doctrine of Truth. Trans. J. Barlow. In Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, vol. 3. Ed. W. Barrett and H.D. Aiken. New York: Random House, 1962. Based on 1931-1932 Lectures. 228
55 Heidegger. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Trans. R. Manheim. New York: Doubleday, 1961. Originally published in 1953 on the basis of his 1935 lectures. 134, 147.
56 Plato. Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper. The Phaedo. Trans. G.M. Grube. Indianapolis, USA: Hackett Publishing, 1997.
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